Australian Spying Fails to Dent Relations Between Indonesia, United States

Jakarta Globe, Vanesha Manuturi & Kennial Caroline Laia, February 17, 2014

US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, speaks during a news conference with
 Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa at the Pancasila building in Jakarta
on Monday. (Reuters Photo/Evan Vucci/Pool)

Jakarta. Observers have lauded Indonesian government officials’ restraint in not confronting visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry with allegations that Washington may have benefited in a trade spat with Indonesia from espionage carried out by Canberra, saying Australia was solely to blame in the affair.

Hikmahanto Juwana, a law professor at the University of Indonesia, said on Monday that by focusing his outrage on the alleged spying by Australian intelligence, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa had wisely chosen to localize the problem.

“The fact remains that the party doing the spying on Indonesia was Australia, not United States,” he said. “Whether the US was involved before or after the spying, whether they shared information for their interests, is not the main concern for Indonesia. The main concern is why Australia [spied]. “This is a matter between Indonesia and Australia,” he added.

A report from The New York Times, published as Kerry arrived in Jakarta over the weekend as part of his Asian tour, cited documents released by former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden as showing that the Australian Signals Directorate monitored communications between Indonesian officials and a US-based law firm representing Jakarta in a trade dispute with the United States.

Australia offered to share its findings with the NSA, including possibly “information covered by attorney-client privilege.” It was not immediately clear whether the NSA accepted the Australian offer or what the dispute in question was about, but at the time of the 2013 NSA bulletin Indonesia was embroiled in a dispute over a US ban on sales of clove cigarettes, and US claims that shrimp from Indonesia were being sold below market prices. The US later dropped its claim in the shrimp case, while the World Trade Organization has referred the clove cigarette case to arbitration.

Hikmahanto said Jakarta’s refusal to lay the blame for the spying with Washington was not because “Indonesia is taking sides with America or is trying to being nice, but simply because the alleged perpetrator of the spying is Australia.”

Aleksius Jemadu, the dean of Pelita Harapan University’s School of Social and Political Sciences, agreed that Indonesia was approaching the issue on the right tack as well as showing deference to a visiting foreign official.

“Kerry’s visit here is essentially to discuss the bilateral relationship. He is a guest in the country. It won’t do any good if Indonesia welcomes him by confronting him with these spying allegations,” he said. “After Kerry’s visit, Indonesia might air its concerns with the United States. This is about the issue of trust.”

In a joint press conference with Kerry in Jakarta on Monday, Marty said Indonesia-US relations remained strong. He also cited a speech by US President Barack Obama last month in which the latter addressed his efforts to reform US intelligence activities, and said he hoped the president’s promises would mean a change to how Indonesia was treated in terms of intelligence gathering. “Our understanding is that the kind of review or amendments signaled by the United States will also be relevant in the conduct of its relations with Indonesia,” Marty said.

Kerry said he shared Indonesia’s concern but stressed that Washington would exercise its intelligence-gathering activities as it deemed necessary for its own national security interests. “We take the issue very seriously, which is why President Obama laid down a series of concrete and substantial reforms that we believe should give greater confidence to people everywhere about their liberty and that they’re being protected, and at the same time, preserving very important tools with respect to keeping us safe in an age of major threats and terrorism,” Kerry said.

Australia has declined to comment specifically on the latest allegation, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott has justified his government’s intelligence gathering “for the benefit of our friends” — a point that Marty took issue with. “I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how talks between the US and Indonesia on shrimps has any direct or indirect implication on Australia’s security,” he said. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

Marty said that as neighbors, Indonesia and Australia must be transparent with one another. “Neighbors should be looking out for each other, not turning against each other,” he said. “We should be listening to one another, not listening in.”

Related Article:

Indonesia Says Reports of Australian Spying ‘Mind-Boggling’