I’ll be writing more on this topic later – but first, here’s a great TED talk I ran across while doing research on the importance of cultural diversity. It made me want to laugh, cry, and applaud at the same time…and reminded me of why I initial began to love travel.

Take a look and tell me what you think.

For me, it was a dramatic shift. To come from Indonesia, where I’d been braving the local metromini, to ultra-modern and comfortable – if HOTTER – Tokyo. My cheap t-shirts and shorts were replaced by business shirts and slacks. We were here to represent America, and that meant dressing well, even if the A/C was being kept high due to recent energy crisis (more on that later).

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Japan is a fascinating country. There is probably no other country in Asia that had as little historical influence from Western colonialism – and it shows, despite the modernization. This trip, I got a deeper sense of the long history, and the strong, continual thread that ties modern Japan to the granduers of the past – and also, the atrocities.

Having visited Korea earlier this trip, seeing relations across the sea from Japan’s perspective proved enlighening – and a reminder how large the cultural and historical gap between Asia and us across the Pacific is.

But what impressed me most was how open the Japan Foundation was – we weren’t being spoon-fed any rhetoric – but we were truly invited to exchange views, learn from each other, and become closer through common understanding.

We were 14 Americans being invited to Hiroshima, barely 65 years since we dropped the most destructive bomb in history here. Yet, we weren’t being told to atone for the past – we were there to see how we could build a better future.

Photos below!

“Terima Kasih,” I said. Thank you.

Her face lit up. “Bisa bahasa Indonesia?”

“Sedikit,” I replied. A little. She sat down smiling, and commented to the others in the room, obviously impressed.

“Bisa bahasa Jawa?” she asked. Everyone in the roomed laughed.

“What?”

“She is asking if you can speak Jawa. It’s another language, of East Java,” said my english speaking coworker.

I smiled. I was in Indonesia, working at Kehati, a biodiversity foundation. Indonesia is one of the world’s mega-biodiversity hotspots – only Brazil has more species of plants, animals, and marine life than Indonesia’s 17,000 island archipelago. But it isn’t only biological diversity that Indonesia is rich in.

Human diversity as well – Indonesia ranks second in the number of languages spoken. It is one of the world linguistic hotspots – on those 17,000 are over 400 distinct languages and dialects. Only neighboring Papua New Guinea has more. The national language, bahasa Indonesia, is merely a revitalized form of a trade dialect used by Malay traders. Before independence, barely a fraction of Indonesians spoke bahasa Indonesia, and even after independence, it was a second language to everyone’s mothers tongues.

I came to Indonesia not only for its biodiversity, but also its human diversity. I wanted to see how a country unified around a language that wasn’t tied to any particular ethnic group – Bahasa Indonesia, or Language of Indonesia – and the role of people’s native languages in everyday life. Jakarta, the capital, includes people from all around the country.

I wanted to see how it compared to India, the country of my parents, with it’s unique quilt of languages, each with a long, literary history. Unlike Indonesia, though, India had no unifying language – Hindi and English were the official idioms, but within each state, the local language still dominated, often with its own unique script.

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Therefore, it comes with great disapointment to say that in nearly 6 weeks here, Jakarta has proven to be less linguistically vibrant than I had hoped.

In a city of people from everywhere, it makes sense that Bahasa Indonesia is widely spoken – but to my surprise, I’ve met many native-born Jakartans who ONLY speak Bahasa. Their parents might be from another part of Indonesia (Sumatera, West Java, perhaps, or Sulawesi, or they are Chinese Indonesian) but they only taught their children Bahasa.

All public education beyond elementary school in Indonesia is only in Bahasa – some instruction in the early years is in the local languages, but not too much. All Universities teach only in Bahasa and, sometimes, English.

For a language to be living, vibrant, it has to be able to be used throughout society. To be spoken at home, with your parents or with your family, is not enough for a language to be alive. It must be prevalent in music, schools, writing, it must be used in formal situations. It must be thought in.

Perhaps, I thought, this was only a Jakarta thing – maybe outside Jakarta, people used their local languages more. Perhaps people in villages will speak with each other in the local languages – but all official writing, all store labels, all government documents, id cards, the currency – only in Bahasa. I’ve met several people who just moved to Jakarta from other parts of Sumatera and Java – young people, my age. Most of them know their native tongue, but not always fluently – but Bahasa is their first language. My coworkers, also from all around Indonesia, only speak to their children in Bahasa Indonesia.

