|
|
 |
Sydney,
March 17: Jetstar Asia, a subsidiary of Australia's Qantas
Airways, says in a travel alert that the decision to bail
out was "in response to factors beyond our control including
a rapid decline in forward travel demand due to government
containment measures, corporate travel bans and a general
pullback from everyday activities across the community.”
The deadly Covid-19 sneeze is not mentioned in this convoluted
explanation.
The
Southeast Asian Times
|
|
|
Media black-out called
for after tour bus slaying
|
|
 |
Manila,
September 11: This cartoon titled “Ineptness”
was published with this announcement: “More than the
media, the Philippine National police and higher ups are to
blame for the Quirino Grand Stand hostagetakingincident”
in the Bulatlat of Saturday, August 28,
2010, five days after dismissed Philippine policeman senior
inspector Rolando Mendoza, 55, armed with an M16 rifle seized
a tourist bus carrying 23 passengers and the driver and threatened
to shoot the mostly Hong Kong tourists aboard unless he was
reinstated.
The former policeman, who was named one of the Philippines
top ten police officers in 1986, was among five Manila policemen
dismissed after they were found to have extorted money from
a hotel chef accused of drug trafficking.
The newly-elected Philippines President Benigno Aquino has
acknowledged “inadequacies” in the police
response to the 12-hour seige in which the dismissed police
inspector was also killed.
The live media coverage of the bus seige was among the “inadequacies”
that had resulted in what the media described as 'botched'
or 'failed negotiations'.
“The intensive media coverage provided a wealth of information
to the former policeman who was watching television on the
bus and listening to the radio throughout the day,” said
President Aquino.
Philippine Interior Secretary Jessie Robredo attributed the
failed negotiations to inadequate training and equipment.
This Bulatlat cartoon goes inside the tour bus
on the day that ended with the slaying of eight Hong Kong
tourists to see senior inspector Rolando Mendoza watching
the arrest of his brother Gregorio Mendoza on television.
A recorded interview by Radio Mindanao Network with the former
police inspector via his mobile phone that was submitted to
the commission of inquiry in the week after the seige revealed
that the distraught former policeman shot the hostages after
he saw the arrest of his brother on the television monitor.
“I can see my brother, why are they doing that? he asked
I’m the one at fault here, not him!
He’s not at fault.
Show me that he’s being freed!
Show me or else I’ll start shooting the people here!”
he shouted.
The former policeman had freed eight of the 25 tourists by
the afternoon of the day he took them hostage but shooting
started after his brother - also a police officer - was arrested
because the police apparently believed that he was involved
in the seizure of the bus.
The
Southeast Asian Times
|
|
|
Judge Ibrahim delivers
guilty verdict
|
|
 |
Jakarta, August 17: This cartoon published in The Jakarta
Post 8 August 2010 shows judge Ibrahim in the dock rather
than at the bench where he sat delivering guilty and not guilty
verdicts until he himself was found guilty of a breach of
the Indonesia’s Corruption Act on August 3.
Dressed in his prison stripes, Judge Ibrahim is ready to serve
a six-year sentence after a look- alike delivered a guilty
verdict.
Judge Ibrahim was found guilty of accepting a rupiah 300 million,
about US$37,000, from lawyer Adner Sirait and businessman
Darianus Lungguk Sitorus in March.
For his money the judge was to rule in favour of the lawyer
and businessman in their appeal to the court over a land dispute
with the Jakarta administration.
Lawyer, Adner Sirait and businessman Darianus Lungguk Sitorus
were tried in another court and face 15 years in prison if
found guilty for allegedly bribing judge Ibrahim.
That judge Ibrahim was found guilty of bribery is not indicitative
of the findings of Indonesian Corruption Watch report of January
this year which showed that 106 judges leaned towards acquittal
or lenient sentences in the prosecution of alleged corruption
in 2009
One judge had dismissed 35 corruption prosecutions during
that year.
Indonesia Corruption Watch found that only 154 guilty verdicts
were delivered in the 378 corruption cases before the courts
in 2009.
The findings also showed that 82 of those found guilty received
prison sentences of less than a year.
Twenty three were sentenced to up to two years and 26 prison
sentence of up to five years. Six of those found guilty received
up to ten years in jail.
Only one received a sentence of more than ten years and the
remaining 16 received a suspended sentence.
Judge Ibrahim was only the second judge to have been found
guilty of breach of the Indonesia Corruption Act since 2006.
The
Southeast Asian Times |
|
|
Indonesia's public order
officers out of order
|
|
 |
|
Jakarta, July 21: This lampoon depicting Indonesia's public
order officers as a public menace was published in The
Jakarta Post on July 10 ahead of the plan to clear Jakarta
streets of beggars before Ramadan and the eviction of squatters
from shanty towns built on either side of the Cipinang East
Jakarta railway line to make way for a dual track
The cartoon was published amid calls for the disarmament
of the public order officers and three months after the
ministerial decree in March that had effectively armed them
with gas pistols, tear gas grenades and tasers.
