Anti-Australian sentiment abounds in Indonesia

At the park with my dog last weekend, I met a guy who had recently returned from his 21st trip to Bali. He usually loves Indonesia, and has, over the years, made some firm friends on his holidays there.

This trip, however, was noticably different, with even his long-time Balinese friends exhibiting a coolness towards him, a distancing unlike they had ever shown before.

As our dogs played together, he told me about the current Anti-Australian sentiment he felt everywhere over there, and of how much it actually scared him. There is a mistrust, a new dislike of us. We, Australians, are now foreigners to the Indonesians, not close allies and neighbouring friends as our politicians try to portray.

The hostile feeling was everywhere, this man told me, from shopkeepers, to airport staff, to hotel porters.

Why is this happening? Didn't we just give this place a billion dollars?

Indonesian Police, working in tandem with street drug dealers, are targeting Australians. There have reportedly been more than a few instances of drugs being planted on innocent tourists. He himself witnessed one guy being busted over something in his back pocket that had been placed there not moments before by a disgruntled dealer. It cost the victim over $30,000 to buy his way out of jail. It's highly likely the police are feeding the drugs back to the streets, giving the dealers ammunition for their stings.

Corruption is still rife in Bali, but the Anti-Australian sentiment, brought on in the wake of Schapelle Corby's awful sentencing, is giving corrupt officials there a whole new set of targets to extort.

The linked article tells of yet another Australian busted for drugs within our neighbour's shores.

I'm almost getting used to it.

We shouldn't be getting used to it.

This latest arrest comes in the same week the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, Imron Cotan, left our shores "disappointed and stunned" at the backlash from Australians after Schapelle Corby's verdict.

"In a way perhaps they are too emotional," he said.

No, you fool Cotan. It's because Australians are human, and unnecessary suffering is something we do not tolerate.

Illicit drugs are bad. With that we will not disagree. But unnecessary, biased cruelty and political vendettas from a country globally recognised to be almost completely broken by corruption?

Why are we tolerating that?