Why? Because, local languages don’t have a future. Indonesia is now a country with English language papers (The Jakarta Post and Jakarta Globe) but no papers published in Betawi, Sunda, Batak, Javanese, Balinese, Madura, or any of the 400+ local languages. It’s not unique. Similar situations are abound in linguistically diverse African countries like Nigeria, the Congo, or Ethiopia. Here, perhaps we can see our future. What use is a local language in a globalized world?

I see it in Jakarta, in glimpses. Wealthy families who enroll their children in English language schools – and then speak to their children only in English. I see them in the fancy malls, dressed western, running around with nearly impeccable American accents. They don’t speak their native, ethnic languages – but nor do they speak Indonesian, beyond a basic conversational level. Why should they? The future is English, Spanish, or Chinese. On a national level Sundanese is useless, but on an international level, so is Indonesian.

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The second most spoken indigenous language in Indonesia is Sunda, the language of West Java, the capital of which is Bandung. In Bandung, I hoped to see what was the status of this language. So I asked my host, after noticing all signs in Indonesian, ”Is Sunda script used anymore?”

He laughed, “No. Its ancient, like Egyptian.”

That didn’t sound right to me. “So, when was it last used?”

He paused, thinking. “Maybe 10th century.”

“Wow, that’s a long time ago.”

It was wrong too – Sunda script, in its most recent form, was used from the 14-18th century, up until Dutch colonialism. I saw one sign in Sunda script the entire time in West Java – at the entrance  to a national park. No one could read it. My two Sundanese guides, who knew rudimentary Sunda, spoke to each other in…

Bahasa.

In Bandung, a Sunda city, all the signs were in a localized form of Bahasa, with some Sunda words mixed in, and a Sunda accent. But at all restaurants, cafes, bars, my hosts ordered in Bahasa. Sunda might be more used in the countryside, but here, in the capital, it is not a living language. And Sunda is #2. Imagine the status of the hundreds of lesser spoken languages.

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If language is only as useful as the opportunities it opens up to you, then we are well on the path towards a mass extinction of the 6,000 languages spoken today. Soon, perhaps at the end of my lifetime, estimates are that there will be only 600 left. This is unprecedented in human history, the intentional destruction of so many languages.

Indonesia, today, has app. 400 languages. Only one is functionally alive – Bahasa Indonesia. Dozens of beautiful scripts, such as:

Batak - 

Jawanese -

Sundanese - 

Bugis -

Achenese (Jawi script) - 

(images from Wikipedia)

are all gone – no signs in any of these scripts in Jakarta. Bahasa is written in Roman script.

It’s a real shame, too, because several Indonesian languages have had long, vibrant, literary history – Javanese, the most spoken native language in Indonesia, has an incredible archives of poetry, literature, all written in alphabets that almost no one can read anymore. Hundreds of years of history, gone. And most of this happened post-colonialism. After Independence.

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Two months in, the office maid still beams at my attempts to speak Bahasa Indonesia, but I rarely hear her speak any Jawa, even with the other Jawanese in the office. I’m enjoying learning Indonesia, but with every word, I wonder, am I contributing to the destruction of Indonesia’s other languages? Part of me wants to pick up a different local language, but who would teach it to me?

Are modernization, development, all the reasons for Indonesia to disregard the past, build new shopping malls, and move towards the future, worth it? I feel like I’m missing  a huge piece of the puzzle in my experience here. I feel like I’m seeing a facade, or the remnants of something that was once far greater.

If we lose our past, can we truly move-on to the future?

However things will soon be back to normal as I will be heading to Asia for the summer! That’s right! Here are the details.

Indonesia – 2 months – I will be interning with Kehati Foundation on various local environmental projects. They are an Indonesian NGO and I believe I will be the only intern they have having this summer. During my time there I will be based in Jakarta.

Japan – This was a surprise. I applied for the Japan Travel Program for Future US Leaders, but, after the disaster that struck Japan in March, I expected that the program would be cancelled. And indeed, the date by which they were supposed to let us know if we got in passed with no word.

Then, just a week ago, surprise! I’m going to Japan! The program is all-expenses paid, and I’ll be the sole representative from Columbia University going. I’m eager to go and network, meet other future US Leaders, and see how Japan is recovering from the earthquake.

It should be a great summer. Korea and Malaysia are also in there, as stops on the way to Indonesia. Lots of photos and updates, I promise. And, as the 2012 election gets going, I’ll restart my political writing too.

I was looking at some old articles I wrote and found this one from Freshmen year of College. This was just a few months after 9/11, but, interesting nontheless as it’s partly my opinion now too. Let me know what you think.

