Bali should be renamed to Pulau Kucing or Ayam

Bali should be renamed to Pulau Kucing or Ayam
By Galina Frango
Nov 20, 2007, 05:58

The inhabitants of Pulau Ayam, formerly Bali

Bali is not Bali anymore; it is a foreign (including Javanese) summer home (“Rumah Liburan Asing“), where the inhabitants have lost everything except their Chinese made underpants. Once a proud and cultured island with feared warriors that defied neighboring Java; now nothing more than a begging bowl satellite of very nasty Jakarta Inc. The natives clucking and watching on as most of the money from the mega bucks generating tourism industry, which ironically and uncompassionately portrays the Balinese as the main reason for going to Bali, actually going elsewhere. Jealously seen too are the kings for a week tourists and dodgy expatriates in subservient “grin for a grain” land, as they throw the Balinese crumbs just as they do chickens. How appropriate indeed the term “chicken” for the Balinese has become; maybe the presently and inappropriately called "paradise island" should instead be renamed “Pulau Ayam”, or worse.

OK, OK, in the late 1960’s while hippies were smoking reefers on Kuta Beach and singing “Love, love, love”, Jakarta sent its murderous “military” the TNI to Bali to murder thousands of Balinese and suppress what was left; which it has to be said the Javanese soldiers did with great relish; butchering their old feared advisories with a smile. OK, OK, to this day the Balinese can not speak up against anything as individuals as they will be beaten to within an inch of their life, or worse. So they have had the living daylights kicked out of them by Jakarta while millions of foreign tourists have come, loved their passive façade smiles, thrown them a few crumbs and then left again. Some dopey foreigners have actually made Palau Ayam their home, squawking on how about much they love the Balinese, emulating a passive peaceful life which does not exist in reality, plus thrown the grateful smiles a crumb or two from their luxury compounds. Some nasty foreigners, often criminals on the run, have made Chicken Island their home, dishonestly bleeding huge amounts of money from the tourism machine, literally and figuratively raping the Balinese as they go. So sure, the Balinese have been knocked repeatedly to the ground, but that does not excuse their gutless lives; their ancestors must be turning in their ash piles.

With television and now the Internet making the world a much more difficult place for politicians, army and police officers and businesspeople to commit civil and human rights abuse with impunity. With Bali the center of so much media attention and with so many foreigners there to witness events, why haven’t the Balinese stood up for their corner like the students of Jakarta have for theirs for example? Isn’t it a fact the people of the island are no longer literally Balinese; they have become pussies. Look how the Carrefour Supermarket went ahead in Kuta even though virtually every local was against it. Why? Because the real owners are powerful Javanese with links to Suharto and the Balinese have become pussies. Look how the Javanese owned firm PT Restu Maharani demolished two Balinese temples illegally in a land clearance to build a hotel in Sanur and all the locals could achieve after "protesting" (of sorts) was a donation of bricks and cement to build some new ones somewhere else! What a joke that the Mayor of Denpasar was behind the act and no doubt being given a bung to act outside his legal remit. What a joke the lowest western travel agent in Bali, gay friendly and police corruption specialist John Daniels of PT Bali Discovery Tours claimed the outcome was a triumph of peaceful mediation and goodwill! Latest is the plan to build a huge development in Canggu and affect the river there, but all the inhabitants of Pulau Kucing (Pussy Island) can muster is mute dissatisfaction.

In the 1990’s the World Bank warned Indonesia not to allow Bali to develop any more, but the limits recommended then have already been doubled and more. New hotels with empty beds here, weird looking villas with stupid names appearing everywhere; Bali has become a resort with a car park from which the Balinese peck for crumbs. With pedophiles packing their knotted hankies and leg bindings and setting of for Bali, it has become the region’s child sex abuse capital; not that the Indonesian and Balinese are blameless as they make out either, just ask any Balinese child what happens at school and in the house of the village leaders! Recently, Bali has become so sick that numerous Thai lady boys have been seen in Sanur, imported in by local expats keen to practice their ever increasingly foul perversions without leaving home (Bali). Perhaps not coincidentally, these bizarre Thai lady boy appearances have been linked to our old fiend Jack Daniels.

