Nurfika Osman & Antara, Jakarta – Some good efforts, but could try harder. That was the report-card takeaway for the government as a number of prominent visiting academics voiced opinions on Indonesia's progress on Wednesday.

In a lecture at the State Palace in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Boediono, David T. Ellwood, dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, praised the nation's progress, but warned of the ongoing need to tackle poverty.

"Economic growth should be healthy and well spread, one that benefits all," he said.

In his own speech at the event, Yudhoyono vowed "faster" action on reducing poverty by focusing on job creation. That would also lift the nation's economic growth in general, he said.

At a book launch later in the day, Ellwood lauded Indonesia's economic record, but said it faced great challenges in the future.

The book "Indonesia Determines its Fate; from Reformation to Institutional Transformation" is a the result of a joint research by the private Rajawali Foundation and the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

The center's director, Anthony J. Saich, acknowledged Indonesia's emergence as a true democracy with steady economy growth, but issued his own warning.

"Despite this impressive progress, we highlight a number of problems that are preventing Indonesia from achieving its full potential.

"In comparison with a number of its neighbors, Indonesia is falling behind in economic and social measures, with the result that the economy needs to grow more quickly," he said.

The book argues that electoral reform is needed to cut the number of parties and curb systemic corruption.

Legal and judicial reforms are necessary, and measures should be devised to enlarge the middle class, including better credit access and bankruptcy protection.

Indonesia must also adopt international standards to attract foreign investment.

Speaking at the book launch, Jeffrey A. Winters, a professor of political and economy at Northwestern University in Chicago, said the book recognized important achievements, "but it is also sharp and brave in showing that some of the most important obstacles to prosperity have not yet been overcome."

He continued: "The poor and weak submit to the country's laws, while powerful elites and oligarchs use intimidation and money to do as they like."

The Rajawali Foundation and Kennedy School have set up an Indonesia program with a grant of $20.5 million in a drive to accelerate democratic governance and aid institutional transformation in the country.

Eight government officials and a University of Indonesia economics lecturer will soon study at Harvard as part of the program, foundation president Fritz E. Simandjuntak told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.

120 million surviving on $2 a day

Jakarta Globe - September 15, 2010

Jakarta – Indonesia has gained the notorious distinction of being among seven countries that are home to two-thirds of the world's one billion undernourished people, an upcoming report reveals.

The "State of Food Insecurity in the World," to be published in October by the Food and Agricultural Organization and the UN World Food Program, says two-thirds of the world's almost one billion undernourished people live in the following countries: Bangladesh, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethio pia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan.

In a press release, the FAO and WFP said the number of hungry people in the world remained unacceptably high despite expected recent gains that have pushed the figure below one billion.

The new estimate of the number of people who will suffer chronic hunger this year is 925 million – 98 million down from 1.023 billion in 2009 – with over half of the total in Asia Pacific.

"With a child dying every six seconds because of undernourishment-related problems, hunger remains the world's largest tragedy and scandal," FAO director general Jacques Diouf said.

The continuing high global hunger level "makes it extremely difficult to achieve not only the first Millennium Development Goal but also the rest of the MDGs," Diouf warned.

"The achievement of the international hunger reduction target is at serious risk," he added, noting that recent increases in food prices could hamper efforts to further reduce the numbers of the world's hungry.

Details of the report were released ahead of its official launch at the Sept. 20-22 UN General Assembly in New York.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono unveiled a plan to slash the hunger rate by tackling unemployment, which he said would have a direct impact on the poverty rate.

He also said reducing poverty was just one of four of his administration's key economic policies, the other three being boosting economic growth, creating jobs and protecting the environment.

Yudhoyono said with "maximum effort," these policies would result in GDP growth of 6 percent by the end of 2010, up from 4.5 percent last year.

The 2009 Global Hunger Index categorizes Indonesia's situation as "serious." The index ranks countries on a combination of three indicators: child malnutrition rate, child mortality rate, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.

The WFP Web site, meanwhile, says 6 percent or about 14.7 million people of Indonesia's population is undernourished. It also says 52 percent of Indonesians live on less than $2 (Rp 17, 980) a day. Of those, 35 million live on less than 65 cents a day and are classified as poor.

The number of "near poor," or those at risk of becoming poor if they lose a single month's income, is estimated to be 115 million.

The WFP noted the government's efforts in helping the poor, such as cash transfers and subsidized rice program. However, despite its progress in achieving MDG targets, Indonesia is still "a low-income food-deficit country," the WFP says.

[Additional reporting from Antara.]

West Papua

Counter-terrorism squad to stay in Papua

Sydney Morning Herald - September 14, 2010

Tom Allard, Jakarta – Detachment 88 has a legitimate role in countering separatism and will remain in Papua, where a long- simmering independence campaign has been running, the unit's commander, Tito Karnavian, has confirmed.

In an interview with the Herald, Brigadier General Karnavian said Papua was different to Maluku, another Indonesian province where members of the counter-terrorism unit have been accused of abuses and from where they will soon leave.

General Karnavian pointed to shootings last year near the US- owned Freeport mine, in which an Australian worker, Drew Grant, and others died, as evidence that separatists in Papua were using "tactics of terror". Advertisement: Story continues below

"Any group using violence against civilians must be seen as a terrorist group. It's not just Islamic groups," he said.

"You can't confine Detachment 88 only for Islamic groups. That would be used by Islamic groups to say that we are just an extension of the Western powers against Islam."

Independence supporters dispute that their armed wing, Organisasi Papua Merdeka, was involved in the Freeport shootings, blaming Indonesian military and police who lost the lucrative job of guarding the gargantuan gold and copper mine.

One analyst, who asked not to be named, doubted whether Detachment 88 should play a significant role in suppressing separatism and said it could prove counter-productive.

"It's a huge mistake to brand separatist activity as terrorism – activities designed to create fear – when you are trying to find a political solution in places like Papua," the analyst said.

Australia and the US fund and train Detachment 88, Indonesia's elite counter-terrorism unit, and value its skill in preventing terrorist attacks, uncovering networks and arresting offenders.

But the nations have been concerned by repeated allegations of abuses in Maluku and are wary of being linked to its counter- separatist activities.

In response to the Herald's revelations yesterday about abuses in Maluku, l an Australian Foreign Affairs spokesman said: "Det-88 has not sought assistance from Australia in any investigations or operations to counter internal separatist movements."

Brigadier General Karnavian said an imminent restructuring of Detachment 88 would see its forces outside Jakarta, including those in Papua, focus on "intelligence gathering rather than investigations".

Under the new arrangements, forces would report directly to Jakarta. At present, General Karnavian said he had no control over Detachment 88 police outside the capital, including those in Maluku. "They were instructed directly by the head of police or head of detectives in the province," he said.

An Indonesia analyst from the Australian National University, Greg Fealy, welcomed the restructure. "There are some well trained, highly professional Densus [Detachment 88] officers at the national level, but regional units often reflect local police culture and preoccupations, including a greater tendency to use violence."

Questions over benefits of NZ training Indonesian police in Papua

Radio New Zealand International - September 14, 2010

There are questions over the benefits of New Zealand's police training programme in Indonesia's Papua and West Papua provinces.

The New Zealand Police are the first foreign force to be invited into the troubled Papua region to undertake training in community-policing. A recent six week training course in Papua involving twelve New Zealand officers followed similar programmes in 2008 and 2009.

But, as Johnny Blades reports, Indonesian police are linked to a long history of human rights abuses and repression of the indigenous people by security forces in Papua.

Recent moves by Jakarta to disallow international development agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross from Papua are a sign that access to the region is more restricted than ever.

Indonesian Human rights observer Andreas Harsono says the government is channelling all international assistance intended for Papua through its own agencies rather than indigenous Papuans.

He questions how New Zealand can engage under a system he describes as biased against Papuans, and co-operate with a police force linked to ongoing abuses. "There is no investigation against police officers that committed human rights abuses. So ask the New Zealand Aid, what do they do? Because the police are still acting very badly in Papua."

The Senior New Zealand Police Liaison Officer based in Jakarta, Tim Haughey, says the personnel receiving the training are Indonesian police trainers themselves and not special forces or paramilitary units such as Brimob, often linked to violence in Papua. He says the training has given Indonesian police a valuable tool for helping resolve problems in Papua.

"Probably a first for many of the trainees, that they had actually sat down with members of the community and talked about problems in the community, things that worried them. And the feedback we got from the community was overwhelming support. They really welcomed the opportunity to talk to police in a non- threatening and collaborative fashion."

But Maire Leadbeater of the Indonesia Human Rights Committee feels the programme is not doing much good.

"What you're looking at with West Papua is a police force that has got a record of grievous human rights violations and I think it would be naieve to think this is because of the failings of individuals. It makes much more sense to me to look at this in terms of a structural problem."

She says it's unclear whether New Zealand's assistance supports genuine reform within Indonesia's police or is being directed in ways that will not challenge the established order and vested interests.

"Too optimistic in the extreme to think that the contact with a few New Zealand police is going to make a difference to a situation which is embedded structurally. And the alternative is that Indonesia takes the other message from it – and I believe they have because there's a lot of mention about this police training programme, there's been an article in the Jakarta Post and so on, I understand – so they're using it as a kind of whitewashing, if you like, of a record which really doesn't any whitewashing at all."

New Zealand's government says it continues to press Indonesia to address human rights abuses.

But Marie Leadbetter says New Zealand's method of quiet diplomacy hasn't brought any help for Papuans but rather increased co- operation with the forces of repression in the troubled region.

Papua proposes 500,000 hectares for food estate: Minister

Jakarta Post - September 13, 2010

Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said his ministry received a proposal to make use of 500,000 hectare areas for the 1.6-million-hectare food and energy estate projects planned in Merauke, Papua.

He said half of the proposed area could be planted directly since it was not in forested areas that have been allocated for other business aims.

"We are still assessing the remaining 250,000 hectares to ensure whether they are located in peatland or natural forest areas," Zulkifli said recently.

The proposal limits the expansion of the food estate to only 500,000 hectares for at least the next five years as stipulated in the spatial planning law.

The forestry law says any conversions of forest areas into other purposes could only be done after approval by the House of Representatives. The government's team for spatial planning would examine proposals submitted by local administrations to change the status of forests.

"I estimate that the process to change the status [of 250,000 hectares of forest] in Merauke will be completed by the beginning of next year at the earliest," he said.

Zulkifli denied reports that the Papua administration had demanded allocating 1.6 million hectares for integrated food and energy estate projects. "Such an area could only be ready in the next five years if the administration changed the spatial planning," he said.

The minister expressed doubts about investor interest in developing the food and energy estate projects in Merauke, citing the absence of infrastructure such as electricity and roads.

The Agriculture Ministry first floated the idea of setting up 1.6 million of hectares of food and energy estates in Merauke to boost the country's food production. The project has also been high on the agenda of the Agriculture Ministry this year.

However, environmental activists criticized the plan, voicing fears of massive forest loss in Papua, the only province with vast tracts of virgin forests.

To complicate matters, the government promised to impose a moratorium on new permits to operate in peatland and natural forests.

Eight million of the country's remaining 22 million hectares of peatland are located in Papua.

An assessment by Greenomics Indonesia said only 300,000 hectares of production forest in Merauke could be converted for other purposes, including food estate projects.

It said that of the 4.7 million hectares of land in Merauke, 95 percent was still forested with some 3.42 million untouched.

The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said the planned food estate projects would remove indigenous people from traditional lands, potentially giving rise to conflict.

"The food and energy estate projects would not benefit Papuans but rather large companies," Walhi chief campaigner Muhammad Teguh Surya told The Jakarta Post.

Walhi said 32 large oil palm and oil and gas companies had secured licenses to develop food and energy estate projects on 1.6 million hectares in Merauke.

Teguh said massive changes to the function of forests would also make Papua more vulnerable to ecological disasters that would worsen poverty in the easternmost province of the country.

Ondawame banks on Vanuatu to raise their plight

Islands Business - September 12, 2010

Dev Nadkarni – John Otto Ondawame, Vice President of the West Papua National Council for Liberation, was a deeply disappointed man at the end the 41st Pacific Islands Forum summit in Port Vila last month. There was high expectation among the West Papuans that Vanuatu's recent Act of Parliament supporting its claim for independence would get wide acceptance among other Forum nations.

Vanuatu not only failed to table the issue at the leaders' summit but there was also no mention of West Papua in the post-forum communique, leaving the leaders sorely disappointed. Despite that, the leaders still place some faith in Vanuatu, as chair of both the Melanesian Spearhead Group and now the Pacific Islands Forum to take their cause further, though they are well aware of the conflicting influences other countries will have on it in the coming months.

The West Papuans are concerned that Indonesia has stepped up its aid and co-operation in Melanesia and suspect the agenda is West Papua. While some 20 Indonesian diplomats attended the Forum, the country is also believed to have sent an envoy to the 'Engaging Fiji' summit in Natadola, Fiji, weeks before the Forum summit.

Indonesian diplomats Islands Business spoke to predictably denied concerns about West Papua coming up for discussions at the Forum. Andri Hadi, Jakarta based Director General of Information & Public Diplomacy, said the delegation was primarily concerned with co-operation in the Pacific and that they were not aware of the presence of any West Papuan activists.

"West Papua is an internal matter for Indonesia and we will not discuss at this Forum," he said. Asked to comment on Vanuatu's Bill supporting its independence, he said that was Vanuatu's internal matter.

Director of Foreign Affairs Arto Suryodipuro, also based in Jakarta, would not specify any details of the co-operation initiatives Indonesia was planning in Vanuatu or any of the Forum member countries but said that Indonesia was working hard on implementing greater autonomy in the West Papuan region.

Asked for his comments on the West Papuan issue, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said his government recognised West Papua as part of Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the West Papuan leaders squarely accused the Papua New Guinea government of scuttling their bid for support in the four-country sub regional Melanesian Spearhead Group when Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare last year successfully blocked the possibility of West Papua being conferred observer status.

But Ondawame and the movement's long time external spokesman, the Canberra-based Rex Rumakiek are determined to take it to the next level despite feeling let down by their own region's leaders. Here's what Ondawame told Islands Business after the Forum.

How do you feel?

"Disappointed and badly let down."

Do you expect Vanuatu to follow up on their assurances?

"Yes, they promised us to take the issue to the Pacific Islands Forum, to the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and the United Nations. We trust the Vanuatu government to follow up."

But it was not brought up at the Forum. Do you think the MSG will support when it is raised there?

"Well, that's a sticky question. But finally, the whole of the Melanesian community must recognise that it is so important to have West Papua as part of Melanesia."

Was there pressure from Indonesia during this Forum?

"Yes, Indonesia did put pressure on this Forum. It is no surprise that there are almost 20 delegates from Indonesia here. It is just because the issue was West Papua. They have been trying hard to convince Vanuatu not to raise the issue with MSG but there is a commitment of the Vanuatu people to continue to demand independence for West Papua."

Do you think Sir Michael Somare will support your cause?

"No, he will not. As long as Michael Somare is in power, he will never support the West Papuan cause, even though at the ground level in PNG, as in the rest of the Pacific, most of the people support the cause. We've seen it in Fiji, Solomon Islands, PNG, East Timor, Kanaks in New Caledonia. But when it comes to government there is some reservation. It is only the Vanuatu government is the only sovereign government that has firmly taken a stand to support. "

Why does Sir Michael Somare not support the cause?

"He is closely linked with Jakarta and he has been well taken care of by the Indonesian government. We cannot trust a man like him. I was one of his victims. He had me put in prison in 1978. Indonesia has a number of arrangements in place with the islands states and Vanuatu for fisheries, trade, security. We are aware of that but that doesn't mean that has any effect on the Vanuatu people's support for us."

Could the movement turn violent?

"That would be the only alternative left for us if the Pacific community continues to deny our rights – in that case, the people will have to take up violence as a last resort."

Do you see that happening?

"At the moment no, but in the long run it may well be. If people in the Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand continue to ignore the situation, that may soon happen."

Is there any sign of arms flowing into the hands of rebels?

"We do not have arms in West Papua. We depend heavily on our traditional arms – bows and arrows – and our minds. And as we fight for our own soil on our own soil, we are prepared to die for it there. We cannot defeat Indonesia with arms. It is impossible – they have huge numbers of armed forces. We only believe in achieving our just cause with peaceful dialogue. We have friends in Indonesia that are working closely with us to address the issue in a peaceful manner. But it is possible our OPM movement could be pushed towards violence at some stage."

Is autonomy working?

