Here’s a haunting documentary to look out for. Some 500,000 to 1 million Indonesians were butchered in the mid-1960s. The synopsis from the official website:
Directed by anthropologist Robert Lemelson and edited by two-time Academy Award winner Pietro Scalia, “40 years of silence: An Indonesian tragedy” is a moving feature length documentary film about one of the most horrific chapters in Indonesia’s history.
Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s comments that Penang state exco members would be asked to declare their assets as soon as possible is reassuring. It shows that the state government is still thinking about it – more than one year after the general election.
Guan Eng says that he is now mulling over the best method of doing so.
It’s all quite simple, really. Just get them to list their assets (as well as their immediate family’s) on a sheet of paper and to declare that the list is a true and fair representation of their net worth. Get these declarations audited by an independent firm.
Here’s something that could be a drawcard for visitors to Penang. Few Malaysians are aware that the man who gave Indonesia its name lies buried in Malaysia – in Penang to be specific.
James Richardson Logan, the man who coined the name ‘Indonesia’ in the 19th century, lies buried in the Protestant cemetery in Penang – Photos by Anil Netto
The Logan Memorial
I did not realise it myself until Indonesia’s blogger of the year 2007, Andreas Harsono, alerted me to it.
Logan was born in Berwickshire, Scotland, in 1819 and studied law in Edinburgh. Arriving in Malaya when he was just 20, he was later viewed by segments of the non-European local communities as a champion of their rights. He was editor of the Penang Gazette and the 27-volume Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, which were also called Logan’s Journals. The Logan Memorial (pic above) describes him as “an erudite and skillful lawyer, an eminent scientific ethnologist and he has founded a literature for these settlements…” He died of malaria in 1869 – a passing the Memorial describes as a “public calamity”.
The following is an excerpt from The Idea of Indonesia, Cambridge University Press 9780521876483 – The Idea of Indonesia – A History – by R. E. Elson: