Tanjung Balai Karimun

While on board a Singapore registered drilling ship in Malaysian territorial waters, I and 6 other Europeans were 'arrested' by 2 Indonesian patrol boats. This is taken from the diary I kept in jail, where I was on hunger strike for 3 months.

Tanjung Balai Karimun 1984

 

    Yesterday a group of women came to the prison loaded up with food and cigarettes. They were from a charity group, trying to make life a little more pleasant for the prisoners at anniversary time. As soon as they were gone the guards got stuck into the food, and the cigarettes went into the prison shop - run by the guards - for sale to the prisoners!

 

     I may start eating again just before the trial restarts. With less than a week to go now I can't afford to be too sick; I have too much to say, and I'm now defending myself. My ears and eye are badly infected and my throat is swollen. The area around my left kidney aches, and I am covered in sores.

 

     Dear sister Maggie, I hate to disillusion you like this, but there has been no Minister of any description here to see me as your cable stated eleven days ago. But oh boy, it's good to know you are trying. You just don't understand the depth of cynicism behind modern politics - and 'news gathering' as well.

 

     Injustice on its own is not an issue nowadays. If the Indonesians hung us up on the barbed wire fence for a few days and sent photos to the news agencies, that would be news. But even then the words they added to go with the pictures would probably be off the top of their heads. 'Slipped climbing the wire while trying to escape. It would be dangerous to move them.'     'Diplomatic moves are underway to have the bodies exported - in cans. Protests have been received from some EEC countries concerned about meat dumping.'

 

     Kaligis' local agent came to see Boo. He says the trial may last another four days, this Monday to Thursday inclusive. But he has heard on good authority that they are considering dropping the violence charge, which leaves only Illegal Immigration. That carries a maximum twelve month sentence. But without the other charges we would never have set foot ashore in the first place.

 

     In my opinion they will still find us guilty and sentence us to time served plus a bit for appearances. They just can't risk the possible repercussions of not finding us guilty of something after keeping us in jail this long. Not that it changes the basic injustice of it all in any way, but it will shut the embassies up. Anything with even a faint whiff of self justification in it will shut them up, no sweat.

 

     I beat Nigel at chess two games in a row. It's a no-light night. Boo and Belchfart have taken over the chess board as night comes down. I stand at the door, and realize I may be blocking the others' light, so I say

"Can you see all right?"

Belchfart answers "Yeah, you're so skinny the light shines right through you now."

Nigel adds "It would take at least three of you to block the light now." Tomorrow I start eating before I disappear completely - besok.

 

     TUESDAY 30/4/85.

     In the morning I had half a packet of noodles, and couldn't even eat them all - but the fast is broken.  Abdul Gani came to take me to the hospital. I was very weak, but managed to shuffle there slowly with his help, and enjoy the experience of being outside the jail, plus the waves and smiles and enquiries of many passersby. At the hospital I got the usual comments about my beautiful wife from people I didn't know, and smiled and said 'I know, I know.' Everyone in Karimun knows I have a beautiful wife.

 

     Abdul Gani was remarkably cheerful. I hadn't seen him smile much in the past few weeks, besides which it was most unusual for the Deputy Commandant to take a prisoner to the hospital himself. People kept coming up to talk to him, then smile at me and say hello. I hadn't seen so many smiling faces since I don't know when.

 

     Finally I asked Abdul what everybody was so happy about, since I was feeling cheerful myself with all the smiles. It took him a while to explain, and he enlisted the help of a nurse whose English was a little better than his. The gist of it was

"I happy because you eat and smile. You good man, I know, and I not happy see you not eat not smile. Some men no matter but you matter. You help Indonesian men even you sick, I see, I hear. You good man, you make not eat many people in Karimun worry and pray for you no die. Now I tell people you eat all people happy."

     And I thought no good deed went unpunished!

 

     I was examined by a different doctor from the one who saw us before. He spoke good English and acted like a real doctor. Both ears, left eye and throat were still infected, and I still had a painful area round my left kidney. He got me to strip off and gave me a thorough examination - not like Indonesia at all.  He sounded all round my chest and stomach area, took my blood pressure, looked in my eyes and ears with his torch, and peered down my throat. He asked me to stand on the scales, and they said just under 57kg. In other words I have now lost approximately what my wife weighs! Then he told me if I didn't eat and drink well I would die soon. I told him I had already started this morning, and he gave me an injection and prescription. He also told me I should stay away from cigarettes, so I told him I'd try and locate a very long cigarette holder.

 

     Abdul Gani took me to the dispensary and filled the prescription for me. There were antibiotic capsules plus three different kinds of pills and a bottle of liquid medicine of some kind. Four of the capsules, three of each of the three types of pills, and two spoons of the liquid per day for 6 days.

     The doctor had looked horrified at my sores when I stripped off. I told him I sweat a lot and the well water at the jail is very dirty, and that my skin has always been sensitive. Being blond, blue-eyed and fair skinned is not an ideal prescription for living in these conditions. He told Abdul Gani that I should be given enough cleaner water to wash at least once every day.

 

     We strolled slowly back to the jail, with well-wishers interrupting our conversation constantly. For a little of the way I had a couple of five-year-olds hanging onto me while Abdul supported my other arm. Abdul wanted to know how were Liz and Gina and Grace. Then he asked if he could come and visit us if he was ever in Singapore. I told him we had to give up the flat, but I would give him Patrick's phone number, and that Pat speaks very good Malay.

 

     When I reached the jail there was mail for us all. It comprised copies of letters sent by Kaligis/Harsubeno to President Suharto, the Chief Justice, etc.  They were pointing out that our innocence had already been proved in court, and asking that action be taken against the police for abuse of power, falsification of documents and so on.

 

     That will be the day in Indonesia, when Police Thief Alexander and his Bribal Bashers are punished instead of the orang puteh. It will never happen. Christ, we've got a guard commander at the jail who lost a stripe for beating a prisoner to death - and he boasts about it! The other weekend six prisoners were shot to death in Java while trying to escape, and there is no suggestion of any kind of inquiry. And in the next-but-one Province to where we are now, the police chief doesn't like people driving too fast, so he shoots them on the spot.

 

     This is the bloody madhouse our countries pour money into by way of encouragement while we sit and rot in one of their stinking jails for four months already without being found guilty of anything. While our official representatives sit around making polite conversation and patting the b******s on the back. In a city with more billionaires than any other capital city in the world - other people's billions, made at the expense of 36,500,000 - yes, I'll write that again - 36,500,000 of their own people who are officially below the poverty level of $166 PER YEAR. And that is the official figure, sanctioned by the lying cheating billionaires, so just imagine what the real figure is. In a country richer in natural resources than many of the countries which continue to give the billionaires their handouts.

 

     In Nigel's rather crude but effective way of putting it "There's nobody treats a n****r worse than another n****r." There is probably more persecution and inequality in this country than in South Africa, but here, as in Black Africa and half of South America, the fact that they are all the same colour (more or less), and are doing it to each other, makes it okay according to the twisted convolutions of the Western political mind.

 

     If there is such a thing as Injustice based on man's inhumanity to man, then it knows no political hypocrisy based on expediency. It is or it is not, and the stamp of political double vision changes only the appearance, not the fact - and therein lies the potential for the greatest injustice of all; the ability of the politician to see blue where there is only red, and to re-project it as blue to those who are not there to see for themselves.