"Autonomy doesn't work. The people have totally rejected it and have returned the autonomy to Indonesia during protests last month. The autonomy has been only lip service. It has never helped develop the Papuan community. There has been no improvement at all. Instead it has brought in corruption, militarisation, making it the poorest province in Indonesia even though West Papua is so rich in terms of natural resources. But Indonesia is also reorganising the territory and carving out new provinces?

"That is the military strategy to divide the people and increase bureaucracy and corruption and bring in more Indonesian settlers. By 2020, West Papuans will be a minority in their own territory – that is the plan of the Indonesian government.

So what is next? Where to from here?

"We will work with Vanuatu to internationalise it. We want to work towards bringing it up in the next UN General Assembly. Fifty US Senators have already signed a petition to President Barack Obama to make the West Papuan issue part of the United States' foreign policy in the near future. The US is a champion of freedom and we are confident its people will see our point. We will not let a regional setback to hold us back, although it would be good to have the support of our governments, just as we have the support of our wantoks."

Indonesia bans another leading international agency from Papua

Radio New Zealand International - September 10, 2010

Indonesia's government has been accused of clamping down on the most prestigious and well-established NGOs operating in the Papua region following its decision to ban another leading agency from working there.

Jakarta has refused to renew the agreement under which the Dutch Catholic development agency Cordaid has been operating in Papua for over three decades. Cordaid programmes in Papua have focussed on accessing social and economic development for the poor as well as providing better access to health care and education.

Johnny Blades reports:

Indonesia's Ministry of Social Affairs voiced suspicion about Cordaid supporting Papuan separatism. The agency has denied this but the government is refusing to extend permission for Cordaid to continue its work.

Ed McWilliams of the West Papua Advocacy team says there is no truth to the separatism link.

"Cordaid, like most organisations operating in Indonesia, have been very cautious to avoid any kind of connection to such organisations. So I think it's much easier to understand this as we understood the expulsion of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as an attempt to reduce the amount of international activity and of course observation of what is going on in West Papua."

As well as banning the International Committee of the Red Cross from Papua last year, Jakarta recently forced the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation out of the region.

But Indonesian Human rights observer Andreas Harsono says the need of Papuans for humanitarian assistance is more critical than ever.

"For instance the HIV infection rate in Papua is 15 times – one-five times – higher than the national figure. You go to Merauke, you go to Wamena, and you walk just an hour from the main urban areas and you will see clinics without anyone, without medical staff, without moreover a doctor or even a nurse. So it (the decision to ban Coraid) is going to make the suffering of the Papuan people more and more severe by banning such organisations from operating in Papua."

Ed McWilliams says Cordaid's microfinancing programmes have been very effective in helping grassroots Papuan communities rise above poverty.

"A lot of the money that's been going from Jakarta into West Papua essentially has gone to the elites and, frankly, found its way into corrupt channels pretty consistently. Whereas this Cordaid assistance was going directly to the people so it had a very good impact."

Andreas Harsono says the emerging picture for international development agencies looking to run programmes in Papua is that they must operate through Jakarta.

"So this programme is going to be more or less shaped by Indonesian NGOs in Java. They're the ones who are now receiving the money, and they do the programmes in Papua because it is easier (for Jakarta) to control the Java-based NGOs than the Papua-based NGOs."

Meanwhile, the prominent Indonesian human rights lawyer Totung Mulya Lubis says the decision to ban Cordaid was taken "too hastily" and without sufficient evidence.

He says that to stop foreign social funding is akin to killing off Papua-based NGOs, which almost entirely depend on overseas funding.

Yudhoyono's response to campaign on Papuan prisoners disappoints

Radio New Zealand International - September 10, 2010

There's no sign that Indonesia's government will release any more political prisoners in Papua region despite a large campaign pressing the President on the issue.

At least 45 Papuans are known to be incarcerated in prisons in Papua and West Papua provinces for their involvement in non- violent demonstrations or expressions of opinion.

In July, Indonesian authorities released two political prisoners jailed for pushing for independence of Papua.

Last month, an open letter to the President from two dozen international and local NGOs working for human rights requested the release of all Papuan political prisoners. However according to human rights observer Andreas Harsono, President Yudhyono's response is disappointing.

"The President did not release any political prisoners. What he did release then were graft convicts, corruptino convicts. Three-hundred and forty-one graft convicts received jail (term) reduction."

Indonesia accused of anti-NGO campaign in strife-torn Papua

Radio New Zealand International - September 9, 2010

Indonesia's government has been accused of running a campaign to limit global awareness of Papua following its decision to ban another leading international NGO from working there.

Jakarta has refused to renew the agreement under which the Dutch development agency Cordaid has been operating in Papua region for more than three decades.

Cordaid programmes in Papua have focussed on social and economic development for the poor. The government has voiced suspicion that Cordaid is supporting Papuan separatism although the agency denies this.

The West Papua Advocacy Team's Ed McWilliams says a pattern is emerging following Jakarta's move to force the International Committee of the Red Cross out of Papua last year.

"Targetting some of the most well established and most prestigious organisations. I think this essentially is an act of intimidation against other NGOs that basically will now be encouraged by these examples to restrict their activities even further."

Decision to ban Cordaid from Papua taken exclusively by Jakarta

Radio New Zealand International - September 9, 2010

The West Papua Advocacy Team says ordinary Papuans stand to lose considerable benefits after another leading NGO was banned from working in Indonesia's easternmost region.

Jakarta has refused to renew the agreement under which the Dutch development agency Cordaid has been operating in Papua for over three decades.

The Advocacy Team's Ed McWilliams says Cordaid's microfinancing programmes have helped large numbers of grassroots Papuan organisations.

"There's no indcation that the Papuan government had anything to say in this decision. And of course it impacts the people of Papua. So once again, I think it's an example of decisions being taken in Jakarta without any consultation with Papuan officials or civil society."

Military ties

US restores military ties with Indonesia's Kopassus killers

Direct Action - September 2010

James Balowski, Jakarta – Human rights groups have reacted angrily to an announcement by Washington that it will restore military ties with Indonesia's abusive special forces Kopassus, accused of perpetrating some of the worst crimes against the people of East Timor, Indonesia and West Papua.

The July 22 announcement, which signalled a lifting of a 12-year ban on US training of Kopassus, was made during a visit to Jakarta by US war secretary Robert Gates, who has long advocated the restoration of full bilateral ties with the Indonesian military (TNI).

"I was pleased to be able to tell the president that as a result of Indonesian military reform over the past decade... and recent actions taken by the Ministry of Defense to address human rights issues, the United States will begin measured and gradual programs of security cooperation activities with the Indonesian Army Special Forces", Associated Press quoted Gates as saying after meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

US officials said Kopassus, which numbers around 5000 and has a limited role in fighting terrorism in Indonesia, had reformed enough in recent years that the US saw advantages in working to bring about what they described as "further change". "It is a different unit than its reputation suggests", Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters travelling with Gates. Officials added that the State Department would vet any members before they could receive training.

For his part, Yudhoyono "guaranteed" that there would be no more rights abuses by the TNI. "I'll guard the Indonesian military reform and ensure that what happened 10 or 20 years ago will not happen again", he was quoted as saying by defence minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro, who attended the meeting with Gates.

Gradual rapprochement

The announcement is the latest step in a gradual rapprochement between Washington and the TNI in the face of opposition by human rights groups. In the wake of international outrage following the massacre of more than 100 peaceful protesters in East Timor in 1991, the US Congress cut off Indonesia's access to specific kinds of military training and "lethal" equipment. When TNI- backed militias rampaged through East Timor after the UN- sponsored independence referendum in 1999, President Bill Clinton severed all remaining military ties, but then quietly restored contacts the following year.

Under the 1997 Leahy law – named after its author, US Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont – the US is banned from providing training or other kinds of assistance to any foreign military unit if there is "credible evidence" that it has committed "gross violations of human rights". This can be waived if the secretary of state certifies that the relevant foreign government is "taking effective measures" to bring responsible members of the unit to justice.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001 and the 2002 Bali bombing, the Bush administration attempted to circumvent these restrictions by providing assistance through a counter-terrorism program, although this still excluded Kopassus. In 2005, the administration issued a national security waiver allowing full engagement with the TNI, and abandoned the conditions for renewed cooperation, including TNI reforms and prosecution of soldiers responsible for rights violations.

However, it was not until the lead-up to a postponed visit to Indonesia by US President Barack Obama in late March that training of Kopassus was publicly aired. In an attempt to slip around the ban, the Obama administration floated a plan to test a training program for younger Kopassus members. According to the March 4 Washington Post, the idea was that the US would conduct training and joint exercises only with Kopassus soldiers who, because of their age, could not have been involved in earlier abuses.

In March there were reports in the Indonesian media that the US would soon lift the ban. US officials denied the reports. "The US Government is reviewing its policy on Kopassus but has not yet made a decision", a US embassy statement said.

The Australian government resumed cooperation with Kopassus in 2005. Normal relations with the Australian SAS resumed after a visit by Australian army chief of staff Lieutenant General Peter Leahy in late 2002. Relations continued to improve following the Bali bombing, and several joint Kopassus-SAS exercises have taken place. Kopassus has also routinely carried out exercises with Singapore and Thailand.

Kopassus was involved in the murder of five Australian-based journalists at Balibo in 1975, prior to Indonesia's full-scale invasion of East Timor. Kopassus and other troops indicted by UN-backed prosecutors in East Timor for crimes against humanity during the 25-year occupation and in 1999 remain at large. Although some Kopassus officers were convicted of the kidnapping of student activists in 1997-98 and the 2001 murder of leading West Papuan figure Theys Eluay, the majority have evaded prosecution.

Kopassus was also implicated in the 2002 fatal ambush of two US teachers and an Indonesian national near the Freeport mine in West Papua, widely believed to be retaliation for a decision by Freeport to stop paying the TNI for "security services". According to a June 2009 report by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), Kopassus continues to be involved in arbitrary arrest, detention and mistreatment in West Papua.

Rights groups slam decision

International and Indonesian human rights organisations slammed the decision, calling it a setback for democratic reform and a betrayal of Kopassus' many victims.

In a statement issued on July 22, Amnesty International said: "It sends the wrong message in a country where mass and severe human-rights violations have taken place in an atmosphere of impunity". "US support to this unit undercuts the recent efforts advocating reform within the Indonesian military", said an Amnesty spokesperson.

HRW said the decision rewards Kopassus for its intransigence over abuses and betrays those in Indonesia who have fought for decades for accountability and justice. "The Obama administration has just failed a key test. This is not the way to encourage reform with a military that has yet to demonstrate a genuine commitment to accountability for serious human rights abuses", said HRW advocacy director Sophie Richardson on July 22.

Richardson noted that Jakarta had not only failed to remove from the military the few Kopassus soldiers convicted of rights violations, but had recently promoted officers linked by credible evidence to past abuses. "Every abusive military in the world will sit up and say, if the United States is willing to go ahead and engage with Kopassus despite its failure to reform, why shouldn't the US engage with other abusive militaries?"

In a July 23 statement the West Papua Advocacy Team pointed out that opposition to US military cooperation with Kopassus is based on the unit's undisputed record of abuses, and that claims of reform are belied by credible independent reports: "The military, especially Kopassus, but also the US-funded Detachment 81 and the militarised police, routinely intimidate, threaten and accost Papuans who non-violently resist denial of fundamental rights, illegal expropriation of their lands and marginalisation".

The group noted that, despite a 2004 legislative requirement that the TNI divest itself of its empire of legal and illegal businesses by 2009, the military retains this source of off- budget funding, adding that past US State Department reports acknowledge the TNI's involvement in criminal activities such as people trafficking and drug running.

The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN), which has been running an online petition campaign urging the US to maintain the ban, said that the decision was a betrayal of the unit's many victims in East Timor, West Papua and throughout Indonesia, and will undermine efforts to achieve justice and accountability. ETAN noted that the US provided training and assistance to Kopassus for years, and when the US was most involved, Kopassus' crimes were at their worst.

"US re-engagement with Kopassus tells Jakarta that Obama administration rhetoric about human rights reform and accountability is empty. The new policy will only embolden those resisting reform and trials for past human rights violations, as well as efforts to rein in security force criminality", ETAN's national coordinator, John Miller, told Direct Action.

Victims want answers

Indonesian rights groups and the families of victims reacted angrily, saying they would march on the US embassy in Jakarta to demand answers from the Obama administration.

Papang Hidayat from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) said the government had failed to fulfill several conditions set by the US for lifting the ban. "Kopassus members implicated in human rights abuses, such as those from the Rose team [responsible for the 1997-98 abductions], who were punished and released, have been promoted and hold strategic positions in military as well as civil institutions", he told the July 24 Jakarta Post.

Mugiyanto, chairperson of the Association of Families of Missing Persons and one of the activists abducted and tortured by Kopassus, said the victims and their families were living witnesses to the lack of state efforts to tackle past human rights violations. "The government should show its accountability in dealing with the issue. So far we have not seen either judicial accountability or non-judicial accountability", Mugiyanto told the July 26 Jakarta Post.

Speaking at a Kontras news conference on July 25, Maria Catarina Sumarsih said the decision would hurt chances of punishing those responsible for past atrocities. "I am very disappointed with this turn of events. The US is acting like a washing machine by cleaning the dirt from the Indonesian military", Sumarsih told the July 26 Jakarta Globe. "I have been seeking justice for more than 12 years, since my son was brutally shot by the military, and today the US is saying that what they did is correct by reviving defense ties. Maybe they think killing innocent people is correct."

Stalled reform

Yudhoyono's "guarantees" will also be of little comfort to the victims. Despite repeated pledges to solve prominent cases such as the 2004 murder of rights activist Munir, who was assassinated allegedly in revenge for exposing crimes committed by Kopassus, not one case has been resolved since Yudhoyono took office in 2004.

"There was an explicit recommendation from the House of Representatives in September 2009 that required President Yudhoyono to form an ad hoc human rights court, search for the 13 [abducted] people who are still missing, provide rehabilitation and compensation to the victims and ratify the UN convention against forced disappearances. Yudhoyono has a constitutional and moral obligation to pursue these recommendations in his capacity as president and member of the Officers Honour Council in 1999 [which examined the Kopassus officers involved in the abductions], which means he knows the truth about the fate and whereabouts of those who are still missing", Mugiyanto told Direct Action.

Under Yudhoyono, other reforms such as the divestment of the TNI's nefarious business interests and trial in civilian courts of soldiers accused of criminal offences, have all stalled. The TNI has recently expanded its territorial command structure, which allows the deployment of command posts and detachments at all levels of the civil administration. This provides the organisational framework for the TNI to act as a political security force and maintain its illegal logging, prostitution and protection rackets.

While expressing relief that Gates did not announce full cooperation, Senator Leahy voiced deep regret and said the unit must expel officers linked to abuses before there could be greater cooperation, adding that Kopassus "remains unrepentant, essentially unreformed and unaccountable". "I deeply regret that before starting down the road of reengagement, our country did not obtain and Kopassus did not accept the necessary reforms", he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse on July 22.

The announcement was also denounced by Senator Russell Feingold, the former chair of the Senate's Asia subcommittee. "Further actions are needed before we can be reasonably satisfied that Kopassus, and the Indonesian armed forces more broadly, have become a reformed institution accountable to international human rights standards and the rule of law."

Obstacles

Moves towards a "measured" and "gradual" program of cooperation still face obstacles. In preparation for lifting the ban, US Defense Department officials said they had asked the Indonesian government in recent months to remove "less than a dozen" members of Kopassus who had been convicted of previous abuses but were still part of the unit.

Yet in April, Colonel Nugroho Widyo Utomo, who in 1998 reportedly played a key role in creating and arming the militias that later carried out much of the violence in East Timor the following year, was appointed deputy commander of Kopassus. This follows the January appointment of Major General Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, who was implicated in the 1997-98 abductions, abuses in East Timor in 1999 and the 1991 Santa Cruz Massacre, to the position of deputy defence minister.

TNI chief General Santoso claimed that Kopassus has already sanctioned personnel involved in questionable conduct, but stopped short of saying whether they had been dismissed. "As far as the TNI is concerned, the issue of past human rights violations is over", Santoso was quoted as saying by the July 24 Jakarta Globe.

At an anniversary ceremony on April 16, Kopassus commander Major General Lodewijk Paulus called allegations of past rights violations a "psychological burden". "Honestly, it has become a problem and people just keep harping on them", he told the Jakarta Globe. "It's not fair."

Human rights & law

Counter terror unit's reputation sullied by torture claims

Radio Australia - September 15, 2010

The alleged torture of six Christians in Maluku at the hands of Indonesia's counter-terrorist police unit, Detachment 88, has thrown a spotlight on Australia's multi-million dollar support for its work.

