It’s been quite a while since my last blog. I’ve been wanting to, honestly, but I keep finding that I have other things to do. I know, that makes no sense. The closest I’ve come to blogging recently is after getting my iPhone. I figured there was a dearth of articles about it, but even my total infatuation with the thing (it’s the best damn device I’ve bought in AGES), couldn’t get me to write. Maybe I will soon. What finally did it is something that I saw recently on my latest trip.
You see, I just got back from spending two weeks in Indonesia. It’s a fabulously marvelous country, with great, friendly people, awesome scenery, diverse cultures, great food, awesome food, amazing fruit and wonderful food. Not to mention the food. So I will write about all that in a subsequent blog. I will also write about Durian fruit and the fabulous Durian pancakes you can get at the Duck King restaurant in Surabaya! But one very powerful thing that struck me has more to do with how the powerful treat the masses, and how common a theme that is. When I was in Surabaya, everybody wanted us to see the “mud flow”. Intrigued, we drove the 20kms north from Surabaya to Porong, where we faced a surreal sight. There, behind a huge dike, as far as the eye could see, was a sea of hot oily mud, fed by a bubbling underground mud volcano.
The real tragedy is the story behind it. Here’s what I’ve managed to find out.
In May 2006, a company owned by the Bakrie Group, which is in turn owned by the family of one of the richest men in Indonesia, Abulrizal Bakrie (who also just happens to be Indonesia’s Minister of Welfare, go figure), started drilling for oil and gas. They also were drilling without using any protective casing with their drills, which apparently is contrary to all common safety practices in the oil drilling business. No matter, because in addition to the gas, they found hot mud, and lots of it. A mud volcano, to be more exact. Due to the lack of protective casing, this hot mud mixture started spilling out and engulfing the adjoining land, which happened to include rice paddies, factories, fish and shrimp ponds (which form a large part of the economy in that region) and villages with actual living people and animals in them. People as in men, women and children. And all their belongings. Needless to say, all that was destroyed, along with a brand new toll highway being built. These two pictures are separated by a thin strip of road, barely wide enough for our car. The rubble you see is what’s left of the village houses that used to stand on this spot.
rice paddy - flooded
rice paddy - intact
Somehow, miraculously, the adjoining rice paddies, shown in the other picture, were untouched. But not for long, because the mud mixture is still flowing and it doesn’t seem to subside. According to the Christian Science Monitor, as of November 2007 an estimated 1 billion cubic feet of mud has inundated an area of 2.5 square miles, burying 11 towns and displacing at least 16,000 people, and that it is expected that the mud eruption will last for years to come. Along the way, since the first eruption, there have been some explosions, a ruptured gas pipeline, and several collapses of the dike in different places, all of which have caused more property damage, and in some instance more injuries and deaths. But here’s the galling part. Mr. Bakrie and his family have tried to distance themselves from the disaster caused by their company, even at one point trying to sell the company for $2 to an offshore company owned by the same group, according to the New York Times. As far as I’ve heard, people have still not received any compensation or restitution, and the rumour has it that Bakrie is trying to buy people out of their lands at a small fraction of the original cost, but the deal is only available to people who have actual deeds to their land. Unfortunately most of the people have no belongings left and have no paperwork.
This is a sad state of affairs as it is, but it was a stark reminder to me of all the other instances where people’s lives are used as pawns in the money games of rich, powerful people, all in the name of oil. I wonder if there have ever been any wars started for that same cause …
