Vita A.D. Busyra, Jakarta – When pop singer Ahmad Dhani ponced around as Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi war criminal and mass murderer, in a music video for presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto last week, it prompted an international outcry.

The incident, coming on the heels of the reopening of a Nazi-themed restaurant in Bandung, has also raised questions about why Indonesians in general seem so inured to symbols and imagery that elsewhere in the world would be tantamount to hate speech and liable to criminal charges.

The problem, says Bonnie Triyana, the founder and chief editor of the history magazine Historia, is that few Indonesians know about the Holocaust, and those who do more often than not will tend to deny that it happened.

European World War II history is not taught in schools here, and Holocaust denial is not a crime as it is in some European countries. "In Indonesia, such regulations doesn't exist," Bonnie told the Jakarta Globe on Friday.

"But if everyone [in Indonesia] was equally educated, they would be able to put social pressure and sanctions on people like Dhani, to make it clear that stunts like wearing Nazi costumes whether to cause offense or just for fun are a bad idea."

He said it was lack of education more than anything else that accounted for the lack of sympathy among Indonesians for victims of the Nazis' atrocities. "Those people are ignorant. If [Dhani] truly understood history, he would never have worn the SS jacket in the first place," Bonnie said.

Asvi Warman Adam, a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), called Dhani "a product of an education system" that failed to inculcate Indonesian youths in the horrors of fascism.

"Fascism occurs when one group thinks that his side is more advanced, in terms of power, intelligence, rightness," he said. "That's just not right."

Dhani's stunt has been widely reported on in the international media, with Time headlining it as "one of the worst pieces of political campaigning ever."

The singer, who previously claimed to be part Jewish, says he sees nothing wrong with the video, and has instead lashed out at the "stupid" international media for trying to stifle his "creativity."

"Fake foreign journalists need to be taught about the freedom of art... if I want to dress up as a pocong or kuntilanak [Indonesian ghosts]... I have the right," he tweeted on Friday.

"I deeply regret the international media articles about me," Dhani told the Globe later in the day. "They throw sh@t at me – then they hide their hands. None of them tried to contact me. I want to reiterate to the foreign [media] that I don't care about their opinion on what I wear," he added.

"They're too stupid to actually think that there is fascism in Indonesia," he said. "Too stupid. Nazi uniforms and accessories, Jewish and even devil's accessories are commonly used in Indonesia as part of fashion. I have several military uniforms from various countries, such as Italy. I wear whatever is available."

His statements on Friday were a complete flip-flop from earlier in the week, when he apologized for dressing up as Himmler.

"I will never wear it again. I've learned my lesson," Dhani told a Globe journalist in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, on Wednesday. "This was purely about fashion and was not related to ideology – the Western media knows I am a real pluralist."

Bonnie said the whole sorry episode highlighted the need to overhaul the national education curriculum to give students a better grounding in history.

"Forget about European history being left out of the school curriculum – we were never properly taught Indonesian history at school, so we easily forgot what we learned," he said. "It's no wonder, then, that human rights issues in this country are neglected or cast aside."

The furor over Dhani's video has drawn even more scrutiny to the rights record of Prabowo, a former military general who has for years had to fend off widespread allegations of gross rights abuses against civilians in East Timor and pro-democracy activists in Jakarta.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesias-school-system-faulted-dhanis-nazi-stunt/