Is Indonesia humiliating itself? THE LAST CHAPTER

For the past two chapters I've reviewed a couple of mistakes two different ministers made; the Minister of Education's mistake of suddenly taking the National Exam's difficulty up to eleven (literally, according to the participated students), and the Minister of Communications and Informatics's mistake of cluelessly blocking sites that are innocent and are far from being "pornography" sites. In this last chapter of my three-part series, I'm going to review how "Indons" (FYI, it is the short for "Indonesians", and it does have a bad connotation in it; read on for details) made their mistakes; blaming the innocent, destroying a hard-worked infrastructure, and bribing a lump sum of money. These acts are simply the benchmark to differ which ones are "Indonesians" and which are "Indons"...

INDONS, Y U NO ACT RIGHT???

 INDONS, Y U BLAME THE INNOCENT?

A picture is worth a thousand words; this is what the Indons always do with their motorcycles...

Sometimes there's a point where bigger objects are the ones to blame even though it is the smaller ones that actually did it, especially as we are reminded of one accident in which a motorcyclist rode against the traffic and hit a car, killing the motorcyclist in process, but it was the car that was blamed, and it brought the anger of the people who witnessed it. They were so angered, punches and profanities flown to the innocent car. The fact that it was the innocent that got hit by everyone and this whole thing reminds me of the senseless site blocking (the "innocent") done by the Ministry of Communications and Informatics (the "people") because of only ONE inappropriate video by the laws of the country (the "motorcyclist"). I could safely say that to be brutally honest...

The accident started with a motorcycle riding against the traffic and then got hit by a car running at 60 kmh, and happened on 13th May at 9.30 am, exactly one month ago. The motorcyclist died while the driver, identified as Austin, was taken to the nearby police station, but his car was destroyed by the passerby. A video recorded by one of the witnesses can be seen below, courtesy of YouTuber Agung Ferdianto:

It is appaling that Indons like them would abuse the innocent people instead of the culprit due to their "seeing is believing" act combined with "distorted perspective" approach, which equals "Judging on their own". I know that Jakarta is known for its hectic traffic jam in certain areas, but this is too much. In the end, there comes a couple of questions:

Is the driver the one to blame?
Only if the driver drives against the traffic, it's a "yes" answer. In this case, it is "no". Even if the innocent drove a car at a quite fast speed for a family car and the motorcyclist died for his own stupidity, you can't just simply judge on your own.

Are rich people the one to blame?
This question is much more a "stereotypical racism" than an actual question, addressing the issue where one of the attackers did shout something about the driver being a rich person. This grows more questions: Are the ones who own cars rich people? Can you define who a rich person is according to your own thoughts? The list goes on and on. Other than that, it's almost the same question as above...

Why were you gone totes cray cray that you judged the accident by yourselves?
Should we build an Anywhere Door that can take you to Radley Sanitarium? No? Then what is the philosophy and purpose behind all of this? The first action of helping the dead motorcyclist is right for a size of a first-half witness action, the second half...? -_-

Why can't the police handled the situation?
They had to, but unfortunately they lost the momentum to everything (read: no police interaction at the scene). The police should've warned the motorcyclist and even fine him for riding against traffic, if only the police could enforce the golden laws of traffic. This is the best solution possible, but hard to implement due to situation.

INDONS, Y U DESTROY THE PARK?

Unhealthy queuing; these people, who wanted the free ice cream, queued to an extent that they were destroying the park the mayor had worked hard on for years. (source: TribunNews)

Although this was days before the motorcyclist accident, the antics of the Indons doesn't stop at falsely judging things, and not just happen in Jakarta alone; it goes to an extent that they would destroy an infrastructure only for a mere free ice cream. One of the most-established ice cream companies that has its venture in Indonesia for a long time held an event in which they gave free ice creams to everyone who attends the event. Emphasizing the word "Free" (=zero money), chaos ensued as people queued for a chance of getting the free ice cream. But at the same, they destroyed the park, and in fact, this angered the mayor so much, so many F-words are literally thrown, especially knowing that the mayor did the hard work for establishing the park all by herself for years. In case you don't know, this event is held in Surabaya, exactly at Taman Bungkul, which is one of the cities where this free ice cream event is held. Poor mayor... If only the queuing people didn't destroy the hard-worked park she maintained for years... :(

You can see the expression of the angry mayor uploaded by YouTuber Toko Kelontong.