Detachment 88 began as a small, elite squad, in a bid to insulate it from the corruption and poor practices that plague Indonesia's security forces. But it's grown in size and reach, amid mounting complaints about the use of excessive force and breaches of human rights. Australia's new Foreign minister Kevin Rudd is likely to meet soon with his Indonesian counterpart Marty Natalegawa, with one Australian expert accusing Canberra of turning a blind eye to Detachment 88's breaches.

Presenter: Linda Mottram

Speakers: Dr Greg Fealy, Australian National University; Dr Marcus Meitzner, Australian National University

Mottram: Created in 2004, in the wake of the Bali bombings, Detachment 88 began as a small, elite group within the Indonesian police with a strictly counter-terrorism brief. Australia was hoping for an effective unit based on its small numbers, its high level of training and good pay rates. Doctor Greg Fealy, an expert in Indonesia and Islam at the Australian National University, says Detachment 88 or Densus has been one of the most important and successful Indonesian police units.

Fealy: It's arrested more than 300 people on terrorism charges and its been able to get the great majority of those convicted. So its done its job very well, its very well trained and if Densus wasn't there, you would have to create some other kind of unit doing a similar task because this is very specialised work.

Mottram: But the record has been sullied. For one thing, instead of capturing and extracting intelligence from terror suspects, enabling authorities to fill in critical knowledge gaps, Detachment 88 has recently more often killed them. That's also fuel for jihadists seeking new recruits, experts fear.

The elite nature of Densus has also been eroded, as its grown and fanned out across all 33 of Indonesia's provinces to respond to terror cells in diverse parts of the archipelago from central Sulawesi, to Maluku, to Aceh.

Lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Australian National university Doctor Marcus Mietzner is acknowledged by colleagues as the best informed in Australia about Indonesia's security apparatus.

Mietzner: Detachment 88 is no longer a small, unique, elite unit. It has been expanded, it is now basically present at all important local levels, including in Maluku where this incident happened. So it is no longer under the strict control of police headquarters where you could again insulate this particular unit from tendencies in other police units. So the expansion, and in a sense as you will the decentralisation of Detachment 88 has made it impossible to maintain that very high standard which was certainly in place at the beginning.

Mottram: And that means it has also strayed into enforcing Indonesia's laws that make expressions of separatism – from flag waving to writing an essay – a crime that's seen many jailed for long terms. Greg Fealy says the Fairfax newspapers report on the cases in Maluku by reporter Tom Allard are likely a case of how Detachment 88 or Densus has been derailed.

Fealy: This is a much more politically charged area, these kind of separatist group areas and I think there are other sections of the national police that can deal quite effectively with that. You just risk the possibility that things like what Tom Allard has said happened in Ambon could be happening elsewhere in places like Papua and Aceh and the like.

Mottram: Doctor Fealy says a recent positive development was the announcement that all Densus units would be responsible to the national police commander.

Fealy: So they're now bypassing the provincial police chiefs and that centralisation should result, I hope in better oversight and in better professional standards at the local level.

Mottram: It comes on the back of continuing complaints about Detachment 88's harsh and brutal treatment of suspects... though its not a debate that's seen much light in Australia. Marcus Mietzner again.

Mietzner: There was always torture of suspects, of people who were in detention but again especially in Australia no-body really cared because it was seen as a necessary evil to get to the problem of Islamic militancy. The reason why this is now raising a different response is simply that these are Christian separatists and not Islamic militants.

Mottram: Doctor Mietzner says Australia needs to think carefully about what it wants from it's support for Indonesia's counter- terrorism efforts.

Mietzner: If the focus remains on effective counter-terrorism measures then the assistance certainly should be continued. If however the stress is on upholding human rights and making sure that everything is according to procedure, then of course the strategy would have to be changed.

Mottram: Its another issue for the complex Australia-Indonesia agenda, when Kevin Rudd sits down soon in his new capacity as Australia's foreign minister with his Indonesian counterpart, Marty Natalagawa.

Canberra denies probe into Maluku torture allegations

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Nivell Rayda – The Australian government has rejected reports it is investigating allegations that Indonesia's elite counterterrorism unit tortured suspected separatists in Maluku.

An Australian foreign ministry official previously said Canberra was concerned about the allegations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and that officials from its embassy in Jakarta had visited Ambon in Maluku to check them out.

Australia channels millions of dollars each year to Densus 88, the Indonesian National Police's counterterrorism unit. On Tuesday, however, an embassy official denied there was an investigation going on.

"An embassy officer visited Maluku recently as part of a regular program of provincial visits," a spokesman said.

"In that context, publicly available reports of allegations against the [Densus 88] Maluku Unit were raised with local government officials and NGOs. Any investigation is a matter for Indonesian authorities."

Densus 88 is said to have tortured 12 of 21 suspected separatists arrested last month for allegedly possessing an outlawed South Maluku Republic (RMS) flag.

Police accused the suspects of trying to hoist the flag during President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's visit to the province on Aug. 3 and disseminate posters, books and other material concerning alleged human rights violations in Maluku to foreign dignitaries and journalists.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Marwoto Soeto said police had launched an investigation into the torture claims. "If they're true, the officers could face charges," he said.

Sophie Richardson, the interim Asia director for New York-based HRW, urged Australia to get involved in the investigation.

"The Indonesian government has made multiple rhetorical commitments to greater police accountability... which have proved to be empty pledges," she told the Globe. "The Australian government must investigate these torture allegations."

However, Hikmahanto Juwana, an international relations expert from the University of Indonesia, said the Indonesian public might regard Australian involvement in a probe as interference.

"Australia must use only existing diplomatic channels to ensure these allegations are investigated," he said. "Since the claims were made, Australia has been trying to appease its own people, who are calling for more accountability over the funding for Densus 88."

Semuel Wailaruny, from the Maluku People's Advocacy Team, has said Densus 88 tortured many people at its provincial office.

"They were blindfolded with duct tape and scarves so they wouldn't see their attackers," he told the Globe on Monday. "They were beaten. Their heads were slammed [against] walls and they were kicked in the stomach. One of them, Yonias Siahaya, was left a cripple. He is paralyzed from the waist down."

However, Maluku Police spokesman Adj. Sr. Comr. Johanis Buai denied the accusations.

The allegations came as another Maluku prisoner, Yusuf Sipakoly, died on Monday from injuries his family says were sustained during torture, and for which he was denied treatment.

Justice urged for victims of Tanjung Priok massacre

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Nivell Rayda, Jakarta – Twenty-six years after soldiers killed dozens of demonstrators in Tanjung Priok, rights groups are demanding that the next attorney general finally bring to justice the masterminds who have so far eluded prosecution.

On Sept. 12, 1984, soldiers fired on Muslim protesters demonstrating against a government proposal requiring all organizations to adopt Pancasila as their ideology.

The death toll from the incident has long been disputed, but estimates range from 24 by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), to several hundred by other sources. Only four bodies were ever recovered and identified.

After the fall of then President Suharto in 1998, the case was finally investigated, and in 2003, 14 people were tried and subsequently acquitted by an ad hoc human rights tribunal.

Muhammad Daud, from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), on Monday accused the Attorney General's Office of protecting the masterminds behind the case, including former Vice President Try Sutrisno, who was the military commander for Jakarta at the time.

"The AGO has never been serious about prosecuting the case," he said. "There are people already identified in the Komnas HAM investigation, like Try Sutrisno, who should be prosecuted but never were. Many of Komnas HAM's findings were never used by the prosecutors, which weakened the cases against the 14 who stood trial in 2003."

Kontras has vowed to take the case to the Judicial Mafia Eradication Task Force on the grounds that several witnesses had allegedly been bribed, intimidated or harassed by law enforcement officials to recant their earlier statements to the AGO.

Another rights group, Imparsial, called for the next attorney general to be appointed from outside the AGO in order to finally resolve the case. It said that outgoing Attorney General Hendarman Supandji and his predecessors had failed to investigate cases of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Armed Forces.

If the next attorney general was to come from within the AGO's ranks, it said there would be little hope for resolutions to a string of military abuse claims. Hendarman, who is set to retire next month, has nominated eight candidates for approval to the president, all of whom are AGO officials.

The families of the Tanjung Priok victims also say an outsider to take over at the AGO. "We want an attorney general who can revive the case by bringing fresh charges against those who were acquitted, and bring to justice the top military generals who ordered the killings," said Beni Biki, whose brother Amir died of multiple gunshot wounds in the incident.

"My brother was killed by guns paid for by the public. I'm ready to forgive, but no one has come forward to claim responsibility. I will not rest until there is justice for my brother and the others who were killed."

Wanmayetti, whose father was among the Tanjung Priok demonstrators, said his body had never been found. "I just want closure," she said. "If he's dead, I want to be able to visit his grave and pay my respects, like a daughter should."

Families of victims renew calls to reopen investigation

Jakarta Post - September 15, 2010

Jakarta – Human rights groups on Tuesday demanded the government investigate alleged judicial irregularities in the 1984 Priok Riot trials at the human rights ad hoc court between 2003 and 2005, claiming widespread corruption and a failure to bring perpetrators to justice.

The groups said the acquittal of 14 military personnel by the Supreme Court reflected undue influence by interested parties.

Beni Biki, the chairman of the Union of the Tanjung Priok Victims and Families, said elements of the military had attempted to interfere in the riot cases long before the trials began in 2003.

He cited the efforts of former vice president Gen. (ret.) Try Sutrisno – Jakarta Military District chief at the time of the riots – toward social reconciliation in 2001. "Money was offered and 85 of the more than 100 victims accepted it," Beni said.

"The Attorney General at the time, MA Rahman, made no serious efforts to solve the case, as can be seen from the fact that neither Try Sutrisno nor L.B. Moerdani were held responsible." Beni said during commemorations Tuesday to mark the 26th anniversary of the riots.

L.B. Moerdani was the Commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces when the riots broke out.

The riots in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, on Sept. 12, 1984, broke out when military officers violently attacked Muslim protesters who rejected a new regulation forcing all mass organizations to adopt the state ideology Pancasila.

A 2000 report released by the National Commission on Human Rights claimed 24 people were killed, including Beni's brother, Amir Biki.

The commission alleged that 33 former military officials, including Try and Moerdani, were responsible for the tragedy. The Attorney General's Office, however, only named 14 suspects in the case.

Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, who served as commission chairman between 2002 and 2007, said prosecutors failed to explain why they named only 14 of the 33 people the commission believed should be held responsible for the bloody riots.

Papang Hidayat from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) insisted on exploring the possibility of re-opening the case.

"This was a crime against humanity under international law and has no statute of limitation. The possibility exists for a retrial with new or old suspects under new charges," he said.

Papang added that the AGO would play a vital role in uncovering what actually transpired and who was responsible. "We need a [new] attorney general who is sensitive to human rights issues," he said.

Papang said the career prosecutors recently nominated to succeed outgoing Attorney General Hendarman Supandji were poor choices because they had were not able to reform the AGO and tackle past human rights violations. (ind)

Australian investigation into torture allegations not welcome

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Jakarta – National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri has rejected any suggestion that the Australian government would investigate Indonesia's elite antiterror police unit, Densus 88, amid allegations that members of the Ambon-based unit tortured peaceful political prisoners.

"There are no foreign authorities who can conduct any form of investigation of our officers," Bambang told reporters at the Presidential Palace on Tuesday. "It's impossible."

Member of the elite unit in Ambon, which receives a large portion of its funding from the Australian and United States governments as well as training, have been accused of torturing 12 people arrested for attempting to raised the banned South Maluku Republic (RMS) flag during President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's visit to the province on Aug. 3.

Over the course of a week, the victims were allegedly blindfolded, beaten, pierced with nails, forced to hold stress positions and forced to eat chillies. One of the men, Yonias Siahaya, has been left paralyzed from the waist down, it was reported.

Bambang, in his comments on Tuesday, was reacting to a statement from the Australian ministry of foreign affairs that it had sent officials to Ambon to investigate the claims.

"The Australian government is aware of and concerned by the allegations of brutality [raised by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch] toward political prisoners," the statement said.

"Australian Embassy officials [in] Jakarta have made inquiries with the Indonesian National Police, including during a recent visit to Ambon, where these allegations were discussed with both government and civil society representatives," the official said.

Bambang also avoided answering a question about funding for Densus 88, also known as Detachment 88. "Aid can take various forms, it can be in a form of cooperation et cetera but the point is, no foreign party can investigate my officers," he reiterated.

The Sydney Morning Herald, meanwhile, has quoted Brig. Gen. Tito Karnavian as saying that the Ambon-based unit of Densus 88 would be disbanded because the alleged separatists were peaceful. He denied suggestions there was a wider problem of excessive force within the unit.

The United States has reportedly pulled funding or other assistance to the Ambon-based members of the unit since 2008.

Foreign assistance for Indonesia's often notorious security personnel is a sensitive topic in many donor nations, with most human rights opposed to providing any form of assistance until Indonesia addresses its military's alleged war crimes and human rights abuses.

Indonesia police to investigate police torture allegations

Agence France Presse - September 14, 2010

Jakarta – Indonesian police said on Tuesday that they will investigate new allegations that political activists have been tortured by members of United States- and Australian-backed antiterror unit Detachment 88.

The counter-terror squad, also known as Densus 88, allegedly tortured 12 suspected separatists who were arrested last month for possessing an outlawed South Maluku Republic (RMS) flag.

The allegations came as another Maluku separatist, Yusuf Sipakoly, died in custody on Monday from injuries his family says were sustained during torture.

Sipakoly was arrested in 2007 for unfurling the outlawed flag and performing a traditional war dance in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Police in Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, denied that his death was the result of kidney failure stemming from torture, and dismissed allegations that he had been denied medical treatment for years.

But police spokesman Marwoto Soeto told AFP in Jakarta that allegations against Detachment 88 officers related to the suspects arrested between Aug. 1 and 7 would be the subject of a "thorough investigation".

"If the allegations are true, the officers could face charges... Torture is a criminal act which carries a maximum penalty of nine years in jail," he said.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday that members of Detachment 88 had beaten the detainees for up to a week, brought them close to suffocation with plastic bags, stabbed them with nails and forced them to eat raw chillies.

Detachment 88 receives millions of dollars in funding and support from Australia and the United States, which helped establish the unit in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and the 2002 Bali bombing.

An Australian foreign affairs spokesman said Canberra was "concerned" about the allegations and embassy officials had made inquiries with the Indonesian police, including during a recent visit to Ambon.

Indonesia is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture but it has no corresponding law against the practice, which is widespread throughout the country's prisons and police forces.

The UN special rapporteur for torture visited Indonesia in 2007 and found that police used torture as a "routine practice in Jakarta and other metropolitan areas of Java", the most populated island in the archipelago.

Prisoner in Maluku dies after years of neglect, rights groups say

Jakarta Globe - September 13, 2010

Nivell Rayda, Jakarta – After years of being denied access to proper medical treatment, Yusuf Sipakoly, a political prisoner being detained in Ambon, Maluku, died at the age of 52 on Monday.

Despite mounting pressure from international human rights group such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, authorities from Ambon's Nania Prison had repeatedly refused treatment for Yusuf, who had been serving a 12-year sentence for treason.

Although Kuda Mati General Hospital in Ambon has not yet released its findings into the cause of death, including to Yusuf's family, Semuel Wailaruny, a lawyer from the Maluku People's Advocacy Team, which has been monitoring Yusuf's condition, said that he had been suffering from kidney failure and had required dialysis.

Amnesty said it believed that such denial of urgently needed medical care amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

"Yusuf became gravely ill after he was tortured during his detention and interrogation process by police officers three years ago. And for three years, he was not treated properly," Semuel told the Jakarta Globe.

"He was beaten in the abdomen, which might have caused his kidney to rupture, and suffered internal bleeding in his vital organs.

"He told prison officials about his severe pains but was denied hospital treatment. He also did not receive adequate treatment for rib injuries he had received during his detention."

It was not until last week that Yusuf was given permission to be treated at Kuda Mati Hospital.

"Help might have come too late for Yusuf," Semuel said. "His face was already blue because he needed dialysis. He was already weak. I could see the light in his eyes fading."

The lawyer added that Yusuf went into a coma at 5 a.m. on Monday and the hospital released him into the care of his family at 10 a.m. Yusuf died at his home at 11:30 a.m. local time.

"The treatment of Yusuf Sipakoly violates Indonesia's obligations under international human rights law," Amnesty said in a statement. "The denial of medical care for Yusuf Sipakoly also violates the guarantee of the right to health in Article 28H (1) of the Indonesian Constitution."

Chandran Lestyono, a spokesman for the Justice and Human Rights Ministry, which oversees the country's penal system, said financial constraints made providing proper medical treatment for prisoners difficult.

