Power, politicians and brutality

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Sep 15, 2009

By Farish A. Noor (The Nut Graph)

FOR a region that prides itself for its so-called Asian values, we in Southeast Asia don't seem to practise what we preach. We talk about how the region's peoples are peace-loving, but we forget — and we continue to erase and forget — the historical fact that Southeast Asia has been one of the world's most violent parts.

It was here that the Khmer Rouge murdered hundreds of thousands of people in their bid to take Cambodia back to Year Zero. It was here that hundreds of thousands of alleged communists were massacred in the anti-Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) purges in the 1960s. It was here that the Vietnam War was fought with napalm and chemical weapons.

So where, pray tell, was the peace in the region?

Of late, tempers have flared again in Malaysia and Indonesia for the wrong and most absurd of reasons. Indonesian vigilantes now claim that they will unilaterally invade Malaysia with samurai swords and ninja-throwing darts. How will this invading force land on Malaysia's shores? Fly over via Air Asia?

And in Malaysia, a dispute over the building of a Hindu temple in a predominantly Malay-Muslim neighbourhood led a group of nobodies to parade with a severed cow's head in hand. What an apt reminder that this is the month of Ramadan when Muslims are supposed to exercise moral and emotional self-restraint and composure. These are brutish times indeed.

Power of the media

Should we be surprised by any of this? The historian will remind you of the facts of our bloody and violent history and tell you that in relative terms, we seem to be slightly more civilised than before. It would be surprising, to say the least, if the region witnessed another round of bloody genocide akin to that by the Khmer Rouge.

Photos of genocide victims of the Khmer Rouge regime
(Source: Wiki commons)

Yet this does not, and should not, be a cause for celebration for us. The tempering of tempers in the region has less to do with a Southeast Asian community that has matured and renounced our ancestors' violent ways. Rather, it has more to do with economic and geopolitical realities, which dictate that states can no longer massacre their own populations and get away with it. The global media is there to see to it that mass killings, pogroms and the systematic demonisation of communities will not be carried out in full public view. The only thing that seems to hold back this tide of unreconstructed primordial violence is the fear of the loss of international recognition and much-needed foreign capital investment.

But if and when the international media is not looking, the thugs and gangsters who infest our political landscape will come out of the woodwork and do their dirty business. The cow-head protest in Shah Alam was a relatively small incident that, despite making international headlines, did not stay there for long. Likewise, the vigilantes in Jakarta who are sweeping the streets of the city of Malaysians probably realise that they, too, being insignificant themselves, will get their 15 minutes of fame and then be forgotten.