Calls to disband the Public Order Agency that employs the
officers began in April after a riot at Tranjung Priok left
three public order officers dead and hundreds of rioters
and police injured.
The Public order officers are also accused of destroying
homes and business premises in the enforcement of municipal
bylaws
Imam Prasodjo, sociologist at the University of Indonesia,
says that the public order officers take their orders from
the Public order Agency and are often poorly trained junior
high school graduates who are paid about rupiah 300,000
a month.
Poltak Sinaga of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights
Association says that there were 21 cases of alleged violence
by public order officers since 2004 on the record.
Human-rights violations by public order officers toward
minority groups and the poor, including street vendors,
buskers, transvestites, women and children, violate the
Constitution, she said.
Allegations of abuse by the public order officers from various
parts of Indonesia include the death of a 14 year old in
2007 after a beating from nine public order officers.
Public order officers were accused of being behind the death
of a further five who were involved in a land dispute with
the military in the same year.
The public order officers were also accused of seriously
injuring nine after a raid on a market last year and last
month three teenage buskers died after being chased by the
public order officers.
The new chief of the Public Order agency, Effendi Anas,
has admitted that the public order officers 'needed to repair
their image as abusive enforcers'.
The
Southeast Asian Times
|
|
|
Poet
returns prestigious arts award
|
|
 |
Jakarta, June 28:
The cartoon above which shows the bewildered Golkar Party
President Aburizal Bakrie still in bed mid morning was published
in The Jakarta Post after poet Goenawan Mohamad returned his
2004 Achmad Bakrie Award to its joint organisers - the Freedom
Institute and the Bakrie untuk Negeri Foundation on June 22.
The poet said that he returned the award to show his disappointment
with its sponsor.
The award was returned because the Bakrie company, Minarak
Lapindo Jaya Brantas, denied responsibility for the May 2006
mudflow that has inundated houses, fields, shops, factories,
schools, hospitals and mosques as well as displacing more
than 50,000 people from 12 villages in Porong district, Sidoarjo
regency, East Java
The poet when asked why it took him six years to return the
award said: “I tried not to relate the award with what
he does as a political figure and businessman, but the contradiction
has gone too far”.
He also returned the rupiah 100 million in prize money plus
interest.
The poet was also asked why it took him so long to realise
the true nature of Bap Bakrie
The
Southeast Asian Times |
|
|
Cartoonist’s
ignorance sparks apology
|
|
 |
Bangkok,
May 31: Stephff's View, the cartoon above published in Thailand’s
mass-circulation English-language Nation newspaper, prompted
a quick rebuke and apology. “We would like to inform
you that this is of very poor taste and totally disrespectful,”
wrote an indignant India-Thai Chamber of Commerce president
Subash Baja. “We take very strong objection to this and
we fail to comprehend how The Nation has allowed this kind
of offensive language and the cartoon. We have been deeply
hurt by such insensitivity.
The president then explained that the work by Indian sculptor
living in Thailand Ravinder Reddy had been commissioned by
the India-Thai Chamber of Commerce King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s
80th birthday. The contrite cartoonist, Stephff, Stephane
Peray, replied: “I need to apologise to the whole Indian
community because I honestly didn't know it was Indian
(I assumed it was Thai because of the hairstyle). There was
absolutely no intention to be disrespectful to the Indian
people, but you are right, I certainly hurt the feelings of
the artist, so therefore yes, I do apologise to him.
The
Southeast Asian Times |
|
| Seeing
no evil, hearing no evil, speaking no evil |
|
 |
Bangkok,
May 26: Judges of Thailand Criminal Court approved the issuing
of an arrest warrant for fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra to answer charges of terrorism at a closed sitting.
Approval of the warrant was given to Special Investigation
Department chief Tharit Pengdit, his deputy Police Colonel
Narat Savetanant and chief investigator Police Lieutenant
Colonel Thawal Mangkhang.
It was provided after the judges were shown videos of Thaksin
Shinawatra speaking to his red-shirt supporters from via a
satellite link from outside Thailand.
Chief investigator told reporters that his department would
now establish in which country the fugitive was living and
seek his extradition.
The
Southeast Asian Times |
|
|
Australian
parliament applauds slaying of terrorist
|
|
 |
Jakarta, March 13: The members of the
Australian House of Representatives and Senate – both
supposedly dedicated to the rule of law – burst into
spontaneous applause when visiting Indonesian President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono confirmed that his elite police Detachment
88 had conveniently dispatched alleged bomb maker Dulmatin
in a shootout in Pamulang, Jakarta, earlier this month. History
shows that suspected terrorists and potentially embarrassing
drug traffickers are likely to fall victim to extrajudicial
slaying long before they go to trial in Indonesia. But if
the human-rights-supporting Australians were quick to forget
the rights of an alleged terrorist, a Jakarta Post cartoonist
was at least able to realize that for Australian and Indonesian
rulers, Dulmatin’s was a timely death. Still, unlike
the mass slaughter of the 1960s, the killings are now selective
and, as then, have the approval of the Australian government,
diplomats and commercial representatives.
The
Southeast Asian Times
|
|
|
