Waku, Women and Solomons

Tim, a friend of mine, sent me an email a earlier this week, expressing his concern and well wishes for my family, who has business interests in the Solomon Islands, because of the rioting, looting and burning of mainly ethnic Chinese or Asian-owned businesses and property in Honiara this week. He was exasperated and wondered if there was any end to these senseless acts of violence in our world. Read the BBC report on the rioting in Honiara.

When I saw his email, I thought to myself, “No, this isn’t really all that ‘senseless’ if you can understand the situation and context behind all this.” There are reasons, albeit unsatisfactory ones, and multiple overlapping reasons at that – all of which involve a complex interplay of systemic government corruption, disenfranchisement among many people, unemployment, hopelessness, disempowerment, poverty, cultural differences, jealousy and greed among others.

But now that the dust has settled a bit, and as I see the wanton destruction left behind and listen to the quivering voice of the Solomon Islander woman (among countless others) on the news tonight wondering how she’s gonna feed her family now that she’s lost her job at the burnt down Pacific Casino Hotel, I find myself reluctantly agreeing with my friend. Yes, regardless of what explanations have been provided by the experts and analysts – and many have been given (see below links to some articles) – at the end of the day, it all has indeed been quite senseless, really.

I spent my last meal in the Solomon Islands at the Ocean View Restaurant at the Pacific Casino Hotel, and later walked along the swimming pool with my sister in the cool evening breeze before my flight back to Australia. I remember seeing the professional-looking waiting staff and the numerous local Solomon Islanders employed in the hotel service industry and remember feeling extremely hopeful for the Solomon Islands, realising that each job that had been created by the investment that has been poured into the country in recent years will help feed a few extra people and perhaps allow a few extra kids to stay at school longer.

To later see it burning on Wednesday night was tremendously sad for me – even though I have no connection whatsoever to the hotel, other than having spent my last meal in the Solomons there and remembering how optimistic I’d felt on behalf of and for the Solomon Islands then. But it was the hopes that I had for the country that were being burned to the ground.

The Pacific Casino Hotel alone, along with its Western restaurant, Chinese restaurant, nightclub and casino – owned by Patrick Leong, a naturalised Solomon Islander Chinese – employed up to about 600 local Solomon Islanders. I cannot even begin to fathom the flow-on repercussions this rioting will have on the country’s economy, now that a substantial size of Honiara’s government business tax revenue has been wiped out, along with most likely a thousand or so jobs .

It needs to be noted that the majority of the rioters and fire starters were unemployed young men, and a sizeable number of whom were under the influence of alcohol as opportunistic looting took hold in the chaos that ensued from the confrontation between RAMSI police and protesters outside the Parliament. These men had nothing to lose any way. But suffer the women and their children. It is the women who are ones who have gone looking for jobs and found work behind the counters of Chinese-owned shops, or in the service industry such as the Pacific Casino Hotel and who then bring food home to feed their children and send them to school.

Like the previous ethnic conflict, it was also the women and children who bore the brunt of the repercussions of the violence enacted by the men. During the ‘ethnic’ conflict beginning in the late 1990s and the subsequent government coup by Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF) militants and members of the police force in June 2000, up to 20,000 people were displaced and the entire country’s economy came to a standstill. The Solomon Islands economy contracted by about 14.3% in 2000, 9% in 2001 and a further 2.4% in 2002. (Source: DFAT) I can only wonder how much will the economy contract this time round.

Suffer the women and children. And suffer the local ‘waku’ (pijin for Chinese/Asian) of Chinatown - many who are second or third generation Solomons or who have become naturalised Solomon citizens - with them becoming scapegoats for the actions of a few (if the bribery and vote-buying allegations by some prominent Asian businessmen is true). This is not even considering the influence and financing of the Solomons government by one particular country – whose influence, for better or for worse, is without a doubt visibly evident in the Solomon Islands.

