Welcome to our blog! upriver talk Tok Man

The great GM question and Indonesia.

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:36:10 +0000

One might hope that Indonesia has been suitably alerted to the dangers of genetically modified (GM) crops as a result of the failure of Monago/Monsanto’s GM cotton experiments in Sulawesi in 2005 and the call by farmers to reject the crops which failed to live up to promises. This was accompanied by the shocking fact that Monsanto bribed some 140 Indonesian officials to introduce GM crops, for which Monsanto was fined $1.5m. The protection of Aceh and Indonesia’s other heavily militarized “satellite” province, Papua, from GM disaster is less secure as the army would probably be the preferred route of these predatory companies to establish themselves in these places.

The immediate health issues UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
of GM crops have been widely discussed. The as yet unproven absense of any adverse health symptoms in humans clearly makes arguments in this on both sides somewhat hypothetical and academic. But the health issues are a smokscreen to hide the real issues. The real issues are far more sinister if not apocalyptic.

It is to the shame of MUI, Indonesia’s largest Muslim body, for short sightedly approving a fatwa of no objection to the human consumption of genetically modified grains and soya beans. This was in the face of the fact that GM grains were discovered to cause organ damage to rats quite apart from the obvious fact that GM crops severely affect biodiversity, which is perhaps Indonesia’s greatest natural resource and asset. But clearly rats’ health was not the concern of the MUI. But perhaps the MUI should take note: Does a “minimal” (“acceptable”) quantity of poison make poison any less poisonous? Is there not here a case for declaring such crops as haram for human consumption? Does not poison for a rat indicate also poison for humans?

Where people’s actions must be also judged by people’s intentions when they act in a certain way, one question with GM crops must be, “What is the intention of the Genetic Modification corporations?” GM technology is owned by a mere handful of multinational corporations. For these companies GM is not about producing more food but all about the profitable and monopolistic control of the food chain “from earth to mouth.”

One of the priorities of genetic modification is to make seeds and their plants specifically immune to the pesticides and herbicides (poisons) supplied by and only by the same company as the seeds. This may well save the farmer and his empolyees work and toil but it also makes farmers mere lower level production managers in the resultant corporately controlled food chain. The potential health risks are a logical concern as the resulting crop by default contains traces of pesticide and herbicide poisons used on the crops, which the GM plants and seeds are programmed to be resistant to for their fruition. Does a plant or seed’s immunity to pesticide and herbicide poisons necessarily imply that a human will also be immune to those same poisons with which they must by default be contaminated? Or should the GM corporations start thinking about genetically modifying the consumers as well to resist any ill effects?

With traditional agricultural methods, a crop sown may include a wide variety of species of one grain (often up to 30 species of one grain). If for various reasons such as weather and soil conditions, one species does not germinate or mature successfully then there are high chances that other species will succeed in coming to fruition. In this way it is rare that crops fail altogether. In any case each country’s species adapt naturally to survive in the country’s particular weather and soil conditions. Cross breeding has also over the centuries proven to be a successful developer of optimum species for specific geographic and climatic conditions.

GM crops inevitably impoverish the gene pool of species and biodiversity in general even if huge gene banks are jealously guarded in controlled storage facilities. What happens when GM crops cease to flourish in the same way that mosquitoes now become immune to pesticides, rats to poison, infections to antibiotics, etc? The worst case scenario happens when, not if, total failure happens. It will happen suddenly and there will be few or no alternatives as for instance those provided by traditional methods. Then it will not be a boast of more food but none at all and there will be no time to develop new species in suitable quantities. Like the production of biofuels on agricultural land and tropical forests, genetically modified crops constitute a potential crime against humanity and a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Lastly, the most sinister aspect of apocalypse near is the so called “terminator” gene, whereby seeds are genetically modified to become sterile after the first planting (For commercial reasons, of course! Which sees off any claimed altruistic reasons of the GM peddlers!) It is not proven that such crops do not contaminate neighbouring crops with the “terminator” gene and render them sterile too.

Aceh’s extensive rice production is non GM and mainly organic by default as chemical fertilizers are little used. Bullocks and buffaloes are allowed to graze on the paddy fields before planting. They consume the previous crops’ stubble and fertilize the next crop. But corn and sugar production is now being promoted in Aceh Tengah and Tamiang by Indonesian Agro-companies, mostly for ethanol and other biofuels. This will inevitably have the effect of raising the price of basic food commodities as land is taken up for these products to feed cars and cattle for the meat packing industry in the USA rather than food for people. The Aceh Government will have some difficulty in keeping the ecological and ethical balance of the land if it is to carry through its Aceh Green policies. Monsanto and Dupont have already been sniffing around.

Tok Man

UPRIVER TALK UNDER CYBER ATTACK !

Thu, 2 Dec 2010 07:18:59 +0000

Upriver Talk is being hacked. The hackers are most probably from the Indonesian Army’s intelligence in an attempt to prevent people from learning the truth about Aceh’s and Indonesia’s forests. As it is the TNI (Indonesian Army) that is doing most of the illegal and “legal” logging in Aceh, as well as sequestering away many of Aceh’s other natural resources, we feel that we are perfectly justified in exposing the truth about it all. The tropical forests of the world are of concern to those that are worried about global warming and climate change, which is indeed a lot of people in the world. Indonesia’s forests are the fastest disappearing in the world making Indonesia into the third most prolific carbon emitter in the world. The TNI clearly does not like this exposure. The fact that they have gone to the trouble to interfere with the UPRIVER TALK blog is virtual proof that we are right on target with our complaints against the army. The Achinese themselves are extremely cautious and reluctant to tell the truth about how their resources are being stolen, having only recently emerged from a bloody war of independence against Indonesia’s notoriously delinquent army. In recent months the army has increased its numbers in Aceh, despite conditions of the Peace Agreement of 2005, whereby the Army is supposed to reduce its presence there. At the same time Indonesia is busy scaremongering depicting the Achinese as “terrorists” and nuturing a human rights based disinformation campaign concerning the implementations of Shariah Law in Aceh to very willing ears in the West and elsewhere who see crazed Muslims with an assassin’s dagger between clenched teeth behind every stone. (More on this in another article).

UPRIVER TALK is taking evasive action against these attacks. We feel that it is important for you to know exactly what is happening and how it is affecting Aceh’s forest heritage and we will keep you updated.

Tok Man

VOICE OF THE FOREST Rafl y Aceh’s extraordinary singer.

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:46:59 +0000

Rafly with his extraordinary voice has been singing ever since he was very young starting with his father who was a religious teacher in South Aceh learning the traditional repertory of Achenese religious songs and praises for the Prophet (SAS).

Although he began his working life as a teacher in a religious school he soon fUPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM questionollowed his preferred vocation. Over his professional singing career of twenty years he has explored many styles and formats of song and music. But it was the Tsunami in Aceh which made him into Aceh's most famous singer, when his songs poignantlyly reflected the suffering of the Achinese people bringing tears to eyes and inspiring comfort and new hopes for the future to a despaired people .

Rafly is highly conscious of the modern cultural dilemmas in Aceh and in the Malay and Muslim world and is constantly seeking a music and song format which portray a common spirit of what he calls "Melayu Raya" in the modern world which at the same time evokes the history of the Malay peoples and their aspirations for the future. Rafly is also concerned at the destruction of the environment, especially of the tropical forests. Many of his songs address these issues, calling on Muslims to be true Khalifs of the Earth. “The intricate balance of the Earth reflects the Oneness of its Creator” he extols. Some of his songs exhort people to plant trees and repair the damaged forests.

Most of all it is Rafly's music which commands attention and his extraordinarily versatile voice which rivals the best of international performers. Although he is hardly known outside his country, his voice is up there in the class with the greats, Yousou N’Dour of Senegal, the late Nusrat Fatih Ali Khan of Pakistan deserving the appreciation of a public far and wide outside the borders of his native Aceh.

His songs are a celebration of faith, the forests, the history and rhythms of Aceh which in his hands are combined into a modern format that is uniquely Rafly: Voice of the Forest, Voice of Aceh. Sou Uteun Sou Aceh.

Tok Man

ABU USMAN PREVENTED FROM GOING TO HAJ

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:24:22 +0000

Sheikh Abu Usman Nurul Fauzi of Gunung Mas, West Aceh, one of Aceh’s Awlia and notably Aceh’s Eco-Sheikh, who was scheduled to board a plane for the pilgrimage to Haj from Jakarta, was not able to board his plane, as he was not given priority for a visa by the Indonesian government Haj Agency. This unfortunately is typical of the Indonesian goverment's constant attempts to belittle and humiliate Aceh's religious figures. Abu Usman has now returned to his village in West Aceh after a brief and trying time in Jakarta.

Abu Usman founded a village in West Aceh after the tsunami, where homeless people, orphans and traumatized hearts could find refuge from the destruction and loss of life on the coasts of Aceh. His village, Gunung Mas soon became two villages or Dayah with the twin Dayah of Peulanteu. Residents pursue agricultural activities combined with tree planting to repair Aceh’s depleted forests plundered by the army during the independence struggle. Gunung Mas-Peulanteu has become an Islamic eco-village and a model for other communities to follow. People from all around the country came to take part in the project and vision, especially those who had lost their families in the war or the tsunami. The village offered new hopes to despaired souls and a vision for the future. The project of “Aceh Green” which later became official government policy was virtually conceived from Abu Usman’s village. Abu Usman is the successor to the late Abu Ibrahim Woyla Rahmatullah, who died last year at the age of 109.

LATEST

Banda Aceh, Monday, November 22, 2010

The full story of Abu Usman’s thwarted Pilgrimage to Haj is now beginning to emerge. It appears that the official responsible in the Indonesian Religious Ministry’s Haj department has been arrested in Jakarta for corruption. It further appears that up to a thousand other pilgrims were also affected and that they too had not been able to board their planes as the Haj Department had not issued their visas. Prospective pilgrims also report that the price of going to Haji had suddenly been arbitrarily increased from 27m to 67m rupiahs: one person for the price of three. So we get the gist of the responsible official in the department’s hesitation to give out the required visas - 40m rupiah per person (app $4,000). The spectre of Korrupsi follows the Indonesian administration right into the religious department. The thwarted hajis are hoping for a refund of their ticket and accommodation costs already paid.

Tok Man

Selamat Lebaran IdulAdha!

Sun, 7 Nov 2010 12:53:03 +0000

I have the honour and pleasure to be spending the ‘Idul Adha period in Aceh, Darassalam. Crong is a small village or Dusun near to the amusingly named small town of Grong Grong Sigli, Pidie a short distance inland from the Melaka straits on the East coast of Aceh. It is a small village or Dusun which earns its living in rice farming and prawn ponds, although during the rice planting season one can hardly see the difference as thDon’t forget me!
I’ll be there
e paddy fields also are flooded for planting.
Remember the Garden!
We are now fast approaching the ‘Id. From all around us people are already leaving our midst for Haj. Those that remain UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM questionat home are keeping their best animals close to their houses, goats, sheep and cows, spoiling them with tit bits and delicacies. The animals seem conscious of their honoured status destined for the ritual slaughter and appear to take pride in their combed coats and pampered cleanliness and their newly acquired special relationship with the head of the household, who visits them regularly bringing a fresh new treat. Their meat will be distributed to the poor in the village. All parts of the animal will be used. ‘Id is one day when everyone will get a taste of meat, a luxury rarely afforded by many, when not everyone will be able to buy or own an animal for slaughter.

Upriver Talk wishes all our readers and Muslims all over the world “Id Mubarak! Selamat Hari Raya! May Allah bring success and rewards in this world and the next!”

Tok Man

For donations for Korban click here.

ONE BILLION EUROS Tropical Forests, REDD Money, Green Money and more Cash in your (khaki kamouflaj) pocket.

