Will “Little Barry” be welcome in Indonesia?
Image posted on the Down with the Barack Obama statue in Menteng park Facebook group.
Barack Obama has announced a trip to Indonesia, where he lived for four years as a child. But will he be welcomed with open arms? Just a week ago, a group of local Facebookers furious at the decision to erect a statue of Obama as a child in Jakarta filed a lawsuit against the local council for putting it up.
The two-metre bronze statue, christened "Little Barry" (Obama's old nickname), was unveiled in Menteng Park in an uptown district of Jakarta on Dec. 10. Bearing the inscription "The future belongs to those who believe in the power of their dreams", it was promoted as a symbol of hope for Indonesian children. But within a month, a Facebook group calling for the immediate removal of the statue (Down with the Barack Obama statue in Menteng park) had managed to garner the support of 55,000 people.
Last week, the group filed a class action lawsuit against the governor, the mayor and the Jakarta Park and Cemetery Agency before the Central Jakarta District Court. Their leader, Heru Nugroho, says he will not give up until the statue is taken down.
Image posted on the Down with the Barack Obama statue in Menteng park Facebook group.
CONTRIBUTORS
“Obama’s not even Indonesian! (…) There is definitely a business intention behind this statue”
Rully Dasaad is a photographer from Jakarta who went to primary school with Barack Obamain the capital.
The main reasons that people want to see the statue removed is because Obama is not recognised as a hero or someone who has done great things for the nation - he's not even Indonesian! If the statue had to be made, why did they put it in a public place and not in our old school?
The man behind the project, Ron Mullers, is half Indonesian, half American. He's a big Obama fan (although he's never met the man) and an entrepreneur. He owns a company that includes restaurants, and they put on special ‘Obama evenings'. So there is definitely a business intention behind this statue.
Image posted on the Down with the Barack Obama statue in Menteng park Facebook group.
He's certainly got the attention he was looking for. But he said that the park where the statue is placed is where Obama used to play, which is not true. It's in an elite suburb called Menteng, where we did indeed go to school, but he lived elsewhere and didn't hang around there after leaving school.
There's also another group protesting against the statue; a minority of fundamentalist Muslims that has been gaining ground for around six years now in Indonesia. From the moment Obama took office, they've been waiting to see if he would act on what they describe as ‘Muslim issues', such as Gaza. They've decided he's another George Bush who refuses to take any action against the Jewish state; which is why they depict him as a Jewish sympathiser and deem the statue offensive in a mainly Muslim country."
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