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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
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On the Ground The first wave of U.N. peacekeeping troops land in East Timor By YISHANE LEE also: More stories Below The Fold September 20, 1999 Web posted at 2:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 2:30 a.m. EDT
Still, the International Herald Tribune took a more cautionary stance, placing Australian Prime Minister John Howard's televised address to the Australian nation near the top of its lead Timor story, written from Singapore by Michael Richardson. It described the risk of "a hit-and-run guerrilla war that could keep it [the U.N. force] tied down for months." PM Howard acknowledged: "Any operation of this kind is dangerous. There is a risk of casualties." The story also mentions that a militia leader demanded Sunday that East Timor be partitioned so that a portion closest to West Timor be included as part of Indonesia. Coincidentally a controversial new security bill is in its final rounds of debate in Indonesia's House of Representatives, reported the Jakarta Post. Due for endorsement just before the current legislators end their terms of office, the bill would significantly increase the power of the military to interfere with civil affairs. An editorial in the paper put it plainly: "If enacted, the bill will strengthen the grip the Indonesian military has over the country's political structure." However, on Sunday politicians from several parties hinted that voting would be delayed. Emergency airdrops of food and other supplies to East Timor began over the weekend. As calls for a war crimes tribunal grew louder, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ogata Sadako arrived in Kupang, West Timor, where nearly 200,000 East Timorese refugees have fled. In Darwin, where he arrived from refuge in the British embassy in Dili, Timorese freedom fighter Xanana Gusmao began making moves to convene a transitional government in exile. With troops finally now in place, other news is beginning to dent front pages. The SCMP's Kuala Lumpur correspondent Ian Stewart reported that one of the largest demonstrations since former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was jailed ended with police firing tear gas and water cannons into a crowd of 10,000. To also mark the anniversary of his arrest on charges of corruption and sodomy, supporters assembled at the National Mosque in Malaysia's capital to ask for an independent royal inquiry (by the nation's king and state sultans) into an alleged poisoning attempt against Anwar. Reports have said tests in Melbourne, Australia, showed that the former finance minister's blood contained elevated levels of arsenic. In a related analysis piece detailing the escalating tensions between Anwar supporters and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government, Stewart acknowledged that "Anwar is not outwardly ill, and the Melbourne findings have yet to be supported by a more rigorously monitored analysis." None of the online English versions of three Malaysian papers covers the pro-Anwar demonstration directly. Harakah reported that 30 NGOs had called for an investigation into judicial impropriety in relation to Anwar's poisoning. Malaysia's Star reported that Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the demonstrators petition for a royal inquiry will create tension in the country's political situation. "To politicize the issue of the alleged poisoning and the court case involving Anwar is of no benefit," Badawi said. The pro-government New Straits Times was even more reserved-to the point where no news of the demonstration appeared at all. Not to be outdone, Singaporean elder statesman Lee Kwan Yew, in an Agence France-Presse story published in the SCMP, made an example of the East Timor tragedy, saying that it reveals "the dangers of radical reform." Lee said he "sympathized" with Indonesian Prime President B.J. Habibie, "who inherited a much-diminished presidency from president Suharto that no longer commanded respect and regard," the story reported. Each in his own world With anime becoming mainstream even in America (Miramax will release the Japanese all-time hit Princess Mononoke this fall), the phenomenon of otaku is intriguing scholars overseas. French journalist Etienne Barral thinks he knows what is behind what he calls a uniquely Japanese concept. In a new book published in French, the longtime resident of Japan says the difficult-to-translate word encompasses "people who absorb themselves in virtual reality such as animation, comics, video games and young entertainers and isolate themselves from the real world," according to the Daily Yomiuri. Though the word has come to also mean anyone who is obsessed about any one topic-a train otaku is akin to a trainspotter-there is a sinister side to the obsession. In the late 1980s, a 31-year-old Tsutomu Miyazaki was charged with kidnapping and brutally murdering four girls. He had replaced normal social contact with a home library comprising thousands of videotapes. Barral traced the growth of otaku to Japan's post-1960 period of rapid economic growth. "The educational system that puts extreme emphasis on groupism isolates those who fail to conform and they react by escaping into a world of virtual reality," he said. For instance, video games allow these socially dysfunctional people to become heroes-albeit only on TV. Barral has studied the phenomenon for a decade, including helping to make a three-hour French documentary about it in 1993. Call him the otaku's otaku.
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