I

would like to explain some of the reasons why Indonesians are so angry and seem to be overreacting to Malaysia's tourism ads. First of all, the anger and hateful comments aroused by our people are mostly because of the rumors that have been going around in our society that Malaysia has claimed another one of our cultural heritages, along with batik, Pendet, and Reog Ponorogo.

I even read in someone's blog about Malaysia claiming angklung as theirs as well. Therefore, some of people out there who don't read newspapers and watch TV and are not aware of what's really going on, will be easily believe the unreliable information that they obtain from the society (from what they hear from their colleagues, neighbors).

That's what provokes them to protest the Malaysian ads.

Your comments:
I can understand why people are upset, but the whole cause of this seems to be that both the Discovery Channel and the Malaysian Tourism Board seem to be a lot more interested in promoting Indonesian culture than the Indonesian government does!

Indonesians always get angry at foreigners when the people they should really be angry with are themselves.

That's why you keep picking on people outside your benighted country. In the meantime, the rest of the world will get on with things!

Nicholas
Cambridge

First of all, Indonesian must accept the fact that batik, for example, doesn't exist in Indonesia alone, it exists in Malaysia, Thailand, even African countries, except that there is a certain variation to the design that make the batik in their respective places unique.

Indonesian people should read more, that's for sure. And stop claiming everything as yours! Cambodia won't claim your Borobodur as theirs, although it looks the same as their Angkor Wat.

Koko
Malaysia

This is the silliest argument ever. If you think that you *'own'' the traditional arts, then why does Indonesia copyright them? The French copyright Champagne and other food products.

You know why? Because it's a smokescreen for people like the author of this load of rubbish to write hate-filed articles.

If every country stuck to its *'traditional arts'', Australia would have no tourism at all.

Seriously, think about this sort of stuff before you write an article. This would not change the mind of any tourist from my country if they were traveling to either country, but money would make more of a difference.

Rod
Sydney

The fact is, Malaysia's tourism ministry produces excellent advertising that makes Westerners really want to go there - Indonesia's tourism ministry produces utter garbage that makes Westerners think the country is a joke.

Indonesians shouldn't get mad at Malaysia - get mad at your own useless tourism officials, fire them, employ good PR people (foreign, of course) and get people coming here.

And by the way, Malaysia claims rendang is theirs too. And kris (which, indeed, is also Malaysian), and that Bahasa Indonesia is not a proper language, but stolen from Malaysian (which it is).

Rizal al Rolli
Jakarta

Malaysia and Indonesia go a long way further than just this cultural spat. Not-so-distant history tells us that Sukarno had a go at Malaysia with his famous "Ganyang Malaysia".

Even further back, before the 18th century, we had plenty of encounters with Malaysia, some good some not ... mostly not.

So why are Indonesians so angry at Malaysia? It's gotta be in our blood.

Rizal Yara
Jakarta

They can claim some cultures in this archipelago since the roots of their Malay culture lie in this archipelago.

Why we must be angry over that? Are the Indians and Chinese angry with Malaysia for claiming part of their cultures as Malaysian?

No, because those Indian- and Chinese-Malaysians have the rights, based on their cultural roots, to claim Indian and Chinese cultures as their own.

And since they're now part of Malaysia, then they can call some Chinese and Indian cultures Malaysian. Chinese-Indonesians actually outnumber Chinese-Malaysians, and now we also state that the barongsai (lion dance) is part of Indonesian heritage because Chinese-Indonesians are part of us. Well can China be angry with us over that? Face it, we're just angry with Malaysia because our little brother is now more prosperous than us.