BY MAX LANE
The Australia Indonesia Institute (AII) is advertised as a body promoting people-to-people relations between Australia and Indonesia. Its real role in defending the political status quo in Indonesia and Australia has been revealed by a recent funding decision.
The AII rejected a $16,000 funding application from Curtin University to bring several Indonesians to an academic conference being held at the university on February 2-4. The funding was rejected because journalist and writer John Pilger has also been invited to speak at a plenary session on February 4.
AII chairperson Philip Flood was quoted in the January 19 Age saying: "We don't have a problem with them inviting John Pilger, we don't have a problem with him expressing his views — we just didn't think we should pay for him".
Flood's comments are dishonest and cover-up the real character of the institute's decision. Curtin University did not ask for money to pay any of the costs for John Pilger's participation in the conference.
There can be only one way to view the decision: it was punishment for inviting Pilger, a known critic of Australian foreign policy and of the kind of economic development promoted by key members of the AII board.
This decision, setting a precedent for government bodies refusing funding as punishment for involving critics of government policy, should sound warning bells to academics and cultural workers everywhere.
Philip Flood, like previous AII chairperson Richard Wollcott, was an ambassador to Indonesia when General Suharto was president and defended the Suharto regime from its Australian critics. Flood was criticised by Pilger for his role in covering up the horrors that took place in East Timor under Indonesian military occupation.
In the January 17 West Australian, AII board member and business tycoon Harold Clough claimed that he led the charge arguing against funding the conference. Clough's company in Indonesia, Petrosea, made huge profits during the Suharto period. Among its projects was building roads for the notorious Freeport mining company in West Papua.
Flood and Clough's push to punish Curtin University for inviting Pilger should be rejected by the academic, journalist and Indonesianist community in Australia. The academics and journalists who are members of the AII board should resign in protest.
Pilger will also be speaking at a March 1 Sydney public meeting organised by Green Left Weekly.
[Max Lane is the national chairperson of Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific].
From Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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