Humanity Revisited

Long story short: I'm on an internship in Aceh, Indonesia. More on that later, i promise to post my rantings about my arrival and the first few days soon. Now, i just want to get out what I feel while it's still warm...
I just got home from a 'field trip' which involved travelling to villages, talking to the villagers about the new project we are implementing with the government, blablabla.
As expected, in most villages, the immense majority of the villagers attending the meeting (5o on average) was masculine. In one meeting, we had 1 woman. (and our team leader, Ella, who is an indonesian lady as well). Funnily, Ella was doing most of the talking, first because Cliff and I had a language handicap (Cliff speaks average Indonesian, and I, well.. don't) but also because she outbrains us both. Anyways.
The last village, however, was different: the audience was almost exclusively feminine. Wow, I thought, if they didn't have both breasts I would have thought I landed in an Amazones camp (review your greek mythology if you're missing my joke. I know what you're thinking: 'geek'. Yep.)

Turned that there were so few men present in the meeting because... most men in the village were killed during the war that ravaged Aceh during the last 3 months. Bam. Reading statistics is something - hearing the women tell you that they have land but they have to go hungry because there is no one to work the land is insane. "If I have lunch, then I won't have dinner", said one lady, 70 years old +.

I asked Ella about who was doing the killings, the Indonesian government or the GAM (the separatist movement which was the other party to the war). And she told me that the army (the government, therefore) was pretty cruel to people.. take this example: the army forced people to denounce their own children when they got home. The army would then go in and kill the son.
Now how the army pulled that? Well, by threatening the people that if they didnt denounce their children, they (the army) would kill their grandchildren.
Talk about a dilemma. If you had the choice, who would you have killed, your son or his own children?
You know that they're going to get him anyway. And you know that they would actually kill your grandchildren.
And you know that if your son was given the choice, this is what he'd choose too.
And those motherfuckers of the army knew it, too.

Now the way they carried the execution was pretty innovative, too. They may have outsmarted the israeli army in cruelty (though i'm not sure).

First, the execution would be carried in the house, in front of the parents.
Second, it wasnt by gunshot, or by a blow from a machette. No. They'd get young people armed with bamboo sticks and have them all hit the victim -- so the mother ends up picking up the pieces of her son, literally.

This makes me sick. I can't believe that someone could do that to another human being.. I don't think any other species in the animal kindgom is capable of such insanity...

Free Egyptian Bloggers!! And the ridicule of egyptian politics

I wasn't going to discuss egyptian politics on this blog, though i've been flirting with the idea of creating a separate blog for that...
But there are limits for what one can take. I've been reading for a while now about what has been on in Cairo, with political egyptian bloggers under fire by the government.
I got to those blogs as i was researching for the Fred Schauer paper i was writing -- on the emergency law, hehehe...
But it's suffocating. Kefaya ba2a, gatkom el araf. The thing is, I often disagree with what the bloggers in question write, but I find appaling that they would be thrown in jail for that.

The 'chef de ligne' of the bloggers in prison is a chap named Alaa Abdel Fattah. He's been in jail for a month now. He just sent a letter from prison, through his better half Manal - who also shares his blogging - http://www.manalaa.net/alaa_blogs_after_one_month_in_prison .
Another guy who has been in jail is a chap whom I have known -- ayyam el MUN wel MAL wel 3ak da kollo -- Ahmed El Droubi, palestinian, AUCian. My first impression when i first met him (sorry ya Droubi: 'biscuit'!). But I've been hearing the biscuit turned out to be a rock. Kudos, Ahmed. He has been freed a few days ago -- welcome home, Ahmed. http://freedroubi.blogspot.com/

Egyptian politics are on the blog, that's now official! I guess it was somewhat ludicrous to attempt to avoid them anyway. The fact that I live far from home only made local politics less urgent to me -- but that doesn't mean that it's not an integral part of what makes me go round...