Logically, if the queue doesn't sit in the grass of the park, then you could expect a very long queue considering the queuing space provided wasn't big enough, and it even created traffic too, but then again it is so wrong in many ways, even before or after getting the ice cream. You know that some Indons don't hesitate to litter, right? Even before it was started, it is already wrong. Should there be questions? Not really...

To prove that it is indeed wrong from the get-go, the event has no authorization yet at that time, saying that it had to be authorized by the mayor beforehand. The Brand Manager Assistant also stated that they had the authorization because the event is a national-scaled one and Surabaya was just one of the cities, but she also added that there's the Event Organizer that prepared everything. At that time, the mayor came to the event and started throwing profanities and anger to the organizers, exactly at 10.30am, and after that she passed out and was brought to the hospital. Thankfully, the company that held this event sent the letter of apology to the mayor and has since been responsible to help recovering the park.

INDONS, Y U BRIBE FOR MONEY?

This is the most recent case to date. Bribery in Indonesia is most likely common, especially in Jakarta. In fact, there are various cases where it makes everything worse. Let's take two examples in Kelapa Gading and Blok M, two recent places most prominent for bribery. In Kelapa Gading, it is two shops that are victims to the bribery, but thankfully the owner took the initiative to tell everything to the police. The result is the shops are sealed to prevent the bribery to take place.

Yet, the larger-scale bribery takes place in Blok M, this time it's Ennichisai a.k.a the Little Tokyo Festival held annually in Blok M area. For five years, it has attracted many visitors, local and international, for showing how a Tokyo nuance can be felt in Jakarta and to also show that Japanese culture is more than just Japanese animations; it has everything from food, to culture, and much more. For everyone, Ennichisai has been a place in the hearts of Japanese culture enthusiasts, and for a personal note, I have been visited the festival for two years straight, starting from 2013.

Here are the "bottom-line-only" translations of what Daisei Takeya, the founder of Ennichisai, said, translated from renata707's Indonesian translations:

Just days before the show started, the organizers were 'bribed' and if we don't give them money, the show won't go. (1)

It seems like it's hard to unite those who worked hard for everyone and those who only think about the money. (2)

With evil-ridden people like these, Ennichisai is hard to be realized. Therefore, we decided to end it for good. (3)

We apologize to thousands of people who enjoyed Ennichisai at Blok M's Little Tokyo. (4)

Even with all these lies and problems, we stayed strong to the end and has made this event the one to remember by many. (5)

Actually, this thing was even considered before the event starts, because we have felt the effect of this city's mismanagement and political issues. (6)

The organizers had a good aim and meant to give contributions to Blok M, yet our aim was made difficult, even to extent that we were being bribed. (7)

Of course we are sad because we can no longer feel this joy anymore, but let's part ways joyfully. (8)

We hope that you enjoyed Ennichisai just like we the organizers do. Once again, we apolgize for this inconvenience and thank you for all your participations. (9)

The Ennichisai founder once stated that this year is the last Ennichisai, and so the enthusiasts are saddened by this news. The reason why this year is the last is simple: bribery. According to the founder, the sum of the bribery is large but the exact amount is unknown, even to this date. This means that the festival that strengthens the bonds between Indonesia and Japan ends due to a mere bribery that hurt the festival.

Faith in Japanese Festivals has restored; Ennichisai finally will see another year, with new team and no corruption. (source: @renata707 on Twitter)

Fortunately, Takeya-san has stated recently that Ennichisai will see another year, with a brand new team and the no-bribery-guaranteed policy, which means financial report will be open to the team.