Can Terrorism ever be stopped in a free world?  As long as people are allowed to think for themselves, their will always be ones who think differently, who see the world from different eyes.  There will be ones who want to change the world, and who see that the only way they can get enough attention towards there goals is to strike out in a violent way.

Policing will never stop all terrorism.  To do this, we would have to monitor every single person in the world at every time.  Once we start doing this, are we still in a free world?  What’s to stop someone from using this monitoring information for there own greedy needs?   And who is to police the policers?  In theory, it is impossible to monitor all of society and remain a free country.  Privacy laws would have to be drastically changes, first amendment rights would be under siege (wouldn’t 24 monitoring be against the right to being searched without a warrant?).  Thought technology will soon make the idea of monitoring everything all the time, with computer doing most of the work, a feasible idea, is it something that we want?  Is the cost of eliminating terrorism forsaking all our freedoms and privacy?

There are other alternatives.  One would be to dig down further and see what causes Terrorism.  Obviously there is some reason that terrorist acts against the United States have been increasing in the past few decades?  What has changed in the world in this time?
In the past few decades, US corporations have frolicked on the path towards Globalization, basically making the world one big Capitalist goldmine for US corporations to feed of and get richer from.  In doing this, we have infringed on many cultures, not really helped reduce poverty at all in most poor Capitalist countries, and angered people.  We need to reform capitalism and stop angering the poor people.  Namely, Arabs have been the most infringed upon because there culture is one of the oldest on the planet, and old traditions are hard to break.  We need to make capitalism fairer to the poor countries, and give them more of a change to compete against us.  The WTO and NAFTA often strike down any attempts by the poor countries to try and give some edge to local farmers or companies, all in the name of a “Global Economy.”  All this really does is keep the country poor and dependent on the products of the rich multinational corporations of the United States.  This policy needs to change; the best way to reduce terrorism would be to reduce Global Poverty.

Obviously, attacking countries trying to drive the terrorists out isn’t going to solve the problem.  Once we drive them out in one place, they go somewhere else.  The only way to fix things would be to change the country they are in to a better place so that they are no longer welcome there.  The US ignored Afghanistan for a decade, and look what happened?  You’d think that we would have learned from this, but look across the continent into Africa and you see an eerily similar story.  Somalia.  Somalia, during the cold war a focal point of conflict between the US and Russia, once the cold war was over, a worthless piece of land to throw away.  Which is basically what we did, and the current administration shows little resolve in fixing this problem, save sending a few commando units to drive out the Al-Qaeda from there. If we aren’t going to fix this problem now, when are we?  After the next huge attack?  Or will we ever?

To stop terrorism we can’t just throw out military at the problem.  The problem is hard to see, and it can only be fixed from the inside.  By making the world a place where large-scale terrorists organizations are unnecessary is the way to go.  Otherwise we will be fighting against an invisible enemy or sending the world toward a Police-State rule, two things that nobody wants.

The announcement that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, leader of Ethiopia for 19 years, would speak at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum created a stir from within the Columbia student body, sparking a debate whether Zenawi has done an adequate job balancing economic development with civil rights and freedom.

Journalists sent an open letter to Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger, asking for an explanation for the University hosting a controversial world leader, and if a venue for counter-voices would be provided. The University responded that all World Affairs Forum speakers are held to identical standards of openness and questioning, regardless of their nationality or stature.

However, it appears that Zenawi has as many supporters as he does detractors. When Zenawi spoke at the forum on September 22, there were two competing demonstrations, one in support of Zenawi and one against, across the street from Alfred Lerner Hall.

“I believe that he has a right to speak here,” said Semir Saleh, an undergraduate student at NYU who participated in the demonstration against Zenawi. “But people also have a right to know about what his regime is doing.”

Zenawi took power of Ethiopia in a 1991 coup and was reelected in parliamentary elections in 2005, amidst accusations of voting irregularities and intimidation, which led to widespread protests and police retaliation that killed 193 people.

The most recent elections were held this summer, with Zenawi’s coalition winning 99.7% of the seats in Parliament. According to those present, it was a quieter, more repressive environment.

“People were fearful. You have to think about how your decision effects your family, your community, your friends, and your employers,” said a second-year SIPA student with experience working in Ethiopia who preferred to remain anonymous. While no major violence was reported, Human Rights Watch criticized the government for preventing foreign news organizations access to report on the elections..