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 04:06:34 +0000

One might well ask: “What forests In Indonesia?” There are hardly any left except for a few show parks for tourists. Aceh and Papua, however, still have considerable expanses of tropical forests and the Achenese are intent on keeping them. In Aceh, Governor Irwandy Yusuf beat SBY to the post by declaring a total moratorium on logging in 2007 as part of his “Aceh Green” Policy. The illegal logging continued unabated. A couple of months ago subsequent to the Norway deal, President General declared his moratorium on logging for all of Indonesia (presumably). So far it hasn’t had much effect in Aceh any more than Irwandy’s 2007 moratorium.

Well, er, you see, General SBY - er - Mister President, Sir, it’s that your army is doing most of the illegal logging, Sir - as well as the so-called “legal” logging. Blatantly and in joint venture with the guys that have the machines to do it.

That’s the case for Aceh. The situation is similar in Papua, where there is also a massive military presence responding to its own demands for independence. These two countries historically have little to do with Java, except perhaps to defend themselves from Jakarta’s heavy hand: Two countries subjugated by the Dutch and handed over to the Javanese (i.e. Indonesia) to be kept under military control and by imperial right exploited for their wealth and natural resources “to build skyscapers and palaces in Jakarta” as one Achenese ruefully put it, while looking at his own shoddy abode devoid of adequate toilet facilities or public water supply and serviced only by a sporadic electricity supply.

The Army does not take part in the international political discussions on REDD, and, therefore, stands to gain little or nothing from the amounts pouring into Indonesia’s political elite “to protect it’s forests.” Thus it’s business as usual in the militarily conrolled illegal logging industry.

As a considerable percentage of Indonesia’s remaining forests are actually in Aceh, one might also just wonder what percentage of that billion will go to Aceh to conserve it’s forests and whether that amount is affected by the Peace Agreement shareout of Aceh’s natural resources (70% for Aceh, 30% for Indonesia)? Or does the Indonesian government farm out the protection of Aceh’s forests to the TNI? It often appears so. In which case the TNI knows how to protect its patch. Norway, take note.

A senior British parliamentarian asked me about this 70% - 30% shareout of Aceh’s natural resources according to the 2005 internationally brokered Peace Agreement between the Aceh Freedom Movement and the Indonesian Republic. He asked me whether there is any independent auditing of the amounts paid by the Indonesian government to the Aceh Government and whether the Aceh government knows how much is owed according to the Helsinki Peace Agreement. Until now I have not been able to obtain any information on this except that there appears to be no independent audit at all and that the only person that knows even how much is received is the governor himself and, presumably, the President of Indonesia, the giver in Java. It appears that in similar mode to the distribution of the Tsunami funds the Indonesian economy is extremely ad hoc, usually depending on who gets their hands on the money or natural resources first. The Army is very high on that list.

It seems that there is very little the Achenese can do to halt what has become a frenzied (armed) plundering of Aceh’s resources and land grabs orchestrated by the Military, “special autonomy” or not. In one such case the army is claiming ownership of land with false documents obtained through its friends in the senior echelons of the bureaucracy. The lawyer defending the plaintif farmer has reason to fear for his life.

Shame, however, is a real political mover in S.E.Asian politics, as the tsunami proved so eloquently, when thousands of international aid workers came to Aceh and saw in front of their eyes what the Indonesian army was doing to the Achenese people. Peace talks were the result and the subsequent Helsinki Peace Agreement. Unfortunately the Javanese have cheated all the way down the line in keeping to the conditions and clauses of the Agreement, while at the same time attempting to paint the Achinese as ”terrorists”. This strategy can also be seen from here as a preparation for war, so that the world will once again turn its back on the feared massacre. This indeed is the trauma that traumatizes the Achenese since thirty years of open and total war. “In the case of Palestine, at least everyone now knows what is happening there,” remarked one Achinese farmer, “But few in the world are aware of the situation in Aceh.”

In spite of one of the principal conditions of the Helsinki Agreement whereby the TNI’s presence in Aceh should be reduced, the numbers of military personnel and auxiliary services have actually increased substantially, especially in the rural areas where the natural resources are. Jakarta’s recent warmongering against Malaysia saw a further substantial and rapid increase in those numbers. The new contingents can be seen running and drilling in batallions on the country roads where brand new barracks have already been built to accommodate the new troops. The logic is clear: The Peace Agreement of 2005 was internationally brokered in Helsinki. Therefore, the Indonesian government needed an international security reason to increase its military presence in Aceh (to counter any “threat of invasion” from neighbouring Malaysia). Hence the warmongering. The war frenzy has now subsided. At this stage in S.E.Asian political and economic development a war between Malaysia and Indonesia would be unthinkable - and both countries know it. An increased military presence in Aceh is now fait accompli.

Of course the Army is not above doing a bit of replanting too. I attended one sucUPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One Billion Euros
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
h military operation. I began to think that the TNI was changing its ways. But then I learned that the land on which the planting was being done was a retired senior government official’s huge estate which included a 400 hectare lake. The official was one who had during his term of duty made a fortune from illegal logging (in collaboration with the TNI, of course!).

The Javanese regime should be shamed internationally at it’s callous exploitation of it’s colonies, destroying their environments, impoverishing their peoples, stealing their natural resources virtually at gunpoint to build palaces and skyscrapers in Jakarta and enrich its corrupt clique of generals. One might wonder why international governments are reluctant to do this. Would it be because international big business does its business in the full knowledge that they can get what they want from Indonesia (and its colonies) by bribery of the central government or by joint venture business deals with the TNI?

One of the main issues in the news in Jakarta is “Korrupsi.” Perhaps Norway’s billion will draw international scrutiny on Indonesia’s ad hoc economy and how much of it gets into battledress pockets. Of course the trouble with any army is that it is armed and paid to use its weapons. One intrepid journalist from Harian Aceh went to the Island of Seumeulu to investigate a TNI sponsored illegal logging operation there. He was severely beaten up by the army there ending up in the hospital. He is lucky to be alive. . . and perhaps so am I for saying so.

Tok Man

For further reading on this see link:

http://www.aceh-eye.org/data_files/english_format/ngo/ngo_hrw/ngo_hrw_2010_01_00.pdf

Digging and all about “Number 2”

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 08:48:49 +0100

In the village of Creung there are plenty of wells for drinking and bathing Yet not one house has a toilet. Well...to piss is not really a problem, just find a quiet spot near a tree for modesty and you can add to the tree's pleasure and growth. It rains frequently and is hot frequently, so no problem (i.e not a whiff!). but to do a “number two”..... hmmmm! well, you really have to know your way around. It's a long walk to the mosque where there is an acceptable dual chamber WC with a well of water to wash. Most of the locals run off into the forest carrying a jar or bottle of water to find relief. I’m not too keen on that first thing in the morning or last thing at night! What with the mosquitoes and all! How quickly they get a sniff of a bare bum (!) leaving you scratching all the way home! And, well, the villagers really would like a toilet. So for my own and the villagers’ convenience we’re building a double WC job with a well near to it for water, digging and building a large septic tank behind it near to the local surau (Public prayer place - pic on right.) plus a bathing room attached. Of course, it's actually quite a big job, as might be imagined, and work is going on even now as I'm in Banda Aceh for a couple of days - running, as one usually does in capital cities. Al Hamdullah! The entire village has put in a hand Gotong Royong style. Insha’Allah we’ll slaughter a goat and give a feast to the orphans of the village, when the work is finished. Digging a septic tank is quite a mudbath (pic above) as the water table is high. The sons of Paddy farmers set to it with gusto. As a finishing touch we thought we’d use the displaced earth from the septic tank excavations combined with a truckload of earth to raise the general level of the land, plant a few shady trees and make a nice garden. See a nearly finished job in the nearby village of Daka (2 pics below). Fit for VIP’s! But, sorry, no sit-up Euro-throne affairs!

But it’s the industrial excreta that’s the real problem. Everything’s wrapped in plastic. The entire globe is suffocating in it. In the remotest village now there are piles of the stuff everywhere. In “modern economies” there are processing plants and waste disposal systems to accommodate the detritus. Not so in “less developed countries” which have become victims of the chaotic avalanche, while being coerced by intense advertising to buy ever more of these “conveniently” packaged products. Yet even the “developed” nations have great problems in disposing of all their waste. How does one imagine that less “developed” countries can cope any better? I recall one Canadian tourist lady, who claimed to be an environmentalist, complaining how people threw away their consumer litter with such abandon, when they are used to wrapping food in banana leaves and the like, which roaming goats snatch up as delicacies. This same lady also criticised the local habits of burning waste. I wonder what other method she had in mind in places where there is no rubbish collection nor waste disposal infrastructure, and the highest technology incinerator is a small bonfire in front of your house. It keeps the mosquitoes at bay in the evening.

I cannot forget what a wise old shaikh said to me in the Sahara many years ago by way of practical advice for living. He said: Wherever you live, be it in a palace or a swept patch of earth next to the roadside, watch carefully over three places: The first place is where clean water comes into your living space, whether a graceful fountain or an earthenware pot of fresh clean drinking water. Honour that place and give the water the respect it deserves. The second place to be watched carefully is where dirty water UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question

and waste leave your domain. This place usually requires more attention than the first. The third place, said the sheikh, is to have always a place in your domain which is clean and ready to receive a guest or a traveler. Of course, the desirability of visiting you may well depend on the first two conditions.

If you are living in the most basic conditions, whether you call it “close to nature” or “extreme poverty” it is personal - very personal - waste that is the first concern for hygiene and cleanliness. In general a piss on the ground does not cause any problem. But the “Number two” is best stored and redistributed from under the ground, where it becomes fertilizer. This always involves digging.

I have noticed over the years that it is often those folk who are used to flush toilets, fitted bathrooms, sewage systems, and “hygienic standards” in their native “developed” countries that are the dirtiest and most unhygienic in their personal habits when “primitive” conditions are prevalent. The old addage of “let not the left hand know what the right hand does” is still efficient enough personal hygiene instruction for millions of people and deserves not to be mocked by proponents of “modernity”. For Muslims, of course, there is a five-times-a day reminder of the basics of hygiene and water treatment in the wudu (ablutions) ritual.

It is not only the villages of Daka and Creung that do not have proper toilet facilities but many villages all over rural Aceh. So Upriver projects is embarking on a campaign to provide such essential public conveniences for a number of small village communities in Aceh. It costs about £1,100 to provide one such facility. Please contribute to this.

Tok Man

Tsunami aftermath. From the eye of the storm.

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:31:52 +0100

For about £5,000 the house is yours. You can rent the house for about £250 a year from a corporate landlord. The entire area was flattened by the tsunami. Most of the original residents perished. Similar or identical new houses (well, small concrete boxes) can be seen all over the still desolate landscape. A zinc roof covers the house which consists of one room with two adjoining rooms. There is a small now crumbling cement open verandah at the back of the house which also serves as a kitchen adjacent to a toilet cum washroom disposing of piped water and an underground septic tank. This gives on to a miniature back garden. A small cement porch in front of the house completes the architectural facilities of this typical tsunami house.

Drinking water can be drawn from the well and people boil their water before they consume although generally residents now buy their water in 25 litre containers for home dispensed drinking water. The well water does not, of course, contain any of the permitted poisons that municipalities have the habit of adding to public water supplies for reasons of public health. Every house is provided with its own well. They say that here the well water is good all the way to the sea which is not far away over virtually level land comprising mostly fish and prawn ponds and an elaborate system of dykes and canals. Much replanting of mangroves has been done in neat regimental rows on the fish and prawn ponds, sometimes in locations not quite suitable. Rows of dead and dying mangrove tree saplings can be seen protruding out of the waters which are however surprisingly clear and clean as the original river cum canal system has now been restored to pre-tsunami efficiency, itself a heritage of traditional water management systems.

When out and about bottled water can be bought by the glassfull in its own plastic cup with piercable plastic cover. Water companies, including Danone compete with each other for this considerable market. Each plastic cup is sold with a miniature straw which one uses to pierce the plastic cover and suck out the water. Everywhere one goes the land is littered with these minicup-sized containers.