The bribery, though, has been a common practice as said before. The police has one job to obliterate them, but it would be a tough job because the bribers will always have a growing number. Once again, we are reminded that even the biggest figures should be wary of them.

THE ENDING POINT

Indonesia, the fourth most populated country in the world, has been through a series of humiliating feats, either from the ministers or from the people themselves. The mental of the "Indons" have been heavily struck and they have thrown so many antics. Reluctantly judging by themselves (to an extent attacking the innocent for the crime he/she doesn't do), vandalizing the infrastructures and bribing for money pretty much describes who the "Indons" are, and some cases, that unfortunately didn't make the cut to this blog, like not giving a pregnant woman a seat in a public transportation (and eventually vent on a social media site about that) and creating black campaigns for their opposing presidential candidates for the upcoming presidential election made things worse.

Unfortunately, some ministers are also this; creating mental stress in the education department has made Indonesians everything but smarter, and even online creative fields become extinct as "innocent" sites are being blocked for pornography. It seems that 2014 has seen itself as one of the period-ending downfalls suffered by the country, even in certain departments you can take your guess at. The new president, as well as the new ministers, are expected to have one job at improving Indonesia to a better country, paving a way for better things imaginable in most departments for the next five years.

We hope whatever the choice is for the 6th July presidential election, he can take the responsibility to make a better Indonesia, and not just the president; the mentals of every Indonesian become less of an "Indon".

See you in the next blog post...

This is the hint of what will come after the three storms of dissing the mental of Indonesians... (x)

Further reading 
[EN] News of the Free Ice Cream chaos on The Jakarta Globe
[ID] Kaskus thread of the motorcycle vs car accident
[ID] Taman Bungkul news on TribunNews

~[R]

Is Indonesia humiliating itself? CHAPTER II - Pointless Internet Censorship

So in the light of the 106th year of Indonesia's awakening (although it has passed days ago...) we were struck by some of the unsatisfying cases, one of them is the unsettling National Exam of this year that it used out-of-topic questions from every student's three-year education in either Junior High and High School on certain subjects. This has raised rage for all students, to the point that someone ended her life over her failure at doing the exam. Thankfully, an initiative intends to make the exam a benchmark tool for all schools nationwide, and hope that with changing its system, the education in Indonesia will see a better future. I also wanted to point out a case happened at one of the International schools in Jakarta on the last post too, but I realized that not only would it make the post a TL;DR one but also raping won't be included as one of the topics here in my blog.

However, if I were to do so, the only thing I would say is this: Have the International schools do intense checkings. Raping is outright pointless, especially at International schools.

POINTLESS INTERNET CENSORSHIP; WHY SHOULD THIS HAPPEN?

The second chapter of the series takes the topic of internet censorship in Indonesia which enrages everyone, because the site the Minister of Technology blocked are "innocent" sites that doesn't appear to contain porn. The minister's aim to eradicate porn is actually good, but did they went too far? We think so. Vimeo was blocked due to such circumstance, along with other sites like Reddit, Imgur, and others. Vimeo is actually a video-sharing site that offers high quality videos and is a site where content creators post their creations and video portfolios for everyone to see. The site also implements the rule of anti-porn contents, but sadly the implementation might be a bit loose from one of the local news I read (source forgotten).

The interface of Vimeo. This site is blocked by the Indonesian Minister of Technology due to a dirty twerk video shown in one of the political party's campaign. Some said that this is to discredit the party.

Founded in 2004 by Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein, it offers the same service as YouTube where it allows users to share and view their videos. The name is actually an anagram of "Movie", but is also a play on words "Video" and "Me". While Lodwick and Klein left in 2007 and 2008 respectively, Dae Mellencamp became the CEO of the site until March 19, 2012 with Kerry Trainor taking place. As of September 2013, its search feature requires Google Analytics to work properly and users of Firefox and Chrome web browsers cannot search on Vimeo without disabling privacy protection. As of the end of 2013, Vimeo attracted 100 million unique visitors per month and more than 22 million registered users worldwide, with 15% of its traffic came from mobile devices.