And though I still hold hopes for Solomon Islands and want to see it get back on its feet quickly, I fear its recovery won’t be as quick this time round. This latest blow to the Solomon Islands is akin to someone who has just gone and broken their hip before either of their broken legs have even fully healed. If any good thing can come out of this, I only hope it will have truly shaken the Solomon Islands government and its politicians into some sense and realise that they really must work to put an end to (or realistically speaking, at least reduce the level of) corruption in the country and ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth or risk squandering the future of their people away for good.

Suggested Reading
'Melanesia is a huge disaster' by Greg Sheridan
Foreign Editor at 'The Australian' 20/4/2006 p12

'Mission a moral hazard' by Susan Windybank
Researcher at Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney

Gay Catholic Bloggers

To those of you who follow and read blogs that cover both gay and Christian issues (among other topics), may I recommend John Heard aka DREADNOUGHT - Australia’s very own answer to American bloggers Andrew Sullivan (who now blogs with 'Time', author of 'Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality' and 'Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex and Survival') and David Morrison (author of 'Beyond Gay' and founder of Courage Online, an online support network for same-sex attracted men and women wishing to live chaste lives).

I had the good fortune of discovering DREADNOUGHT through another friend Ron Belgau whose very own website is also worth a visit. Several articles mentioning John Heard or about his opinions have also appeared in ‘The Age’ in recent times and he has also featured on John Safran’s show ‘Speaking in Tongues’ with Father Bob Maguire on SBS earlier this year. Click here to go to the SBS ‘Speaking in Tongues’ website.

One of John Heard’s most recent commissioned article was on gay marriage and it has appeared in this month’s ‘DNA’ magazine, in which he articulately argues against gay marriage without bible-bashing the reader – something not easily achieved by many Christians.

Apart from being authentic and raw, DREADNOUGHT also has some excellent writing in it. A recent Palm Sunday entry by DREADNOUGHT moved me and here’s a snippet of it to whet your appetite for more of his stuff.

On 8 April 2006, DREADNOUGHT writes:

“Same sex attracted men know better than most the longing that hides and sometimes overwhelms the human heart. All men are born to bond, to seek out someone who will reflect, however imperfectly, something of what is precious about us. Our secret joys - the song that says that, then and never anything else again - are collected about our person. We touch these things gently, feel deeply about them and offer them up to the hard world. Those of us with any hope left try not to trample ourselves, and we try to avoid being trampled by others. We try, despite the inexorable assault of crap, to maintain the spark in the expectation that someone, somewhere will flare back at us.

When Christ entered Jerusalem, the formerly indifferent caught fire. They burned with love for a new Man. They celebrated the rumoured heretic, the One Who said such wild things. They threw down their finest for the Nazarene to walk on, even though He spent time with outcasts, whores, lepers, tax men and foreigners.

It must have been an incredible sight, and Catholics repeat the scene every year on Palm Sunday. It is one of the most sublime liturgies ever devised by man.A week later the cheering crowds turned. They beat Christ until He cried blood. They hammered Him onto a tree and screamed obscenities. Even when He made manifest His love, even when He reached out to those who pierced Him, they rejected Him in the most extreme manner.

Any man who has been dumped, rejected, overlooked by an object of affection, any woman who has been ignored or shunned, must see in his or her sorrow the magnificent suffering of Christ crucified.

Somewhere though, in all the pain and fear, all the heart-hurt and startled tears, the Lord rises. Christ vindicated death, He bore down on evil and triumphed for, and as, the Light. In the deepest pit of despair, even after the Jews and Romans tore Christ, the best parts of Him were resurrected. How can we fail to hold Him before our eyes, tears swept and hearts prepared for joy: even if it feels like a mockery now?”

Fishers of Men

There is beauty in the priesthood. And the Catholic priesthood has become increasingly attractive to me in recent years. Who would have thought that a fervent anti-Catholic teenager like me would one day grow up to become deeply sympathetic towards Catholicism and view the priesthood and anyone who answers the call to priesthood with great respect.

During my solo traversings across various cities and countries in recent years, popping into a Catholic cathedral or a church in whichever city, town or village I’m in has almost become part and parcel of the itinerary.

