Bali’s biggest punk rock band, Superman is Dead (SID), has continued to use its celebrity status and music to make a statement about Benoa Bay’s reclamation, a hot contentious issue that’s been simmering for the past couple of years and appears to not be going away anytime soon.
This week we got news from the community behind the Tolak Reklamasi movement, ForBALI, that activists were taking to the streets of Jakarta to force President Joko Widodo to pay attention to the fate of Benoa Bay. SID, whose band members haven’t been shy about telling Bali’s governor to let reclamation go, has reportedly scheduled a concert tomorrow night in Jakarta at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC), according to Antara.
The band’s drummer, Jerinx, told Antara that though it’s been a hell of a long struggle, he and his bandmates intend to stay the course, until the government refuses reclamation. “For almost two years we’ve struggled. We’ve sacrificed so much, we also made a lot of enemies. We will not give up here,” said Jerinx.
Reclamation means an area of 700 hectares upwards of Bali’s Benoa Bay would be used for development megaprojects that have been scrutinized for having negative consequences on flooding, erosion, mangroves, and other fun stuff like that. The land used to be under protective zoning, but Presidential Decree No. 51/2014 issued by former Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono snatched the land of its protected status.
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Jerinx is optimistic about the Jokowi administration, citing Jokowi’s record and refusal of reclamation from government ministers Susi Pudjiastuti and Anies Baswedan.
One of SID’s most recent activist efforts was a #playsonthesea concert staged on Friday at Padang Galak Beach. Too bad the singer is wearing an unfortunate Confederate flag t-shirt, though he probably (hopefully) is not making a political or racist statement with his wardrobe pick. (However, Antara did report that the band’s choice for the upcoming Jakarta concert will be traditional Bali batik as a signal of his protest, so maybe the band does fully think out their outfits…)
Photo at the top: Twitter
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