Sorry, I can't agree with Miko at all. As quoted from book description "this is a book about violence, and about being afraid.". Thus, the author certainly writes about his feelings, about his fear. This is not Mr. X newspaper article about recent political events or a history review. If you were looking for something like that you've bought wrong book.
FYI there are number of movies which present historical events in the contrast of daily life, so as Parry did. Anyway, I think I still need to read the book, but just would like to point out that your statement is wrong. If you look for pure journalism without any emotions buy a book of history facts of Indonesia.
I remember the sad face of a Chinese dude I know who had his house in Green Garden turned over by the mob(they smashed up the furnature, set fires, even shat and pissed in it).
Luckily he had stayed in a hotel for a week or so.
If he had not, he probably wouldn't be here today.
So to slag the book off cos it's about violence doesn't make sense at all to me.
cheers...
Anyone watched "Sometimes in April"? It's difficult to call this violence. It is inhumane, pure barbaric evil. It’s shocking to know that people are capable of slaughtering other people. It happened in Nazi cam Auschwitz-Birkenau, it happened in Nigeria, Rewanda, China, Indonesia, thousands times in the past and it will be the case in the future and I'm just afraid it will be more destructive.
so Mr Marek et al, what should the likes of Gusmao and HORTA do? What should those exiled since 1965 do?
Maybe Indcoup, myself and various colleagues and friends could join forces and write about those events. (Indcoup, were we still colleagues at that time? Or had you already moved on?)
My comment that we lived and experienced those events at street level rather than from hotel bars holds true because, yes, there was violence. I heard gunshots, saw crowds waiting to lynch Suharto as he returned from Austria and Egypt, and it was a time of staying calm in an oasis of unknowing.
Our perspectives are just as valid, if not more so than Parry's, because we lived here and didn't just pass through. I don't want to read this book because its 'reality' is obviously far from ours.
By-the-by, there are a number of fine journalists writing, as expats, about Indonesia. The Guardian correspondent, I am given to understand, was one voice at the end of the British Embassy hotline. I'd be willing to read John Aglionby's version of events.
Lloyd Parry is brave. He encounters headhunters on the rampage.
However, Lloyd Parry must know about the part played by Western security services in the toppling of Sukarno and Suharto. Yet he makes no mention of this in his book.
He makes no mention for example of this: "On 15 May, a CIA plane bombed the Ambon marketplace, killing a large number of civilians on their way to church on Ascension Thursday. The Indonesian government had to act to suppress public demonstrations.
Three days later, during another bombing run over Ambon, a CIA pilot, Allen Lawrence Pope, was shot down and captured."
http://
www.thirdworldtraveler.co...nesia57_KH.html
"Allan Nairn, investigative journalist for The Nation, has made more discoveries of links between U.S. intelligence and Indonesian intelligence units, particularly the notorious KOPASSUS Group 4, responsible for the detainment, torture, and disappearance of pro-democracy activists.
Colonel Chaiwaran, the commander of Group 4, admitted to Nairn that he regularly reports to Col. Charles McFetridge, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) attache at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta...."
http://eatthestate.org/02-38/
Bed...ithAssholes.htm
I always have had a problem with people like him and various UN officials who proded, cajoled, encouraged (rightly or wrongly) the East Timorese into voting on Independence then when the "shit hit the fan" disappeared (with some very limited notable exceptions)leaving the East Timorese of all factions to face the aftermath.
Fair 'nuff MB if that is how the book is described in your edition then I can understand what you're saying. Here's how the blurb in my edition reads;
"The vast island nation of Indonesia, one of the most alluring, mysterious and violent countries in the world...a riveting account of travels in the heart of darkness"
Eh? Does that sound like Indonesia to you? I wonder what he would write in Congo or Rwanda.
Look I have no problem about his emoting all the time, it just grated with me that as a journalist he let it get in the way of effective reporting. Was his lovelife the reason he missed the Trisakti massacre? Did he allow his clownish prejudices get in the way of understanding why some East Timorese may have wished to vote for autonomy within Indonesia. I would have liked to have heard their reasonings instead all we get is stupid caricatures.