Perhaps it’s for a bit of connection and solidarity whilst being on the road. There is something indescribable about that feeling of connection with a fellow pilgrim – when your body is weary and your soul could do with a bit of connection to another human being whom you know “has also been there” – whatever we imagine those crosses to be, I guess.

I remember being deeply moved when this Dominican brother in a far-flung Western province of the Solomon Islands gave me some of his precious time and some much-needed words of encouragement before I left the tiny island he was on. I had stumbled across the Dominican Order which was located on this tiny island off Gizo by accident – or perhaps by divine appointment – when I loitered around the town’s humble Catholic cathedral and got talking to a local who happened to be heading back to the island.

I remember debating with myself whether it was worth going out of my way just to visit this mission (St Louis Mission) outside of Noumea, supposedly the site of the oldest Catholic church (built 1859) in New Caledonia, when there was no guarantee I would meet anyone, let alone be welcomed.

But I was deeply humbled when I did arrive at the mission after trekking down this dusty road off from the main road where the bus driver had kindly dropped me off. The mission looked deserted, but as with all Catholic churches, the church itself was always open for me to wander in. I eventually bumped into someone at the mission who went off to tell the Father in charge that someone had wandered into the mission. I wasn’t quite sure what I was say to him but instead found myself being welcomed earnestly by the Father there and was also impressed upon - as perplexing and difficult as it was for me to try and comprehend - the certainty of vocation felt by the Fijian priest and the Vanuatan priest-to-be I later also met at the mission.

When I went and saw ‘Eighteen’ at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival last month - a film about an 18-year-old street kid who befriends a gay hustler and a Catholic priest among other things - I had prepared myself for the possible negative portrayal of Catholic priests (and especially in a queer film) in light of the numerous child sexual scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in the Western world. Instead, the filmmaker moved me with the portrayal of the Catholic priest as a man of integrity. When Father Chris finds himself confronted by a scantily covered Pip - the 18-year-old street kid whom he’d just invited to his place for a wash and some food to eat – Father Chris looks at him in the eye and warns him, “I do not like being tested” and then walks off promptly leaving Pip on his own, just like Joseph did to the Pharoah’s wife. It encouraged me to see that the priesthood or the priest was still being portrayed in such a light – and even in a queer film - at a time when many people are highly cynical of the priesthood.

Priests are individuals who have given their lives wholly to the service of God. And Pope Benedict XVI once said about being a priest, and about being fishers of men, “There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him. The task of the shepherd, the task of the fisher of men, can often seem wearisome. But it is beautiful and wonderful,because it is truly a service to joy, to God’s joy which longs to break into the world.”

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has recently released a short but powerful promotional film clip 'Fishers of Men' to attract men to the priesthood. And like another blogger DREADNOUGHT (John Heard), I too think it’s an absolute winner.

If the YouTube video clip above does not work, click here and then click on the 'Fishers of Men' trailer.

Viva West Papua?

In the film ‘V for Vendetta’, the freedom fighter V urges his fellow countrymen to rise up against tyranny and oppression in a futuristic totalitarian Britain. V also reminds one of the lead characters in the film that, “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

In the case of the 43 Papuans who fled their province for Australia in January, “the people” certainly were afraid of their government. However, I have also been somewhat nonchalent over the recent granting of temporary protection visas (TPV) to the 42 Papuan refugees (decision is still pending for the 43rd member), who incidently arrived in Melbourne today – nearly a month and a half after they were intercepted off Cape York Peninsula in far northern Queensland on 18 January after journeying across the Torres Strait in a traditional outrigger canoe. (Read the article in 'The Age' today)

Australia, being a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, is obligated under international law to provide asylum to refugees who have been found to have met the requirements of Article 1 of the Convention, which defines a refugee as “someone who has fled and is outside his country of nationality and cannot return home due to a well-founded fear of persecution arising from reasons of political opinon, race, religion, nationality or membership of a particular social group.”

