Customers
enjoying the drinks and the view at a bar in Jakarta, which has hundreds of
upscale hotels, restaurants and pubs that serve alcohol. Credit Kemal Jufri for
The New York Times
I.B. Agung Partha foresees an apocalypse, as
he put it, on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
The threat is not a plague of locusts, nor
one of Bali’s dormant volcanos springing to life. It is in Jakarta, the
Indonesian capital several hundred miles away, where Parliament is debating
legislation that would ban beer, wine and spirits across the thousands of
islands that make up this country.
For Bali, whose beaches, lush landscapes and
cultural attractions drew four million visitors last year, the effect would be
something like the end of the world, said Mr. Partha, the chairman of the Bali
Tourism Board.
“Hotels have bars, restaurants have bars, and
they serve alcohol — this is just part of tourism,” he said. “This bill is just
no good.”
Alcohol bans have been proposed before in
Indonesia, by the same Islamic political parties that are pushing the current
bill. Their scripture-based arguments gained little traction in Indonesia’s
multifaith society, which is mostly Muslim but has a secular government.
But this time, those parties have taken a new
line: that alcohol should be banned for health reasons, not religious reasons.
And a passive response to the legislation by Indonesia’s dominant secular
parties, which could have quashed it months ago, has some worried that it could
become law.
“For me, it’s all about pluralism and human
rights,” said Rudolf Dethu, a leader of two groups opposing the legislation,
one of which organizes social events to promote the culinary aspects of beer.
“It’s not just about alcohol — there’s
something bigger behind this,” Mr. Dethu said. “First it’s drinking, and then
rules on who you can date and what time you can go out at night, and it’s not
in the Indonesian culture to say no to authority.”
There have long been fears about creeping
Islamization in Indonesia, which is the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority
nation but has influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities. (The vast
majority of Bali’s residents are Hindu.)
Political Islam has made gains here since
Indonesia began moving toward democracy in 1998, after the ouster of its long-ruling
authoritarian president, Suharto. In the past decade, autonomous regional
governments have passed hundreds of local bylaws inspired by Islamic law, many
of which enforce morality codes. The country’s Constitutional Court is
currently hearing a petition by an Islamist group demanding that gay sex be
outlawed, and that an existing adultery law be expanded to include sex between
unmarried persons.
The bill before Parliament would ban the
production, distribution, sale, consumption and possession of alcoholic
beverages among Indonesians and foreign tourists alike. Violators could face up
to 10 years in prison.
Critics of the Islamic parties backing the
bill — which have the support of hard-line Muslim groups that have sometimes
engaged in violent intimidation — say their concern for drinkers’ health is a
cover for pushing Indonesia toward becoming an Islamic state under Shariah law.
Mohammad Arwani Thomafi, a lawmaker from the
Islam-based United Development Party and chairman of a special legislative
committee debating the bill, said that his party was merely acting out of
concern for public health.
“Prohibition should be a legal requirement to
protect the public,” he said, citing “dozens” of deaths across Indonesia each
year directly linked to drinking.
But while that statistic is accurate, none of
those deaths were connected with alcohol sold legally in stores, bars and
restaurants — mostly to relatively affluent Indonesians and to foreigners.
Rather, they were caused by illegally brewed spirits, an underground industry
involving hundreds or perhaps thousands of producers, to which the Indonesian
police have largely turned a blind eye.
The Center for Indonesian Policy Studies in
Jakarta, citing local media reports, said there had been 453 deaths and 373
injuries from drinking alcohol since 2012. All were from illegally distilled
alcohol, locally known as “oplosan,” which can contain a variety of substances
including methanol, medicinal alcohol, fruit extract and toxic substances such
as mosquito repellent.
And 83 percent of those deaths occurred in
autonomous districts with Shariah-inspired bans or restrictions on the sale of
alcohol, said the center’s executive director, Rainer Heufers.
Such regulations “do not increase public
morality and health,” Mr. Heufers said. “Instead, they push the consumption
from legally produced and traded alcohol to illegally produced and traded
alcohol, which leads to more deaths and injuries.”
President Joko Widodo’s governing coalition,
which plays a key role in drafting legislation and holds a majority in
Parliament, is against the ban. His government has proposed increased
regulation instead, including mandatory licensing for stores that sell alcohol
and identification checks for buyers.
But Indonesian parties have a history of
breaking with their own coalitions on contentious legislation. (Two of the
Islamic-based parties backing the bill are members of the governing coalition.)
That has some opponents of the bill fearing that it could become law, given
that previous attempts to ban alcohol have never gotten this far. The
commission debating the legislation includes six large secular-nationalist
parties, most of them also in the coalition, that could easily have stopped it
but have not done so.
Alcoholic beverages for sale at a supermarket in Jakarta.
Credit Kemal Jufri for The New York Times
“It’s difficult for parliamentarians to be
against it, because they could easily be viewed as un-Islamic,” Mr. Heufers
said.
Alcohol has been consumed in Indonesia for
centuries, and it is an integral part of cultural and religious ceremonies
among some of the country’s more than 300 ethnic groups. A survey of 1,600
people in eight Indonesian cities, conducted by another Jakarta-based research
institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that most
respondents did not regard drinking as a health crisis.
“The Indonesian public does not consider this
alcohol issue an urgent matter, but some of our politicians do,” said David
Christian, a researcher with the group.
The bill’s potential economic impact has been
hotly debated. Last year, another study by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies found that a total ban on alcohol would reduce
Indonesia’s gross domestic product by a mere 0.03 percent and eliminate 128,000
jobs, just 0.1 percent of the country’s official labor force, figures that some
found surprisingly low.
Mr. Christian, the researcher, said that
study only looked at the national economy, not at the presumably more severe
effects a ban would have on places like Bali or Jakarta, which has hundreds of
upscale hotels, restaurants, wine bars and pubs.
Prohibition would also trigger the implosion
of the $600 million local alcoholic beverages industry, shutting down
Indonesian companies that produce spirits, beer and cider (and closing three
wineries in Bali). The largest of these companies is Multi Bintang Indonesia,
which brews Bintang, the national beer, and is also the local brewer of
Heineken and Guinness.
The company — which opened in 1931, when
Indonesia was under Dutch rule — operates the first Heineken brewery opened
outside of the Netherlands, had net sales of $220 million last year, and has a
market capitalization of more than $1 billion. The company also invested $50
million during the past two years to upgrade and expand its operations, all of
which could be lost, said Michael Chin, the company’s president director.
“Obviously I am concerned, but it does not
stop us from engaging the government and Parliament on a regular basis” about
the proposed ban, Mr. Chin said. “There is no health crisis that is related to
legitimate alcohol.”
Joe
Cochrane
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