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Prabowo criticized for FPI overtures

Jakarta Post - May 31, 2014

A checkered past continues to dog would-be leader – Jakarta Globe. May 30, 2014
Abuse claims cloud Prabowo's run for presidency – Agence France Presse. May 30, 2014
Candidates urged to address human rights – Jakarta Post. May 23, 2014
Graft suspect Suryadharma refuses to resign, Prabowo pledges support – Jakarta Globe. May 23, 2014
Prabowo targeted over abductions – Agence France Presse. May 22, 2014

Markus Junianto Sihaloho, Jakarta – The Wahid Institute, a progressive muslim research and tolerance outreach center, on Saturday criticized Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto for courting votes from the hardline Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, in the run up to the July 9 election.

"It is unwise," Wahid Institute researcher Muhammad Subhi Azhari said. "The people will think that this candidate tolerates violence."

The jab may have been aimed at the candidate's checkered history: He has been criticized widely, at home and abroad, for human rights abuses committed by his troops in 1997 and 1998 – when he was a special forces commander under strongman President Suharto – including the alleged kidnapping of 13 political activists who remain missing.

The FPI has a history of violent attacks against minority Ahmadiyah, Shiite and Christian communities and thug tactics in campaigns against brothels and nightclubs. "All mass organizations must be embraced, including the FPI," Prabowo said last week, using the local term for large civil society groups.

Prabowo's running mate, Hatta Rajasa – chairman of the Islamic-based National Mandate Party (PAN) – earlier this week attended a muslim service in South Jakarta with core FPI members. He asked attendees to support the Gerindra ticket.

By gaining the support of a wide range of muslim constituencies, including hard liners, he hoped to build cooperation, he said. "I hope that [Indonesia] can be calm, peaceful and with no stark differences," he said, as reported by news portal Solopos.com. "Keeping harmony, this is important."

The FPI, however, have time and again acted against religious inclusion. The group has campaigned successfully for years to keep an Ahmadiyah mosque in Bekasi, West Java closed to worshipers.

Hatta was not the only vice presidential candidate to have paid lip service to a controversial mass organization.

Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle presidential candidate Joko Widodo's running mate, former Vice President Jusuf Kalla, was seen expresing support for paramilitary group Pemuda Pancasila, known for thuggish tactics and admitted involvement in the 1965 communist purges, in director Joshua Oppenheimer's acclaimed documentary, "The Act of Killing."

"The nation needs preman," he said in the film, using an Indonesian loanword that means both "free man" and gangster. "We need our gangsters to get things done." The Joko-Kalla camp have not publicly reached out to the FPI.

Subhi of the Wahid Institute said that the Prabowo campaign's efforts to court the FPI vote were "morally wrong." "[Prabowo and Hatta] have not set a good example fot the Indonesian people," he said.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/prabowo-criticized-fpi-overtures/.