The houses, as could be expected, are extremely hot inside, like small humid ovens with their concrete walls, low ceilings and corrugated zinc rooves. The house I am staying in is one that was built by the BRRI (Indonesian government organisation formed to channel all the international G-to-G funds for tsunami relief). The houses are of the poorest quality of all the aid-built houses (rumah bantuan). There are thousands of such houses often built in austere rows and blocks like military quarters or well, yes, refugee camps.

Marginally better are those built directly by the foreign agencies, but undoubtedly the best rumah bantuan were those built by the Turks and the Japanese. The latter built timber houses on stilts in the traditional manner which are very agreeable to live in. The Turkish built houses are well designed, well built and well laid out both in interior design and in their urban context.

The Ottomans had a lasting presence in and relationship with Aceh for hundreds of years which the Achenese reflect on with great pride and respect. Until the tsunami there was a large (Ottoman) Turkish neighbourhood which the Turks (of modern democratic and republican Turkey) rebuilt with great care and foresight. Even a (Turkish) Wali’s shrine (Sheikh di Bitai) and a mosque were beautifully rebuilt. Many of the gravestones from the (Turkish) cemetary were recovered, some of them intricately carved in marble with old Turkish calligraphy. Many of these stones were recovered several kilometers from where they were uprooted by the tsunami, and carefully replaced. UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question

Even more interesting and worrying is the economic aspect of the rumah bantuan developments. The houses were mostly constructed In areas most affected by the tsunami and where large numbers of people died and where both roads and property boundaries were obliterated. The mainly Javanese contractors hired by the aid agencies or the government to build the houses built them according to an overall plan which had little to do with previous ownership. Where previous ownership titles could not be established, the house ownership was assumed by the developing contractors. The land ownership in many cases reverted to a number of agencies created by the central government for the purpose. These agencies and the developing contractors have since become like corporate trusts, which subsequently sell or let the rumah bantuan to whoever wishes to rent or buy.

In Calang on the West coast of Aceh where some 80% of the population perished, rows and rows of these rumah bantuan were built, for a population which effectively no longer existed. Javanese workers imported by the Javanese contractors subsequently occupied many of these houses. Calang has now virtually become a Javanese town, exacerbating Achenese fears of the central government’s transmigrasi policies to swamp the Achenese in their own land with non Achenese. A well proven imperial strategy. Although the international response to the 2004 tsunami was unprecedented and generous, many Achenese actually seemed to have been sidelined, now twice cheated of help intended for them. The money, of course, went through the hands of the central government through the special agency created for relief work in Aceh, the BRR. “A little bit for you and a little bit for us.....” etc. Another tranche of the tsunami money was chanelled ostensibly to a subsequent natural disaster, an earthquake on the island of Nias, West Sumatra. One does wonder how Indonesia’s finances are managed.

Tok Man

Soldiers of fortune and the Sultan and his Imam.

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:34:57 +0100

On the fourth day after Wali Nanggroe, Hassan Tiro died in Banda Aceh on 3rd June 2010, I arrived from Malaysia at the tomb in Meureue, Aceh Besar, to pay my respects to my departed friend. I stayed two nights in a guest room at the Makam (tomb). Many came from all over Aceh for ziarah (a visit): the great and the mighty, simple villagers, humble folk, former comrades in arms, politicians, the governor, Irwandy Yusuf (the “green governor” - Aceh Green!), the beaucracy and the ‘ulema (religious scholars), the sheikhs with their murids (disciples), delegations from afar and from the pesantren (religious schools), where the entire turn out of santris (students at pesantren) would arrive in multiple open trucks and vans, often dressed in a uniform colour of the traditional dress (spectacular arrivals!) accompanied by their teacher. Frequently the tomb was surrounded by hundreds, thousands of folk, many in groups under the roof of a balai (wooden meeting house on stilts comprising a roof and pillars only) to recite surat Yassin in unison and sing some songs for the Prophet (Salawat). Read, recite, sing and then return in their vehicles to their villages, desas, dayas and dusuns, sometimes many hours’ journey away. Some stayed overnight under the marquees, waqafs, balais, dewans or covered verandahs. Supporters, well-wishers, comrades might send in a truck filled with firewood, coconuts, bananas, farm produce, sacks of rice and sugar, coffee, live animals, cows, buffaloes and goats to be slaughtered to feed all and anyone who came to visit. The open air kitchens worked around the clock to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner of rice and meat and, of course, provide an endless supply of that excellent Aceh coffee to discuss over.
There was always plenty of good company to discuss with over that coffee. One such person, a learned man in religion, of some seventy five years was Abu Keune (pron. Keunay), a close relative to the deceased Wali Nanggroe – a cousin perhaps – who lived in the heartland of the Tiro family’s region in the mountains of Pidie. Keune, his village, (or dusun) carried his name or vice versa. Abu Keune had been with his royal kinsman for thirteen days from the last few days of his life in the Zainulabidin hospital in Banda Aceh until the day I met him at the Makam (tomb) of the Heroes in Meureue where he was buried. I later learned that it was Abu Keune who was the imam of Hasan Tiro’s jenazah (funerary) prayer in Banda Aceh’s ancient main mosque, Baiturrahman of tsunami fame, attended by tens of thousands of Achenese.
Abu Keune must have heard of my active interest in issues of the environment and forest conservation in Aceh. He insisted that I visited him in his village. He took pains to write down his address for me in my notebook in his antiquarian and calligraphic handwriting in Latin characters reminiscent of old Dutch or Flemish overtones. Several times, over more than two days we found ourselves in each other’s company sipping coffee in a place shaded from the heat of the sun or the rain in spasmodic tropical downpours, when the rain beating on the roof drowns out any articulate conversation. Several times he repeated his invitation to me and told me his timetable for the following ten days to inform me when he would be back in his village. “Illegal logging!” he whispered ominously, to arouse my interest.UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
After two nights at the tomb I had to return to Banda Aceh to meet my philosopher friend, Ibrahim Roche, of Trinity College University, Dublin, Ireland, who was coming to Aceh to spend ten days with me there. I had intended to take Ibrahim, a recent convert to Islam, to our eco- village in West Aceh and to meet its spiritual leader, Abu Usman. So I decided to visit Abu Keune in his village on our way back from Gunung Mas-Peulanteu. Geumpang, the small mountain town nearest to Abu Keune’s desa was just half way from Meulaboh on the Indian Ocean West coast of Aceh, up and over the mountains and on the way down to the plains and paddy fields of Pidie and the ports of Samalanga and Sigli on the East coast of Aceh, the Straits of Melaka, the busiest shipping lane in the world since more than a thousand years.
Several days later the three of us got off the “L-300” minibus at Geumpang in the afternoon: Ibrahim, myself and an Achinese friend who was accompanying us. We asked some locals how to go to Keune. Three young men volunteered to take us there on three motorbikes. Fine! So we set off along an unsurfaced road for some 10 kilometers as rain started to fall until we came to Keune nestled in the bower of thickly forested mountains.
No one was at home when we arrived at Abu Keune’s house, but a neighbor said that he was around. Abu Keune’s wife came home from outside and said that Abu Keune was in his kebun (forest orchard) and would be back home soon. While we waited we went to pray the travelers’ prayer at the mosque down by the river about 400 yards away.
As we prayed the rain fell in great torrents: a rain when only the ducks keep moving in a disciplined file over the paddy field and across the bridge, each one in perfect step with the others. For humans “Rain” is always a credible excuse for any missed rendez-vous in these parts. We waited on the mosque veranda within sight of Abu Keune’s House until the torrent had subsided by which time the road to our would-be host’s house had become a river. Eventually we arrived wading uphill and upstream. Abu Keune had returned home. We were received courteously and simply by Abu Keune. Coffee and food was served. Abu Keune was delighted that we had decided to come.
After the ‘Isha prayer we were shown to the guest room. Abu Keune mentioned something about an event or function the following day which he would attend and that we would be welcome to join him at this event. “Koordinasi” he called it. I was not quite sure what a “koordinasi” event was like. It didn’t fit into any category of Achenese events that I knew. It all sounded a bit official. “The Bupati (local governor), ‘ulema and village headmen will also be present” related Abu Keune as if to intrigue us with the prospect of meeting the local VIP’s and dignitaries. We slept on it.
The next morning after the subuh prayer, we had hardly had time to drink that first cup of coffee when a military vehicle stopped outside the house and a soldier got out. Abu Keune announced that we were to get in the van “to take us to the koordinasi event,” he assured us as if to dispel any apprehensions we might have had. Indeed the soldier was our chauffeur. He said not a word during the short trip to Geumpang driving us straight to the regional military Headquarters.
In the military HQ to our surprise, all the soldiers and officers were (obediently) smiling as we were received together with many other guests. The soldiers’ wives were also there all dressed up in their uniform pink sitting under a canvas marquee. Even more smiling soldiers, mostly Javanese or Batak tribesmen, served us with a feast. Other TNI soldiers distributed (smilingly) small packets of cakes to the local kampong folk. A podium had been set up with a microphone in front of the military hospital. All the VIPs, Generals and senior officers, and Abu Keune with other local dignitaries sat in the front row facing the stage. Speeches followed extolling “Cooperation, good will and national (Indonesian) social unity”. Abu Keune did the honours by making dua’ and offering prayers for all of that.
Then I read the banner which was draped in front of the military-run clinic behind which the stage had been erected. According to the banner the event was surprisingly enough under the sponsorship of the Indonesian ministry of social affairs and was to celebrate, (formalize, legitimize?) a joint venture between the TNI (Indonesian National Army) and the East Asia Minerals Corp: “ Koordinasi ! ” Ah!

Of course! It all suddenly dawned on me. It was not just the timber that interested the TNI (the TNI is indirectly or directly responsible for most of the illegal logging going on in Aceh) but what lay below the ground – Gold. The East Asia Minerals Corporation is a Canadian company specialized in the industrial extraction of gold. The company announced on the banner “PT East Asia Minerals corp” is a Jakarta-based subsidiary. The Company operates from its regional HQ in Singapore, directed by its CEO, an Australian by the name of Geoffrey Gold. (Believe it or not!) The soldiers were indeed diligently distributing golden smiles!
Now this was clearly not a matter of villagers panning with water for gold dust from crushed rocks in the age-old manner. This joint venture born in hell announced industrial gold mining with all its lethal accoutrements: mercury and cyanide used in its extraction, massive earthworks and environmental destruction if not disaster. All this in collaboration with the Army! (Now, why was I thinking of James Cameron’s film “Avatar”?) This seemed to explain the emphasis given to the hospital in the event. An innoculation scheme was announced and launched as part of the “koordinasi” celebrations. A small group of school-aged children (mostly children of Javanese soldiers) had volunteered to have syringe needles pressed into their arms in front of all as an exemplary public demonstration. Of course, once these lethal chemicals find their way into the water table, some severe health problems would be expected, especially that most Achenese drink water from their wells. I tried to recall accounts of Mercury or Cyanide mass poisoning .... ? Ibrahim, the Irishman, who although not understanding a word of Indonesian or Achenese had been watching carefully what was going on. “Genocide!” he muttered in my ear “They’re preparing to kill every one and sterilize the children with injections!” The Irish can be very blunt!
Later I learned that two military helicopters a week loaded with gold left the military HQ in Geumpang bound for Jakarta. “Koordinasi” could certainly at least be described as legalized armed robbery of one of Aceh’s most precious resources, significantly from the heartland of the recently deceased Hassan di Tiro. “ When the sultan dies, plunder the palace and take away the gold” I thought, trying to remember if this was a quote from somewhere in history.
For good measure the proceedings ended with a mini treeplanting operation not in the open but in the mosque compound on land which usually serves at the mosque’s carpark. Some fifteen trees each in the name of one of the VIPs. Doubtless just to show how green the Army can get!
Whether Abu Keune realized or not what he was lending his hand to, he did not say and I was not sure. But even if he knew or understood all of its implications, what could he do in any case? He had been virtually summoned to the military HQ and short of having a gun pointed at him he stepped up to the podium from his place next to the senior general and recited doa’ at the ceremony. In Aceh the military just say and the people have to follow. To be sure Abu Keune appeared very uncomfortable and out of his element as he spoke. In this part of the world one does not betray one’s own feelings and emotions in public. The Bupati did not attend but sent his deputy in his place and was thus spared such covert emotions.
Many questions are raised by this event in a small town in the mountains of Aceh. Firstly, President, General Susilo Bambang Yodhiyono (charmingly acronymed “SBY”) had recently made a declaration in Jakarta decreeing that the Army was not to enter into business ventures. But perhaps that does not apply in the further outreaches of the Javanese empire? Or perhaps General SBY does not have any control over the powerful TNI? In any case the army’s presence in Aceh was supposed to have been reduced by the terms of the internationally brokered Peace Agreement of 2005, whereas it has actually increased after an initial token military pull-out. Is the Indonesian government serious about conserving its remaining forests and environment? The Army clearly has contrary intentions in Aceh?
The Achinese shrug their shoulders helplessly and remain patient with the remark that the Javanese attach great value to Aceh, and then add “but not the Achenese”. The Achinese will remain patient for a while and then what else can they do? They will be provoked to fight to defend their forest heritage. Perhaps the Javanese are preparing for a genocide after all whether by cyanide and mercury or by bullets when Achenese patience turns to anger. The sequestration of Achinese oil and gas wealth by Jakarta in collaboration with Exxon Mobil and the TNI still remains fresh in the Achinese mind and was largely the cause of the last spate of war of thirty years culminating in the tsunami and the Peace Agreement signed in Helsinki in 2005. Two helicopters of gold a week is perhaps ample motivasi. Tropical forest destruction is just part of the scenario (an environmental “final solution”). Louix XIV, the “Sun King” once remarked before he died, having stolen all the wealth of France to build his palaces, “Apres moi, l’orage.” (after me the storm). The pending storm in Aceh began in June 2010 in Geumpang in the mountains of Pidie, Aceh.
Tok Man

