In Reply to: here now, blue bird taxi's posted by maurjohn on Monday, 9. March 2009 at 19:47 Bali Time:
Most of the hotels here are part owned by the Suharto family. If this means nothing to you understand the Suharto family is credited with mass killings and other serious human rights violations, de facto stealing the beach land of Nusa Dua from local land owners using compulsory purchase orders which even these were cheated on, and building their hotels in Nusa Dua from money they stole from International loans and aid. If everything widely reported about Suharto is true, staying in Nusa Dua means rewarding people that murdered the locals and stole from the taxes paid by your parents (as International aid often comes from taxes foreign countries levy on their own citizens). Hotels in Nusa Dua also unlawfully to this day preventing local people from enjoying the beaches there (legally all beaches are public property but see how security staff prevent locals from enjoying their legal rights in Nusa Dua), which means you are condoning and supporting civil rights abuse when you stay at most hotels in Nusa Dua.
Then there are those particularly nasty accounts of young children on holiday in Bali who allegedly are raped or otherwise forced to perform sexual acts upon their adult child care supervisors[sic]. There are two reported cases involving alleged rape / sexual abuse of children whose parents had left them in the care of crèches in 5 star hotels in Nusa Dua. One 3 year old girl contracted gonorrhea, one 5 year boy is alleged to have been forced to perform oral sex on his male adult supervisor. The hotel involved in the 3 year old girl affair settled out of court without admitting liability. Now these are reported incidents. Like rapes, how many other incidents are likely given the fact that most parents would want to keep such crimes quiet? And isn't it even more frightening that these cases happened in Bali's supposed top luxury hotels? What goes on in other hotels where security and screening maybe even worse?
Because Indonesia favors only the wealthy and corrupt, the terms being synonymous in Indonesia, it has no real labor protection laws. Indonesian hotels frequently send workers home without pay during quiet periods. When you look at hotel room prices and local costs including staff salaries (they typically earn less than US$50 a month), understand Indonesian hotels generally care nothing about or for their staff, just profit. As many of the hotels in Indonesia are western brand names (normally 49% owned by that overseas hotel group and 51% by the Suharto's or their friends), you will also understand that there is even less justification for sending someone home in a country with no welfare system just because guest levels dip below a certain level. Also understand many hotels keep the service charge element their staff are meant to receive for themselves and actually cheat on the taxes which are meant to pay for the Indonesia's impoverished struggling health and education services. This cheating by hotels even has a term;'The Twin Book System' (one set of accounts for the tax man, the real ones for the management). Understand how little of your money ends up in the pockets of the staff, how much of what you pay is stolen from both them and poor Indonesians generally, and then understand why you should boycott these hotels; because without affirmative action, nothing will change.
For any company to even so much as trade in Indonesia they must be involved in corruption; because every aspect of dealing with government officials generally requires bribe money to be paid to them. We do not believe it is possible for a foreign company to operate in Indonesia without directly contributing to and being a part of corruption. Corruption robs the poor people of Indonesia of billions of dollars (plus their human and civil rights) and goes into the pockets of people who commit civil and human rights abuses. Buying Indonesian products and / or services puts money into the pockets of some of the nastiest people in the world.
If you think that boycotting Bali will hurt the very people you want to help, think again. After the October 2002 bombings, apart from the nasty commercial travel & tour agent hacks on the island blaming foreign governments for their subsequent woes (let us not forget that), many people reported that no-one on Bali would starve if the tourists stayed away. Sure, hotel workers would have to go back to the rice fields, but many Balinese said that Bali would probably become Bali again. And if boycotting Bali's tourism makes the government sit up, take note and actually act as it should, you can imagine what sort of future Bali's young would then have in terms of living in a decent environment with a legitimate police force protecting it, not destroying it. Also, economically in just 10 years, the Balinese could have the same standard of living as you. If you say it is the people who boycott Bali who are hurting the Balinese, it is actually you that is doing them the real harm by feeding the system that abuses them.
Which hotel was that again?