"The medical budget for each prison is limited, sometimes as little as Rp 15,000 [$1.65] per prisoner per year," he said. "To address the financial issues, we must coordinate with the Health Ministry, and that means a very long administrative process. So we didn't do this deliberately."

Yusuf was arrested in June 2007 for assisting a group of Maluku political activists who unfurled the Benang Raja flag, the symbol of the South Maluku independence movement, while performing a traditional war dance in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during a visit to Ambon.

Although Yusuf did not participate in the act, he was caught with a Benang Raja flag. Semuel said Yusuf was subsequently taken to a police station where he and other activists were allegedly beaten by police officers.

"We have tried to take the human rights abuse case to the National Commission on Human Rights and police internal affairs, but no action has ever been taken," he said.

Police deny Densus 88 tortured detainees

Jakarta Post - September 14, 2010

Erwida Maulia, Jakarta – Australia has sent an official to Maluku to investigate the alleged torture of political detainees by Indonesia's elite antiterror unit Detachment 88 (Densus 88), an allegation quickly denied by the National Police.

Australia's Sydney Morning Herald daily reported Monday that Australia had sent an official to provincial capital Ambon to investigate claims that the unit, which receives millions of dollars in funding from Australia each year, brutalized a group of separatists last month, beating and dehumanizing them in detention.

"The Australian government is aware and concerned about the activities of Detachment 88 officers, dispatching an official two weeks ago to Ambon, Maluku's capital, to investigate the claims," the Herald said.

The arrests of the Republic of South Maluku (RMS) separatists occurred in August after police and intelligence officers uncovered a plan to fly dozens of banned separatist flags and other politically sensitive material attached to helium-filled balloons over Ambon when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and foreign guests were in the city for Sail Banda event.

Indonesian Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Marwoto Suto, however, denied that Detachment 88 had anything to do with the alleged arrests, saying it was not part of the unit's job description, which is to specifically handle terrorism suspects.

"Separatist movements should be the responsibility of the local police, and or Brimob [Police Mobile Brigade] squads assigned to conflict areas, such as Aceh, Papua and Maluku," Marwoto said. "Detachment 88 handles terrorists, not separatists."

He did not deny, however, the possible mistreatment of prisoners by local police.

Marwoto said the police might conduct an internal investigation into the alleged torture, but only after the Australian government sent an official letter regarding the plan to investigate the case.

"It's only normal that they come [to National Police headquarters] first to give the letter; otherwise the Maluku Police might reject the investigation," he said, adding he had not heard about the arrival of an Australian official probing the case.

Marwoto confirmed that Detachment 88 was indeed supported by the Australian government. "What I know is that the support is not cash, but in the form of training, education and equipment," he told The Jakarta Post.

In June, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report saying that the unit, in cooperation with prison guards and local police, tortured political prisoners in Maluku.

The international watchdog conducted interviews with more than 50 political prisoners between December 2008 and May 2010. They found that Detachment 88 officers tortured those who tried to "peacefully wave banned symbols".

In line with the report launch, HRW asked all benefactor countries, including Australia, the Netherlands and several EU countries, to stop funding Detachment 88 until there is an impartial investigation into its activities.

Indonesia's new danger from within

Sydney Morning Herald - September 13, 2010

Tom Allard – Yonias Siahaya's eyes, wide open and full of fear, shift constantly. They dart from left to right, across the crowded ward at Ambon's main hospital, like those of a wild animal just caught and caged.

Siahaya is in considerable pain, his left side immobilised from the waist down. His right hand is handcuffed to his bed and his hip fractured, the result, he says, of a savage beating last month by members of Detachment 88, Indonesia's elite counter- terrorism unit funded and trained by Australia and the US.

But the 58-year-old construction worker and father of eight is not a radical jihadist. He is a Christian and his crime was to be found in possession of two flags of the Republic of Southern Moluccas, the banned emblem of separatists based in and around Ambon, an island in Indonesia's east most famous as the bustling hub of the lucrative spice trade in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The RMS (Republik Maluku Selatan) movement claims widespread support but is, by most accounts, small. All agree it has little or no military capacity. But while it lacks size, it has a knack for launching peaceful protests aimed at embarrassing the Indonesian President, Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

In 2007 a group of RMS activists infiltrated a Family Day ceremony hosted by Yudhoyono at Ambon's Merdeka stadium. Posing as a dance troupe, they somehow convinced organisers to let them perform the cakalele war dance before unfurling a nine-metre-long RMS flag hidden inside a drum before a stunned and angry President.

Siahaya was part of a new plot, this time to float dozens of the distinctive rainbow flags attached to helium-filled balloons during Ambon's Sail Banda regatta in August when the city was filled with foreigners and Yudhoyono was again visiting.

Siahaya is especially agitated when the Herald visits because the police security detail that has been guarding him for more than two weeks have briefly left their posts and could return sooner than anticipated. He is, however, anxious to tell his story, one that begins at 3am on August 2, when his home was raided by police.

"They took me to the Detachment 88 office in Tantui. There, they blindfolded me and asked me questions. They didn't believe what I was saying and they started hitting me. They hit me repeatedly... with fists and kicks on my face and body."

Moving his arms wide, above his head, he adds: "My arms were stretched up like this... Then I was pierced with a nail but, since my eyes were blindfolded, I didn't see who did it, I only felt it."

The beating lasted five hours, Siahaya says, and caused him to cough up blood and vomit. When it stopped, he collapsed on the floor, where he remained for four days before he was taken to hospital.

Siahaya's account of brutality was one of eight obtained from a group of Malukans arrested early last month in a series of co- ordinated raids by Malukan police and the local unit of Detachment 88.

All of them, besides Siahaya, are in prison. Those incarcerated smuggled out recorded statements and photographs. In their testimonies, they allege mistreatment ranging from the brutal to the puerile and perverse.

Many of them say they received beatings that lasted for days. They describe pistol-whippings and being ordered to hold excruciating stress positions while they were kicked and hit with wooden truncheons, iron bars, sandals and fists.

One man, Paul Lodewijk Krikoff, said he was forced to eat chillies and told to embrace and kiss a fellow prisoner on the mouth.

Another, Jacob Sinay, says his leg was placed under a table leg while police officers jumped up and down on it.

Two of the men said plastic bags were placed over their heads until they were close to asphyxiation.

All of them allege that the mistreatment occurred, at least at some point, at the Detachment 88 office in Ambon.

The allegations add to a growing disquiet about elements of Detachment 88, their tactics and remit, including its recent propensity to shoot dead a large number of terrorist suspects, forgoing potentially valuable intelligence and giving jihadists a rallying cry against the Indonesian state.

They also raise broader questions about Indonesia's approach to peaceful protest, amid a recent history of its security forces harshly prosecuting dissenters in Maluku and Papua, Indonesia's easternmost region that is off-limits to journalists without permission from Jakarta.

Ahmad Yani, a legislator from the United Development Party, known by its Indonesian initials PPP, said Detachment 88's foray into battling separatism and its recent history of using excessive force was "completely out of their job description".

He warned that the counter-terrorism unit risked becoming the modern equivalent of Kopassus under the Suharto dictatorship, the Indonesian military's special forces unit that acted with impunity, kidnapping and killing political activists across the archipelago.

"We have to be really careful about it because we don't want anyone to turn the clock back to the old days when Kopassus got training in the US and tortured their own people when they're back home."

Indonesia has made great strides since the Suharto years, becoming a democracy with a vibrant media and civil society. This year, the US agreed to restore ties with Kopassus that were severed in the late 1990s.

But, as revealed in today's Herald, it quietly installed a ban on training Detachment 88 members linked to abuses in Maluku in 2008, a response to the brutal round-up of activists linked to the dance incident in 2007.

That ban, which was not revealed at the time, remains in place, says a spokesman for the US embassy in Jakarta, Paul Belmont. Indeed, the Herald understands it has been extended to include new members of the unit associated with last month's abuses. "We have been critical of alleged human rights abuses against separatists, in particular in Papua and Maluku," Belmont said.

Australia, too, is deeply concerned, sending an official from the embassy in Jakarta to Ambon two weeks ago to investigate and raising the issue with Indonesian police and government officials.

"The Australian government is aware of, and concerned by, the allegations of brutality towards political prisoners," said a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs. The spokesman declined to confirm or deny whether Australia had introduced a similar ban to the US.

Asked to comment about what's happening in Maluku, the commander of Detachment 88, Tito Karnavian, was unable to grant an interview but insisted, via an "official statement" delivered by SMS that "Det 88 of headquarters that I lead DID NOT deal with that case".

Maluku police denied there was any mistreatment, but their claims that no one was hospitalised or that Detachment 88 members weren't involved were directly contradicted by the evidence, including copies of the arrest warrants signed by a Detachment 88 commander and the hospitalisation of Siahaya.

To be sure, Detachment 88 officers did not act alone in Maluku. Under an unwieldy structure that has emerged since Detachment 88's formation in 2004, it has deployed its highly trained members to all of Indonesia's 33 provinces. They often act on jobs at the behest of provincial commanders.

But the co-ordinator of the Indonesian human rights group Kontras, Haris Azhar, says it defies commonsense that Detachment 88 leaders in Jakarta do not know what's happening in Maluku and Papua, where allegations of torture involving its officers have been emanating for three years.

"Jakarta should know what their representatives in local police do. Otherwise, what are they doing in Jakarta?" Haris asks. "This is part of the system to limit information to the public."

The US and Australia have an obvious interest in combating Islamic extremism in Indonesia. The two countries have lost more than 100 of their citizens to terrorist attacks in the country. But they keep their support of the unit as low-key as possible, not least because it can be used by extremists to argue that the Indonesian state is beholden to infidel governments.

They are also anxious to keep relations on track with Indonesia, which is why both nations have kept under wraps from the public their long-held concerns about Detachment 88. But Haris from Kontras said the issue of abuses by Detachment 88 needs to be investigated thoroughly and those responsible for abuses brought to justice.

"This is a serious problem not only for Indonesia but also for donor countries like the US and Australia. They, too, have to be responsible for what Detachment 88 does," Haris says.

"Their brutality against the [Malukan] activists, for instance, will nurture the seed of hatred against the country. So Detachment 88 is now a social problem for this country."

It is understood that senior commanders of Detachment 88 have been unhappy with the activities of its units in the provinces, because co-ordination with Jakarta on anti-terrorism investigations has, at times, been poor.

The counter-terrorism force is to be restructured and its units placed under 10 regional commands directly answerable to the police chief in Jakarta. But the structure still puts a premium on combating separatism.

"Detachment 88 was formed to focus on terrorism but it can also be deployed to counter high-intensity crime, so handling separatism movements is not out of their jurisdiction," says Marwoto, the national police spokesman.

Flying flags and floating balloons hardly seems to qualify as a "high-intensity crime".

But Yonias Siahaya and the others arrested last month, about a dozen in all, can expect long prison sentences if, as expected, they are formally charged.

About 70 people were rounded up after the 2007 dance incident and are serving sentences of between six and 20 years, more severe punishments than many people charged with terrorism and corruption offences.

Yusuf Sapacoli, temporarily out of prison and in the same hospital as Siahaya due to chronic kidney problems he attributes to beatings and being forced to drink hot water infused with carbon paper, was among those arrested in 2007.

"I got 12 years," he says. "I told the court I didn't commit rebellion. I never carried a gun and pointed it at anyone or anything. I never launched any violent attack against the state. I only wanted to prove that I have the right to express my opinion." (With Karuni Rompies)

Anti-terror unit deals out own terror

Melbourne Age - September 13, 2010

Tom Allard, Maluku – Australia has sent an official to the Indonesian province of Maluku to investigate claims that Indonesia's elite counter-terrorism unit, Detachment 88, which Australia and the US train and fund, brutalised a group of separatists last month, repeatedly beating and abusing them in detention

The alleged serious mistreatment of political activists in the Indonesian province comes as it emerged that, in May 2008, the US secretly banned members of Detachment 88 in Maluku from receiving assistance.

The Age has also learned that the Australian government is "aware and concerned" about the activities of the Detachment 88 officers, sending an official to Ambon, Maluku's capital, to investigate two weeks ago.

But human rights activists argue the response from the donor nations is inadequate because the abuses of peaceful protesters, which were first documented in late 2007, continue.

About 12 activists were arrested in early August and taken to the Detachment 88 office in Tantui, a suburb of Ambon, where they say they were subject to mistreatment both brutal and bizarre, an investigation by The Age has revealed.

The arrests occurred after police and intelligence officers foiled a plot to float dozens of banned flags and other political material attached on helium-filled balloons across Ambon when Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and foreign guests were in town for the Sail Banda regatta.

Seven of the prisoners smuggled out recorded statements, while another activist was interviewed while recuperating from a fractured hip. He was handcuffed to his bed in hospital.

All said they were blindfolded and then hit around the head and body by the police officers during interrogation, sometimes with wooden sticks and bars or while forced to hold painful stress positions.

Police allegedly jumped on the prisoners, burned them with cigarettes, pierced them with nails, and brought them to the point of suffocation with plastic bags placed over their heads.

One said he was forced to eat raw chillies, while two said they were ordered to hug and kiss each other and beaten when they refused. "We were all tortured beyond limit and, during the torture, if we mentioned the name of the Lord Jesus, we would be punched and slapped," said Yusuf Sahetapy, one of the prisoners.

A spokesman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade declined to confirm or deny whether Australia had, or would, institute a ban on Detachment 88 officers like the US, saying the department would not comment on individual members of the unit.

"The Australian government is aware of, and concerned by, the allegations of brutality towards political prisoners," the spokesman said. "We will continue to monitor the situation and make representations as necessary."

Detachment 88's commander, Tito Karnavian, said the unit in Maluku was not under his control, and referred inquiries to local police.

The director of criminal investigations in Maluku, Jhonny Siahaan, said "no violent act was ever used during the investigation. All the people arrested are doing fine. None with broken bones, all healthy, none hospitalised. It is our department doing it, not Detachment 88."

But The Age interviewed one of the prisoners, Yonias Siahaya, in hospital, where he was recuperating from a fractured hip and was handcuffed to his bed. Mr Sahetapy also said he spent two days in hospital, before returning to detention and more beatings.

The Age also obtained one of the arrest warrants for the men, which is signed by Dwight Jordan de Fretes, who is identified as acting commander of Detachment 88 in Maluku.

Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia of Human Rights Watch, said the allegations of torture by Detachment 88 have been consistent and detailed for three years, and Australia and the US needed to pressure the Indonesian government.

"Detachment 88 should be investigated by an independent body. The international donors should press very hard and consider suspending or limiting assistance," he said. "This kind of torture is a damning indictment of the Indonesian government... and of those who support Detachment 88."

Indon torture claims no surprise: Expert

Australian Associated Press - September 13, 2010

Adam Gartrell – Australia should press Indonesia to ensure its elite anti-terrorism squad obeys the law and upholds human rights, an expert says.

Allegations that members of the Australia-funded Special Detachment 88 force recently brutalised peaceful political activists in the province of Maluku should come as no surprise, Deakin University's Damien Kingsbury says.

"I would say the allegations would be absolutely correct," Mr Kingsbury told AAP. "This sort of stuff has been going on for years, it's par for the course."

Detachment 88 is regularly accused of human rights abuses, particularly in Papua and West Papua, by organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Fairfax newspapers this week reported about a dozen separatist activists were arrested last month over a plan to display banned flags and other political material during a visit by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The activists were subsequently taken to a Detachment 88 office in Ambon, Maluku's capital, where they were blindfolded, beaten, burnt with cigarettes and pierced with nails.

Mr Kingsbury says Australia's efforts to inculcate human rights standards into Indonesian organisations like Detachment 88 have had little success.

"The evidence has been consistently that this doesn't sink in and these organisations continue to use methods that we would find highly inappropriate.

"Australia is well within its rights to say 'look, we support the work of the anti-terrorism squad but it must act in a lawful manner and not actually encourage that which it seeks to resolve'.

"By beating peaceful protesters and committing human rights abuses what they're actually doing is pushing people towards violence, not away from it."

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Monday said the focus of Australia's engagement with Detachment 88 was in combating terrorism in order to protect the lives of Australians and Indonesians.

"Detachment 88 has not sought assistance from Australia in any investigations or operations to counter internal separatist movements," a DFAT spokesperson said.

But Australia was aware of and concerned by allegations of brutality against political prisoners, the spokesperson said.

"Australian embassy officials from Jakarta have made inquiries with the Indonesian National Police, including during a recent visit to Ambon, where these allegations were discussed with both government and civil society representatives.

"We will continue to monitor the situation, and make representations as necessary." Asked if Australia had followed the United States' lead to ban members of the Maluku Detachment 88 from receiving further assistance, the spokesperson said: "We do not comment on individual members."

