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Bali prohibition battle as Muslim conservatives increase their influence
Sydney Morning Herald - April 26, 2015
The Dutch police banned the locally-made "black" liquor popular among indigenous Indonesians. Between 1920 and 1925 they tried to eradicate arak, badeg and ciu from several areas of Java. Spying villagers were given prize money for dobbing in local alcohol producers, leading to overzealous tip-offs of fermented cassava cake makers. (The fermentation process produced ethanol.)
"This led to conflicts among people," Kasijanto writes. Meanwhile, Dutch and Indonesian police officers assigned to crack down on liquor sold in coffee shops had a tipple themselves. "As a result the fight against liquor was apparently not very effective," Kasijanto notes drily.
Meanwhile, the Dutch continued to import "modern liquor" such as brandy and jenever from Europe, lining government coffers with tax.
If all this talk of bootleg liquor, alcohol bans and exemptions for one class of people sounds strangely familiar, it is because Indonesia is once again facing a push for prohibition.
In a move that took many by surprise, the Indonesian government announced in January the sale of beer would be banned from convenience stores, street food stalls and beach vendors. (This was already the case for wine and spirits, which is, in any case, taxed to the hilt and prohibitively expensive for most Indonesians.)
As of April 16, beer can only be purchased from supermarkets and restaurants (although exceptions have now been made in tourism hotspots following a public outcry.) The Trade Ministry said the move was needed to crack down on underage drinking and protect morals and culture in society.
And then this month secular parties agreed to deliberate a bill that has expats breaking into a cold sweat across the archipelago. If passed in its current form, the bill, which was initiated by two Islamic parties, would impose a total ban on the production, sale and consumption of alcohol. Anyone caught drinking could face up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 50 million rupiah ($5000).
Before you cancel your flight: exemptions would apply. "Five star hotels, Bali and North Sulawesi might be examples of places to be exempted," Muhammad Arwani Thomafi from the United Development Party (PPP) – Indonesia's oldest Islamic party – told the Jakarta Post. Other proposed exemptions include religious rituals, pharmacies, customary uses and other authorised places.
However, many commentators point to the increasing sway of conservative Islamic groups. Associate Professor Greg Fealy from the Bell School of Asia-Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University, said the Islamic-led prohibition movement is "stock in trade" for parties like the PPP and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
"The interesting thing is the non-Islamic parties – previously known as middle of the road and not supporting Islamist agendas – are also supporting [the deliberation of the bill]," Fealy says.
He said President Joko Widodo's party, the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), was the most obvious example. "Everyone wants to avoid alienating a constituency and limiting the sale of alcohol is seen as something that has broad community support."
Indonesians are not big boozers. According to the latest World Health Organisation figures, 92 per cent of the people in the Muslim-majority country abstain from drinking alcohol.
But expats and tourists love an ice-cold Bintang. Kadek Nova, a beach vendor in Bali for eight years, says if he can't sell beer he may as well stop selling drinks. "Almost 90 per cent of what we sell are beers. A few bottles of mineral water on the side per day, soft drinks even less, the rest would be beers. Between a crate to seven crates [a day], depending on the tourist season."
Kadek stays in touch with many of the tourists; they are repeat customers. "Many of those friends read the stories about the beer ban. They sent me SMS, saying if they can't buy beers in Bali, they will go somewhere else, like Thailand."
The restriction on beer sales met strong opposition on Bali, which is both strongly reliant on tourism and majority Hindu.
The Wall Street Journal reported that more than half of all beer sales in Indonesia might be hit by the decree because minimarkets and small retailers accounted for about 60 per cent of the market.
Even the governor of Jakarta seemed to think the whole thing was lunacy. (Admittedly the city administration owns a 26 per cent stake in beer manufacturer Delta.)
"What's so wrong about beer? No one has ever died from from drinking beer, people die from bootleg liquor. If alcohol is prohibited then I guess we should all also ban cough syrups. Those contain alcohol, too, you know," Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, said in The Jakarta Post.
His comments enraged Prosperous Justice Party member Fahira Idris, who vented on Twitter that beer was addictive, just as dangerous as vodka and wine and furthermore contained carbon dioxide which could disrupt the heart's function.
The row over beer dates back to the Suharto era. Muslim leaders fiercely resisted a government plan for partial restrictions on alcohol sales because they wanted a total ban in line with countries in the Middle East.
The impasse led to no legal restrictions on alcohol sales and supermarket shelves groaning with beer, wine and spirits. Criminologists blamed alcohol for the increasing crime in cities.
News outlets pointed out Suharto was somewhat compromised: one of his grandchildren controlled a beer distribution monopoly in Bali and another family member had recently taken over duty-free alcohol sales nationwide.
An editorial in The Jakarta Post in 1997 said: "Indonesia could perhaps pass as the freest country in the world where the sale of alcohol is concerned. Cheap liquor can be bought by anyone, even at small roadside stalls in most cities."
Although it is now only beer that is readily available, Devie Rachmawati, a social issues analyst from the University of Indonesia, supports the ban in convenience stores.
Devie says young people spend hours hanging out at minimarkets because they have Wi-Fi. The stores, she says, only loosely implement regulations on the sale of alcohol. "Sometimes the fridges are not locked, sometimes they put beer on lower shelves where young people can access, and minimarket employees never check their customers' ID when they buy beer."
Devie says alcohol consumption is a health issue, which is why it needs strict law enforcement. But given so few Indonesians drink, Westerners inevitably feel the booze bans are personal.
"I will be selling my house and moving out of Yogyakarta this coming year because of the mounting influence of fundamentalism in the area," Charles Jarret wrote in The Jakarta Post.
"The beer ban – please understand that almost no one drinks anyway – are the last straw in a list of reasons. After living in Indonesia for 30-plus years, I now feel that it is time to leave."
Life in Indonesia is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for foreigners. Visas are harder to obtain. The government has proposed making foreigners sit a Bahasa Indonesia language proficiency test before they can obtain a work permit. And the controversial jailing of Canadian teacher Neil Bantleman over dubious child sex abuse charges has spooked the expat community.
But the Australian National University's Greg Fealy says while there may be an element of anti-Western sentiment in the crackdown on alcohol, he did not believe it was central. "Anecdotally people have a perception that alcohol use is increasing, which is linked to hard drugs."
Nine people were killed and three injured in a horrific accident near a bus stop in Central Jakarta in 2012. The driver of the minivan that hit them was believed to have been drink-driving.
"Although there is an inclination to see the [alcohol restrictions] as an Islamic issue, there are also broader matters of law and order," Fealy says.
At the eleventh hour, beach vendor Kadek Nova and others selling beer in Bali won a reprieve. On April 15 – the day before the minimarket came into effect, the government issued a guideline saying designated tourism areas would be exempt.
Kadek told his Australian friends not to worry. "Bali can sell beers, they can still relax by the beach and buy cool Bintang there," he said. "They are all happy and said they will come back to Bali."
Steve Carrole, the author of "The Ultimate Guide for Moving to Bali", is similarly sanguine about the prohibition bill. Several political parties have said they will not deliberate the bill without significant changes. The co-ordinating minister for the economy, Sofyan Djalil, told the Wall Street Journal the bill was unlikely to get through parliament.
"Those of us who have been around in this country for a while know that every once in a while some crazy scheme pops up to protect the country's citizens from... themselves," Carrole wrote in the Bali Manual.
He pointed to the 2008 anti-pornography bill, which some feared could mean the end of bikinis in Bali. "One look at any beach in Bali will tell you about how far that bill made it."
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