02/05/10

Obama Statue to Leave Indonesian Park

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A recently-erected statue of President Obama as a 10-year-old boy will be removed from a public park here, city officials said Friday, bowing to vociferous criticism on Facebook just a month before Mr. Obama is scheduled to visit Indonesia.

The statue will be relocated as soon as possible to an elementary school that Mr. Obama attended during the four years he spent as a child here, the governor of Jakarta, Fauzi Bowo, told reporters.

In December, the city unveiled the 43-inch tall bronze statue in a park in Menteng, the neighborhood where Mr. Obama lived with his divorced mother and Indonesian stepfather in the late 1960s. Financed by $10,000 from Mr. Obama’s supporters here, it depicts the boy known at the time as Barry in shorts and a T-shirt, smiling as a butterfly lands on his left thumb.

But the statue of Mr. Obama — who successfully exploited the potential of social networking sites during the 2008 presidential campaign — soon became the target of intense ire by critics who said Mr. Obama had done nothing for Indonesia and said the public park should be reserved to honor an Indonesian.

More than 56,000 Facebook members joined an Indonesian-language Facebook group called “Take Down the Barack Obama Statue in Menteng Park.” Critics also filed a lawsuit to force the city to remove the statue.

The statue dispute notwithstanding, Mr. Obama remains extraordinarily popular in Indonesia, where government officials, the news media and ordinary people expressed disappointment that he did not include Indonesia in a trip through Asia last year.

Heru Nugroho, 46, who started the Facebook group, said he had not made up his mind yet whether he approved of the spot chosen for the statue’s relocation.

“If they want to move it to the school, that may be acceptable,” Mr. Nugroho said in a telephone interview. “He did go to school there.”

Mr. Nugroho said that he was not an “America-hater.”

“I don’t hate Obama, either,” he said, adding that his protest was for “our image as Indonesians. We Indonesians don’t even pay enough respect to our own heroes, people who contribute to our country. Then, suddenly, you build a statue of a person who’s contributed nothing to Indonesia. It’s only because he lived here when he was little.”

At the statue’s unveiling in early December, a city official said it would inspire “Indonesian children to reach their dreams.”

Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.

Which way to the school?