i just got done sending out an informative email about yesterday's bombings, reassuring everyone that i am safe and that jakarta is, in fact, quite far away from me...
i was going to copy and paste it here for anyone who isn't on my sending list, but it won't let me, so oh well. i'll use my blog to complain instead.
since i don't have a tv, and i don't read indonesian quite well enough to subscribe to a newspaper (that's a joke. i don't even remotely speak indonesian well enough to understand half the newspaper.), my main source of news is whatever is online. and given the extreme third-worldness of our interents here, even that is limited. the events of yesterday though have me pursuing the news.
my island was bombed. yeah, it was in jakarta. it was far away. about as far away as new york city is from indiana, in fact. but still. i live here. on java. in the grand scheme.... jakarta is close to home. too close to home. and i won't ever forget where i was when it happened.
two men walked into two hotels and blew themselves up with the intention of taking down everyone they could with them. let me put this into perspective for you - they found one bomber's head in the hotel lobby later. it was all that was left. i was watching tv at the warung yesterday. i was watching people being carried out on stretchers. one guy was black from head to toe and his legs were on backwards from the knees down. one old man had no skin left on him. they were indonesian.
but get this - outside of the indonesian news channels, nobody is talking about the indonesians. EVERY SINGLE other news source i have found (and believe me, i've been monitoring closely) has reported solely on how many foreigners were killed or injured. i have yet to see a report on how many indonesians were hurt or murdered. yes, i understand the international impact of what happened. i get that. but is an indonesian's life really worth any less than an australian's life? than an italian's life? than an american's?
the attack happened IN INDONESIA, for heaven's sake! indonesians got their heads blown off! indonesians got their skin melted off! indonesians got their legs blown backwards! but who will ever know? because who cares?
indonesia? where's that?
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