To our Pakistani brothers...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:08:23 +0100

Although I have not been online myself over the past month or so, I have seen the pictures of devastation and read the newsprint and even read between the lines. Many of the places I see in the pictures I have been to and recognize them even in their unrecogizability from calmer times.
You have been chased out of your dwellings by the raging waters both upriver and downriver. Even those living in the higher altitudes have not been spared the enraged brown monster as it came crashing down your usually docile mountain river. I myself lived for six years beside one such mountain river and know well how the sound of the river is present in one’s ears 24 hours a day, constantly informing of its moods and temper. You listen for news of heavy rains upriver and when to expect the torrent. You will be concerned when they cut the trees upriver but you will know that when the rain is both upriver and down then there is no place for the river to hold all the water between its banks. When it comes it is sudden and insistent. Even if your house is on stilts you hope you will know when to run for higher ground up on the hillside and you will know that it is generally safer to seek refuge upstream rather than down. There is a lesson in that in these days when the destruction of the planet’s natural rhythms and ecosystems are at their peak and you in Pakistan will be reminded that your country is close to the “roof of the world” and the majestic Himalaya.
When the floods have subsided it will not be an easy task to return to your piece of land, riverbank, riverside meadow, rice-field, orchard or garden. But return you must, for who else will defend the upmost reaches of the rivers of Asia’s most vital watershed as you have watched over them? For there are always foreign folks from the East and the West who will take your vacated lands and they have only books and maps to read the land with and they may not be Muslims either nor can they know the intimacies of the rivers as you do nor the fragile balances of heaven and earth, land and water, water and life. For this is sacred knowledge given by the very land itself and acquired with patient experience and time.
You have defended the land and its upriver waters over the centuries and have seen the end of empires from your mountains. Although your lands are fertile, the ravages of shortage and hunger are not strangers to you. You are indeed a resilient people and have survived. Drought, floods and earthquakes all have tried to shake you out of the mountains. Wars with invaders have attempted to dislodge you. You have resisted often heroically and with persistence. You are a people of Seumangat (Spirit, solidarity) Even now, your enemies, posing as friends, try to prevent aid coming to you because they don’t approve of your style of politics or religion, tarnishing you with the brush of terrorism and trying to make your land into another Gaza.
In Aceh we also have seen the murderous rages of the waters, both from the mountains where foreign invaders cut down the trees, causing the rains to flood the lowlands and estuaries, and from the sea in tsunamis. Our enemies also tried to control the aid money generously donated by the world community and dictate who should receive help and who not. We also know in Aceh how long it takes to recover from the trauma of war and natural disasters. We are still recovering from the last war which ended in 2005 and the last tsunami of December 2004 and pray for easier times. But slowly we rebuild our lives aUPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
gain and we resolve to defend our mountain areas and their river systems as we have always done and which we see as a sacred task. Although we do not live near to the roof of the world as you do in Pakistan, our mountains are still clad with tropical forests, which gives our small country in the distant East of the world of Islam a prime importance in the natural balances of heaven and earth, land and water, water and life on the Earth.
Allah has caused the waters of the sea to vent vengeance on us from the sea. The tsunami now comes upon us vertically from the sky. Will our deserts now become fertile and verdant? Will our forests now become deserts? Is Qiamat upon us already? In Aceh we are planting, planting trees, planting, in these destructive times as if we will live a thousand years. We pray that you in Pakistan will remember that you are close to the roof of the world. We know you will defend these high places as we will defend our mountains and forests watching over the natural balance of Heaven and Earth, land and water, water and life. Come tsunami, come flood, from upstream or downriver, come war, come peace, come Qiamat! We pray that Allah accepts and fortifies us with perseverance and patience! Wassalawat Wassalam!
Tok Man, 15th Ramadhan 1431.

THE DEATH OF A SULTAN

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:44:49 +0100

Perhaps one might expect unusual and momentous events to mark the passing of a king. For Hasan diTiro Nature pulled out all the stops as the Achenese people mourned the passing of their leader. Hasan Di Tiro was the legitimate inheritor of the Achinese sultanate and the undoubted spiritual leader of GAM (Aceh Freedom Movement). If anyone epitomized the spirit of the New Aceh and united the hearts of the Achinese since the Peace Agreement of 2005 it was Hassan DiTiro, Wali Nanggroe, father of the Nation. As the solemn funerary prayers were being said in Baitur Rahman Mosque in Banda Aceh over the body of Hasan di Tiro, the assembled congregation was suddenly shaken by an earthquake. As the people came down the marble steps of the mosque after the prayer into the hot tropical afternoon sunshine a shower of rain briefly soaked everyone. This so called "hot rain" is generally considered to be an ominous omen in these parts, foreboding difficult times ahead.

The three days that followed saw torrential and continuous rains to fall over much of Aceh causing floods in many parts, which in turn cause landslides. An unusual wind came spiraling in from the Indian Ocean such as people had rarely experienced, felling trees and dislodging roofs from houses. The seas indeed raged causing huge waves, preventing the ferry boats to ply the neighbouring islands. It seemed to the people that the heavens responded to the death of one of Aceh's heroes with momentous climatic events. In any case these events in themselves helped to imprint on the minds of the Achinese people the significance of "Wali Nanggroes's" death. Indeed his death has momentous implications and promises difficult and confused times ahead.
UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
If the mystical signs from above were real to the Achinese, they were not much off the mark. In this so called real world of political direction and manoeuvering the indications are equally as worrying for the Achenese. Hasan Di Tiro's death leaves a leadership void which will be difficult to fill. In the absence of a clear successor there is no one who unites the aspirations and respect of the Achinese as Hasan Di Tiro has done over the past thirty years. It was Hasan diTiro who proclaimed a Declaration of Aceh's Independence from Indonesia on the 4th December 1976 and from his exile in Sweden lead the subsequent armed struggle against the might and cruelty of the Indonesian army which invaded the country. The war for independence became the 20th century’s longest war, largely uncronicled in the international press and thus ignored by the world, except for two or three international Human Rights organizations, such as Amnesty International. It was total war against the entire population. Hasan Di Tiro was indeed a King who lead his people in war. His return to Aceh was the triumpant return of a king and a hero after GAM and the Indonesian government signed a Peace treaty in Helsink brokered by Maarti Ahtisaari former president of Finland. It was ease after the extra hardship of the tsunami. An Achenese proverb says eloquently “Pat ujeun yang hana pirang. Pat prang yang hana reuda” (There is no rain without end. There is no war not followed by peace.) He was buried in the family mausoleum, the Makam Pahlawan (the tomb of the heroes) in the small village of Meureue, Aceh Besar, in great state and solemnity. Hundreds of thousands of Achinese came from all over the country, the important personalities and the country folk alike, to pay homage. Countless former GAM fighters came to pay their respects to their Commander-in-chief, comrade and king and a humble man.

He died in the Zainalabidin hospital, Banda Aceh after a brief illness at the age of 85. His death marks the end of an era in Aceh. All of Aceh prays for a safe entry into the next.

Tok Man

The Two Ways to Woyla : From Freedom Fighters to Eco-warriors: But No Terrorists, please!

Tue, 11 May 2010 16:20:44 +0100

The alternative route which has now mostly been resurfaced takes you a much longer way but is in a better state of repair. The road takes you a short way down the East coast as far as Bereunuen and then goes West over the most spectacular forested mountains down to Meulaboh on the West coast. The road saw many hot encounters of the Aceh Freedom fighters (GAM) and the TNI (Indonesian army) during the years of the conflict.

If you go to Kuala Bhee, Woyla, near Meulaboh in West Aceh to pay your respects to Abu Ibrahim Woyla Rahmatullah, you can get an L-300, the ubiquitous 10 seater minivans alternatively referred to as buses or taxis from the bus terminal in Banda Aceh or call the bus operator and the vehicle will pick you up from where you stay. Don’t forget to mention which of the two routes you wish to take: via Tangse (over the mountains or Calang (The coast road).

Both of these roads in Aceh make me angry. The first epitomizes the pure exploitative neglect of the country and its infrastructure by the Indonesian government over the years, whilst it has exploited Aceh's resources to the hilt at the point of a gun, giving nothing in return and leaving the people poor. The second road displays the ruthless destruction of Aceh's forests by the army and predator Jakarta-based companies during the 30 years war. To add environmental insult to injury palm oil plantations creep up the sides of the mountains, especially on the west side.

Perhaps for the first time traveller the experience is an adventurous one as the ten seater minivans which serve as buses navigate between the ruts, rocks, mud and troughs in unmade surfaces. The distance between Banda Aceh and Meulaboh the principle town on the West coast of Aceh is some 200 miles. The journey takes some 9 hours by whichever way one chooses to go, the short or the long route. The coast road will shake you to the bones, the mountain road will sadden and shock you.

The image of Aceh as a lawless and dangerous Wild West is carefully cultivated by the political and militaristic elite in Jakarta. To read the Javanese Press one would not be encouraged to go to Aceh at all. Achenese people are generally friendly, honest and helpful without ulterior motives towards foreigners. Certainly one feels safer walking at night anywhere in Aceh than in many Indonesian cities outside of Aceh. In fact some cities like Surabaya, Jakarta, Medan are quite a nightmare for the first time traveler in Indonesia, as one is assailed by beggars, touts, would be ruffians of all sorts and other marginals.

Aceh is the heartland of the establishment of Islam in South East Asia and the Achinese are proud of this and are broadly devout and believing Muslims. In as far as Indonesia is considered by many as being a "Muslim" nation, historically Aceh is without doubt the elder brother in the family of nations in Muslim S.E.Asia. The 30 years war with Indonesia which ended with the Peace agreement between the Aceh Freedom movement (GAM) and the Indonesian army was a nationalist affair. The Achenese are indeed very nationalistic and proud of their country. The war had nothing to do with "Islamic fundamentalism" although Jakarta has tried constantly to portray the Achenese in this light in its presentation of the war to an Islamophobic West. This policy of stigmatization of the Achenese continues. It will serve Jakarta well if and when Indonesia again finds excuse to invade Aceh to impose its heavy hand as in the recent past. Recent events testify to a sudden intensification of a "psy-ops" strategy aimed at Aceh.