Detachment 88 head Tito Karnavian effectively washed his hands of the allegations, saying regionally-based Detachment 88 forces like that in Maluku were not under his command.

"That is why Detachment 88s (under regional command) are going to be dismissed very soon and replaced by one centralised Detachment 88 headquarters," Mr Karnavian told AAP via text message.

"So that command and control will be easier particularly for countering terrorism."

Detachment 88 was formed after the 2002 Bali bombing with support from Australia and the US. It continues to receive millions of dollars in Australian funding each year.

Freedom of expression & press

Military chief who allegedly beat reporter fired

Jakarta Globe - September 9, 2010

Candra Malik, Surakarta – The Karanganyar military district chief has been removed from his post the day after he sought out a reporter whom he allegedly kidnapped, beat up and threatened, and offered an apology.

The chief, Lt. Col. Lilik Sutikna, visited the office of the Solo Post daily in Surakarta on Tuesday, to apologize to journalist Triyono, who covered a corruption trial that implicated the Karanganyar military district.

Lilik has publicly admitted to beating Triyono and threatening his family while in a fit of rage over the story. Brig. Gen. Langgeng Sulistiyono, the Diponegoro military commander in charge of Central Java, confirmed on Wednesday that he had removed Lilik from the post because of the beating, and had launched a Military Police investigation, according to Col. Abdul Rahman Kadir, commander of the Surakarta military district.

"We will make sure that the suspect is prosecuted, and the victim is protected. We deeply regret the beating incident that resulted in the hurting of a journalist and sullied press freedom," Abdul Rahman told reporters.

Triyono then described what Lilik had done: "He beat me five times, grabbed my hair and threatened me. He said that he would kill me and my family if I dared to write about" the corruption case.

Triyono wrote a story on Sept. 1, covering a hearing in the trial of Toni Haryono, the husband of Karanganyar District Head Rina Iriani, who is accused of embezzling Rp 15 billion in government housing funds and directing the money to political parties, police and military command officials in Karanganyar.

"I was picked up by a military detective and taken to their headquarters," Triyono said. "In the commandant's office, Lt. Col. Lilik Sutikna beat me and threatened to kill me. He said that he did not like my story."

Triyono initially did not reveal what had happened to him for fear of reprisal, he said. But he could not hide his swollen face and black eye.

After he revealed the truth to his editors, he was rushed to a hospital. Accompanied by his editors and a number of press organizations, Triyono reported Lilik to the Military Police detachment in Solo on Tuesday.

"Thankfully, the case was handled immediately. However, we ask that the safety of Triyono and his family be guaranteed by the police and the army," said Anton Wahyu Prihartono, the managing editor of Solo Pos.

Lilik has admitted to beating and threatening Triyono, saying he could not help himself. "I realized I did something wrong and I am ready to undergo the legal process in the Military Police detachment," he said on Wednesday morning.

Politics & political parties

Talk of president Tommy draws scorn

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Markus Junianto Sihaloho, Jakarta – Analysts have dismissed the efforts of several small political parties to court former president Suharto's son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra as their possible presidential candidate.

Burhanuddin Muhtadi, a political analyst from the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI), said its surveys on possible future national leaders had never included Tommy's name.

"Only a small number of people miss the Suharto regime. Many people would avoid parties linked to Suharto, including Golkar," Burhanuddin said. He said more than 70 percent of the people were satisfied with the current state of democracy.

It was obvious Suharto's descendants were still keen to return to the national political stage, Burhanuddin said, citing attempts by the former dictator's eldest daughter, Siti "Tutut" Hardiyanti Rukmana's to run as the Concern for the Nation Functional Party's candidate (PKPB) in the past two elections.

Her sister, Siti Hediyanti, failed in her bid to enter politics through Golkar and to chair the Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI) this year.

Burhanuddin said Tommy, a former member of the People's Consultative Assembly, had twice failed to re-enter politics. In 2009, he ran for the chairmanship of Golkar but did not get a single vote.

His attempt to chair the Mutual Assistance Families Society (MKGR), a core group within Golkar, also went nowhere this year. "From all this, I doubt he has the ability to still have a role in Indonesian politics," he said.

Unlike Tutut, who still had some political clout, Tommy was mostly known as the "prince of Cendana," who preferred to party.

Cendana is the name of the street where Suharto's private residence is located in a posh district of Jakarta. The name is also used to refer to the Suharto clan. Burhanuddin said the small parties were only interested in Tommy's wealth.

"I see Tommy's passion to enter politics as his new strategy to secure his wealth and assets," he said. "But remember, he may have a big passion but times have changed." The Suharto name was no longer a selling point.

A group of small political parties announced on Monday that they were considering nominating Tommy for president. The 14 parties contested last year's general elections but failed to get into the House of Representatives.

Jeirry Sumampouw, from the Independent Committee for Election Monitoring (KIPP), said it was up to the public to find out Tommy's motives for returning to politics.

He said several wealthy figures with a dark past had been able to make the transition, citing retired Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto, who happens to be a former Suharto son-in-law, and Gen.Wiranto, both leading figures under the Suharto regime.

Jeirry said the two now enjoyed a new image as politicians after investing heavily in establishing the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) and the People's Conscience Party (Hanura), respectively.

"No one remembers their involvement in human rights violations. They have even become idols for some," Jeirry said. "This is what people should see. Tommy may have similar motives."

Although the election law might complicate his bid, Jeirry said Tommy's money could still command votes. "The key now is whether Tommy would dare to spend his money," he said.

Haris Azhar, coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said that while Tommy might increase his popularity by using the small parties to run in the next election, it would not guarantee him votes as most people would still see him mainly as Suharto's son.

SBY is down, but he's not out, surveys find

Jakarta Globe - September 9, 2010

Armando Siahaan, Jakarta – Despite President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's flagging popularity, his Democrats remain the party to beat, in part because of a lack of viable alternatives, according to recent surveys.

If a national election had been held last month, the Democratic Party would have won with 27 percent of the vote, six percentage points more than what the party managed in winning elections in 2009, according to a survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute. The survey involved 1,829 respondents and was released this month.

While survey respondents had doubts about a viable alternative to Yudhoyono, former President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) appears to be benefitting from the president's troubles.

The LSI, which has done work for Golkar and other parties in the past, said its survey found that Yudhoyono's popularity had dropped to 66 percent in August from 85 percent shortly after he was re-elected to a second five-year term a year ago.

"This shows that there is a great dilemma among the public that while SBY's performance is seen as deteriorating, there is also a lack of an alternative figure who could bring new hope to the country," said Burhanuddin Muhtadi, an LSI analyst.

Separately, a survey by Indo Barometer, which has also worked with political parties in the past, found that if a presidential election had been held in August, 35.1 percent of the electorate would have voted for the incumbent. The survey involved 1,200 respondents.

Megawati came in a distant second with 13.6 percent, and retired Army general Prabowo Subianto, from the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), came in third with 4.5 percent.

Even though Megawati fared poorly in the limited survey, her party was seen making inroads elsewhere.

The survey found that the PDI-P was making strides in the eyes of voters, with its popularity rising from 9 percent to 15 percent since April this year. The party won 13 percent of the vote in the 2009 legislative elections.

The LSI survey, which did not offer figures for former client Golkar, found the Democrats' popularity had fallen from 32 percent to 27 percent since January.

Burhanuddin said there was a correlation between the PDI-P's gains and Yudhoyono's declining approval rating. He said that as long as people remained disappointed in the performance of the government, particularly on populist issues, the opposition PDI-P would continue to gain.

The LSI survey also showed that 77 percent of the respondents thought the government had failed to properly handle a spate of explosions involving liquefied petroleum gas canisters, while 66 percent objected to the government's decision to increase electricity rates.

"This is natural. When the government's performance is seen as bad, the opposition automatically gets the credit," Burhanuddin said.

However, he said the PDI-P's failure to break the 15 percent approval rating pointed to a public that did not believe the party had a leader who matched up well with Yudhoyono. "Their leaders are the same old faces," he said.

Environment & natural disasters

Activists demand study of Timor oil spill's health impacts

Jakarta Globe - September 15, 2010

Eras Poke, Kupang – A nongovernmental organization in East Nusa Tenggara has lodged a claim for a scientific evaluation of the long-term health damage that could result from last year's Timor Sea oil spill.

The spill, which lasted 74 days, occurred after the Montara oil rig, operated by PTTEP Australasia, a subsidiary of Thailand's PTT Exploration & Production, caught fire off Australia's northern coast in August 2009.

The Indonesian government said the spill affected 78,000 square kilometers of Indonesian waters and is currently seeking Rp 22 trillion ($2.44 billion) in compensation from the oil rig's operator.

Activists, however, say this figure is understated. Among the groups arguing for more compensation is the West Timor Care Foundation (YPTB), which has been lobbying on behalf of fishermen who claim to be affected by the spill.

YPTB's Frans Tulung said it submitted a claim last week for PTTEP Australasia and the Australian government to pay for a complete evaluation of the oil spill's impact.

Tulung said that because seafood was the staple diet for up to two million people in the province, the oil spill and related environmental damage posed a serious health threat.

Ferdi Tanoni, YPTB's chairman, said the organization decided to submit the claim on its own because the Indonesian government had failed to take into consideration the spill's long-term health impact on residents of East Nusa Tenggara.

"A study by Alaskan researchers showed that the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 reduced the life expectancy of the residents there by 20 years," Ferdi said. "This is the long-term effect that the Indonesian government has overlooked but that we are demanding must be studied."

The foundation has previously said the damage caused by the spill was worth about $15 billion.

Ferdi also lashed out at the government and provincial administration for not compiling a comprehensive list of residents affected by the spill.

"Besides the health problems, lots of fishermen and seaweed farmers have lost their livelihoods," he said. "The authorities must implement programs to ensure that they find work."

Frans said local fishermen and seaweed farmers had for months complained of reduced catches and dwindling harvests in the contaminated waters.

"Based on these considerations, we are calling for the formation of a joint, credible and accountable research team to evaluate the impact of the oil spill," Frans said.

"The team should comprise officials from the Indonesian and Australian governments, as well as from PTTEP Australasia and from community groups in East Nusa Tenggara."

YPTB's advocacy team includes Christine Mason, an oil law expert from Australia, and Welhelmus Wetan Songa, an international law professor at Nusa Cendana University in Kupang.

Health & education

Religions 'play essential role' in family planning

Jakarta Post - September 14, 2010

Jakarta – Religious leaders are widely regarded as playing a significant role in promoting the government's family planning program, religious activists say.

Former Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) chairman Hasyim Muzadi said religious leaders could play an important role in promoting the family planning program, as had been proven during the New Order era.

The interim results of the 2010 census shows that Indonesia's population has reached 237.6 million, jumping by 32 million people over the last 10 years. Demographers have warned that a population boom is looming, and that a breakthrough in family planning efforts is needed.

"In the past, ulemas gave their full support to the government [family planning] program. They helped it run very effectively by promoting the idea that contraception did not violate religious teachings," Hasyim said.

Controversy over birth control emerged after 1998, when several Islamic groups rejected the idea, he said.

The ulemas were once involved in campaigns conducted by the National Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) at grass roots levels, Hasyim said.

However, their role largely depended on the government and their success diminished along with changes in the government's policy on family planning in 1998, he said.

The role of the ulemas, working together with the BKKBN, should be revitalized, he said.

Ignas Tari of the Commission for Family at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Jakarta, said church leaders might make a positive contribution to the family planning program because the church supported the idea of "family welfare".

"However, we disagree with artificial birth control methods," he said, adding that the church, in this case, chose natural family planning methods, such as by limiting sexual intercourse to times when women are not fertile. This, he said, was because the church upheld the right to life.

Ignas said such methods could be as effective as using contraception, citing East Nusa Tenggara, a province where the majority of the population is Catholic, as a successful executor of the method.

Ignas said the government had recognized the method in the family planning program. Religious leaders, especially priests, play a significant role in promoting family planning among the faithful, he said.

"Every couple who gets married must attend a marriage preparation course facilitated by priests and doctors. During the course, priests teach them about natural family planning methods," he said.

In addition to this, Ignas said, priests also provide marriage counseling sessions, which would also include consultation about natural family planning methods.

Lieus Sungkharisma from the Buddhist oranization Gemabudhi said there was not much controversy on birth control among Buddhists, since religious leaders also played an indirect role in promoting the family through disseminating its religious doctrines.

"Our religious leaders suggest that we plan everything in life and this also includes forming a family," he said, adding that marriage was also not essential in Buddhism.

According to Lieus, another essential doctrine is related to the essence of life itself – that everybody born on earth undergoes suffering. (lnd)

Education becoming more elitist, poor students missing out

Kompas - September 13, 2010

Jakarta – Tertiary education is becoming more elitist compared with the 1990s and 1990s, with the participation of those from less well off families dropping. The increasingly high cost of study is the principle obstacle facing the poor wishing to attend tertiary education.

This fact can be seen from a study on gross enrollment ratio (GER) rates based on the economic background of students.

Looking at population census data for the years 2003-2008, the tertiary education GER disparity between students from rich and poor families is extremely high.

Enrolment levels for the poorest section of the population at tertiary education level in 2008 reached 4.19 percent. For the richest section of the population meanwhile it was as high as 32.4 percent, although this was a decline of 3 percent. For the second richest group meanwhile, there was an increase of around 1 percent.

Nationally, the tertiary education GER for the academic year 2009/2010 only reached 17.93 percent out of those in the age group 19-24 years, around 28 million people.

"I see that tertiary education is becoming more and more elitist for the poor. In the 1980s and 1990s, the number of poor that were able to study was above 10 percent. Meaning that the current situation is of even more concern for those who do not have money", said education observer Darmaningtyas when contact from Jakarta on Sunday September 12.

According to Darmaningtyas, access for poor students had declined dramatically since 2000. The reason for this is that during this period state universities (PTN) began to open special entry lanes that in reality were easier for rich students to access.

The logic of the state universities, which have opened a special entry lanes so that cross subsidies could happen, said Darmaningtyas, is inappropriate. Tertiary education institutions are not incorporated companies that provide different access in accordance with economic means.

"Tertiary education provides a service that is a citizen's right, not differentiating between rich and poor. In education, access must be the same. What [should] be differentiated are taxes for the poor and rich that can later be used to fund education", said the activists from the Taman Siswa University.

Because of this therefore, tertiary education institutions now, particularly state university, must be cheap. In order for this to happen, the government must increase budget allocations for tertiary education level institutions.

In addition to this, the acceptance of students must be open and simultaneous, lest there be technological obstacles for students from remote regions with online systems coming into effect.

National Education Minister Mohammad Nuh admits that educational access at intermediate and tertiary levels between the poor and rich are still imbalanced. Nuh however stressed that education cannot be allowed to be discriminative. Because of this, efforts to broaden public access to all education levels must be improved. (ELN)

[Translated by James Balowski.]

End of innocence for Bali's next generation

The Australian - September 11, 2010

Deborah Cassrels – On a flawless day in Bali, tourists are revelling in sun and surf and padding about plush hotels. Beneath the highly developed tourism industry a deepening health crisis is gripping the island.

Encapsulating the trend is a tiny Balinese girl whose unfocused gaze indicates her poor state of health. Asih, two, is pale and listless as she wanders about her home of the past year, Anak Anak Bali orphanage, or Bali Kids, in Kerobokan. Asih is having trouble fighting off a common cold. She is HIV positive and has tuberculosis, preventing her immune system from kicking in quickly.

She is one of the estimated 7317 HIV-AIDS cases in Bali, part of an epidemic, much of it heterosexually driven, dubbed an AIDS tsunami by health workers. Known cases are thought to be the tip of the iceberg. The infection rate has jumped 81 per cent from 4041 in late 2006, according to the Bali Department of Health. The rate is alarming not only for the exponential rise but because health providers are questioning the veracity of records.

Figures are thought to be much higher than reported and their collection is being thwarted by discrimination, social taboos and ignorance of the disease, doctors say. Local men who engage in same-sex relationships, visit sex workers without using condoms or inject drugs with infected needles are not telling of their risk-taking behaviour, even on their deathbeds.

But data shows migrant Indonesians and Balinese men, many of whom work in tourism areas, are spreading the virus from sex workers to unsuspecting spouses, corroborating a Health Department study that found 48.9 per cent of sex workers only "often use" condoms. Four times as many men as women have HIV-AIDS.

As the epidemic ravages families, a new generation is falling victim. Mothers, usually widows whose partners have died, are unknowingly transmitting the virus to children at birth. Many children are being forced into orphanages as a result.

