They have to be careful. They’re interested in doing things with Taiwan, but they want to be sure that this relationship is set up properly.

The better educated people in Indonesia who know what’s going on in the world are aware of sensitivities that are attached to dealing with Taiwan.

Earlier this year, I went back and forth, and both sides said, “Yes, we would like to do this,” so it’s getting underway now.

I thought, “There are these new fact-checking agencies in both places. There could be an established channel of communication between them to share ideas and experiences, they could learn from each other, their dialogue could be focused on preventing disinformation in multiparty democratic elections that should be just and fair.”

Officially, it’s neutral. It’s nonpolitical. It’s a nonprofit group of largely volunteers. It’s not connected to a political party, but the people who run it or the people who volunteer are supporters of freedom and democracy.

These are good people whom I believe are respected by the Jokowi administration.

There’s an equivalent that was set up in 2016 in Indonesia. It goes by the acronym MAFINDO. It stands for Masyarakat Anti-Fitnah Indonesia, which means The Association of Anti-Slander Indonesia.

I said, “These fact-checking agencies were recently set up in Taiwan and in Indonesia.” You probably know…

“In 2019, for sure, it will become a bigger problem.” I said the same thing about Taiwan. I said, “During the last presidential election in Taiwan” – it was in 2016 – “disinformation was a problem. It will become a bigger problem in 2020. This problem is going to grow. ...

“This is all going to come up in the next 15, 16 months, and I know from being in Indonesia in 2014, during the last presidential election, that so-called ‘fake news’ was already a problem.

I said, “In April of 2019, Indonesia will have a presidential election. In January of 2020, Taiwan will have a presidential election.

At the OFF last year I said, “You know, Taiwan and Indonesia are the two brightest spots for democracy in Southeast Asia, so they are where human rights will probably be best protected, and this commmonality could be better recognized.”

In order to change the way people think, you need to reframe their understanding of connections.

Thank you for helping to develop that curriculum.

So, I have a historical argument for why Taiwan is part of Southeast Asia.

It’s very similar in some ways to the Peranakan in Java.

Also for many years, Taiwan shared a similar sociological experience of single Hoklo men coming here and marrying local women and creating a new mixed-race culture.

Some Hoklos came to Taiwan directly from Fujian, but some of the earliest Hoklos also came from Java. When the Dutch set up in Tainan, these Hoklos were already in Batavia, and so some of the Hokkien speakers already in Batavia came to Taiwan with the Dutch.

Yes. The indigenous people are Austronesian. Also, the Hoklo population…. Hoklos were in Java before they were in Taiwan.

Yes, Taiwan is also a Pacific island. And the indigenous people of Taiwan are Austronesian, the same as…

I said, “Most people in these two countries do not yet share a great deal of mutual understanding nor speak each other’s language. I think they ought to become more aware that they are the two leading democracies in this region. I have my own historical argument for why Taiwan ...

I said, “Two bright spots for democracy in this region are Taiwan and Indonesia.” I often travel between these two countries. Exchanges between them have multiplied very rapidly in recent years, but such exchanges are still at an early stage.

I said, “I’ve noticed that in recent years democracy seems to be backsliding in the region. If you want to protect human rights, you have to protect democracy. I think democracy is increasingly threatened.”

I’ve been in this region about half the time since 1981, much of which time I’ve spent in Taiwan and also in Indonesia, and the last eight years in Singapore.

Yes. I said, “Listening to all of you express your interest in protecting the human rights of particular groups, I realize, more basically, that we also have to protect human rights themselves.”

I said, “Taiwan’s formal sector has pretty good labor regulations that protect the human rights of these migrant workers from being violated.” Every once in a while, one of them might get tricked or something like that…

The Indonesian migrant workers with whom I work in Taiwan are all formal sector employees. They aren’t housemaids. They aren’t fishermen. They’re mostly factory workers or they work in hospitals or nursing homes.

Indeed, they have big challenges in protecting the human rights of refugees, not only in their countries of origin, but also in relocation camps. Everyone at the table had to speak. I do some work with the Indonesian migrant workers here, so I mentioned them.

Each of us had to talk about our work and we would see whether anything came out of that. The people at the table were from different parts of Asia and represented different nationalities. Most all of them were working with refugees, and indeed…

Yes. Let me share with you that I was at the Oslo Freedom Forum last year. I was invited to a human rights roundtable, a group of maybe 10 or 12 people.

Smart cities is one of the areas that the Singapore Government has targeted for Singapore’s future growth. Singapore hopes to become a center of innovation for smart cities. They want our university then to develop research focuses on smart cities

Yes.

I’ve shared it with a colleague. I said, “we should create a course based on this job description to counter the predominant mentality.”

It’s beautiful.

Did you write this yourself?

Your job description?