One event involved the arrest of a number of "terrorists" in Aceh in an operation which was given the highest possible media profile focussing renewed international attention on Aceh in a highly prejudicial light. The operation was clearly part of this stigmatization of the Achenese as "Political Islamist fundamentalists" The facts of the affair have to be known in order to understand what is actually going on.

The alleged terrorists were overwhelmingly members of Jamia'ah Islamiyah, which is almost exclusively composed of Javanese and which has no following in Aceh. The mindset of some international groups of Muslims, fired with a post colonial anger at the continued assaults on the lands of Islam has not had any impact on Muslims in Aceh. Firstly the Achenese have been far removed from movements outside of their boundaries as the Achenese have been proccupied with their own nationalist struggle against Indonesia, which has never taken on any such ideological “Islamic” dimensions such as those ignited in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Chechenya, Algeria or Palestine. Secondly Aceh adheres resolutely to traditional sufi style Islam. The Wahabbi style of Islam, which produced the Taliban, Ikhwan al Muslimin, Hamas, FIS, etc, has not penetrated Aceh and is unlikely to do so seeing both Aceh’s Islamic cultural context and its people’s apparent lack of concern in the affairs of the rest of the world.

When the official news announced that all of the "terrorists" had been apprehended, any canny reader had to ask how the authorities knew in the first place how many terrorists were involved. A member of the security services, who wishes to remain anonymous, suggests that the "terrorist elements" were assured (by whom?) that they would find safe haven in Aceh. This would have been given some credence by these Javanese members of Jamia'ah Islamiah on account of the lawless reputation of Aceh cultivated in the Javanese press. But it clearly was not so as they were promptly rounded up in a massive operation shortly after their arrival in Aceh. This successfully stigmatized Aceh to such an extent that travel warnings have been given to would-be Australian travelers to Indonesia. Now, of course, this is a desirable result for the Indonesian authorities: to discourage international visitors traveling to Aceh in a continuing effort to isolate Aceh.

Meanwhile religious schools and organizations have been drawn into the futile denial game ("No, Islam is not a terrorist religion," etc.) These same religious institutions have been sternly summoned to "watch out" for "militant Islamic tendencies" among its members and students - notions which are quite foreign and out of tune with Achenese perceptions and understanding of Islam. But once the mud-slinging has begun, some of it will stick in the public mind. To take the metaphor to a more dire level, “you paint a dirty dog before you kick it.”

Jakarta's designs of exclusive economic exploitation of Aceh (at the point of a gun, if necessary), have plagued Aceh ever since Aceh joined the Indonesian national enterprise under Soekarno. Aceh found itself not to be a partner of Java but an exploited colony of a hungry central government. Indeed this has been the reason for Aceh's rebellion and for promoting its historically justifiable claims for independence. Now under the terms of the Peace Agreement of August 2005, Aceh theoretically enjoys "special autonomy" with its own elected parliament and jurisdiction over 70% of its own resources.

There are other reasons for the hotting up of the psy-ops and media campaign by Jakarta against Aceh in recent months. It is what Oxfam describes as the “threat of a good example.” This is when a country might implement a successful model for independent development, refusing the dictates of foreign or colonialistic predators and seeking to direct much needed resources to serve the needs of the domestic population instead of wealthy foreign investors. This has everything to do with the Aceh government’s “Green Aceh” policy, and its efforts to make Aceh into an environmentally prioritized economy. This policy runs in the face of Indonesia’s disastrous environmental record and of Indonesia’s internationally (USA) capital motivated economy. This green direction taken by Aceh does indeed have good prospects for success in view of potential international approbation and encouragement on account of Climate change concerns.

In the context of Indonesian environmental profligacy Aceh Green policies if successful, risks putting Indonesia in a bad light by comparison. The “threat of a good example”, therefore, becomes a potential loss of face for the Government in Jakarta, which is otherwise busy “greenwashing” its international image. Hence a media effort to repaint Aceh’s image unfavourablyly was put into motion. With the efficient mechanisms of the Indonesian public relations machine, the news of the anti-terrorist operation was widely disseminated around the world. The mud stuck in spite of the American ambassador’s (surprisingly canny) statement that the “terrorists” were Javanese and not Achinese and that it was not in the nature nor the culture of the Achinese to adhere to such movements or methods. One must add to this that although the Achinese are generally devoted Muslims, they have been little affected by Islamic movements around the world, especially those which have given birth to “Militant Islam” of the Taliban/Wahabi leaning. The Achinese are certainly no Taliban.
UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One Billion Euros
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
Another recent event in West Aceh and how it was reported in the Indonesian press was another example of Indonesian media disinformation concerning Aceh and grass roots earth concerns. Farmers and country folk from villages near Jeuram, West Aceh, seeing how their land was being disappropriated to make way for oil palm plantations protested and went to the extreme action of attempting to burn down a palm oil processing plant. The news report was long and detailed but only reported the efficiency of the police operation of arresting 25 people dubbed as “ringleaders” of a gang of willful larsonists, adding more grist to the media mill depicting Aceh as a lawless place unsafe for foreigners to wander around in search of the soul of Aceh. There was absolutely no information given in the press about the reasons for the radical action taken by the farmers.

Now farmers generally get hot under the collar for two reasons only: land issues and the price of the commodities that they produce or the commodities they have to buy in their production (fertilizers, fuel, etc). The fact is that they were protesting against the disappropriation and abuse of the land in their region. With generations of experience farmers know more about the eco-balance of land and how to conserve it that those city folk with their five year plans. They have seen how the encroaching palm oil plantations diminish the land, its fertility and its water resources, threatening their own cultivation of crops as well as the ecological balance of the land. The fact that the plantation company with its capital is Javanese (foreign for the Achinese) acting completely over the heads of the local Achinese and against their interests, is not an issue to be mentioned in any press report. These brave farmers were waging a virtual war to defend their land from the encroaches of palm oil plantations on and near their land and will certainly pay dearly for their excesses: Eco-warriors indeed.

All this is, of course, deja vu: a familiar mechanism employed ever since empires existed to disappropriate land from the indigenous people suitably dressed by bespoke media tailors.

It remains to be seen how the Achinese now wish themselves to be seen: as freedom fighters or eco-warriors perhaps but as terrorists, no way! Swords to Ploughshares. Planting Trees not bombs.

Tok Man

Biryani & Blah! Blah! in Bogor.

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:00:12 +0100

It was supposed to be an international Islamic conference on Climate Change. You certainly wouldn't have thought so. There was hardly a reference to any Islamic source during the entire conference, neither were any Islamic perceptions, duties, injunctions from shari'ah, or traditional islamic wisdom or knowledge evoked. Once the mandatory introductory reading of some verses from the Qur'an was over the entire two days that followed were spent wheeling out the same scientific facts that are supposed to convince secular city folk of the threat of global warming and notoriously ignored by governments. There was not one Islamic scholar who rightfully could have and should have screamed hell-fire and brimstone words at humankind and especially at the Muslims for allowing Allah's creation to be abused in the manner it is being abused. But not a whimper. There was little reference to the moral aspects of the issue, no attention given to the nature of khilafah incumbent on Muslims in particular. One might have expected some tokens of praise and gratitude to the Almighty for the diversity of the divine creation as manifested in Allah's most bounteous of creations, the tropical rain forests for which South East Asia is famous. But then on the other hand Indonesia is not the safest of places for the survival of these sites, most of them having been destroyed in the ongoing oil palm planting frenzy. So perhaps mention of them at all was considered undiplomatic and non PC on account of the presence of so many government officials from the various ministries, forestry, environment, agriculture and natural resources. These same officials did, however, wax loud with their massaged statistics and pie in the sky programs. Pure greenwash! The environment seemed to be perceived as a pleasant park in which to eat one’s lunchtime sandwiches or a sea view beyond the jacuzzi in holiday time.

Now, it wouldn't have much mattered if the conference had been like so many others, purely secular and "scientific". It would doubtless have been just another affair full of ardent intention in response to stunning, frightening, scientific apocalyptic hardtalk, just another conference which just another government would ignore. So many times this secular/scientific approach has failed miserably to get any government to act. One had hoped that maybe, yes, maybe, Muslims could show the way by putting a moral and spiritual slant on the arguments. True the effect would only work for Muslims and effect only environmental conditions in Balad al Islam. But it would at least be a start and maybe spread by example. But in Bogor it just didn’t happen. The only way to talk to Muslims is to talk Islam in the language of wisdom, balance, khilafah and the prophetic example. And, yes, there are plenty of legal instruments in the shari'ah utilized in the past as working tools.

If we, city Muslim folk, all sitting in our conference centers, universities and government departments actually spoke to the farmers and those that still hold to the land for their sustenance and Muslim lifestyle, then they will certainly understand. They see full well that the natural status quo is out of balance and that the climate is getting hotter. With sadness and sometimes anger they see Nature’s great glories disappearing before their eyes, devoured by the whims of stock exchange indices. More than likely they know the reasons and also know what to do about it and what not to do. But one has to talk to them in the language of Islam and in the language of the earth itself. For they already know what it takes entire universities of scientists to persuade city folk of the truth of what we (yes, city folk) have done to the environment. I wondered who the conference in Bogor was trying to persuade? Firstly we have to know who we are talking to and who are we trying to persuade of our good cause. For certainly governments have become deaf. Meanwhile the forests disappear and the world gets hotter.

In the blatant absence of any perceived Islamic notions of the intrinsic balance of creation, scientific arguments were resorted to. But even the handling of scientific evidence was parroted out as if read second hand in the newspapers. There was hardly an expert or climate scientist in sight and no one with any Islamic credentials or fibre. There resulted not even any concrete "Islamic" statement pronounced although some half baked green dreams of intention were mooted. If there was an agreed statement to crown the motley gathering it certainly was not a headline grabber. In fact I don't recall a statement being elaborated at all, least of all discussed among the delegates and panels.

An idea of green pilgrimages was mooted, which amounted to little more than charging pilgrims more for their once in a lifetime experience by offsetting air transport emissions, eating less Macdonald's hamburgers or using their hotel towels twice. Perhaps to celebrate their eco-piety pilgrims in future might dye their ihram green for good measure! That for sure would cause a fashion sensation in the tawwaf! The vice mayor of Bogor announced that Bogor was henceforth a green town (as if by a magic wand) We all looked around for teams of housepainters to appear.
UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
It was patently clear that the very composition of delegates was flawed. In most countries when government officials and ministers are confronted by environmental agencies, NGO's and activists, they would be bombarded with awkward questions. In South East Asia everyone smiles just that little bit more intensely. Many of the speakers indeed were high government officials who euphorically announced their respective government departments' ever so perfect environmentally responsible programs. To hear their declarations to intensely smiling audiences one would have been lead to believe that Indonesia is the number one hero in its defense of its environment and we all might have wondered why we had come at all.

What is beyond doubt is that the forests of South East Asia are the most ancient in the world and are also broadly in Muslim hands to protect but in fact are the most rapidly disappearing or threatened. Of course, this was neatly ignored. Responsibility for action on climate change and the reduction of carbon emissions was put squarely into the hands of the industrialized nations for their carbon emissions from transport and industrial sources, which, true, account for 18% of emissions. Not mentioned was the fact that forest clearance accounts for 18-20% of emissions, which has put Indonesia into third position (after China and the USA) as carbon releaser. At least issue could have been made of Euro-American markets' thirst for biofuels which is responsible for most of the forest clearance in South East Asia to make way for the voracious oil palm plantations. That too was deftly by-passed. Issue could also have been made of the proposal in the European Union to include palm oil plantations to be categorized as forests and therefore qualify for REDD rewards. This policy if implemented could well sound the death toll for any remaining tropical forests in South East Asia. Regarding Indonesia's precious few remaining tropical forests the general feeling was "We'll keep them if the rich nations pay out the cash to make it worthwhile." Cash for Creation (as if it were to sell indeed!) Islamic notions are surely not compromised by such mercenary considerations. But then these days one never knows.