Last month tourism officials floated the idea of legalised prostitution, while examining the risk to tourists and their possible role in promulgating the disease. Although tourists are believed to be largely unaffected, it's unknown how many are at risk. In the firing line are Bali's biggest fans, Australians, who contributed a whopping 56 per cent rise to foreign arrivals with 213,361 visits in the year to May compared with the same period last year.

Asih's story, which includes family disintegration coupled with a backlash from poorly educated villagers, is typical. After Asih's father died from AIDS-related illnesses, her HIV-positive mother fled her village in Singaraja, north Bali, when fearful villagers warned they would kill her baby if they did not leave. Both ended up in Sanglah General Hospital, Denpasar, for months. They are being treated, successfully, with antiretroviral drugs but Asih's mother, unable to care for her child, surrendered her to Bali Kids, which offers free clinical and dental treatment, and provides mobile medical services to other orphanages and villages.

About 4000 children live in 71 orphanages around Bali, many disreputable and none of which accept known HIV-positive children, says Bali Kids' project co-ordinator, Adelaide-born Brenton Whittaker. Yet many are sent to orphanages after their parents die of AIDS-related illnesses. Stories abound of exploitation, slave labour and funding ending up in the pockets of corrupt operators.

"At Bali Kids it's extremely difficult for anyone to scam us because it's medical treatment. I see the child receive the treatment, so I can see where the money's going," says Whittaker.

When Inquirer visits a Dickensian-looking Denpasar orphanage housing 40 children ranging from infants to teens, the owner is away indefinitely. Children cook meals, consisting of only noodles and rice, in a squalid kitchen over an open fire. An eight-storey concrete maze, it overlooks a rural back yard where clothes dry amid piles of rubbish. Girls share a small dormitory, two to a single bed, while boys sleep on a mat on the ground floor. All share an abysmal toilet facility.

Lying abandoned are countless donations of clothes and toys. This is one of the orphanages where the Bali Kids medical team regularly treats children but the owner does not permit HIV testing, which is free in hospitals and clinics.

Involved in charity work in Asia for more than 20 years, Whittaker received an Order of Australia medal for humanitarian services to children in 2005 when Bali Kids opened. Bali Kids is first a medical facility, caring for underprivileged children suffering from malnutrition and illnesses such as TB and scabies. Increasingly, it cares for impoverished HIV sufferers.

"That's our calling because no one else wants to deal with it," Whittaker says.

Local authorities also refer children with HIV to Bali Kids. "You see the children arrive so sick and leave happy and healthy so you feel you have achieved something," says Whittaker, attesting to good responses to antiretroviral treatment. "Plus we are educating them... so they have the opportunity to get into the workforce."

Whittaker has been instrumental in securing three scholarships in Australian private schools.

Meanwhile, the latest HIV screening study in March by the Bali Health Department reveals Bali has the second highest infection rate in Indonesia behind Jakarta and the island's young are most vulnerable, with those in the 20 to 29 age range peaking at 46 per cent. Sexually active teenagers between 15 and 19 account for 2.3 per cent of HIV.

"We are seeing pregnant teens who have contracted HIV while at high school but we don't have the real numbers, that's the problem," says consultant pediatrician Ketut Dewi Kumara Wati at Sanglah Hospital. Efforts to curb the spread are proving arduous. Many locals are unaware the virus even exists. Those who suspect they are infected typically shun testing and leave preventive treatment too late. Adding to the crisis, some hospitals turn away patients.

"It's very hard to get medical staff and doctors to work with HIV-AIDS patients," says Dewi, the only pediatrician at Sanglah's children's AIDS ward. She believes the true number of cases on the island is about 10,500.

The highest prevalence of the virus is in the capital, Denpasar, and the Buleleng and Badung (the Kuta area) regencies, tourist districts that villagers and migrants gravitate to for work.

Tourism officials are warning of the effect the virus could have on Indonesia's top tourist spot but claim the Balinese government would rather sweep the issue under the carpet.

"They don't want to touch this. They are confusing it with a moral issue. They don't want to talk about sex, but it's a health issue, a disease," says Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya, head of the Bali Tourism Board. While Wijaya does not directly link tourism to transmission rates, Bali's contact with foreigners far surpasses that of the rest of Indonesia, and intermingling is a fact.

His solution? A government-controlled prostitution zone with regulated health checks. "How can you control public health if you don't control the sex workers?"

Yet he says a red-light district would taint the island's image. "We cannot promote sex tourism. It would send the wrong message. People don't come here for that."

But it can't be said sex tourism doesn't exist. Sex workers in Bali attract 88,000 customers a year, this year's report shows. And although HIV infection rates among foreigners are at negligible levels, the real situation is hard to gauge.

Figures for the second largest group with HIV, injecting drug users, estimated at 1371, have stabilised since 2002, according to the study, but the prevalence of the virus among transvestites and prisoners is increasing.

Kerobokan jail, where the Bali Nine drug traffickers and Schapelle Corby are detained, has HIV testing and counselling and the highest incidence of infection in a Bali jail, at 29 prisoners.

Most HIV programs are funded generously by AusAID, through the HIV co-operation program for Indonesia, which provided $500,000 in 2009-10. AusAID's programs have been instrumental in bringing down infection rates among intravenous drug users. Overall it has provided more than $4.8 million for HIV-AIDS Bali programs since 2002.

Yet Bali is at risk of losing a generation, as increased numbers of HIV-positive mothers – about 600 a year – endanger their children, says Dewa Nyoman Wirawan, of the Bali Aids Commission and public health professor at Denpasar's Udayana University.

Dewi agrees. "Without prevention many children will die. It will be the loss of a generation. Children are slow progressers and it will not show 'til they are in their teens," she says.

A report by Wirawan last June on the UN Millennium Development Goals warns HIV-AIDS is the largest inhibitor to achieving child mortality reduction goals. "The estimated number of residents in Bali to be infected with HIV... will double in a very short time. The big challenge... is the explosion of the epidemic through heterosexual contact and the still low level of condom use.

"If there is no prevention of transmission from pregnant mother to her baby, then in one year it is expected approximately 300 infants will be infected with HIV. Usually all of these children will die... [in] under five years."

The suppression of safe-sex messages because of social taboos on AIDs-related issues are at the core of the problem, says Tuti Parwati Merati, of the Bali Aids Commission, who is also head of tropical and infectious diseases at Sanglah Hospital and the University of Udayana's medical school. With about 150 new patients admitted in the late stage each month to Sanglah Hospital, she battles the problem daily.

"More than 80 per cent of HIV-AIDS patients throughout Indonesia wait until it's too late because they do not know they are infected by HIV," says Merati.

Frustrating medical efforts are farcically low statistics on deaths from AIDs, estimated at 341 in total in Bali. Merati, who diagnosed the first AIDS case in Bali – and Indonesia – in 1987, suspects substantial numbers of deaths from AIDS are unreported. She concedes that awareness of the disease remains pitifully low.

Although testing and antiviral treatment is free, antibiotics and antifungal treatments are not, a factor she fears stops people following up on related illnesses.

The Balinese, about 93 per cent of whom are Hindu, do not religiously oppose condom use, but Muslims do. A safe-sex advertisement was pulled from Indonesian television stations last year because Muslim groups believed it was promoting promiscuity and adultery.

Entrenched animistic beliefs also inhibit safe-sex programs, Dewi says. People often believe their illness is related to karma or a punishment for perceived bad deeds. Some think it's the result of a curse from an enemy and most seek help from witch doctors. Amanda Morgan, country representative of Bali's Burnet Institute in Indonesia, which combines health research, including HIV initiatives, with the Burnet Institute (Australia), concurs numbers are much more extensive than acknowledged, the response driven by inaccurate data.

"When you don't have the data you have to question if you are responding in the most effective way."

The Indonesian Ministry of Health estimates 40,000 people have HIV-AIDs, while UNAIDS puts the number at 270,000.

"We know it's an iceberg phenomenon but as we dig deeper we are seeing increasing numbers, and particularly numbers of children, not being addressed," Morgan says.

When Putu Utami founded the outreach group Bali Plus in Denpasar in 1995, her husband had just died of AIDS-related illnesess. She found out he was gay after he died, a week after the birth of their son, now 15. She had learned of her own HIV infection six months into the pregnancy.

"My husband never told me he had AIDS. When I told him he had infected me and asked why he had the virus, he just cried. "I was scared for my baby. I was scared I was going to die... I was very angry."

Mercifully, her son is HIV-negative and Putu has responded well to treatment. She married again in 2003 and says her new husband, although initially sceptical, is accepting of her situation.

She only recently told her son, who lives with her first husband's parents, of her HIV status. "He was very angry and sad, and asked me if his father had another girlfriend." She pleaded ignorance. Her parents-in-law still don't know their son was gay.

Graft & corruption

Golkar wants to know what happened to bailout probe

Jakarta Globe - September 13, 2010

Nivell Rayda, Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Antara, Jakarta – The Golkar Party has called on the antigraft agency to explain why it has been focusing far more attention on the central bank bribery case rather than the 2008 Bank Century bailout scandal.

Golkar chairman Aburizal Bakrie said on Sunday that he would request clarification from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) about its priorities.

The KPK announced on Sept. 1 that it had named 26 former and current members of the House of Representatives as suspects for allegedly taking bribes to vote in Miranda Goeltom as senior deputy governor of Bank Indonesia in 2004.

Ten of the 26 suspects are Golkar members, while 14 are from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Former Golkar legislator Hamka Yandhu and the PDI-P's Dudhie Makmun Murod had earlier been sentenced to two and a half years each for their roles in the bribery scandal.

Golkar secretary general Idrus Marham said the party would question the KPK over its focus during a hearing of the House's special committee on the Century investigation.

He said the Century bailout involved more money and that the alleged corruption "can be seen more clearly." He was quick to clarify, however, that Aburizal in his statement was not accusing the government of using the KPK to pressure political foes.

He added the issue was only raised during "casual talks" with fellow Golkar heavyweights Surya Paloh and Jusuf Kalla, the former vice president.

"We're not saying that the government is trying to manipulate the case to attack us," he said. "We only want the KPK to clarify its decision to name suspects in one case and not in another."

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said in June that it had found no traces of graft in the Rp 6.7 trillion ($744 million) bailout contrary to lawmakers claims of illegality. The police and the Attorney General's Office have echoed these findings.

The 26 legislators were charged with accepting Rp 250 million to Rp 1.45 billion ($28,000 to $160,000) each in bribes to vote for Miranda Goeltom.

KPK spokesman Johan Budi said the commission would welcome Golkar's questions about its progress in the Century case.

"If they want information on the case within their capacity as legislators, we'd be more than happy to explain to them," he told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday. "But we can't tell them about the substance of the investigation because that's confidential."

He added the commission's investigators had met last week to discuss the case, but declined to offer further details. He also stressed that the KPK would not allow anybody to intrude in their probe, or be "forced to go after a particular person."

In regards to the bribery case, Idrus said Golkar also wanted to know why only those who allegedly received the money had been charged while those offering the bribes had escaped scrutiny.

The bribes, which reportedly came in the form of travelers checks, were believed to have been issued by Nunun Nurbaeti Daradjatun, Miranda's friend and also the wife of former National Police deputy chief Adang Daradjatun.

Nunun has never shown up for questioning, however, claiming a mysterious illness that causes memory loss for which her lawyer says she is seeking treatment in Singapore.

Meanwhile, Golkar has taken steps to defend its members from the bribery charges. Golkar has appointed former Justice Minister Muladi to head its defense team. He is also the party's associate chairman for legal and human rights affairs.

The PDI-P had asked the KPK on Sept. 3 to explain the process behind the naming of its 14 members as suspects. The PDI-P has reiterated it did not intend to interfere with the commission's investigation.

But a corruption watchdog said the PDI-P needed to be careful not to appear like it was trying to influence the KPK probe.

"The PDI-P is a big party known for siding with the poor. It would be a betrayal of the party's constituents if it defended members of the party involved in a Rp 24 billion graft scandal," said Febri Diansyah, a researcher from Indonesia Corruption Watch.

War on terror

The dream job for police

Sydney Morning Herald - September 12, 2010

Tom Allard – Special Detachment 88, or Densus 88, is a crack counter-terrorism unit that officers dream of joining.

Many Indonesians admire its success in hunting down terrorists and preventing attacks.

It has about 400 members attached to its command in Jakarta and hundreds more in the country's 33 provinces, with heavy representations in Papua and Maluku. Its members are easily the best resourced within the Indonesian National Police.

Formed after the Bali bombings in 2002 brought mass-casualty terrorism so shockingly to Indonesia, Detachment 88 was, at its inception, equipped and trained in large part by the United States and Australia, which provided it with high-level training in communications interception, close combat, forensic sciences, surveillance and intelligence gathering and analysis.

It has a facility at the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Co- operation, set up in 2004 with almost $40 million of Australian funding. According to the centre's website, the Australian Federal Police still run most of the counter-terrorism seminars.

Detachment 88 also benefits from the $16 million in annual funding allocated to the AFP to combat terrorism in south-east Asia.

Freedom of religion & worship

Bekasi FPI leader named a suspect in Bekasi attack

Jakarta Globe - September 15, 2010

Arientha Primanita, Jakarta – Jakarta Police on Wednesday named the head of the Bekasi branch of the Islamic Defenders Front a suspect for his alleged role in a brutal attack on two church leaders on Sunday.

The Criminal Code charges laid against Murhali Barda are understood to be incitement, which carries a maximum prison sentence of six years, destruction of property (5 years and 6 months), maltreatment (2 years and 8 months) and a premeditated attempt to cause serious injury (12 years).

Munarman, spokesman for the hard-line group, also known as the FPI, said although Jakarta Police had named Murhali a suspect, it did not mean that he was guilty.

"It is part of the legal process and we will follow it through," he said. "We will have to see if it can be proven in court." He added that Murhali was not at the crime scene when the attack happened.

Murnaman said the other nine suspects were not FPI members because their names were not on the group's database. He said the FPI would provide a team of lawyers to defend Murhali.

Petitioners call on government to protect religious freedoms

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Candra Malik, Jakarta – About 4,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the government do more to protect Constitution-enshrined religious freedoms in response to Sunday's brutal attack on two leaders of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) in Bekasi.

The HKBP, which had its church sealed after Bekasi authorities capitulated to demands by hard-line Islamic groups to close it, was the target of a similar attack in August.

The five-point petition has been posted online. Leila S. Chudori, a senior editor at Tempo magazine and one of the architects of the petition, said a printed version would be sent to the president soon.

"Sunday's attack is what encouraged us to draw up this petition to invite Indonesians to stem the spread of violence," she told the Jakarta Globe, adding that the latest attack was part of a worrying trend, citing a report that the Setara Institute think tank had recorded 28 cases of rights violations against Christian groups in Indonesia between January and July.

The first of the petition's five demands is for state protection for people's right to worship.

The second is for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to make good on his campaign promises on this issue, while the third is for follow-up action on the police's Aug. 30 report on hard-line groups that perpetrate religious violence.

The last two demands are for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, and for Yudhoyono to focus on the domestic problem of religious conflict rather than on similar issues abroad.

Controversial permit system for houses of worship defended

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Ulma Haryanto, Jakarta – Islamic leaders on Tuesday defended a government regulation that requires local consent before a house of worship can be established, which pluralism advocates say has been used to discriminate against minority religious groups.

A joint ministerial decree, issued by the ministries of religious affairs and home affairs in 2006, states that permits for houses of worship can only be issued if at least 60 local residents approve it.

"We believe that the regulation needs to be revised because it does not cater to people's needs," Bonar Tigor Naipospos, deputy chairman for the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

Calls to amend the decree resurfaced following the attack on two leaders of the Batak Christian Protestant Church's (HKBP) Pondok Timur Indah congregation in Bekasi on Sunday.

Though police officials maintain there is no proof the attack was related to religious conflict, suspicions are rife that it was related to the church's troubles with hard-line Islamic groups that have been protesting the church's use of a vacant lot in Ciketing, Bekasi, for prayer services without a permit.

The church began holding services in the field in August after the house it was using was sealed off by the Bekasi administration, again because it did not have a permit.

Theophilus Bela, secretary general of the Indonesian Committee of Religions for Peace, previously told the Globe the permit requirement was being abused. "Building permits are an excuse here to shut down churches or to freeze prayer services in homes," he said.

The HKBP's Filadelfia congregation in Bekasi, the HKBP Church in East Karawang, West Java, and the GKI Yasmin Church in Bogor have all seen their places of worship sealed off or blocked by protesters this year because of the permit issue, according to data collected by Setara.

Bonar said that such requirements were unnecessary since freedom to worship was enshrined in the Constitution.

