Tulisan menarik tentang makna di balik "bantuan"
Australia terhadap Indonesia, dalam kasus bencana
Tsunami di Aceh!
Satrio
======================================
THE DARK SIDE OF GIVING: Australia-Indonesia relations
post-tsunami
by Robert Cribb, Research School of Pacific and Asian
Studies, Australian National University and President
of the ASAA.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australians are justifiably proud of their swift
response to the humanitarian crisis in Indonesia
following the Boxing Day tsunami. Not only has it
demonstrated genuine generosity, Australia's prompt
and leading role in the relief effort is seen by many
commentators to offer the chance for Australia to
prove definitively to Indonesians that our
intentions are good, and to banish the lingering
strains in relations caused by the separation of East
Timor in 1999. Indeed, with thousands of
Indonesians and Australians working together on
restoring a battered region, a host of new personal
ties should put new depth into the relationship.
This could provide an insurance against future
tensions.
Already, however, there are signs that things might
not turn out so well. Indonesia is too poor and too
badly hit to have the luxury of refusing foreign aid,
as has India. But not all Indonesians will welcome
this intrusion of foreign benevolence.
Indonesian traditions place great emphasis on
reciprocity. 'Rice debts must be repaid in rice, blood
debts must be repaid in blood' was a slogan of the
nationalist revolutionaries in Aceh during the
revolution of the 1940s, when the Acehnese were
enthusiastic supporters of Indonesia.
Reciprocity can mean revenge.
Within this framework, gifts create obligations, and
generous gifts create big obligations. There is a vast
gift economy in Indonesian society, in which
power-holders bind the weak and the poor to them by
means of generosity. Some dismiss this as corruption
but it is also a means for helping to redistribute
wealth in a country where the official tax and
social welfare system is not up to the job.
Of course Indonesians do not fear they will have to
repay all those aid dollars back one day or that they
will need to send relief workers to Australia. What
they fear is being bound to do the will of Australia
and other Western countries. They understand that
beneath the veneer of the doctrine of Christian
charity--that gifts ought to be made with no
expectation of return--the West also has a strong
sense of reciprocity. If Australia has spent $500
million to help Indonesia, how can Indonesia
then play hardball in trade negotiations, on the issue
of human rights, on illegal immigrants and
environmental issues?
Receiving countries, too, are always aware of the
power of creative accounting. $1 billion has been
allocated to assist Indonesia, but how much will be
spent on Australian salaries, on products from
Australia, on contracts for Australian firms? Foreign
aid can sometimes be a cover for financial
transactions which barely touch the purported
recipient. Yet that figure of $1 billion will stand as
a constant reminder to Indonesians that they have to
be civil to Australia.
None of this means that relations have to go bad. But
we should not imagine that aid in time of emergency
will buy us Indonesia's friendship.
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