The whole affair appeared constructed and snowballed into such a (green) washout (to mix a few metaphors.) But we thank the organizers for their hospitality and the delicious food at the Santika hotel in Bogor. But apart from the biriyani it was blah! blah! all the way and as for achievement …well, Bogor all! (forgive the pun!). Astafigh’Ullah!

Now on the way to Aceh, Islam’s heartland in South East Asia. Perhaps Aceh can be a last hope for the Muslim world.

Tok Man

Aid al Mawlud Mubarak!

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:42:52 +0000

We greet all our Muslim readers on the auspicious occasion of the Blessed Prophet’s Birthday, Peace and Prayers on Him,

“Light of my eye, majestic humility,
Mercy for the World! and you and Me!
I remember You, pray for You, remember You, pray for You...
Nurul Aini, Jad Hussaini, Khairul Khalqihi

Comfort my heart in the Garden of Your love
Where Your tears give life to all and you and me
I remember You, pray for You, remember You,
pray for you...

Nurul Aini, Jad Hussaini, Khairul Khalqihi...

Upriver, 12th Rabia Awwal 1432.

The Knowledge Society and Elaeis guineensis

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:59:34 +0000

The European Commission is busy talking about Palm oil and biofuels again. They are trying to deceive themselves (and, oh so gullible, us) that oil palm plantations can be classified as forests. They can then claim that palm oil is sustainable, even if tropical forests have to be cut down to accommodate them. If they do come to that conclusion after their present discussions they will be committing a crime against the planet. Of this there is no doubt. Greed seems to have no limits.

This EU move would, of course, if successful, cause even further clearance of the few remaining tropical forests in Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil. Needless to say the Indonesian government is complicit with and supportive of the EU initiative and has published highly misleading and irresponsible data to justify it’s disastrous destruction of prime forests for palm oil as part of its greenwashing efforts and perhaps also to line up its now extensive palm oil plantations for remuneration under the REDD agreements. Not only has Indonesia become the world’s largest producer of palm oil but is also the world’s 3rd most profligate carbon emitter on account of forest clearance.

True, oil palms are trees, scientific name Elaeis guineensis, an African tree. But to class oil palm plantations as forests is either naive or positively wicked. They are saying that motor cars are more important than humanity.

Of course, for those that believe in God, or have even a modicum of morality, the issue is clear: Tropical forests are the most amazing and multifarious manifestations of His creation and that we humans are the stewards and cherishers of this fabulous heritage. Rainforests contain more that 60% of the world’s known species, not to mention countless as yet undiscovered ones. To cut rainforests is not just a crime against humanity but an insult to God Himself. And, yes, rainforests must be cut to make way for the insidious armies of oil palms. For the grey infidel and presumably secular aspiring Eurocrats, there is no such understanding as all is economic and what it’s worth on the boards of the Stock Markets, chips in the financial poker game.

Does one have to wheel out the facts again for immoral legislators to read? Oil palms devastate the land where they are planted. Once planted the soil becomes a sterile desert, its nutrients and water resources consumed. The oil palms give nothing back to the soil in terms of compostible mass. Nothing lives in an oil palm plantation except rats and snakes, not counting those that live with their eyes fastened on the stock exchange boards counting their profits.

The truth is that there is no such thing as sustainable palm oil for Biofuels. Arguably oil for cooking and human consumption might be seen as being sustainable but for cars and the diesel engines of the world, definitely not. Just the sheer extent of land needed to fuel international demand makes it an impossible proposition. Sooner or later humanity will have to choose between its machines or its own survival.

Wouldn’t it be better and more efficient to use human fat to make biofuels? There are enough obese reserves in the streets of any European city without having to import oils from faraway places. Only a few decades ago such manufacturing skills were perfected in the heart of what is now the European Union, although the preferred end product was soap. So, it’s not for lack of technology. The two options are clearly crimes against humanity. Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food confirmed this in 2007 at UN HQ, New York. When will they learn?

The only sure known way of climate regulation and carbon sequestering, is to plant trees, real trees, and to conserve natural tropical forests. Oil palms do little to sequester carbon (50-90% less than tropical forests over 20 years), or cool the climate. As for stabilizing the water table the oil palm solves this by drinking it all itself! Levelling forests for oil palm releases huge quantities of carbon. When plantations are planted on peatlands, even vaster quantities of UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One Billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM questioncarbon and methane are released as the land is drained. On exposure to air, peat rapidly oxidizes, decomposes and releases disastrous amounts of carbon dioxide and methane. Methane is about 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Moreover the production of one ton of palm oil results in carbon dioxide emissions of up to 33 tons (9tons carbon) roughly ten times that in the production of ordinary diesel fuel. Added to this are the damaging use of fertizilers and the methane emissions of the palm oil production process. But the most criminal aspect is the loss of tropical forests cleared for plantation planting.

If European society claims to be a knowledge based society then it is severely in self denial as it condones the destruction of the rainforests in favour of biofuels from palm oil. For the most valuable commodity of the tropical rainforests is just that: knowledge. Only 1% of the chemical components of forest plants has been catalogued, whereas 25% of prescription drugs derive directly or indirectly by synthesis from tropical forests. The forests constitute a real working model of how ecosystems interact and affect the global ecology, balance and climate, of which little is known. But we do know that to cut them down heats the climate, reduces rainfall, diminishes oxygenization, releases carbon and lessens carbon absorbtion. All this to feed your car and make the fabulously rich handful of companies richer and richer....and spit in the face of the Almighty, as we burn thousands of books of the as yet unwritten knowledge of the future. Indeed such knowledge may save us. Or is the folly of man inevitable, as we all leap like lemmings off the pages of history driving our biodiesel powered cars?

Tok Man

COP 15 = COP OUT The fire Next Time

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:37:27 +0000

The Klimaforum 09 or the People’s Climate Summit is the engine providing the fuel to the fire of future public fury. Klimaforum is somewhere between the summit and the streets, combining the experts, the “people”, the climate change victims, polemicists, and the various action methodists, activists, scientists, environmentalists, anarchists, communists, socialists, unionists, greenists, the famous and the populists and above all the popular voice, including also many of the voices from the South trying in vain to be heard at the Bella Centre, where the intergovernmental dealings are going on: That is, every one except the governments of the developed world who have decided that the banks are worth saving but that the planet can go to hell.

Every day demonstrations of one or many groupings march in solidarity with “the planet.” Inaction from the governments forebodes ill for the planet and especially the planet’s peoples. Most of the governments of the world horsetrading at the Bella Centre (in full gridlock) will not come to any internationally binding arrangement which will satisfy either the “North” (the people) or the “South” (the peoples or the governments) or the growing ocean swell of international popular concern with Climate Change. We marched in support of “Aceh Green” the Aceh Government’s environmentally prioritized policy, in the hope that the world will take notice, support us and, yes, (why not?), follow. UPRIVER TALK
Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question

Concern may well transform into anger, storms of civil disorder and anarchy, when governments where they are effectively in place will fight (literally) to keep order and what they call “rule of law.” Ex-president Bush’s administration foretold that the greatest threat to international security will arise not from terrorism but from environmental activists. With the very survival of the planet at stake, this looks very likely. The result will be the progressive arming of police combined with draconian laws of control which will doubtless make anti terrorist measures look tame.

In Christiana, Copenhagen we got a taste of how governments will react, as police stormed the entire Christiana enclave. The whole late night operation looked suspiciously like police provocation as an excercise for operations to come. I think I’ve gotten most of the acrid smell of tear gas off my person. I was recommended to take a cold shower to do that, which I didn’t fancy too much in Copenhagen’s below zero temperatures. But one thing is sure: It is not only the climate that will heat up and don’t blame the messenger.

Meanwhile any farmer in Aceh will tell you that to cut the forests heats the climate and to plant trees cools it ....and regulates the rainfall.... stabilizes the water table.....purifies the air.....prevents floods....freshens the air......

Tok Man

“Wonderful, Wonderful Hopenhagen!.....” The world hopes and prays that this time ..... ..... Meanwhile something’s cooking in Aceh in Aalborg. “Aceh Green” on the march.

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:03:20 +0000

“Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen,” warbled the 1950’s Danny Kaye song in the famously trite film about Denmark’s chilren’s story teller, Hans Christian Anderson. As one Dane was telling me in the street “When this conference is over the stories of Global warming will bore us all to tears.” The Copenhagen conference is not one but three conferences. The first unfolds in the staged bustle of the Bella Centre with the entire coodinating backing of the Copenhagen Municipality and the government of Denmark vaunting their cool organizational efficiency. They’ve even renamed their city “Hopenhagen” for the occasion. A free bus shuttle ride whisks you from the airport to the Centre. A vast exhibition-like space accommodates conference proceedings, workshops, delegations, press rooms, workshops, receptions, presentations, etc. Delegates pour in from around the world to line up for the registration process under the strict scrutiny of heavy security surveillance. It’s a bit like lining up in channelled queues for passport control at an international airport, which most of the newcomers had just left. A rank of conference officials sit primly behind their computer screens vetting and checking each delegate, journalist, observer, NGO as they present themselves one by one for the grilling of these unsmiling steely eyed officials.

Not having registered previously I failed the tests and checks of conference credentials,. I had just turned up with tales from the tropical forests to relate and Aceh Green: a messenger of bad news and good news. I felt like a refugee who has fled his destroyed homeland with hopes to make a new life, rejected at the frontier by faithful government servants who went strictly by the book (what book?) denied entrance and sent away but with nowhere to go.

I loitered around a bit with the countless other failed applicants. Some had come thousands of miles to be present: Indigenous tribal people in dire straits setting out from their destroyed habitats and homelands to take their messages of woe to Copenhagen; people doing pioneering development work in remote places, freelance journalists looking for stories - and, of course, stories are plentiful, wherever you look - just among those that failed to get into the conference and make their voices heard inside the hallowed precincts.

Feeling somewhat rejected and distinctly discouraged, I wandered around the other rejected ones comparing them with those that came “with all their papers in order”, invited or sponsored by the approved organizations or governments. I watched them slipping through the security barriers with smug nonchalance. There were so many bureaucrats from so many governments, and, well, bureaucrats are pretty much the same the world over whatever language they say yeah to their masters in, obedient and smug. One can get mugged in the street by a gun-toting thug, but the bureaucrats rob you wielding rules and regs, pure smuggery! I decided that I felt better in the company of the rejected ones and wandered around exploring the company I found myself in. Entire University research departments, idealist activists, some coming from the ends of the world: A heady mix and not a dull moment.

Deciding to take a look at the centre of town, where, I quickly learned, an alternative conference, was taking place: Klimaforum. A parallel concurrent event, something like the famous “fringe” of the Edinburgh festival. So free rides from the Bella Centre to the centre of town in diminutive electric cars which astound one with their speed, acceleration and silence (one passenger only per car). The cars are produced by BMW, who clearly thought it the best promotional opportunity available to drive people free to and from the Conference Centre. The talkative driver all the while helpfully explaining all the technical points of this snappy little vehicle as he drove at what seemed breakneck speed weaving silently in and out of Toyotas, Mercedes, Nissans and Volvos, all spewing CO2 in dogged flatulence: an exhilirating free test drive.

The driver/ test pilot/ salesman dropped me off smilingly at the Klimaforum, the Conference of the second level. As if arriving straight from the airport, with my bag still on my back I was more than ready for other than tense security situations. Housed in a huge building, at first glance the entrance foyer ressembles more a food court than a conference venue. Stalls are everywhere selling Vegan, veggie, organic, healthy things to a motley colourful crowd: the avid and vivid and livid, treehuggers, adventurers and roadie friendly, enthusiastic students, the erudite and the wise. Lots of famous people: the ones that really say it all and pull no punches in telling the truth: Naomi Klein, Wanghari Mattai, Archbishop Tutu and the likes. All in all a much more promising mix of people for meaningful meetings. Several panel meetings were taking place simultaneously with attentive audiences, ardent seminars and not just a little eager agit prop. No registration. Just take your pick.