Article 28 Section E of the Constitution states that "every person shall be free to choose and to practice the religion of their choice" and "guarantees all persons the freedom of worship, each according to their own religion or belief."

However, Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Islamic organization in the country, said freedom of worship was not an absolute freedom.

"Religious freedom cannot simply be based on what the Constitution says – there are rules to be followed," he said, citing the 2006 ministerial decree, which he said was agreed to by all representative councils of the country's six official religions.

"All articles in the decree must be publicized to avoid problems." Amidhan, chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), agreed, saying there was a need to regulate how religions were practiced.

"If everybody obeyed the joint decree, such conflict would never happen," he said. "The incident was caused by one party that was trying to force its religious expression."

After Bekasi attack, fears of more religious violence

Jakarta Globe - September 13, 2010

Arientha Primanita & Markus Junianto Sihaloho, Jakarta – Experts have warned that Sunday's attack on churchgoers in Bekasi could be symptomatic of a growing religious intolerance in the country that if left unchecked could ignite deeper conflicts.

During the incident, unknown assailants attacked worshipers from the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) in Pondok Timur Indah as they held Sunday services on an empty plot of land they own.

Church elder Asia Sihombing was stabbed in the stomach during the attack, and the Rev. Luspida Simanjuntak was beaten with a stick when she attempted to come to his assistance.

Both are still recovering in Mitra Keluarga Hospital in East Bekasi, with Asia being housed in the intensive care unit.

For the congregation, Sunday's attack was just the latest episode in a line of intimidation and abuse directed against it.

The congregation was forced to hold services in the empty lot after its church in Pondok Timur Indah was sealed off at the order of Bekasi Mayor Mochtar Mohammad, after hard-line Islamic groups had threatened violence if he failed to close it down.

In August, the congregation, which was already holding services outside under a heavy police presence, was the victim of a similar attack.

On Monday, Andreas Pareira, from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said this latest incident should be seen as a national problem.

He said the attack was just the latest in a string of violent acts against minority religions and sects, and was indicative of "systematic and organized actions to disrupt freedom of worship" across the country.

"I believe this latest incident is part of a wider conflict rooted in interreligious conflict," Andreas said. "That's why the government must act decisively in identifying the perpetrators."

Ismail Hasani, a researcher with the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, said the attack may have been masterminded by groups looking to take advantage of conflicts between Muslims and Christians.

He called for the authorities to crack down on vigilante groups and to amend the government decree on the establishment of houses of worship.

The decree requires that applicants must get the signed approval of the majority of local residents before being granted a permit to build a house of worship.

"Those terms are not feasible and are very discriminatory against minority religions," Ismail said. "The freedom to worship is the right of all of our citizens and it must be protected."

The Setara Institute has previously said that attacks on churches and minority sects are on the rise, with more attacks recorded in the first half of 2010 than in the previous two years combined.

Part of the problem, according to Yuna Farhan, the secretary general of the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra), is that the government tends to treat the fallout from religious conflict, rather than prevent it.

He said the Ministry of Religious Affairs had allocated Rp 11.5 billion ($1.3 million), or 37 percent of the budget for its interreligious harmony program, on post-conflict resolution.

"The ministry's acting like the fire department: they wait for a conflict to break out, then they dive in, rather than try to prevent it in the first place," Yuna said.

He said that in the draft of the 2011 state budget, the Religious Affairs Ministry was due to receive Rp 31 trillion, the fourth- highest allocation, and more than the Ministry of Health's Rp 26 trillion.

"Ironically, such a large budget has proven to be ineffective in preventing interreligious conflicts," he said.

Hasyim Muzadi, a former chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's biggest Islamic organization, called for Sunday's attack to be investigated immediately and for the perpetrators to be taken to court.

"It needs to be dealt with quickly because it's a very sensitive case and it could give rise to wider social problems," he said. "This is not a localized issue. It could have a ripple effect that stretches across the country, and even beyond."

Ismail added that a thorough investigation was needed to end public speculation about who was behind the attack.

A timeline of fear:

December 2009: A church service of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) Pondok Timur Indah at a house in a residential complex in Bekasi is disrupted by hundreds of protesters.

Feb. 7, 2010: 200 protesters again rally against the house being used as a church.

March 2010: The Bekasi administration's Building Planning and Monitoring office (P2B) seals off the house. The church members later forcibly open the house, arguing the P2B did not follow proper procedures when sealing it off.

June 20, 2010: The P2B again seals off the house.

July 23, 2010: HKBP members file a complaint with the National Police against Syahid Tajudin, chairman of the Bekasi Islamic People's Forum (FUI), accusing him of violence and desecration for forcefully closing down their house of worship.

Aug. 1, 2010: The HKBP begins holding Sunday services in a vacant plot of land on Jalan Ciketing Asem.

Aug. 8, 2010: Dozens of HKBP worshipers are attacked by a mob while hosting a Sunday service at the vacant lot on Jalan Ciketing Asem.

Aug. 13, 2010: A mediation meeting between the Bekasi administration and HKBP ends in deadlock. Administration officials offer a new vacant building as a temporary place of worship, but the church insists on using its own land.

Sept. 12, 2010: A reverend is hit and a church elder stabbed by unknown assailants on their way to Sunday service.

Police backtracks: No suspects yet in Bekasi church attack

Jakarta Globe - September 13, 2010

Arientha Primanita, Jakarta – Contrary to earlier media reports on Monday, a Bekasi police official says that they have yet to name suspects for the attack on members of a Protestant church in Ciketing on Sunday.

Sr. Comr. Imam Sugiarto, Bekasi district police chief, said that the police are still gathering information on the stabbing incident.

"We have questioned 10 witnesses who were at the location," Imam told the Jakarta Globe. "We are focusing on the investigation but we have not yet named anyone as a suspect."

When asked about the perpetrators' identities and the police sketches being made, Imam declined to comment, saying that the investigation is proceeding.

Earlier, Comr. Ade Ary Syam, Bekasi Police chief of detectives, was quoted by online news portal Detik.com as saying that they had identified the suspect responsible for the stabbing.

Imam said that the police had sent a letter urging the congregation not to conduct their service in Ciketing, Bekasi, on Sunday. "The area is prone to risk because the neighborhood has been protesting their activities," he said.

The Bekasi administration provided the congregation with an alternative place to worship, a vacant building owned by the administration, for their use until they are able to obtain a permit for their church.

Imam said that it was unfortunate that the congregation did not follow the government's suggestion of using the vacant building. He added that the police have always protected the field where the worshipers gathered, assigning up to 500 policemen each week.

"Following the stabbing, security procedures will be reviewed," he said. "Maybe we will assign our personnel along the entire route and not only at the location," he added.

Church elder stabbed in attack on Christian worshipers in Bekasi

Jakarta Globe - September 12, 2010

Ulma Haryanto, Bekasi – A church leader was stabbed in the stomach and a reverend beaten during an attack on a group of Christians forced to pray in a field in Bekasi on Sunday morning.

Saor Siagian, a lawyer representing the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) Pondok Timur Indah congregation, told the Jakarta Globe an elders was stabbed by an unknown motocyclists on Sunday morning.

"Penatua [congregation elder] Sihombing was leading the congregation for Sunday mass when he was stabbed by someone riding a motorcycle," Saor said. Also targeted was Rev. Luspida Simandjuntak, who was assaulted.

The hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and Bekasi Mayor Mochtar Mohammad have prevented the group from holding services in their church, which has been sealed, forcing the group to hold Sunday services in a field in Ciketing, Mustika Jaya village.

Last month, a group identifying itself as the Mustika Jaya Moslem Forum (FUI) attacked the group, injuring eight. "Since then members always go in groups for Sunday prayers," Saor continued. "Sihombing was leading one of the groups when the stabbing occurred."

Sihombing has been taken to Mitra Keluarga Hospital in Pengasinan, Bekasi. His condition is believed to be serious. Two people have reportedly been arrested.

Islam & religion

Indonesia Ulema Council opposes French burqas ban

Agence France Presse - September 15, 2010

Jakarta – The Indonesia Ulema Council said on Wednesday that it opposed France's ban on full-face veils.

"Middle-eastern Muslim women wear full-face veils as part of their culture and religious belief. If the French parliament wants to champion human rights, it should allow women to wear the veils in public," MUI chairman Amidhan said.

"If it's for security reasons, the question is to what extent is there a threat posed by women wearing burqas?"

The council said the issue was of limited importance for Indonesia's roughly 200 million Muslims, with very few women in the Southeast Asian archipelago wearing full-face veils.

"We disagree with the law but it's not much of an issue for us here. We're quite far away and Muslim women in Indonesia don't wear full-face veils."

The French parliament passed a law Tuesday prohibiting wearing a full-face veil in public, meaning a ban will come into force early next year if it is not overturned by senior judges.

The Senate passed the bill by 246 votes to one and, having already cleared the lower house in July, the bill will now be reviewed by the Constitutional Council, which has a month to confirm its legality.

Islamic groups protest harassment against Koran

Jakarta Post - September 13, 2010

Jakarta – The Indonesian Islamic Propagation Institute (LDII) and the Indonesian Mosque Council (DMI) have called on Muslims in the country to launch a protest against an incident which marred the 9th anniversary of the Sept. 9 terror attack on the US over the weekend.

"The incident is intolerable as it violated the human rights. The US government should not stay silent in response to the harassment against a religion," LDII chairman Prasetyo Sunaryo said in a press statement.

He was commenting on six conservative Christians who tore some pages from a Koran in a protest outside the White House on Saturday. The incident came as a Christian hard-line group canceled its plan to burn a Koran to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 9 attacks.

Prasetyo said the LDII and DMI would file a protest with the US Embassy in Jakarta later this week as the incident departed from President Barack Obama's view concerning ties between the US and the Muslim world.

"We demand evidence of President Obama's words. The incident may spark anger among mujahids and Islamic fundamental groups," Prasetyo warned. He called on Indonesian Muslims to remain calm and take measures to maintain religious harmony in the country.

More than 1,000 accidents in exodus

Jakarta Post - September 13, 2010

Jakarta – Two days after the Idul Fitri celebration traffic has started to gain steam, as many holiday travelers began leaving their hometowns on their way back to Jakarta and other major cities across the country.

The death toll from traffic accidents on highways during the holiday season continued to climb, reaching 216 by late Saturday, the police announced Sunday.

Overall, 1,013 traffic accidents had been recorded during the ongoing Idul Fitri holiday season. National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Iskandar Hasan told kompas.com on Sunday.

Two hundred and ninety people were severly injured, while 566 sustained light injuries from the accidents, he said. The police recorded 86 traffic accidents on Saturday alone, resulting in 34 deaths.

"The estimated immediate financial damages from the accidents total Rp 3.8 billion [US$422,000]," Iskandar said.

Last year, 702 people were killed in traffic accidents during the Idul Fitri season.

In West Java's recently completed Nagreg Ring Road, some travelers were forced to walk after their cars stalled on their way up the steep Citiis incline.

Traffic heading to Jakarta via Bandung's Padalarang turnpike also increased, while detiknews.com reported that on Sunday evening the popular Puncak resort area near the West Java town of Bogor had been closed to traffic from Jakarta.

A long line of vehicles stretching up to 20 kilometers was reported in Puncak from about 2 p.m. because of the high volume of vehicles coming in and out of tourism parks and restaurants along the way.

Cianjur Police traffic unit chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Gatot Utomo told Antara that massive congestion was reported in tourist areas such as Cibodas and Taman Safari park.

On Sunday, traffic along the main northern coastal highway, better known as Pantura, which connects Jakarta to other major cities in Java, had begun to increase but was not yet congested.

Around 5,000 vehicles, mostly motorcycles, were recorded on the highway's Cirebon-Indramayu route every hour.

"Traffic would become heavier by night. We estimate it will reach 100,000 vehicles an hour," Indramayu Transportation Agency chief H. Kusin told kompas.com at the Lohbener traffic monitoring post on Sunday.

"But we expect the peak in traffic will take place on Monday," he said, adding that this was based on the fact that many holiday travelers, especially civil servants, had to return to work on Tuesday when the government's set holiday for Idul Fitri ends.

Officials estimated that around 2.4 million homeward bound travelers and 600,000 vehicles would travel through West Java's northern and southern routes for Idul Fitri, around 300,000 more than the 2.1 million travelers last year.

At Jakarta's busy Senen train station, holiday travelers are expected to arrive back in the capital next weekend before many children return to school on Sept. 20.

"We anticipate the inflow of returning travelers will peak on Saturday or Sunday," PT Kereta Api Indonesia spokesman Mateta Rijalulhaq told Antara on Sunday.

Two days after Idul Fitri, few travelers had returned to Jakarta, he said, adding that many people were still trying to get tickets at the train station on Sunday to return to their hometowns to celebrate Idul Fitri with their loved ones.

One passenger, Kartika, said she usually preferred to visit her relatives after Idul Fitri.

"It's better to leave after Idul Fitri because it's not so crowded," she told Antara, adding that she was leaving for Yogyakarta with her husband and children.

Indonesian cities empty for end of Muslim holy month

Associated Press - September 9, 2010

Niniek Karmini, Jakarta – Millions of Indonesians crammed into trains, ferries and in greater numbers than ever, motorcycles, as they poured out of major cities to return to their villages to celebrate the end of the Islamic holy month with families.

The annual mass exodus, which always leaves the country's overburdened and poorly maintained transportation systems bursting at the seams, resulted in massive traffic jams and the ever-growing threat of road accidents.

Flights were overbooked and anxious relatives weighed down with boxes of gifts formed long lines at bus stations for journeys that can take days.

"It's going to be exhausting," said Sri Maryati, a 21-year-old waitress, as she waited Wednesday with five friends to go to East Java province. "We're going to be hot, cramped, uncomfortable. But still, I can't wait. I just want to get home."

Indonesia, with a population of nearly 240 million, has more Muslims than any other country in the world.

Around 30 million travelers were expected to crisscross the vast archipelago that spans 17,000 islands for Idul Fitri, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month, Ramadan.

Many are construction workers, field laborers and others who earn less than $200 a month, but eagerly spend their savings on the trip.

Half are from major cities, like Jakarta, which turn into virtual ghost towns. Without the help of maids, drivers and other members of their domestic staff, many of the capital's well-to-do opt to spend the week in hotels. The exodus, or "mudik," peaked on Wednesday.

In an effort to reduce road accidents, which kill hundreds every year, the government has urged travelers to avoid making the long, exhausting journey by motorcycle.

But with so many people struggling financially, the motorcycle has turned into the vehicle of choice for nearly 7 million people this year, Transportation Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan said.

"What else can I do?" asked Maman Abdurrachman, 35, as he and his wife and 5-year-old son prepared to go to Cirebon. Plastic bags stuffed with food and presents hung from his bike, and a wooden board extended from the seat to fit extra baggage.

"This is the cheap way to go," the factory worker said. "And it's efficient... we can avoid some of the traffic this way."

Land disputes & evictions

Struggle for land rights in Yogyakarta

Direct Action - September 2010

Zoe Kenny, Yogyakarta – The beach-side town of Parangtritis, on the southern coast of Yogyakarta, is currently the site of a protracted and bitter struggle over land between the local government and people.

The south coast is an important asset for the tourism industry in Yogyakarta. Foreign investors plan to build a 68.2 hectare golf course, a 55 hectare resort and three- and four-star hotels. This will result in thousands of home evictions.

Since 2006, at least 250 families have been evicted and their homes destroyed. They have been moved to temporary accommodation in the area. Ninety-nine other families are threatened by eviction in this area. Families were given 1.5 million rupiah (about A$190), far less than is needed to purchase a new home. Instead, they were offered a tiny shack, on which they may have to pay rent in the future.

Local government here can expel people legally as a result of Yogyakarta remaining the last province in Indonesia still governed by a pre-colonial monarchy. Sultan Hamangkubuwono is king and also governor of the area. He can still use an old law that defines the people who live on the land as "squatters" who can be evicted. This is directly contrary to the 1960 Agrarian Reform Act, which states that land that has been inhabited for more than 15 years belongs to the people who have lived on it. Parangtritis communities have lived here over the last 15-30 years and built their own village.

Attacking sex workers

Fahmi Aslihul Alia, known as Yayak, is a leader of the struggle and also a member of the KPRM-PRD (Committee of the Poor People- People's Democratic Party). Yayak explained that the main pretence for the proposed eviction is to eliminate prostitution from the area. Prostitution, although widespread throughout Indonesia, is illegal.

Sex workers, who are one of the most powerless groups in Indonesia, are a very easy scapegoat for the government. As part of a campaign by local government, women working as prostitutes have been solicited by a police officer posing as a client only to be fined after they accepted. Furthermore, while local police and the government say they want to eliminate prostitution, they do not offer any form of alternative employment or training. The local government is clearly trying to drive a wedge into the community, turning the villagers against prostitutes.

