Like the rest of Indonesia, Batam does not produce almost anything ‘indigenous’ – it is hosting maquiladoras, mainly from the West, Japan and South Korea. Practically, still relatively cheap and unskilled labor is assembling what was developed somewhere else. When minimum wages move higher (as happened in Batam), most of the companies migrate somewhere else. As there is hardly any Indonesian industry to speak of, such places as Batam go down, into free fall.
Mediocre technocrats like Habibie (‘educated’ in Germany), were heavily indoctrinated by the pro-market dogmas. Their theories failed, reducing Indonesia to a country which keeps plundering its own resources on behalf of mostly Western multi-national companies, while keeping its citizens in servitude to big business and modern-day feudal lords.
The results are predictable: environment is ruined, while the cities and villages are precisely like in the feudal days, now only with stereotypically assembled malls and a few international hotels; with dangerous and cheap scooters (wishfully called motorbikes) and, because of the notorious lack of public transportation, legendary traffic jams – something that should be absolutely ridiculous in a desperately poor country like Indonesia.
At the Sekupang neighborhood, I saw two middle-aged women, sitting aimlessly near a polluted waterway. One came from Jember, East Java, while the other from Palembang in Sumatra. They stared at me, a foreigner, in surprise. I asked them about ‘the second Singapore’. They replied, still amused:
“Yes, the previous government promised Batam to become a second Singapore. It has not been realized yet, as you can see.
Life is difficult. I don’t even think about going back home to Palembang for Idul Fitri holidays. I cannot afford it – it is so expensive to go there. Life is so expensive.”
These women are not losing hope. Perhaps one day things could change, improve:
But it depends on the Mayor. We still hope that Batam will be more like Singapore in the future.”
A few steps from where they sat, a child suffering from malnutrition, is absent-mindedly munching on blue paint he peels from a window frame.
There are slums all over Batam, there is misery, like everywhere in Indonesia. It does not appear richer or poorer than the other cities of the archipelago. Things look familiar: no concert halls and no research centers.
Only five bus lines that are operating tiny and primitive buses – that is all that is disguising itself as ‘public transportation’, in an urban area of more than 1 million inhabitants.
There is hardly anything to look forward to, here. Only, perhaps, a trip to Singapore, or marriage to a foreigner, an escape.
Chilli bar in Batam (photo by Andre Vltchek)
Ramadan. During the fasting month, the whorehouses of Batam are open only from 9 pm to 1 am, but they are open. Speedboats from Singapore are still packed, shuttling concerned-looking men, sugar daddies, husbands in need of second wives.
I spoke to Ms. Mira, who works at a small store (warung), which doubles as a bar in Batam’s neighborhood called Nagoya. She laughs, bitterly, whenever I ask some uncomfortable questions:
“I don’t know why I came to Batam, but I did; from Lombok. It was not easy to get a job here. I finally worked at Chilli Bar here at Nagoya Town, at that corner, look… not far from here. I used to make grand total of Rp. 3 million (about US$ 240). And that already included my salary, tips and drink commissions. I heard that in better bars, women could earn up to Rp. 5 million, with the same structures of payment.”
Finally, I went to Chilli Bar, and it was clearly a brothel, a den, with girls dancing in their skimpy clothes, with a transvestite mixing cocktails; a place where there are no secrets, where everything is raw and open. A middle-aged sex-worker, Ms. Jemmy, is from Palembang. She is bitter and tough, and at the same time as melancholic as a character from Chekhov’s play:
“I have a 17-year-old kid now. I was pregnant when I was very young, her age, at 17.
First, I went to work in Singapore, then I moved to Batam to work in a casino. At that time, gambling was thriving here. But then it became restricted, only five places that could have gambling on their premises. So, I would work for 2 weeks and then not work for 2 months. I have a kid to raise, so I moved; I began working in this bar in order to make ends meet.
I would do anything to survive. If customers want to be with me for a night, that’s OK. At one point, I became a ‘second wife’ of a Singaporean businessman who had been travelling regularly to Batam. But then, things did not work out as planned. We broke up.
I don’t have plans to go back home to Palembang for Idul Fitri holidays. I have to earn more money first, to be able to do that. Anyway, I am not looking forward to the holidays. It is already bad during Ramadan – the bars can only operate from 9pm to 1am. Such a short time. Yes, not enough time to get many customers. That means less earning for us. Usually we started to open at 3pm and could stay open until early hours, especially on the weekends.”
Tens of thousands of Indonesian women are drawn to Batam, as hundreds of thousands are drawn to Bali. The legend goes: anything could happen here. Life could change. Prince Charming may appear from nowhere.
But miracles hardly happen. Charming princes that travel here, are usually just some tough Singaporean businessmen, who know precisely what they want. Most of them, once they get it, rush back to their bubble, to a highly conservative lifestyle.
But Indonesian reality is too dreadful and the dream of easy escape too bright. Desperate women keep coming.