The tone of the speakers at Klimaforum was more specific, direct and emotively committed. People used to talking from the streets, voices used to being voices in the wilderness; People used to being ignored by the governments of the world and ever more determined to have their voices heard above the blah! Blah! Officialese, propaganda and greenwashing. When you speak from the streets you keep to the essentials, unclouded by endless obfuscating detail and inductive argument. There’s no time to prevaricate and elaborate, any time you might be asked to “move on please!” All we want to know is the basic issues and what we can do. Then let’s do it. If it’s take to the streets, then we’ve got it all in a nutshell enshrined in a few slogans, banners and flags to wave. Only the performance to stage manage a bit for max fx and impact.

After a few hours of this charged atmosphere, having given a couple of net streaming interviews on Aceh Green, tropical forests, Global survival, End of the world, and the like and talking to whoever was near, I decided to go on to Aalborg in the North of Peninsular Denmark to meet the Achenese community there. By this time I was mighty hungry for as stimulating as much of the days events and people met were, there was not a discernable Muslim in sight and of course nothing much Halal to be eaten, although, I suppose, a nut cutlet sandwich wouldn’t UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question
have agressed my sensitivity too much - just a bit dull. All this probably partly explains why Muslims are not involved or even concerned with Climate Change. It’s the company we’d have to keep while also not eating their food. In my experience, environmentalists tend to be fiercely secular and scornful of the spiritual approach, while at the same time prickling with “holier than thou” attitudes.

I finally chanced upon a Lebanese Shawwarma place in an area indicated to me by a passer by. The area indeed hosted a couple of “ethnic” food outlets but seemed to be more remarkable for Porno shops to suit all deviant proclivities. Fortified by a shawwarma sandwich, I fled back to the rail station and on to Aalborg by train ....

The Copenhagen conference, much anticipated by the world as a deadline for a “last chance for mankind” action, seems destined for the same pointless horsetrading as before, which will just add to the people’s frustrations. The Big, the Bad and the Hungry Capital profiteers will doubtless succeed in having their way and giving the jab that paralyzes even the most audacious governments of any note. The scientists will meanwhile nag at our consciences, accompanied by ever more frequent natural disasters. Where have all the brave ones gone?

In faraway Aalborg the Achenese are gathering their people and as in the past when they came out of the Forests to drive the enemies from their shores they will now be flying the flag for “Aceh Green”. “If the world won’t, Aceh can.” We’ll be on the streets to give Aceh Green a boost. There is news that the Governor, Irwandy is coming with the President of Indonesia. The telephone lines are buzzing excitedly among the Achenese in Denmark and Scandinavia. There’s definitely something cooking among the Achenese. The third level of the UN Conference on Climate Change is and will be on the streets of Copenhagen. We’ll see what happens. Probably we can make the politicians hear, but Big Bucks are deaf, their ears full of wax their eyes glazed over with visions of profits. Perhaps a small, newly autonomous country in South East Asia can make a difference, set an example, be an environmental hero, for clearly most of the politicians seem bent on suicidal inaction. It’s a M.A.D world (mutually assured destruction) all over again. God save us all!

Tok Man

WALI NANGGROE RETURNS TO “ACEH GREEN”

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:08:57 +0000

Hasan di Tiro, who had been living in exile in Sweden for the past thirty years finally returned to Aceh on 17th October 2009. Thousands of Achenese turned out to welcome him back singing and cheering. A truly hero’s welcome was reserved for this now frail old man of 84. His epithet of Wali Nanggroe, father of the nation, is amply deserved. In 1976 after almost twenty years of fighting between the Javanese central government of Indonesia, a referendum was held, in which 96% of Achenese voted for independence from Indonesia. The Jakarta regime responded with a brutal invasion. This caused the formation of GAM (Aceh Freedom Movement) by Hassan Di Tiro, who later went to Sweden to form a government in exile. The GAM fought the might of the Indonesian army (TNI) for the next 29 years.
Although neither the TNI or GAM won the war, both sides were exhausted. The 2004 Tsunami compounded the suffering of the Achenese. A Peace treaty was signed in Helsinki in 2005, whereby Aceh would have “special autonomy.”

Smoke gets in your eyes Breathing the burning forests of Indonesia

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:36:35 +0100

You may entertain images in your imagination of Malaysia as a tropical paradise in pristine rainforests. Malaysia is right in the heart of the S.E. Asia tropical rainforest belt, home to some of the most ancient rainforests on the planet. Well, to be honest, we must admit that most of the forests have gone now to be replaced by Palm oil plantations. Some of the Palm oil plantations have now become towns, urban developments, airports, highways and industrial complexes. There’s not much else you can do with the land after oil palms have had a term on it. Of course, the diesel engines of the world hum merrily as they rejoice at how they are conquering the world. “Well, why not?” You might say, “Somebody’s got to produce the stuff to feed them.” If you are looking for rainforests and wild animals during your stay, you will find only a few areas of forests which are carefully protected for tourists to troop into and gaze at in ever dwindling amazement, for these reserves are beginning to suffer from tourist stress. Certainly what wild animals remain have retreated as far as they can or perished for no place to go anymore. UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question

But go to Malaysia in July or August, and you will really get a shock. You will find that you can hardly see your neighbourhood, that your eyes smart with the sometimes very acrid atmospheric conditions, and that you will cough, splutter and wheeze a lot more than usual. If you are asthmatic, which you might be anyway if you had lived your life in Kuala Lumpur, wher respiratory problems are rampant, it might be better if you moved somewhere where the air is clearer: Birmingham UK? Pittsburg PA? Wuppertal in the Ruhr? Your life will be less at risk.

The actual figures for atmospheric toxicity tend to be kept under wraps and carefully massaged or just not published to the general public, presumably so as not to cause a panic evacuation of the city of Kuala Lumpur. But then outside the cities the conditions are not much different. Rain tends to clear the air a little but not quite enough and, of course, the smoke season does not come during the rainy season.

Every year it happens just as the Trade winds come in from Sumatra, Indonesia. What you are breathing in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia is the smoke from the burning forests of Sumatra as huge swathes of land are cleared for palm oil plantations. Every year they do it and every year the people of Malaysia suffer. The press and the government euphemistically call the phenomena “haze” as if it was some romantic mist that drifts in from the sea.

Just to help matters, if the Trade winds suddenly veer to the opposite direction one is then choked with the burning forests of Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) from the East, which are also being burned to accommodate yet ever more palm oil plantations. While the forests of California, Australia, Greece and elsewhere in the world burn, South East Asia is doing its bit too.

One might wonder why the Malaysian government does not take action against the Indonesian government for its pollution of the atmosphere and for causing so many related health problems. An injunction in the international court perhaps? The government is, however, mute on this. True to form the government is more concerned for the corporate big bucks that palm oil represents than for the health of its citizens, and anyhow much of the palm oil planting in Kalimantan and Sumatra is being done by Malaysia companies. So there’s plenty of reason for the smoke to get in the government’s eyes too.

Tok Man

KIAMAT

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:11:27 +0100

So what is this thing called “global warming”? Or do we prefer to call it “Climate Change” these days? Both terms now in the common language sound anodyne enough. For most Europeans “global warming” sounds comfortable enough, even desirable, and “climate change” might be just a glitch in the weather. Both terms seem to express some external phenomenon. Neither term includes a human reference for it is indeed the hand of humans that is said to be the cause of the phenomena of Climate Change/global warming. Nowadays one talks of “tipping point.” That critical boundary and point of no return in the global warming process is commonly measured to be a 2º rise in the planet’s atmospheric temperature. Beyond that it is claimed that man will no longer be able to control the warming process and that the world will heat progressively out of control until....none less than the extinction of life on earth or something near to that. To anyone and in whatever terms this can only be described in apocalytic terms or in one word, “Kiamat.” No small matter!

“Pollution has appeared on the land and the sea as a result of what men’s hands have wrought: that they may taste of what they have done and return to their senses”
Qur’an: Surah Rum:41.

And so how is it that Muslims are apparently so unconcerned by the issue of global warming? Is Kiamat not an issue that concerns us (and all of humanity)? Do we just sit back and exclaim “It is written and there is nothing we can do to change things” or “We don’t have the (political) power” Generally Muslims see the Apocalypse as being an event whose timing is decreed by the Almighty and that humanity inevitably should follow the process leading up to the event. If it is the pollution of the land and the sea (and presumably also the air) that will cause the Apocalypse then the verse above is clear about who is responsible. Should not Muslims be the first to “come to their senses” and be in the frontline of the action to correct the environmental imbalances, which cause global warming?

Are Muslims as blind as not to be concerned at the greatest issue in the world: its very end? Have the Muslims of the world been lulled into thoughtlessness and irrelevance? Are they so introspectively concerned with “ibadat” yet readily accept the willful destruction of God’s sublime creation of which we are supposed to be Khalifa? It’s like praising someone to his face yet cursing him behind his back. On the day of Judgement Allah will without doubt ask us what we have done with His forests, which can be described as the crowning glory of His creation in their diversity and complexity. We will have to answer “We destroyed them and planted oil palms to feed our motor cars.” May Allah preserve us from His anger!

That the tropical forests play an important role in regulating the world’s climate there is no doubt. The forests of South East Asia can be distinguished from other tropical forests in the world by two factors. Firstly, they are the most ancient in the world and can justly be described as being the Garden of Adam. Secondly, most of South East Asia’s forests are in the hands of Muslims (Malaysia, Indonesia). Yet they are being deforested at the fastest rate anywhere in the world. So what does that say for Muslims and our supposed sense of Khilafah?

When asked what kind of people the Prophet (Salawat wa Salam)UPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question liked most he replied “Farmers and craftsmen”. Farmers and those that work on the land should perhaps remember this before leaving their lands to join the urban poor of the cities to be at the mercy of capital-created jobs and then categorized in statistics of those with or those without jobs. Abandonment of the land by farmers and the take over by profit prioritized corporations for the production of agro-commodities is without doubt one of the causes of the global environmental imbalance. Agro-commodities are just as well palm oil for motor cars as they are rice, wheat and other foods. Farmers and those that work on the land for their livelihood are intimately aware of the balance of the land. They know what the land can provide , work hard to optimize the land’s potential, and watch over its essential balance.

The way things are going at present it seems that the human race is bent on self immolation. One might conjecture that the spate of suicide bombers in recent times is merely symptomatic of the spirit of the age. One might go further and compare politicians in their lack of will or incapacity to stop the destruction of the world’s environment to suicide bombers on a grand scale. But then politicians are not usually guided by any particular creed or belief system, but legislate according to convenience and economics. Scientists and economists have to date not proved to be the best advisors for policies of global justice for all of creation.

Prince Charles said in Jog Jakarta in November last year that Islam can be the way to defend the environment. How is it that Muslims have not yet woken up to this possibility? When and if this happens, the Muslims of the world may well be able to achieve what the entire world of politicians and scientists have to date been incapable of doing.

The world is sick and out of balance in many if not most ways. Whether or not we can “come to our senses” and heal the injuries we have done to the Earth and forestall imminent global catastrophe is not at all clear. Muslims would, however, be well advised to remember the hadith “Come the day of Kiamat, if you have a tree sapling to hand, plant that sapling!”

Tok Man

t

Abu Ibrahim Woyla passes away

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:10:38 +0100

On Saturday 18th July, 2009 at 5 o’clock in the afternoon the small, neat pile of bones, that still retained the life of Abu Ibrahim curled up in his habitual foetal position of reclining finally stretched out to a funereal position lying on his back and he died. Within minutes the news was all over Aceh. “Abu Woyla has left this world”

Abu was 109, although many attributed him with an even greater age. Within hours people from the neighbouring villages had congregated around the house where he died. A grave was dug in front of the house which was his father’s for Abu Ibrahim did not have a house of his own. As the news spread during the days that followed, people were coming from all over Aceh to pay their respects, read Yassin and Fatihah and sing some cassidas at his burial place. By the following Saturday, the 7th day of his passing 100’s of thousands of folk had visited his graveside. Food was offered to all that came. It took a gotong royong from several neighbouring villages to attend to the cooking operation. On the 7th day alone no less than 40 buffaloes were slaughtered to feed the crowds.

