Knowing Indonesia

At the start of 1962, when I sailed from Sydney for the Old World, my grandfather was surprised, indeed slightly shocked, that a young Australian might venture out into the Northern Hemisphere without having first visited Outback Australia and our neighboring New Zealand. Today, in a way, I agree with him. But I’ve never, of course, regretted for an instant my profound relationship with France, along with parts of Britain and the Mediterranean (particularly Greece and Israel). For me, travel has always been an almost sacred affair, carried out necessarily in solitude, akin to setting foot in an ancient monastery. Consequently, I’ve never really traveled very much at all, except maybe into my own metaphorical “heart and soul”.

For Australians in general, Indonesia is a very special nation, since they’re our closest northern neighbors. Personally, I’ve never set foot there. As a schoolchild in Grafton, in the 1950s, I was thrilled when my paternal grandparents, in the context of an exchange program, welcomed a male Indonesian student into their home for a short time. (It’s not impossible that his name is going to spring into my mind, one night, in a dream.) He was so intelligent, refined and friendly that we tended to look upon him as an exhibit in a cultural museum. I would love to know what he thought of us.

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Today, in my native land, everybody is shocked (like me too) because, in the early hours of the morning, Indonesian police dragged a couple of nice Australian fellows out of their beds in Bali, and stood them up for execution in front of firing squads. Needless to say, I disagree entirely with this kind of barbarian manslaughter, which serves no useful purpose. Here in France, on 18 September 1981, the great lawyer Robert Badinter made a moving speech to the National Assembly that culminated in the abolition of the death penalty.

« J'ai l'honneur,
au nom du Gouvernement de la République,
de demander à l'Assemblée nationale
l'abolition de la peine de mort en France... »

It would be marvelous if every civilized nation in the world were to abandon forever the disgusting death penalty… but we’re nowhere near the achievement of this goal. Just look at Texas. Meanwhile, it would be good if Australia were to make an effort in getting to know our northern neighbor, instead of reducing the Indonesian nation to the sole silly low-cost pleasure-ground of Bali.