Indonesians set Australian flags ablaze outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta on Thursday after reports that Australian spies attempted to tap the phones of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife.
Some 200 people marched to the Australian embassy, which had been
heavily reinforced in anticipation of the protests. The embassy
was the scene of a 2004 bombing that killed 10 people.
One protest banner in the city of Yogyakarta, Central Java, read:
“We are ready for war with Australia.”
On Monday, it was revealed that President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono and his wife, high-level ministers and confidants, had
all been targeted, according to documents from 2009 released to
The Guardian and ABC TV by former NSA contractor and
whistleblower Edward Snowden. The same day, Indonesia recalled
its ambassador to Australia for “consultations” over
the allegations.
The heightened tensions and new governmental measures indicate
that relations between the two countries have plummeted to their
lowest point since the late 1990s.
The news came a day after Yudhoyono declared on Indonesian
television that he was freezing military and intelligence
cooperation with Australia, including over areas such as
people-smuggling, intelligence exercises and intelligence
sharing.
“What's the point of joint training when they don't trust
us?” Gen. Moeldoko, the head of the Indonesian armed forces,
said Wednesday.
People smuggling has been an ongoing problem between the two
countries, and the hiatus was placed on cooperation as an
explanation over spying continued to be demanded.
Yudhoyono stated that it had been “in violation of
international law,” while adding that he didn’t know “why
it had to happen. Why Australia did it to Indonesia.”
Tensions boiled over in Australia on Thursday, as Mark Textor, an
adviser to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, tweeted:
“Apology demanded from Australia by a bloke who looks like a
1970s Pilipino [sic] porn star and has ethics to match. #Fairfax
demands appeasement." He later added in another tweet:
“Twitter is indeed no place for diplomacy.”
“I was not referring to anyone in particular, but if you want
to imagine someone, that’s fine by me,” he told AP on
Thursday.
Australia issued a new travel advisory warning to visitors to
Indonesia at midnight AEDT on Wednesday, saying they should avoid
protests and “maintain high levels of vigilance.”
“I want Australia to remain Indonesia’s trusted partner, now and
in the future,” Australian PM Tony Abbott told ministers on
Thursday.
Earlier this month it was revealed that Australia and the US had
worked side-by-side on a large-scale surveillance operation on
Indonesia, during the 2007 UN climate change conference in Bali.
In response, a group calling itself Anonymous Indonesia replaced
the front pages of over 200 websites with the .au address and the
message “Stop spying on Indonesia!”
The Australian Federal Police and Australia’s Reserve Bank also
confirmed that their respective websites had been targeted by a
cyber-attack on Wednesday night, with the Reserve Bank stating on
its website that it was “the subject of a denial of service
attack.”
A twitter user apparently based in Indonesia seemed to
claim responsibility for the attack, declaring: “We Are Ready
For This war.”