Can the economy of an entire island with more than 1 million inhabitants be sustained by such ‘dreams’? It appears that it has to be. Factories are closing down. Real, ‘decent’ tourism has nothing to offer to foreigners who are drawn as if by some powerful magnet to the neighboring lights of Singapore.
Indonesian Batam cannot compete. It has only those few second-rate malls, mainly stuffed with counterfeit merchandise. There is nothing unique here, nothing impressive, nothing truly beautiful.
What was the former vice-President B. J. Habibie really thinking? What did he want to achieve here in Batam, in those ‘heady’ (but in truth, totally wasted) post-Suharto years?
What is here, really; what is here now, in Batam? A few pits from terrible mining ventures, few badly paved roads and dirty polluted waterways. One huge sunken ship. A few slums. A few ‘white elephants’ – unfinished tall buildings, hotels and condominiums.
Fundamentalist capitalism is badly failing in Indonesia, as it is failing all over Southeast Asia. (please refer to my latest book: “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”). It is good to know that it is. The sad thing, however, is that local people, indoctrinated and programmed, are being forced to pay a terrible price. They are not protesting, not rioting; they are mostly suffering silently.
Entire generations are wasted. Almost no one in Indonesia is still aware how bad things have really got. It is ‘top secret’, hidden by the corporate media, hidden by the indoctrinated academia.
Those few who are aware are blaming the circumstances, and the corrupt individuals. Almost no one is blaming the regime – the entire system – injected by the West.
Inundated village in Batam (photo by Andre Vltchek)
One bizarre relic on the islands of Batam, is a former refugee camp for Vietnamese ‘boat’ people. It is located on the island of Galang. This gloomy compound has been turned into a badly maintained, but still fascinating museum. Or you can call it an anti-Communist propaganda monument. Barracks are on display, as well as now rotting boats that used to bring opponents of the Vietnamese Communist Revolution to this part of the world.
Now, Vietnam which had been reduced to a rubble by the imperialist assault from the West, is a Communist (with mixed economy) middle-income country. It has bypassed Indonesia in many fields. Its population is educated and enthusiastic, and its cities are blooming.
I asked a construction worker from East Java, who was working on the premises of the museum, what he knew about the Vietnam War. He was curt:
“This island was for the refugees from Vietnam. But I don’t know about the history. Nobody told me anything. I just started this work on repairing the boats, because they are already falling apart.”
Mr. Adi, now a resident of Batam but originally from Pontianak, knew much more:
“Refugees in Galang Island were the results of the civil wars in Vietnam, and the intervention from the West, just like what is happening now in Syria.”
On the way back to the main, northern part of Batam, I noticed a fence. I stopped the car and went to look. Behind the wires, there was a lake. At the edge of it, an eerie site – a sunken village. Only roofs of houses and a mosque were now visible. All the rest was under the water. “What is this?” I asked. A dam. A badly planned artificial lake. Another disaster, another failed ’project’.
One hour later I photographed a slum, but it was biasa, a ‘usual stuff’, just like anywhere else in Indonesia.
Next day I landed in Singapore, and it was biasa again, but only from the point of view of one of the richest places on Earth: tickets for the concert of my favorite Argentinian concert pianist Martha Argerich, were hopelessly sold out. But I managed to attend a great (free) concert at a magnificent Esplanade concert hall. Changi Airport, the best in the world, just opened its Terminal 4, which was designed as a cozy ancient Chinese town in Southeast Asia. The Singapore metro extended enormously, since my last visit. Biasa, you know, usual stuff… for Singapore.
There is no place on Earth where the contrasts between the super-rich and poor worlds would be so close to each other.
Only 20 kilometers between a bizarre crypto socialist and monstrously rich Singapore and the colonized, robbed, poor and brainwashed super-capitalist Indonesia.
Two different planets. Two different realities.
This contrast never appears in the European or North American mainstream press. The West loves Indonesia as it is now: plundered, defeated, indoctrinated.
No matter what the Western demagogues say, Southeast Asia cannot be governed by capitalist doctrines. When it is, its people are forced to live in unimaginable misery.
But the truth is: there cannot be a “second Singapore” or “second Shenzhen”, not even “second Danang”, anywhere in an Asian country which puts greed and profit above well-being of its people and the social structures.
About the writer and photograper :
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
Rossie Indira is a writer and publisher at PT. Badak Merah Semesta, an independent and progressive publishing house. Her latest book “Bude Ocie di Maroko” is about her travel to Morocco. With Andre Vltchek, Rossie co-wrote “Exile”, conversations with Pramoedya Ananta Toer (This book had been translated to Korean, Spanish Indonesian). Rossie was translator and production manager of a documentary “Terlena – Breaking of a Nation”about genocide in Indonesia in 1965. Rossie can be contacted through her website or twitter.
Cover photo: Two women in Batam – they do not think it looks like Singapore (photo by Andre Vltchek)