Newsletter No. 885
News-Analysis
January 29, 2008

 

DEWI SUKARNO TAKES A PARTING SHOT AT THE SUHARTO LEGACY

Ratna Sari Dewi Sukarno (born as Naoko Nemoto), the third wife of Indonesia’s founding President Sukarno, gave an interview in Tokyo to an Australian news service, reflecting on the death of President Suharto on the 27th. She described the departed dictator as “Indonesia’s Pol Pot.”

Her reported comments were as follows: “I don't want to lash out at a dead man, but I cannot forgive Suharto. He was Indonesia's Pol Pot… Although he had a soft face, he could be cruel and heartless at the same time. You could not tell what he was like on the inside. What he said and what he did were two different things… He ended his life living among friends. I think he was a very lucky man.”

Dewi Sukarno met and married President Sukarno at age nineteen in 1962 after he was charmed by her on a state visit to Tokyo. She had been working days in an insurance company and nights as a hostess at the Kokusai Club in Akasaka, a place for foreign VIPs. Her new husband, Sukarno, was sidelined by Suharto in 1966, along with a massacre of several hundred thousand people and pretty well documented CIA support. Sukarno -- one of the key champions of the Nonaligned Movement and host of the famous Bandung Conference of 1955 -- eventually died under house arrest on June 21, 1970 (which also happens to be the very day that I was born).

After some wanderings in Europe, Dewi Sukarno returned to live in Tokyo, where she has been noted for her outspokenness and occasional minor scandal. She once explained: “I speak too directly. I can't speak diplomatically. I think people are afraid of what I am going to say.”

Now she has given testament once again to her famous outspokenness.

INDONESIAN WORKERS -- LEGAL AND OTHERWISE

As we have mentioned previously, the largest single Muslim community living in Japan is the Indonesian. Hiroshi Kojima has estimated that in 2004 Indonesians accounted for about 35% of all foreign Muslims in Japan, which meant more than 20,000 people. A couple of stories about Indonesians in Japan have recently appeared.

One story was about Indonesian nurses and health care workers. The Japanese health ministry estimates that the nation needs 40,000 more nurses, while the shortage is estimated to reach 450,000 to 550,000 by 2014. This is a field in which other Asian countries could probably help, but with the likes of Kunio Hatoyama as justice minister and Japanese suspicion about foreign immigration, Tokyo is having trouble getting its act together.

Some help is provided by last year’s Japan-Indonesia Economic Partnership Agreement (JIEPA), one provision of which is that Japan is supposed to accept 1,000 nurses and health care workers from Indonesia. For two years beginning from this April, Japan is expected to annually accept two hundred licensed nurses and three hundred certified care workers from Indonesia. These workers will work as assistants at hospitals and nursing care facilities after receiving language training.

Interestingly, the Jakarta Post reported last November that a survey by consultancy firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that Indonesian workers were superior to Japanese workers in terms of “understanding of what they need to do in order to make their companies successful in achieving targets,” but that they were weaker than Japanese when it comes to their commitment to doing so. The point may be that many of these Indonesian nurses and health care workers may face some serious frustrations once they get here and start their jobs.

However, this isn’t stopping some Indonesians from wanting to come to Japan, as our last story indicates. According to the Yomiuri, the Chiba prefectural police and the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau have busted up an illegal entry ring that operated between Sukarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta and Narita Airport in Chiba. The ring involved Indonesians affiliated with the Japanese embassy in Jakarta and Garuda Indonesia Airlines, among others. The ring would apparently arrange for prospective workers to receive false passports and enter Japan as ostensible tourists. The key figures in the ring have now been arrested.