Vimeo in 2007 has its glory days due to support in high definition playbacks (1280 x 720 / 720p), which made it the first video sharing site to support consumer HD, with uploaded HD videos automatically converted to 720/30p VP6 flash video. Since August 2010, all videos are encoded into H.264 for HTML5 support. All videos uploaded before were re-encoded. Non-Plus users can upload up to 500 MB of videos per week, and up to one HD video per week (additional HD videos uploaded within the same week are encoded to SD).

In 2008 Vimeo unveiled its $60-per-year Vimeo Plus package, which allows users additional weekly uploads (up to 5 GB), unlimited HD videos, unlimited creation of channels, groups and albums, no ads, HD embeds, 2-pass video re-encoding that results in higher quality, priority encoding, and more. The arrival of Vimeo Plus also meant the downgrade of the free version, which up to that point also enjoyed unlimited HD re-encodings per week and unlimited creation of groups/albums/channels.

Since February 2010, Plus users can choose to re-encode their 1080p upload as either 1080p or 720p. As time goes on, the site offers unlimited HD embeds, and users can upload that are up to five gigabytes of footage. This makes it possible for full length, high-definition feature films to be uploaded to Vimeo by Vimeo Plus users. In 2011, it introduces Vimeo PRO for business and commercial use only, offering 50GB of storage, 250k plays, advanced analysis and third-party video player support.

CENSORSHIP BEFORE US

It turns out that Indonesia isn't the first to block Vimeo from our ISPs; India in 2012 did it under the orders of Department of Telecommunications without any stated reasons until it is stated that the copyright infringement of Indian films were the cause of this one-week ban. LH Harish Ram of Copyright Labs, Chennai, wrote on his Twitter account that he had not asked for the entire URLs to be blocked but only specific URLs where infringement was taking place. Contrary to what Ram claimed on Twitter, his letter about Dhammu clearly asks for 272 URLs to be blocked and these are complete URLs, not specific webpages. June 15 of the same year, the Madras high court took note of the controversy and clarified that only those URLs which are infringing copyright can be blocked, not entire websites, and the ban was lifted. As of May 2014, Vimeo is accessible in India.

It is a different story in Turkey though as the site is blocked by the court order on January 9 2014 without any reason.

WHAT ABOUT INDONESIA'S WAY OF BLOCKING VIMEO?

This meme was made popular to make fun of Minister of Communications's action of banning innocent sites; Vimeo is one of them. My only question: Is Tifatul Sembiring ever a smart "object"? I don't think so...

Tifatul Sembiring, Indonesia's Communications Minister tweeted from his personal account that video sharing site Vimeo would be banned. Citing Indonesia’s controversial anti-pornography law, passed in 2008, the miniister said the site included displays of "nudity or nudity-like features". The ban came at a moment when films made in Indonesia had begun to attract attention on the world stage, with Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing joining the ranks of the most acclaimed documentaries of all time. It might look as a your run-of-the-mill ban but the stupidity lied in the process of the banning, even the reason for the blocking.

The ban took place when the Minister of Communication witnessed that there is a video showcasing a female singer's twerk at a campaign for one of Indonesia's political parties: the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS - "Partai Keadilan Sejahtera"). The problem lied on the see-through wardrobe the singer wore and the twerk she did, and as the minister spotted the video, the video-sharing site's ban took place where it ordered the Trust+ (Trust Positive) team to order all ISPs to block it, but only some who really did it. This ban caught the anger of the Indonesian netizens as they criticize the illability to ban just the video, and only capable to ban the site as a whole. Other sites the minister claimed as sources of porn are Reddit and Imgur, among others unlisted here.

In the light of this turn of events, the Ministry of Communications wrote a letter to Vimeo requesting that pornographic contents on the site is deleted. A day after Vimeo denied that the site contains pornography. Vimeo's Director of Communications Jessica Casano-Antonellis stated that it does not allow pornographic contents and only accepts artistic nudity (read: non-sexual nudity), and not pornographic contents. She also stated that she is investigating the fact that the site is blocked due to pornography and hope that she could fix the service soon.