Abu had not eaten anything for two months before he died and drank nothing for the last ten days. When people whispered “Abu is sick” and the news got back to him what the people were saying, his son, Teungku Don, reported that his father replied by saying “I am fasting. Aceh is sick”.

If you go to the capital, Banda Aceh, you will see what Abu meant. Since the Peace agreement of 2005 there reigns a kind of drunken euphoria in which people have become blind to all things except acquiring the trappings of modern living: TV’s, cars, motorcycles, handphones and all the gadgetry and industrial products which we are told by advertising are essential to our lives. They had been prevented from such preoccupations since so long, marginalised from mainstream normal, “modern” living by a war against them, which comprised robbery at gunpoint by a predatory military occupation with massive abuses of human rights. Of course, it must be a relief, if not exhilirating, when leaving one’s house no longer to see soldiers to the left and the right and a road block not far away.

Abu Ibrahim was effectively our ketua kampong (Village headman) in Gunung Mas/Peulanteu. He was always present even if rarely in person but actually on the back of a motor bike or crouched in the front seat of a battered 4x4 travelling somewhere far or near. He would stop off in a village where a room would be prepared for him to rest. When locals heard that Abu was in the village, the house would become a focal point for the villagers to come, visit, pay their respects, expound their problems and concerns. Although he would rarely speak, people gained comfort from his presence and would later relate Abu’s exact motions and signs inferred from his manner. The love and awe of the populace was palpable as they would sit silently around this crumpled pile of bones reclining on a rush mat sometimes sitting upright with the help of an attendant to receive a guest or to listen.

Some would scour the countryside looking for Abu Woyla to meet him. It was said that if your intention was not sincere or pure in wanting to see him then you would not succeed in meeting him. The local Bupati (a region’s most senior local government official) sent his deputy to meet him one day. There had been an issue raging concerning a Jakarta-based Chinese company which had received the go-ahead from the Bupati to clear 8,000 hectares of local land for planting oil palms. This would involve the clearing of several thousaUPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM questionnds of hectares of local forest and even the acquisition of some local farm land not properly registered but nevertheless used as common land to grow crops. Protesting villagers had demonstrated outside the Bupati’s office in Meulaboh. Abu listened to the popular voice and did not agree with the Bupati’s decision. It was doubtless to curry his favour and support that the Bupati’s deputy was expedited to meet Abu. The official duly came to Peulanteu knowing that Abu was very poorly (it was during the last month of his life) and that he would not be expected to move around. When the official arrived in appropriate motorcade, Abu had indeed moved on, neatly avoiding to meet the government official. People nodded knowingly at the Deputy Bupati as he emerged from his official car with entourage “all dressed up and nowhere to go”. The new project of palm oil plantation was promptly halted.

Memories of the Tsunami are never far away in Aceh. Two weeks before the earthquake and tsunami struck Aceh the war was proceeding full tilt especially in West Aceh. A platoon of Indonesian soldiers were about to cross over a river to assault a village on the other side. Abu was sitting on the riverbank deep in dhikr and contemplation alone. With a signal Abu forbade the soldiers from crossing the river as they intended. With respect and some element of awe they waited, doubtless thinking that Abu would soon move on. But Abu Ibrahim remained there all the morning... and the soldiers waited. After the dhur prayer he retained his position of vigilance, deep in dhikr....and the soldiers waited. Suddenly at a point near to the time of the late afternoon prayer (Asar), the soldiers took fright and fled in panic to return to their base. The village accross the river was spared. What brought on the fear in the hearts of the soldiers is any one’s guess. But the news of the incident did travel through the military echelons to the generals and as far as Jakarta, to the ears of another general, President of Indonesia, General Susilo Bambang Yodhiyono or “SBY” as he is charmingly acronymed. He sent a military helicopter to bring the old man to Jakarta, where he was lodged in the president’s house. Not comfortable in such opulent surroundings Abu wandered onto the street in his habitual garb, sarong, songkok, bare feet and torso: a beggar at best in the eyes of any passers by. On the street the old man began to proclaim in a loud voice to passers by “If the TNI (Indonesian army) does not leave Aceh, there will be a catastrophe which will make every Indonesian weep!” Abu’s behaviour clearly caused embarrassment to his host, the President, who was about his presidential duties at the time. The war in Aceh was a highly sensitive issue. The old man was packed off back to Aceh and his home ground.

Less than a week later the same area in West Aceh was the nearest to the offshore epicentre of the earthquake that caused the devasting tsunami of December 24th 2004. A company of Indonesian soldiers (mainly Christian) were celebrating Christmas in customary drunken and lecherous manner, partying near the grave of Sheikh Kuala, Aceh’s patron saint, which was right on the beach at the northernmost tip of Aceh and the Island of Sumatra. The Tsunami struck them simultaneously from two directions. The soldiers were the first to be swept away by the deadly wave.

The rest is history. In his death Abu truly united the hearts of the Achinese people.

Tok Man

THE HEAT IS ON! Forests, elections and Michael Jackson.

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 19:23:52 +0100

It hasn't rained for more than a month. Distant seem the memories of that sudden drenching tropical downpour which daily sends people scuttling for the nearest cardboard, plywood or corrugated zinc sheet or banana leaf by way of improvised umbrella. As people swelter, city folk grumble and blame "global warming" as if it's some phenomena "out there" beyond their control, perhaps even some sort of conspiracy hatched in the industrial nations to further oppress the developing world. But of course they don't have to look far for one of the main causes as they also see their forests being decimated making way for palm oil plantations. Any rural people in the world know that forests cool the climate and the lack of them heats it. But, as usual, city folk think they know best.

It is tragic to see some of the world's most ancient tropical forests, jewels in the crown of God's creation, disappearing to make way for oil palms that ruin the land and drink up all the water just to feed the motor cars of the world. Has human kind totally lost its sense of balance and justice? Wild animals, homeless and deprived of their habitat, roam the villages and, if they are strong or cunning enough, attack people to eat, while the sun scorches and the land becomes dry and sterile. One may well sympathize with the animals even as villagers kill them in self defense.

Electioneering has been in full swing for the past weeks with smiling presidential candidates alternating the customary routines of majestic speeches with walking, talking in market places to demonstrate a "common touch" and "democratic" leanings, child stroking and baby kissing as presumed evidence of family values and kindness. The army has again been making itself visible with soldiers in full camouflage battle dress everywhere. The Achenese were exhorted to vote for the incumbent president, General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, pleasantly referred to as "SBY". The result will doubtless be the idolization of the successful candidate. Today is a holiday as people vote, although for the past few days the TV screens have been mostly devoted to coverage of Michael Jackson's life and death. Screens are full of clips of falling forests, fire, destruction and apocalypse from his "Earth Song". Quite so.

Changes in climate are clearly apparent here but the issue doesn't feature in electioneering agendas. It's something "out there", some "Western" preoccupation. But of course it is well known that Indonesia has become the third most prolific carbon emitter after the USA and China, not on account of smoke spewing factories churning out manufactured goods for the world, coal fired power plants or the number of motor cars on its roads but because it ruthlessly cuts and burns tropical forests to plant palm oil plantations to feed our motor cars.

Of course, nature will have it's revenge on its persecutors: The forests, when they become deserts, the rivers when they become dry and the rain when it ceases to fall, the wild creatures when they have only humans left to hunt, the very land itself will curse us when its goodness is sucked out by oil palms and refuses to feed us any more. We deserve the warming, every degree. However many cars we might have, they will not help us. Neither will those ever-so-clever scientists who sit in their laboratories and in front of their screens devising ever more fantastic "geo-engineering" to cast iron filings into the sky or millions of mirrors to defy the forces of the universe.

The answer and the blame lies squarely with us. The entire planet will curse humankind for its negligence and willful destruction of its forests and natural balance. Then there will be nowhere to run or drive to in our cars to escape.
It's getting late. The sun is going down. Another day ends and it's time for prayer. Allah forgive us and spare us Your wrath!

Tok Man

SAWIT TSUNAMI The Invasion continues as tensions rise

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:45:49 +0100

In all their long history of defending their land against foreign predators, the Achenese would never have imagined that in the early 21st century they would find new invaders on their forested lands in the form of ranked armies of trees. The enemies are oil palms. International demand for biofuels has funded a planting frenzy, which is destroying the country, its land, people and climate as well as contributing to global warming. Plantations are funded from outside the country, from Jakarta-based Chinese companies or transnational companies with huge sums of money often passing through the former, which in complicity with the central government engineers the acquisition of land in Aceh for the plantations, above the heads of local Achenese.

The oil palm itself is a foreigner to S.E.Asia introduced from Africa by European colonialists. It is capable of producing more oil from its fruit per hectare than any other oil producing plant, virtually marginalising the soya bean. As a species it is as hungry as any would-be colonialist, devouring all the nutrients from the soil it is planted in and extracting all the water, drying up streams and lowering the water table. It gives little or nothing in return to the depleted soil in terms of compost, leaving its discarded spikey fronds to dry in the sun like debris from a tsunami. The tree itself is a hostile creature armed with vicious thorns on the edges of its stalks like double edged saws. There is hardly a place in the oil palm’s anatomy which you can touch without being lacerated. Its roots reach deep into the earth in a dense weave, forbidding the growth of anything else more ambitious than squat ferns and weeds. After its 25 year cycle of growth and fruiting for oil production the land is left a virtual desert, difficult to cultivate for any other useful crop. In contrast to a forest where a vast panapoly of wildlife flourishes in exuberant cacophany, only rats and snakes thrive in oil palm plantations which are remarkable for their ominous silence.

Oil palm plantations affect the weather severely: rainfall drops, the cooling effect of forests is cancelled. When it does rain the water flows quickly off the parched land causing floods in what's left of local communities. Local communities are uprooted to make way for the ranks of trees that advance in serried ranksUPRIVER TALK

Articles:

June 2009: The Invasion continues.
July 2009 The Heat is On!
July 2009 Abu Woyla Passes away.
Sept 2009 Kiamat!
Sept 2009 Smoke gets in your eyes.
Oct 2009 Wali Nanggroe returns.
Dec 2009 Wonderful Hopenhagan.
Dec 2009 COP 15 = COP OUT.
Feb 2010 The Knowledge Society.
Feb 2010 Aid al Mawlid Mubarak.
April 2010 Biryani and Blah Blah.
May 2010 The two ways to Woyla
June 2010 The Death of a Sultan.
Aug 2010 To my Pakistani Brothers.
Aug 2010 Soldiers of Fortune.
Sept 2010 Tsunami Aftermath.
Oct 2010 Digging.
Oct 2010 One billion Euros.
Nov 2010 Selamat Aidul Adha
Nov 2010 Abu Usman Prevented.
Nov 2010 Rafly
Dec 2010 Upriver Talk Cyber attack
Feb 2011 The Great GM question across the once well balanced countryside. Other products and medicinal plants from the forest are no longer there for the taking.

As ever more extensive land is sought for oil palms by faraway markets funded by transnational big bucks, local farming communities retreat. Farmers traditionally include an array of crops and farming techniques, ranging from rice fields, vegetables, to orchards of cocoa trees, fruit and spice trees, coconut palms, and often a grove of trees planted for their timber used when they build or repair their wooden houses. It's only every so often that you build a new house for yourself. In most villages the wild forest is just on the periphery of the community. Where paddy fields become surrounded by oil palms the land is dried up and rice production becomes more difficult or impossible, especially as less rain falls. Two rice crops a year are reduced to one or none.

In the villages resistance is building as farmers are pushed into ever decreasing areas of productive land and they see their livelihoods dwindle and the trucks of palm fruits roll by. In a number of rural areas in West Aceh local people have protested about the disappropriation of land (often including local forest land) beyond their control and against their interests for the purpose of planting oil palms. Clashes between the police and the people are becoming frequent in scenes which sometimes ressemble some of the fiercest confrontations during the thirty years war according to local press reports. The Achenese are still at war defending the land as best they can.

Tok Man