The Balinese are now hatched to become subservient lackeys without hope past meager minimum tourism industry wages, or to become Indonesian, or should we say “Javanese” as the everyday people of Indonesia get nothing out of this nation [sic]. Prime example is former police chief and Bali governorship contender Made Mangu Pastika; born in Bali and now 100% Javanese. Oh sure he has a charming Balinese face and smile, but this guy was the police chief of West Papua before he took the top job at Mafia Polda Central! Do you know what the police do in West Papua? My God, they murder and rape victims as part of their standard operational procedure according to Human Rights Watch, so how is Pastika such a golden boy? Even the Balinese hate him because he banned cock fighting in Bali in an anvil to crack a nut operation to enforce Indonesia’s no gambling laws; strange that now Indonesia is going to allow gambling on Bintan (near Singapore) and maybe certain Balinese Resorts (hint, hint, those owned by the Suharto family), but the Balinese can not bet a few Rupiah themselves.

So when tourists go to dance performances of the Ramayana in Ubud or wherever with tales of fearless acts by the Balinese against evil dark forces, it is simply a history lesson being performed by chickens. Gone are the days of pride, Bali is now about looking cool smoking a highly addictive clove cigarette produced by a Suharto family company, stealing or perhaps it should be termed “kidnapping” their neighbour’s chickens when they have no job and need money for their motorbike to race along the road to nowhere. With no real education because the tax money still to this day goes to Jakarta, not Bali as was once promised, a young Balinese man’s best hope past a crumby insecure hotel job in a rich man’s world on his own poor island, is to get a job on a cruise ship where they earn 20 times as much for some strange reason. Just how is that exactly, Balinese workers on a cruise ship in the Caribbean or Mediterranean earn 20 times as much as they can at home in a hotel on Bali which basically charges the same as the cruise ship for accommodation? Of course a few and we mean a few Balinese will be accepted into foreign universities under special grants and programs concocted by western politicians to try and make it seem they are doing what they can for Indonesians, while subversively actually helping their own major corporations achieve closed tender contracts that rob everyday Indonesians of their natural resources. Bali is not Bali any more and is never likely to be so again, so let us all be honest and rename the damn island so at least we can be honest about what goes on and the reality of life there.

Please do not get us wrong, we sympathize with decent real Balinese. Some people might say their problem goes back to when the Dutch took over Bali as a colony, but the fact is the true Balinese spirit was not broken then as many of their number fought the Dutch after WW2 for independence. No, the real rot and mass culling of the Balinese came when the USA, Australia and Britain interfered out of self-interest and first forced The Netherlands to give up their colonies, while Britain kept hers, and then when the English speaking Axis of evil installed the murderous Suharto regime at the expense of the elected Sukarno government.

The ultimate problem for the Balinese to be able to realize and stand up against what is happening to them is very much down to tourism. You see, when the poor, defrauded people of Bali see foreign tourists from every country coming to their island, they of course believe that means the International community is for their lot, what they have, Chicken Island. The people of Burma take comfort from the fact the acts of their regime are not condoned by the world, but the Balinese are sold out and accept their subservience with every foreign tourist that arrives on their island. All they can do is look on and wonder how it is the foreigners are so fortunate and they are not; it must be “fate”, which is exactly what their culture and religion allows them to believe and therefore be abused by.

So what is it? Rumah Liburan Asing, Palau Ayam or Pulau Kucing? No matter what you call the island at least be honest that the indigenous people on it have no real hope and no balls left to change things themselves, of becoming proud Balinese again. So go there knowing everything is fake and phony or better still boycott the whole archipelago until the lack of foreign dollars does the job with Jakarta that the Balinese are no longer capable of doing for themselves.