What comes after Indonesia Unite?

Unspun can understand and empathize with the seeming act of solidarity and defiance in the face of the Jakarta bombings with the Indonesia Unite movement, where Twitterers and Facebookers daub their avatars in red and white, the colors of the Indonesian flag. At the same time Unspun thinks that Anita has raised an important question in her blog, Finally Woken.

“But here I must ask one question. Is that it?

I think most Indonesians are deeply traumatic by the media coverage on the previous attacks that sent the country into a despair for a long time. We all suffered from the damage in the economy, travel warning, the crash of national tourism industry, lack of foreign investments and many other impacts on the bomb blasts since 2002. It has taken years to build the confidence and positive sentiment about Indonesia. No one wants to suffer like that again, to lose face so badly like that, hence the strong message sent that we do not agree with the attack.

Not that I disagree with the movement. I do appreciate the initiation, but I don’t see the long term benefits we would make by putting red-and-white flag in our avatars. And it seems that The Jakarta Globe agrees with me: But some Web users were skeptical that the swelling of online patriotism would have any lasting impact. “This incident has had much bigger impact on patriotism among the young than 30 years of propaganda,” technology journalist Aulia Masna wrote on Twitter. “But yesterday’s call for unity needs to be followed up by offline activities.”

I think the most important thing we should do from this so-called Indonesia Unite pressure group is to push the government, our government, to find who did this. We are too scared that the impact of the attack would be like the bombs in 2002-2004, we have forgotten to keep pestering Indonesian government to be committed 100% to find the terrorist and would not rest until we do. We’re having too much fun pointing our fingers to A or B as the mastermind of the attacks, forgetting our duty as citizens is to make sure our government does the job right. No, I haven’t seen any single message in twitter – or I might have missed it? – that urges the government to keep reporting their findings, and what the progress they have made since the attack. Wouldn’t it be more important for us to unite to monitor what they have been doing – rather than making visits to the victims and giving emotional and moving speech to the nation? Have they formed special task forces to handle the victims, the search, and more importantly, the security in the country’s capital city? – and to make sure those behind the attack will be punished? And it is not just that, we also need to be consistent on our pressure and make sure they don’t waste their energy accusing who did this and that without actually doing anything to find the evidence.

We all have to do something, something real, to minimize the future attack possibility, starting from daily activities. For example, the government must improve the registration system so people wouldn’t be able to create fake IDs easily, but we – Jakartans especially – also must stop being ignorant to our surroundings and alert the authorities if we see something suspicious.

On the same day as the bomb blasts in JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Jakarta on Friday July 17th, BBC broadcast a pretty interesting news about 20-year-old middle-class, British-born man, educated at some top independent schools, who converted to Islam in 2006 and was ready to commit the suicide attack in Bristol, England. It has emerged it was Muslims who alerted police in Bristol and counter-terrorism officers from Scotland Yard to Ibrahim’s activities. The BBC understands that his arrest was the first major one following a community tip-off.

Why can’t we do that?

Really, having our national flag attached to our avatar is nice, but it takes more than that to create peace in Indonesia, don’t you agree?”

Expressions of solidarity and defiance are a great way to cope with the shock of the bombings. But unless they are transformed into something more enduring and constructive, they may not mean much in the long run. In addition to Anita’s suggestions Unspun thinks that one of the ways Twitterers can contribute is to become the de-facto guardians of security. How may times have we all experienced the inane and utterly motions that “seurity guards” go through in check in our bags and vehicles. How many of us thought it totally ridiculous that security guards can poke a metal detector into the car, which is made mostly of metal, and register nothing? Or the perfunctory walk through metal detectors that are not switched on, of if they are switched on and buzz, they are too lazy or intimidated by a well dressed person to frisk them? Or the stupidity of guards going through hand carry bags but waiving through roll-on lugguage?

Wouldn’t it make sense to harness the power of Indonesian Twiterers to be the watchdogs that these guys are doing their job properly? If, for instance, someone found that the security procedures at a hotel or public place is wanting, they would tweet about it and hashtag it, say, #laxsecurity. Newspapers and other news organizations can then check for these and shame the offender into putting their security measures right, or the Polce could get off their ask and sanction them for having lax security.