On 14th May, Vimeo received the letter from the Ministry of Communications, and seven days later it sent a letter to the Ministry saying that the Ministry should re-deliberate their decision and that, as mentioned, it doesn't allow pornographic contents, as stated in its two page-long letter. Also stated is the history of its service and the fact that the site is praised for its design and video player qualities and not a pornography site.

This is how Indonesia's Ministry of Communication played its WTF factor, just like the Ministry of Education did to the students in this year's National Exam. As predicted, the blockage has taken the rage of Indonesian netizens and is a form of the Minister's greedy act and that he (the Minister Tifatul Sembiring) has brought the Ministry back to the lighting department era. Also, the blockage is not fair knowing that not only is it snubs other sites that has more pornography than Vimeo has (example: YouTube. YT is not blocked because it has its Indonesian representatives to report abusive contents) but also is the Ministry focused to only one category involving artistic nudity; "art of nakedness" is one of them. Michael A Cheah stated that such category is made by users and because of that, it doesn't show Vimeo's approval.

The controversial Anti-Pornography laws has finally taken its toll, to an extent that it blocked innocent sites as its target, even artistic nudity is subject to this. As @donnybu said on Twitter, the transparent, accountable, feasible and professional internet governance in Indonesia is very needed knowing the fact that everyone could block anything as they see fit. Indonesia's creative field has seemed to be burnt away. Where in the world content creators can post their visual portfolios? When in the world Indonesian fandom fanatics would post their fan fictions of their OTPs and other shippings? Where Indonesians can get a swift, no-bullshit image hosting? And why Indonesians can't get a taste of Reddit?

As of this writing, "innocent" sites other than Vimeo like Reddit, Imgur, and FanFiction.Net has been blocked, and whenever one is to access the site, it will redirect them to Internet Filtering page.

AND THE MOST REASONABLE ACTION IF YOU WERE A MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS IS...

...of course to just block the video and warn the uploader, easy as that, but deliberate the video whether it's a pornography or not beforehand. There's no need to block the whole site as it brings the rage to those who knew that the site doesn't contain porn. That's as the same as if you would burn someone's house for a school bullying. The Minister has to know more about the sites so if he were to block the site he does it in a reasonable way, not by brute force that eventually is pointless.

Indonesia also need to understand what artistic nudity is, and how it is different from pornography that its purpose is simply for artistic purposes, as its name suggests. In conclusion, just like Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Communications has a mental of an "Indon". No offense, but the netizens including me have already seen it, and they are responsible for having Indonesian internet being laughable by other countries.

This also brings up the second chapter's conclusion that the minister should be capable of knowing the sites first and the issues that are in the site, especially regarding a "porn" video hosted on an innocent video-sharing site due to the site's loose implementation of no-nudity Terms of Service. With the Indonesian presidential election on the horizon, following the changes in every ministry structures, we hope that the next Minister of Communication is the more IT-capable person who knows what he does and what he is doing. The next Minister of Education also has one job: to improve Indonesia's education, eradicating stress on students due to final exam and making way for a better, distributed, education system that can cater student's abilities and morals more, because for these two chapters I fleshed out what mistakes these two ministers had and what should have been done to make a win-win situation for everyone.

In the final chapter, we will cover the Indonesian people's mental's fault. Lately, certain Indonesians acted in an unsettling manner in different ocassions, including blaming an innocent person and destructing maintained parks. The two Ministries featured throughout the series has already had a mental of an "Indon" for your information due to their misconducts. Meanwhile it's encouraged to post your "HUEHUEHUE"s in the comments, regardless of who you are and where are you from, whenever you want to laugh at Indonesia's internet governance or just point out your thoughts. If this site were to be closed by the Minister, then I had to kill myself...

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimeo
Various news on Suara.com

~[R]