I am nonchalent partly because I am caught in a bind myself. On the one hand, here we have individuals whose claims for refugee status have been found to be bona fide (even if they are only on TPVs) but on the other hand, I am still undecided as to the issue of West Papua and its independence movement.

Formerly called Irian Jaya up until 2002, Indonesia divided and renamed the province into West Irian Jaya, a smaller province consisting of the Bird's Head Peninsula and the surrounding islands in the far western part of the original Irian Jaya province and the remaining province bordering PNG as Papua in 2003. This split was largely opposed in Papuan as it was seen as an attempt to quell the separatist movement. The term ‘West Papua’ however, is generally preferred among Papuan nationalists who hope to cede from Indonesia and become an independent country.

Indonesia’s stability as whole certainly would be at stake here if it allowed a further breakup of its vast nation, especially only after East Timor’s successful secession in recent years. Faced with the Aceh separatist movement on the western flank of its archipelago and the Free West Papua movement on the east, Indonesia also has to keep a lid on its already existing precarious internal socio-economic, political and ethnic conflicts in its various provinces.

Australia’s Foreign Affairs White Paper also clearly stipulates that it is in Australia’s own fundamental national interest that Indonesia remains stable. The Australian Government, through Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, has also repeatedly reaffirmed its support of Indonesia’s current territorial integrity recently. That certainly puts the Australian Government in an awkard position in light of recent developments.

For now, the Australian Government will try and walk the middle ground, arguing that DIMA’s granting of refugee status to these 42 Papuans will not undermine Australia’s commitment to also preserving Indonesian territorial integrity, that they are two unrelated issues that can be handled separately. I am somehow not fully convinced.

After all, one of its own departments has granted refugee status to these Indonesian citizens, which sends a strong message of legitimacy to their claims of persecution to the rest of the West Papuan nationalists in Papua province, which in turn can only serve to bolster - not diminish - the legitimacy and struggle for West Papuan independence in the eyes of the world. It also remains to be seen whether DIMA's decision to grant TPVs to this first group of West Papuans will spur other West Papuan nationalists to attempt to also seek protection in Australia - not exactly a situation the Howard Government would want to encourage.

Although I feel that Irian Jaya or Papua (or Dutch New Guinea) should never have been annexed and ceded to Indonesia in the first place more than 40 years ago, what has happened has happened and the present reality is that the international community by and large does recognise Papua to be a integral sovereign part of Indonesia.

Australia certainly cannot afford another new state to emerge within its neighbourhood – well, maybe it can, but it is certainly not desirable, economically speaking in terms of the eventual assistance and financial aid it will have to provide – as it does now with East Timor and several of its other Pacific island neighbours including PNG and the Solomon Islands. Neither is it desirable for its own national security reasons and for the stability and security of the South East Asian region as a whole either. Australia simply cannot afford to allow Indonesia to fragment further.

And so where does this leave me? Do I support the freedom of a people group whose aspirations and hopes for their own nation have been allegedly squashed, suppressed and persecuted by the Indonesian government or do I support the status quo of preserving a broader stability in regional terms, which has a flow-on economic, financial and security impact on millions of people in this part of the world?

Will the independence push by West Papuans only lead to more bloodshed and destruction? It is one thing to watch people fight for freedom in movies, it is quite another in real life. Is the so-called ‘freedom’ and the freedom to govern oneself really that worth it? Could a compromise not be found between the Indonesian government and the Papuans – just as the Indonesian government appears to have begun doing in recent years – by moving towards granting greater autonomy and self-rule in Papua province?

And so, even though I am sympathetic to the West Papuans’ cause and concerned about the alleged brutality of the Indonesian military on political dissidents, I am undecided on the independence movement. For now, I am not convinced a sovereign West Papuan state of its own is necessarily the panacea. And Australia will have to tread carefully to ensure that whatever actions it takes now and in the near future in regards to Papua won’t come back to bite itself one day or it may find itself in an even more difficult situation than the one it found itself in over East Timor several years ago.