Wednesday, April 30, 2008

EAST TIMOR HISTORY WARS

There is little doubt that the teaching of History and Social Science in Indonesia could at best be called perverse. Never the less every so often people put pen to paper with statements that simply leave the Stump GOBSMACKED and provides yet another entry in "WHY DON'T THEY TAKE US SERIOUSLY" journal.



Check out this classic piece from today's Jakarta Post Letters section

History Revision 1. The Indonesian Military was invited into East Timor by the Nationalist Group of East Timor (Who???) I guess he means like the Dutch went invited into Indonesia by some local Regents at the time (Do have read of Raffles in Indonesia if you want a real laughable account of Indonesian Regents double doubling at the expense of their people..as they say the more things change...)

History Revision 2. No Christmas before the Indonesians came .... I bet that's news to the Catholic East Timorese and Portuguese (and not suggesting the Ports are the good guys here..but the statment..WTF.

History Revision 3. The posts of UN Secretary General and Portuguese President were all held by Ramos Horta ..Busy little bugger wasn't he.

Although to be fair, the writer is correct that it is to the Australian Labor Party's and its leftist flunkies eternal shame, they sold out so easy and looked the other way during the invasion (which took far longer than the Indonesian Military thought until British Supplied Combat systems turned the tide)

For such slush like this still to be touted without belly laughs in public, shows how far is yet to be traveled in the interests of freedom and democracy.

As a disclaimer, don't for a second think the Stump falls in the camp of those groups that resisted the Indonesia presence. Contrary to the nice, noble myth of the brave Freedom Fighter, they proved time and again that they held own in random unjustified violence, torture and cruelty to innocents.

Oh...Want see an interesting reaction?..Next time you meet a senior Indonesian Official who says he was in Tim Tim prior to independence ask him "So did you ever get a chance to see Aturo?"

BTW.. Dili is not a big city and their ain't no others..

On the lighter side

The Jakarta Post without fail provides a daily belly laugh as well..take this quote on a piece about the arrest of some robbers at the airport.

"He said all four suspected resisted arrest forcing officers to shoot them in the legs." ...Suree they did..chuckle"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great letter, love that Jakarta Post. Also the bit about being shot in the legs - every daytime Patroli type show has images of criminals, all shot neatly through the calf. Can't they use handcuffs or something? Lastly, I tried looking up Aturo - is there a different spelling? I'm intrigued by the story.

Belawan

Unknown said...

totally OOT... but how come you implement a class system for your blogrolls?

how do you decide who's the classy ones?

Rob Baiton said...

I thought Jose Ramos Horta was the Premier of NSW or was that the Prime Minister of Warwick Farm (not far from Sutton's Holden)...

Stump, gotta say I am not surprised with this version of history!

Why should Indonesians write the history any differently for their role in Timor Leste when you have such a great template in the history books describing the events of 1965?

We all embellish the truth a little don't we? In any event if you are going to lie you may as well lie big!

julia said...

Interesting.East timor, West papua there is hope.
The gap remains where Indcoup once blogged. There must have been a tragedy, I imagine. His blog was too hastily deleted, the photos gone,nil.That record could have stayed.