Here is his description of the brave Aussie and Brit troops who had put their lives on the line to protect Timorese civilians while he was moping in Shenanigans Irish Bar in Darwin after he had jumped on the first evacuation plane out of Dili;
"The army press officers in the Turismo were jolly and avuncular, but there was a peevishness about the force as a whole, with its foul commandos, its bristling convoys, and the brusque war-hero manners of Major-General Cosgrave. These were the people who had saved the Timorese, but something about them made it hard to feel grateful."
Twat.
Excellent idea Jakartass. I definitely would like to see your point of view on the events.
Marek.
I started a snail mail letter to Son no 1 in the UK in the week that Suharto started to fall. Unable to get to the post office, my letter turned into a diary of Suharto's abdication. If I can find a copy ~ ho hum ~ I'll post it somewhere in my archives.
As I've said, I'd also like to see Indcoup's diary of those times as well.
PS. Thanks for your comment abouit my hijacking. Yes, I found a bit of spyware, hopefully now completely gone.
I'm Richard Lloyd Parry, the author of 'In the Time of Madness'. I'm delighted to see that my book is being discussed on this interesting blog.
Miko has obviously read the book carefully, and of course he is entitled to his opinion about it. All I would say is that plenty of other people have read the book - many of them knowledgeable about Indonesia, some of them Indonesians - and reached opposite conclusions.
The book received good reviews in the Jakarta Post, the Economist, the Guardian, the Observer, the Financial Times, the Literary Review, Time magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Foreign Affairs, the Bulletin, the Age, the Japan Times, and the Daily Yomiuri, among others. The only stinker, as far as I recall, was in the Australian.
You can find many of those reviews on Google. I draw your attention to two in particular, because they were written by experts on Indonesia. The first is the piece from the Columbia Journalism Review by Lawrence Pintak, a journalism professor who is married to an Indonesian and lived in Bali, I think, for several years.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/1...06/1/
Pintak.asp
The second, from my own newspaper, The Times, is by Professor John T. Sidel of the London School of Economics. He writes that he began the book with low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
art...1599400,00.html
The pages for the book on Amazon also contain comments by various readers, among them Indonesians and those with personal experience of the country.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obi...5429900-
6972608
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product...=books&
v=glance
Finally, would Jakartass like me to send him/her a complimentary copy of the book? I'd be happy to do so. If you want to read it, you can, and form your own opinion. If not, it might serve to prop up a wobbly table leg somewhere ...
Email an address if you want me to put one in the post.
Best regards,
Richard Lloyd Parry
Asia Editor
The Times
Tokyo
My email address, by the way, is:
richardlloydparry@compuserve.com
Read the Times review, guys.
It echoes much of what Miko says, but with an essential caveat: "Parry, it should be said, makes no claims to expertise or to experience “on the ground”, yet his book is remarkably free of the glaring factual errors that usually mar such works in this genre."
I will be taking up Richard's offer of a 'free' read.
Also, do note that we're coming up to the 8th anniversary of the May riots. Indcoup and myself will be posting some memories at that time. I hope others will too.
I don't want to nitpick, but Times review does not to my mind have much in common with the remarks by Miko.
Professor Sidel: ""honest, reflective and self-critical ... it is in the final chapters in East Timor in 1999 that the book achieves its greatest clarity and depth. Parry takes seriously, but not sentimentally the East Timorese struggle for independence, and his sympathies are clear ... notable care and depth of sentiment ... Parry's account of two days holed up in the UN mission's compound in Dili as the killings proceeded outside provides one of the most incisive portraits of moral failure by the so-called "interbational community" which this author has had occasion to read ... should be of interest to many readers ... beats the more epic accounts of "heroic" journalists such as John Simposon hands down."
Miko, by contrast, writes: "onanistic twaddle ... him, him, him ... We couldn't give a flying fart what emotional turmoil they may be enduring ... He misses the biggest story in Indonesia in thirty years ... In East Timor everyone is cartoonish, the brave, quiet, proud, heroic, romantic Timorese, and the ugly, goonlike, thick, dirty Indonesians none of whom have a redeeming quality ... Of course as soon as the first shots are fired he scarpers for the UN compound and stays there thus having no idea what was going on outside ... He doesn't record how many Timorese women and children he pushed out of the way to get on the plane ... sensitive souls such as him are offended by men who say "fuck" a lot ... writers like him were wanking themselves into a coma ..."
Far from "echoing" what Miko says, Sidel says the opposite.
Your review copy will be in the post tomorrow.
Best,
Richard
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