Global Courant 2023-05-24 10:25:27
JAKARTA – After more than 15 years of terrorist attacks that have been the focus of dire US travel warnings, Indonesians can be forgiven for cracking a wry smile as six countries do the same for the United States, the capital of mass shootings of the world.
New Zealand, which shares the top two spots in the Global Peace Index 2022 with Iceland, Australia, Canada, Britain, France, Venezuela and Uruguay have all issued advisories to warn their citizens about gun violence when traveling to the US .
They all point to the prevalence of gun ownership – and the lack of controls – responsible for the more than 200 mass shootings so far this year, in which four or more victims have been killed or injured, not counting the shooter.
Australia tells its nationals that gun crime is possible anywhere in the US and advises those living there to learn active target practice. There is always a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That is also Canada’s line, reminding citizens that “mass shootings occur regularly, usually resulting in casualties”. Britain says: “Violent crime, including gun crime, rarely involves tourists, but you have to be careful walking in unfamiliar areas.”
Venezuela is an anomaly, the travel warning apparently being in response to the US placing the country on its “no go” list – one reason may be that it has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
While the number of mass shootings in the US may have declined slightly last year, the Kentucky-based nonprofit Gun Violence Archive has recorded 600 cases over the past three years in the only country where the number of guns exceeds the population.
A gun enthusiast looks at a rifle scope at a National Rifle Association annual convention in 2019. Image: Getty/Twitter Screengrab/CFR
Few tourists have been affected so far, but as with the immediate impact on tourism from past terror bombings in Indonesia and violent military coups and other actions in Thailand and the Philippines, perception is everything when it comes to personal safety.
Take Bali, haunted after the October 2002 bombings, but still managing to hold its own commercially during the two-year Covid-19 pandemic, when 109,000 foreigners chose to stay on and sit it out.
American citizens are probably safer from random violence in Indonesia and Thailand — and even in the trigger-happy Philippines, a former colony with a penchant for copying America’s bad habits — than at home, unless stupidity becomes a factor.
The Global Peace Index ranks Indonesia 47th, well ahead of the US, which is 129th behind Zimbabwe and Azerbaijan and ahead of Brazil out of 163 countries.
Singapore is the best of Southeast Asian countries in ninth place, followed by Malaysia (18), Vietnam (44), Laos (51), Timor Leste (54), Cambodia (63), Thailand (103), the Philippines (125) and Myanmar, unsurprisingly, at 139.
American commentators like to think their country is as safe as anywhere else, and it probably is. But rates of deadly violence — and willingness to shoot first and ask questions later — are much higher than in other developed countries thanks to the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.
According to Wisevoter, the 2022 rate of gun deaths in the US was 4.1 per 100,000 people, ranking it 32nd behind El Salvador (35.5), Venezuela (32.7), Guatemala (28.2), Colombia (24.8) and Honduras (20.2). – all known for their drug trafficking and violent crime.
The Philippines leads Asia at 21st with 8.28 per 1,000. The 9,028 deaths make it sixth in the world, but still well behind Brazil (47,510), Mexico (20,509) and the United States, where two-thirds of the 13,001 deaths were due to suicide.
Philippine police officers investigate an alleged drug dealer killed by an unknown gunman in Manila in a file photo. Photo: AFP/Noel Celis
Thailand, home to the Petchburi-hired gunmen made internationally infamous by the movie “Bangkok Dangerous”, ranks 47th with 3.1 per 1,000, though it ranks 12th in the world with 2,351 gun deaths .
Indonesia, which has no gun culture, ranks 187th globally. It had a firearm death rate of just 0.06 per 1,000 in 2022, a breakdown indicating that most of the 153 fatalities were caused by accidents or suicides.
But Islamic extremist groups are still active both inside and outside Indonesia.
Early last month, three Uzbeks linked to al-Qaeda affiliate Katiba al Tawhid wal Jihad escaped from a North Jakarta detention center after stabbing two immigration officials to death. A fourth Uzbek died of a head wound in the escape attempt.
The three escapees were recaptured and the investigation is now turning to whether they entered Indonesia with the intent to attack the Israel football team, which was due to compete in the now-cancelled FIFA Under-20 tournament.
The Indonesian authorities were alerted to their presence by US intelligence, which followed them from the Afghan capital of Kabul via Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Later, in mid-April, two terrorists were killed and four arrested in a rare exchange of fire with detachment 88 counter-terrorism officers in the southern Sumatran province of Lampung.
In December 2022, another sign that terrorist cells continue to pose a security threat, a suicide bomber attacked a police station in a suburb of Bandung, killing a police officer and injuring 11 others.
While deradicalization efforts have been remarkably ineffective, terrorism expert Sydney Jones says the global decline of the Islamic State (ISIS) and effective policing have been key factors behind the current lull.
In fact, it is now more than five years since the last major incident, in the East Java port city of Surabaya in 2018, where the simultaneous bombing of three churches terrified 28 people, including 15 victims and 13 attackers.
Even after the first wave of bombings by the newly established terror network Jemaah Islamiyah in 2000, which killed 35 innocent people, it took two years for the government of Megawati Sukarnoputri to acknowledge that it had a homegrown extremist threat in its hands.
In August 2001, US Ambassador Robert Gelbard directed the evacuation of all dependents and non-essential personnel in response to intelligence reports of a planned Yemeni twin truck bomb attack on the embassy.
When an equally smug city hall declined his request to build a bombproof wall along the mission’s street frontage, he had to settle for giant fortified flowerpots instead. The alarm level therefore remained high, exacerbated by the 9/11 attacks that year.
Gelbard’s successor, Ralph Boyce, recalls that a group of Bali hoteliers came to see him at the end of 2001 and asked the embassy to exclude Bali from its travel advice, because as a Hindu enclave nothing would ever happen there.
Exactly one year later, twin bombings of two packed nightclubs in Bali’s tourist strip killed 202 people, including 164 foreigners, in the worst terrorist outrage since the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
The site of the 2002 Jemaah Islamiyah terror attacks in Bali. Photo: AFP
Seven more attacks followed between 2003 and 2009 in Bali, Jakarta and Central Sulawesi, claiming another 82 lives and injuring many, mainly in hotels and markets.
The US currently places Indonesia at alert level 2 (take extra care due to terrorism and earthquakes) on a color-coded scale with four being the highest.
But it advises against travel to Central Papua and Highland Papua, where security forces have tried to secure the release of a New Zealand pilot abducted by Papuan rebels last February.
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