It seems to me that PTBI does not know a lot about Indonesia. He relies on statistic figure in order to dispute claim that killings took place in Lorosae. Which statistic? Biro Pusat Statistik (Statistics Indonesia)? He saw as though the statistics bureau was free from political influence of New Order.

No Arab connection? How spurious...read more about history...

Wow, Indonesia has no correlation with Arab culture? How many words in Indonesian are Arabic? Lets start... every day of the week. What headgear do many Muslim women wear there? What clothes do many "devout" Muslims wear? Hardly "traditional Indonesian"!

@zapata:

LOL, it was the Portuguese census of 1970 and UN census of 2000 that shows that population of East Timor doubled under 25 years of Indonesian rule, which is one of the highest population growth rate in the world. This is thanks to the massive improvement in health services brought by Indonesia. Thus, it is statistically impossible that any sort of "genocide" ever occurred in that half-island.

@Viking:

LOL, how many Arab words are there in English? Let's start: algebra, alchemy, alcohol, amber, caliber, candy, coffee, jasmine, lemon, magazine, etc. How many Indonesian-derived words are there in English? Let's start: launch (boat), compound, sarong, paddy, tea, orangutan. I guess that makes English culture a slave of Arab and Indonesian cultures.

What sort of clothing does Australians wear? Ugly American-style T-shirts!

A handful of words from Malay and Arabic in about 600,000 words in the English language hardly points to a heavy influence from either. Arabic has loaned a huge number of words to Indonesian, the largest source for loanwords plus a dipthong or two (remember "kh"?), in fact the next largest source of words after native ones, in a vocabulary of about 100,000 words or less.

English has many loanwords from French- in the main because England was invaded by them. Indonesia was invaded by a foreign culture and never fought it off like the English did.

Highest population in the world? ha...ha...does it mean family planning in Indonesia was a fizzer? No wonder WB ceased to fund it...
You can't simply dispute that mass killings took place by relying on statistics. The mass killings in Lorosae was not like what happened to Jews.

As for Arabic words...if you ever checked kamus bahasa Indonesia (indonesian dictionary-purwadarminta version) you would find 293 words derived from arabic language and only 143 were from English. Most appallingly, words from ethnics in eastern part of Indonesia are rarely found in the dictionary. Java and Sundanese of course are dominant.

Regarding the parliamentary democracy, don't make ridiculous claim that that type of democracy did not fit with Indonesian culture. It is a simplification of a very complex issue. Politik aliran or stream politics was part of it, exacerbated by disharmony amongst elites. As a result, it opted for authoritarian style and this type of goverment was used by Suharto. Imagine what would have happened if Sukarno was not powerful enough to dissolve the parliamentary democracy?

PTBI, maybe you can say anything here about Indonesia because you assumed that most readers here are completely ignorant about the country. By doing that, you may make people to believe that you are an authoritative source. Well i am an Indonesian but i maintain that what you have said is not always true

Viking, your memory must be very short, or you may be too young to remember, but the Indonesians actually got rid of the Dutch invaders after the second world war despite the Poms helping the Dutch.