Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 7, 2010

The controversial bronze statue representing a 10-year-old Barack Obama that Indonesians wanted torn down has been removed

Back in January, I posted a news story about the controversial, bronze statue that was erected in tribute to Barack Obama — the statue of him as a 10-year-old boy in a public park — and how it was causing much hoopla and upsetting countless Indonesians:

The ultimate diss… Indonesia wants the bronze statue of Barack Obama as a child removed. It’s only been up a month.

Kinda sad…

Well, matters have worked themselves out to serve the majority on the Disneyesque statue, as matters have a way of doing… except in Washington, DC.

From VotingFemale, Indonesians join the Hate Obama bandwagon:

Gee… didn’t Indonesian politicians build a monument to Obama?

opps… seems Indonesian citizens had different views about Obama…

After many protests objecting to that statue it was uprooted from the Jakarta park where it was erected and moved to a school yard.

Sooo…. undaunted, Obama scheduled a trip to Jakarta from March 20 through 22.

According to the Associated Press, the approaching Obama visit is being protested.

Indonesians have removed the statue of Barack Obama as a boy

From USA Today, Controversial Obama statue in Indonesia removed from park after protests:

A controversial bronze statue of President Barack Obama as a 10-year-old boy has been removed from an Indonesian park and moved to a nearby elementary school that Obama once attended, the Jakarta Globe reports.

The decision to take down the 43-inch statue, which was erected in December, came after more than 57,000 people joined a Facebook page calling for it to be removed and replaced by a memorial to an Indonesian.

[...]

The statue of “Little Barry” — as Obama was known in Indonesia — shows the young Obama wearing shorts and a t-shirt with a butterfly perched on his hand.

From New York Times, Indonesia: Obama Statue Moved From Public Park:

Officials in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, bowed to protesters who said that the park should be reserved to honor Indonesians and that Mr. Obama had yet to make any particular contributions to the country.

If 57,000 people on Facebook can inspire Indonesian government officials to actually listen to them and heed the wishes of a majority of citizens… oh, never mind.

From The Baltimore Sun, Muslim students protest Obama visit to Indonesia:

Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta’s parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to the predominantly Muslim country, the Associated Press reports.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya, the AP reports.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama’s head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Protest organizer Ahmad Irhamul Fikri, spokesman for the Coordinating Board for Campus Proselytizing Institute, said bigger rallies will be staged next Friday in more Indonesian cities ahead of Obama’s March 20-22 visit.

Such demonstrations of hostility toward Obama are rare in Indonesia, where he enjoys widespread popularity because he spend part of his childhood in Jakarta while his mother was married to his Indonesian stepfather.

Local government officials allowed business people to erect a statue of a 10-year-old Obama in a Jakarta park in December. But it was shifted last month to a nearby elementary school that he attended after more than 50,000 people supported a Facebook campaign against it and court action was threatened.

Obama is expected to sign the statue’s pedestal while in Jakarta.

More commentary on this at Jammie Wearing Fool: Indonesian Students Show the Love for Their Homeboy Obama

Categories: International Relations, Social and Political Climate
Tags: Barack Obama, boy statue, bronze statue, child statue, Indonesia, Indonesia protests, Jakarta, Obama, political, politics, POTUS, Pres. Obama, president, statue