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Tourism ailing, Jakarta toughens
terrorism stance
By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - Maintaining perspective about
events in Indonesia demands that you either believe that
outlandish coincidences are not only possible but
commonplace, or that nothing is a coincidence.
On Monday, President Megawati Sukarnoputri
opened the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)
meeting here in Bali telling members of the battered
industry, "Terrorism must be fought, not feared." She
pledged to do her part in the fight, while chiding
Western and antipodean governments for continued travel
warnings about Indonesia.
That same morning in
Jakarta, prosecutors formally charged Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir, the alleged spiritual leader of radical Muslim
separatist group Jemaah Islamiyah, for involvement in
terrorism plots. Coincidence, right?
PATA of
tourist feet
The PATA meeting was supposed to
mark a feel-good turning point for Indonesian tourism in
general and Bali in particular. PATA gave Bali a vote of
confidence when it confirmed the meeting just days after
the October 12 bombing that killed some 200 people. This
gathering of 1,000 delegates from 42 nations was planned
as a back-to-Bali beach party for the international
tourism set.
Instead, the meeting in the upscale
Nusa Dua enclave has become a crisis-management seminar.
Asian tourism has careered from one predicament to
another since regional currencies collapsed in 1997.
There was a temporary bubble of bargain hunters then,
but the economic fallout decimated key regional market
segments: upper middle classes, expatriate and local,
who didn't have bottomless pockets but would splurge for
a couple of luxury holidays a year; and business
conferences for Western corporations that seemed to have
limitless budgets and hopes for pre-crisis Asia.
The struggle deepened with September 11, 2001,
which made many Westerners reluctant to fly, especially
to places with unfamiliar names. Wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq further depressed international air-passenger
traffic. The Bali bombing boosted some rival resorts
such as Phuket in Thailand for a short time; overall, it
made outsiders even more reluctant to visit Asia.
With the outbreak of severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) spreading from China, an industry that
was previously ill has gone on the respirator. Since the
virus travels with ease in crowded, confined aircraft
cabins, flying is less attractive than ever. Moreover,
China's attempt to cover up the outbreak not only made
the health problem far worse, it has cast doubt on all
Asian governments' credibility.
And not just
governments: Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific spent
recent days denying a leaked internal memo that included
the option of a complete shutdown in May to stem daily
losses of US$3 million as passenger loads fall from the
usual 30,000 toward 6,000 a day.
Experts say
that SARS will have more of an impact than the war in
Iraq on tourism. The World Travel and Tourism Council
estimates global losses in excess of $30 billion and 3
million jobs.
Remember Legionnaire's
disease?
But SARS is a temporary problem. This
new form of flu now looks as lethal and mysterious as
Legionnaire's disease did when it was baffling public
health experts and terrifying the public in 1976. People
will learn to cope, and medical science will eventually
provide some helpful tools. SARS won't end air travel
any more than AIDS ended sex. Furthermore, there's not
much that governments or the travel industry can do when
new diseases emerge other than cooperate with
investigators and ride out the storm.
On the
other hand, governments shouldn't make things worse for
the battered sector. While lamenting travel warnings
that discourage visitors, on March 31 Megawati made her
own move to depress tourism. She issued a presidential
decree, which still requires implementation rules to
take effect, eliminating visa-free visiting by citizens
of 38 countries, including Japan, Australia and others
that provide the bulk of Indonesia's tourists. The
motivations for the new policy appear to be diplomatic
pique, since those nations don't grant visa-free entry
to Indonesians, and phony political security concerns.
Genuine security measures to discourage
terrorist attacks, on the other hand, will help the
travel industry. Megawati's words, and the prosecution's
timing, were reminders that Indonesia's foreign-exchange
earnings from tourism fell to $4.3 billion in 2002 from
$5.4 billion in 2001.
The Bali bombings awoke
Indonesia from the denial phase in its grappling with
terrorism. The outcome of the trials of Ba'asyir and the
accused Bali bombers, both likely to begin next month,
will go a long way toward revealing what phase it has
reached. The prosecutor's dossier contains thousands of
pages of evidence and 25 pages of charges against
Ba'asyir, including treason. Convictions could keep the
64-year-old cleric in jail well into his 90s.
Treason charges against Ba'asyir stem from his
alleged role in plotting a string of church bombings on
Christmas Eve 2000 that left 19 dead across the
archipelago. Those attacks, the bombing of the Jakarta
Stock Exchange building a month earlier, and communal
and religious conflicts fueled by outsiders made the
post-September 11 (and pre-October 12) debate about
whether Indonesia had a terrorism problem ludicrous (see
Indonesia bombed into awareness,
October 15, 2002). Sadly, it wasn't until tourists died
that Indonesians recognized what had been staring them
in face.
Too cozy for comfort
Ba'asyir
is also charged in a foiled plan to bomb US facilities
in Singapore, but he's not accused of a role in the Bali
bombing despite links to some accused plotters. More
mundane but probably more important, Ba'asyir faces
immigration and citizenship-law violations that look
like slam dunks and could result in jail time and/or
banishment from Indonesia. Those charges stem from his
voluntary exile in Malaysia starting in 1985 after
serving a three-year sentence for subversion.
Back in the 1980s, the Suharto regime didn't
tolerate outspoken radicals like Ba'asyir, but in the
Smiling General's political twilight he warmed to
playing the religion card. After Suharto's ouster, his
military and big-business supporters comprising the dark
side of Indonesian politics found common cause with the
Islamic fringe to destabilize the regime of president
Abdurrahman Wahid, the closest thing to a reformer to
lead Indonesia so far.
The Bali bombings
demonstrated the dangers of cozying up to radicals. Like
the remarkable difference in the vehemence and violence
of protests over the US-led attacks on Afghanistan and
Iraq (see Indonesia doth protest too little,
March 29), reactions to Ba'asyir's arrest in October and
Monday's court filing reflect the slippage of radical
Islam's support in Indonesia after the Bali attack.
When police first expressed interest in
questioning Ba'asyir in the days after bombing, he was
whisked to the safety of a hospital surrounded by
hundreds of loyal supporters from religious boarding
schools. When authorities tried to transfer him from his
base in Solo, Central Java, to a hospital in Jakarta,
Ba'asyir's supporters demonstrated, ululated and fought
the police, delaying the transfer for days. Since then,
during his six months of detention up to Monday's court
filing, as dark-side support for radical Islam dwindled,
Ba'asyir's supporters haven't been audible.
That's probably just another coincidence.
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