Despite accusations of repression, many credit Zenawi for Ethiopia’s economic achievement. Ethiopia boasts one of the fastest economic growth rates in Africa, at over 10% a year for the past five years, according to official reports from the Ethiopian government. However, the International Monetary Fund questions this number. Zenawi’s supporters cite the reported measurement as evidence of progress, considering it an indication of Ethiopia’s emergence from a repressive military dictatorship and famine that left over a million dead.

“I’d be surprised, considering our [economic] record, if we didn’t win overwhelmingly,” said Zenawi, speaking of the 2010 elections at the World Leaders Forum.

Zenawi considered his leadership more benign compared to the previous regime. “It’s not coming back,” he said of Ethiopia’s military ruled era.

While supporters praise Mr. Zenawi for reigning over a period of relative prosperity and tranquility, others believe that diminishing freedoms outweigh the benefits of stability.

“It’s a common attitude in Africa to accept something because it’s not as bad as it was before,” said the anonymous student. “[The military regime] was terrible, years of famine, people disappearing, and worse.”

Whether Ethiopia’s stability is improving however is still up for debate. In May, Human Rights Watch issued a report, criticizing an Ethiopian law passed in 2009 that aims to paralyze civil rights, education, and conflict resolution advocacy groups by requiring that 90% of their funding come from within Ethiopia. This is a challenge in a country which, despite its proclaimed economic growth, has one of the lowest per capita GDP’s in Africa.

“When I asked the Ethiopians I met if they would rather have democracy or economic development, they always said democracy,” said another second-year SIPA student with experience working in Ethiopia who preferred to remain anonymous.

The debate continues both in Ethiopia and abroad. Articles both criticizing and praising Zenawi’s speech to Columbia University have sprung up on blogs and websites around the world. Both proponents and critics of the Ethiopian leader voice hope that greater awareness and communication will lead to progress in the future.

Nithin Coca is a first-year Master of International Affairs student, concentrating in Environmental Policy Studies.

This article was previously published in Communiqué, Columbia University School of International and Public Affair’s official student newspaper.

“Oh, I’m just seeing three heads of state this week.”

Now, reality. I have no respect for most heads of state, and two of the three fit squarely into this category. They should have the honor of being thrown into a bullpit, for all I care. Power doesn’t grant you any authority, in my mind, unless it’s been given to you by the people fairly and if you know how to use it justly.

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The first up was Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. I’m working on an article about this visit, which was marred by protests, for some of the campus publications. Be on the lookout for that.

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Second was President Jose Ramos Horta of East Timor, the newest country in Asia. East Timor’s story is sad – stuck in civil war against a dictatorial Indonesian regime for over two decades, almost 20% of the population was killed and nearly all it’s infrastructure destroyed. When Mr. Ramos-Horta took over over after independence, he resided over a country that had nothing except a people terrified by recent history.

Independence, according to the President, came due to planned (resistance) and unplanned (the fall of Suharto) events. The country was totally destroyed, and the UN wanted to setup a Democracy in two-three years.

He mentioned how a Chinese restaurant in New York City can barely get setup in 2-3 years. An entire Democracy?

Yet, East Timor, eight years later, is surviving as a Democracy. Oil has been the livesaver, though the country hopes to develop itself sustainable. Crime is low, educations is growing, and the people are finally emerging from their decades long malaise and seeing hope in their future.

One question I had though – how much of this is due to the leadership in the country, and how much due to oil wealth? But wealth doesn’t necessarily equal freedom (case in point – Saudi Arabia)

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President Abdullah Gu of Turkey was unique for me. Of the three, Turkey was the only country that I’ve been to, and the only country where, to this day, I have friends.

In fact, I used this speech as a chance to talk to my two friends there, Inanc and Gurbet. I wish I’d spoken to them before, as Inanc especially had nothing but virtiol for the current regime, which he said is suppressing freedom and leading Turkey away from a republic towards a dictatorship, and away from the values of the founder, Ataturk.

Mr. Gu gave a speech in which he framed Turkey as the liberal Democratic bridge between Europe and Asia, a center of freedom for a huge region. He spoke ambitously of Turkey’s potential for good in it’s regions, and how its developing into one of the premier Democracy’s in the world, a model for other developing countries.

But in doing this, he made some of the same arguments that a true dictator, Prime Minister Zenawi, made earlier. He compared his regimes shortfallings to that of a worse time, when Turkey was under military rule. He brushed off Turkey’s treatment of it’s Kurish minorities but blasted Israel for it’s treatment of Palestinians. And he spoke in length, dodging questions left and right.

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I’m happy that Columbia gives me these opportunities. But remember, if I’m showing off, look into my eyes. You’ll find my cheekiness.

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