Indonesians are usually an easy-going, amiable people.
But this week, they are boiling with anger and a sense of betrayal after revelations that Australia's Signals Directorate had been tapping the phones of senior Indonesian government officials, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and, worst of all, his wife, First Lady Ani Yudhoyono.
Aussie intelligence was also spying in the very same senior Indonesian cabinet officials who, like the president, are regarded as staunch allies of the US and Australia. This electronic spying was part of the by now notorious, top secret Five Eyes joint intelligence operation between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - aka "the white man's spy agency."
Five Eyes is run by the US National Security Agency; its other Anglo-Saxon members act as loyal junior partners, spying on their neighborhoods and, often, their own people. How much of their local data is passed to Washington is unknown, but it is likely substantial. Disturbingly, it was recently revealed that the US NSA passes information on US citizens to another ally, Israel.
Indonesians are asking why Australia spied on them - supposedly a friendly neighbor - and, worse, on their admired president and first lady. Interestingly, Indonesians I've talked to, including the very bright editor- in -chief of the Jakarta Post, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, feel deeply insulted and personally offended. Indonesia and Australia have been trying to better relations for the past twenty years. They have been cooperating closely on a host of government, military, environmental and health programs.
Indonesia, with 248 million people is the closest major neighbor to Australia's 23 million people, a fact that has often made the highly xenophobic Aussies nervous even though their defense is guaranteed by Washington. US Marines are soon to be stationed in northern Australia, near Indonesia. This militarily useless act has angered Indonesia and China
Australia's new, conservative prime minister, Tony Abbot, arrogantly belittled the scandal as a minor flap and issued the same lame excuse as other red-hand spying western governments: "everyone does it." That excuse may work in schoolyards, but not with Indonesia- or with many Americans, for that matter.