However Yayak explained that the villagers and sex workers have been able to form an alliance to fight together against the proposed eviction. This campaign has been organised through the People's Alliance Rejecting Eviction (ARMP), the left front of the local branch of the network People's Alliance of Radical Action, which fights for the urban poor, farmers, workers and students and consists of 13 organisations and 250-300 people with the main platform being anti-imperialism and national liberation.

Protest demonstrations

The ARMP organises regular demonstrations in the town of Bantul and in Yogyakarta province. There were 25 such protests between March 8 and last August 7. These protests have also included opposition to the rising cost of living and increases in the electricity tariff. The ARMP stands as an alternative leadership to Skawula Alit, a community front organised by the bourgeois People's Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) led by Megawati Sukarnoputri, the former president of Indonesia, which does not intend to resist eviction but to divert the public from acts of resistance.

Yayak explained that the KPRM-PRD has maintained its intervention into the struggle from the beginning and tried to radicalise people through the process. Through fighting alongside the villagers, the KPRM-PRD aims to educate about social issues, law and politics as well as raise awareness about the relationship between local struggles and the struggle for socialism. It hopes to consolidate the ARMP as a permanent organisation and to unite forces nationally.

Repression has occurred from both civilian militias led by reactionary bourgeois parties and from the military. There were incidents of intimidation and destruction of protest camps in June and August.

The struggle in Parangtritis mirrors a process occurring throughout Indonesia. While exact numbers are difficult to find, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions reported that more than 12,000 people were evicted in Jakarta alone between July and August 2008. In Indonesian cities, evictions are justified on the basis of "land reclamation, environmental conservation and public order", while evictions in rural areas are conducted for infrastructure development, tourism, mining and forestry.

Forced evictions will most likely increase if the Indonesian government joins the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), a US$350 million World Bank initiative, which aims to pay poor countries in exchange for making their forests unavailable for logging and mining. In a letter to the Indonesian government in March 2009, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern that REDD is very open to corruption, for example by companies seeking to gain compensation for establishing commercial plantations, and may lead to indigenous peoples being denied access to their land. There are already more than 20 REDD projects in Java, Kalimantan, Bali, Sumatra and Papua.

Regional autonomy & government

Government to set trial period for new regions

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Armando Siahaan, Jakarta – With the Home Affairs Ministry proposing 11 new provinces and dozens of districts and municipalities by 2025, the House of Representatives and the government have agreed not to grant permanent status to new jurisdictions until they complete a trial phase that could last five years.

Ganjar Pranowo, deputy chairman of House Commission II, which oversees home affairs, said on Monday that an agreement had been worked out to compel the proposed jurisdictions to earn their wings during the trial.

The accord follows a moratorium on the creation of new administrative regions that has been in effect since February 2009, following the death of then North Sumatra Legislative Council (DPRD) Speaker Abdul Azis Angkat at the hands of a mob demanding the creation of a new province.

In July, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono criticized the adding of new jurisdictions, arguing that 80 percent of them had failed.

At the time, the president said the government had a "grand design" for how to handle demands for new regions, adding that an evaluation had been completed on the performance of newly created administrative areas.

The House's agreement to a trial period is part of the reform the president was seeking.

Previously, a new administrative area was automatically given permanent status upon approval by the House and the government. But with the new scheme, both parties agreed the proposed regions should go through a preparation phase.

Ganjar said the trial period, ideally five years, would allow the government to assess whether the new jurisdiction would be a positive development or a drain on the state's resources.

Legislation & parliament

House building plans 'mired in corruption'

Jakarta Post - September 14, 2010

Jakarta – The anti-graft commission should keep an eye out for legislators insisting on the construction of an expensive new parliamentary building, the plans for which are suspected to be mired in corruption, a member of the House of Representatives says.

Legislator Gayus Lumbuun of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) told The Jakarta Post Monday that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) should scrutinize the parties persisting that the proposed Rp 1.2 trillion (US$133.2 million) construction of the new House building continue.

"House Deputy Speaker Taufik Kurniawan spoke Monday to a local newspaper, hinting that 'illicit perks' had been distributed to some parties in this process," Gayus said.

According to Rakyat Merdeka daily, Taufik suggested that, owing to indications of corruption, the plan should be stopped, and the KPK should investigate the case. He refused to name legislators who had allegedly received such illegal perks. Taufik could not be reached for further comment on Monday.

The controversy over the new House building has been ongoing, with the public harshly censuring not only the exorbitant construction costs but also proposed recreational facilities, including a swimming pool, a massage facility and a spa inside the new structure.

As the consequence of increased public criticism, on Sept. 6, House Speaker Marzuki Alie announced that the construction – originally scheduled to start in October – would be postponed.

Gayus also lamented the fact that Marzuki seemed to have down- played the exorbitant construction cost by saying that this was relatively small compared to the country's current state budget of Rp 1,200 trillion.

Marzuki, who is from the Democratic Party, told the Post funds for the House construction had been allocated from a three-fiscal-year budget cycle.

"The plan is currently pending further evaluation by a technical team. The evaluation results will be shared and consulted with party leaders," Marzuki said, adding that the decision to determine whether or not a new building was necessary would eventually be decided by House members.

Commenting on the indications of possible corruption in the planned development, Marzuki said, "We should not provoke or issue any statements that will create further problems. If such allegations prove to be true, I would call the KPK to probe the matter."

KPK spokesman Johan Budi said the commission had not received any evidence that corroborated allegations of corruption.

"We can't work if it is based only on rumors. If the public has evidence related to the issue, I recommend they disclose it to the commission," he said.

Meanwhile, Wa Ode Nurhayati, a member of the House Affairs Committee tasked with discussing and approving the construction plan, said she had no comment on allegations of corruption.

"[Corruption] happens everywhere. In the case of the new House building, I personally don't know and don't want to enter that domain," she said. "If it exists, I haven't seen such indications," Nurhayati of the National Mandate Party (PAN) added. (tsy)

43 lawmakers in house ethics council's sights

Jakarta Globe - September 9, 2010

Armando Siahaan, Jakarta – The House of Representatives ethics council said on Wednesday that it would look into 43 reports of ethical misconduct by lawmakers – including an allegation of rape filed against one.

"There is a report filed against M Nazaruddin, from the Democratic Party, and we will first summon the one who filed the report," council deputy chairman Nudirman Munir said said.

Nazaruddin's name was raised by a previously unknown NGO, the Indonesian Parliament Observer Society (Komppi), which reported him to police for allegedly raping a woman at a hotel in Bandung during the party's national caucus in May.

Nudirman, from the Golkar Party, said the council could only investigate if there is a public complaint.

The panel will interview the NGO to ensure that the allegation "is based on accurate data and not just mere slander." Komppi is a coalition of civil society groups, including the Islamic Association of University Students (HMI).

HMI chairman Muhammad Chozin Amirrulah confirmed that Komppi submitted the report to the ethics council on Aug. 18. "We filed a report on allegations of the rape of a sales promotion girl in Bandung, perpetrated by a lawmaker," he said.

The report, which consisted of about five online news clippings as preliminary evidence, was received by Gayus Lumbuun, a lawmaker from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI- P), Chozin said.

Given the many legal cases against House members, including 26 present and former lawmakers who were recently named bribery suspects in the Miranda Goeltom case, the ethics council is often criticized for being ineffective.

Other unconfirmed sex scandals have rocked the Democrats, including recent rumors involving Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi and Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Darwin Zahedy Saleh. Senior Democrats have repeatedly said there is no truth to the allegations.

The ethics council will also deal with a case involving Democratic legislator As'ad Syam, who was jailed last month on a Rp 4 billion ($444,000) corruption charge he was convicted of early in 2009.

The council also plans to summon Izul Islam of the United Development Party (PPP) for diploma forgery, and Nurdin Tampubolon of the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) and Ratu Munawaroh of the National Mandate Party (PAN), both for skipping six straight plenary sessions.

But ethics council chairman Gayus Lumbuun said Munawaroh had reportedly resigned from the House, making a summons unnecessary as long as a formal resignation letter is received.

Nudirman said that the ethics council could not summon Democrat legislator Edhie Baskoro, the son of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for allegedly delaying a Garuda Airline flight unless there is a complaint from a member of the public.

It was reported that the firearms carried by Edhie's bodyguards had held up security checks as they were about to board a flight from Jakarta to Solo over the weekend.

Jakarta & urban life

Jobless and new to Jakarta? The city doesn't want you

Jakarta Globe - September 13, 2010

Jakarta – With the Idul Fitri holiday now coming to a close, thousands of people have started to make their way from Central Java back to Jakarta early on Monday morning.

"We predict that the number of vehicles passing through the Pantura route will increase during the day because many people have to return to work tomorrow," said Sunarto, a police officer at the Indramayu town Lebaran security post, on Monday.

Because migrants see the capital and its surrounding areas as the "land of hope," people from more rural areas usually flock here after Idul Fitri. They tag along with friends or relatives returning home from the holiday.

The municipal government sees the mass exodus as a problem. Year after year, it tightens watch on Jakarta and the bordering cities of Bekasi and Depok from what they see as an invasion of unskilled migrants.

Raids have been regularly conducted over the years to ferret out newcomers who do not have the possibility of being employed in the city. These people are then sent back to their hometowns.

"On H+7 we will start the raid on newcomers. For those who do not meet the requirements, we are very sorry to inform you that you will be sent home to your hometowns," Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo told news portal tempointeraktif.com during the open house at his residence on Friday, referring to the seven days after Idul Fitri.

Some of these requirements include proof of employment and identification documents from the community head in the area.

Fauzi said he had always reminded Jakarta residents not to bring their friends or relatives to Jakarta, especially those without any skills. "We have communicated with many municipal governments in Indonesia about the requirements for anyone who wants to live in Jakarta," he said.

A similar concern was also expressed by the municipal government of Depok, West Java, which threatened to evict unemployed newcomers. "Anyone who comes to Depok with nothing to do will only increase the number of unemployed," Depok Mayor Nur Mahmudi Ismail said on Monday.

Nur asked Depok residents not to take people from their hometowns along with them unless there are can be employed. "If they have a job waiting for them or they want to open a business, then it's no problem, but otherwise, please don't," he said.

According to Nur, migration to Depok is growing by about 4 percent a year. (JG, Antara)

Armed forces & defense

TNI pledges to boost discipline

Jakarta Post - September 10, 2010

Jakarta – The armed forces will improve discipline among soldiers to prevent incidents of subordinates openly criticizing their superiors, Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen. Djoko Santoso has said.

Djoko, who is retiring soon, said the TNI command would take steps to ensure no more soldiers violated the military code of conduct, which was recently breached by an Air Force senior pilot.

"We will certainly make improvements. In the future, no disciplinary violations will happen again," he said as quoted by Antara news agency on Friday.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had previously entrusted the TNI and the Air Force to take action against Col. Adjie Suradji, whose article that appeared in Kompas daily on Monday was deemed an open criticism of the President, who is the supreme commander of the TNI.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Yudhoyono called the pilot's act a challenge of civilian supremacy.

Police & law enforcement

Promotions may widen field for next top cop

Jakarta Globe - September 12, 2010

Nivell Rayda, Jakarta – A string of new candidates might be eligible to take over as the nation's next top police officer despite the National Police Commission nominating only three candidates, analysts believe.

The commission, also known as Kompolnas, which draws up the list of candidates, handed its choices to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last week.

Rules dictate that the police chief be a serving three-star general. There are five at the moment, including National Police Deputy Chief Comr. Gen. Yusuf Manggabarani, internal affairs division head Comr. Gen. Nanan Soekarna and chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi.

However, Indonesian Police Watch chairman Neta S. Pane said several two-star police generals were set to be promoted to commissioner general during next week's routine transfers.

"This would change the whole race because there will be more eligible candidates," Neta said. "Although the Kompolnas has submitted its recommendations, the real influence will be wielded by the outgoing police chief."

Bambang Hendarso Danuri, the sitting chief, is set to retire on Nov. 1 after turning 58. The president must submit at least one name to the House of Representatives legal commission before Bambang steps down.

Neta said a new candidate was likely because none of the current three-star generals were widely accepted within the force.

"Each commissioner general has his own team, rallying support from politicians and retired police officers. There is no unifying figure who is accepted by all," he said.

Internal affairs chief Nanan is seen as the frontrunner. Another favorite being touted by analysts is Comr. Gen. Imam Soejarwo, the police's head of bureaucratic reform, who was recently promoted to three-star general. Many saw Bambang's promotion of Imam as a way for him to enter the race.

University of Indonesia political analyst Bambang Widodo Umar said none of the candidates were likely to bring much-needed reform to the police force, which for years has been regarded as one of the country's most corrupt institutions.

"Like all police chiefs before him, the new police chief might enforce major crackdowns and arrests during the early months of his term. He might even expose graft inside his institution. But over time everything goes back to the way it was," the analyst said.

Bambang said the government must give Kompolnas more teeth, enabling it to act against rogue police officers.

"The new police chief should focus on catching criminals and ensuring national security. Let an external body worry about restructuring the force and sanctioning corrupt officers, he said.

The government is also seeking a replacement for Attorney General Hendarman Supandji, who has submitted eight names to the president, all from inside the AGO.

Antigraft activists from the Center for Indonesian Law and Policy Studies (PSHK) and Indonesia Corruption Watch said the new attorney general must come from outside.

"The AGO needs someone who does not tolerate graft. I don't see anyone inside the AGO who fits the category," ICW deputy chairman Emerson Yuntho said.

Yudhoyono to build trust with tougher legal watchdogs

Jakarta Globe - September 9, 2010

Bhimanto Suwastoyo, Jakarta – In response to mounting public condemnation of law enforcement, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Wednesday vowed to give the official watchdogs for the police and the prosecutors' office more teeth.

"I have decided to revitalize the two commissions formed by the president, the National Police Commission (Kompolnas) and the Prosecutors' Commission," Yudhoyono said after a fast-breaking event at the State Palace.

The two commissions, formed in 2005, are independent bodies under the president and are tasked with boosting each agency's performance. They make policy recommendations and also forward complaints and suggestions on the two institutions from the public.

"I want these two commissions to become really effective in making sure that what is being done by the police and the prosecutor's office is solid," he added.

However, he gave few details on how he would achieve this, but said that one plan was to provide financing independent from the commissions' main institutions.

Yudhoyono said that while "unnecessary collisions" between the commissions with the two law enforcement institutions was not desirable, "there needs to be effective action."

The police and the prosecutor's office have come under increased flak from the public in the wake of several recent scandals, including corruption, case engineering and case-brokering allegations levelled against members of their ranks.

Yudhoyono also reacted to complaints that the government's commitment to eradicate corruption had wavered.

"I want to make clear, that whatever the news or rumors that are circulating about corruption eradication, for me, for the government, and for the nation, we remain consistent in eradicating corruption," he said.

One important tool in the toolbox to weed out endemic corruption, he said, was the Corruption Eradication Commission, better known as the KPK.

The president said the House of Representatives would pick one of the two names forwarded to it to be the new antigraft leader, but the government would consult lawmakers on whether it would be "best for the KPK and for us all" for the new chief's tenure to be a single year or a four-year term.

He also addressed six other topics that he said were current public concern including: the need for an efficient and modern defense force; the choice of new leaders for the military, the police, the Attorney General's Office and the antigraft body.

The case of an air force colonel who is facing sanctions for being critical of the president in the Indonesian language daily Kompas; whether to move the administrative capital out of Jakarta; stabilizing the prices of staple goods; and the recent eruption of Mount Sinabung were also topics that the president raised.

Yudhoyono said he will ask the House of Representatives to provide an "adequate budget" to build and maintain an "essential [military] force" and added that such an allotment "should not disturb other budget priorities."

Saying that Jakarta, as the capital and also the country's trade and business center, was no longer adequate, Yudhoyono said a decision should be made whether to retain the city as the capital or move the seat of the government elsewhere.

"It is true that Jakarta, as a capital, is no longer ideal," the president said. Yudhoyono said that with the city no longer able to sustain its rapidly growing population, a new solution was urgently needed". "We have to make strategic decisions, and this should not take too long," he said.

Criminal justice & prison system

Government gives remission to more corruption, terrorism convicts

Jakarta Post - September 10, 2010

Jakarta – The government has awarded remission to 25 corruption and terrorism convicts serving their jail terms at Cipinang penitentiary in East Jakarta in conjunction with Idul Fitri holiday.

Former House of Representatives lawmaker Anthony Zeidra Abidin, former Medan mayor Ramli Lubis, former Kutai Kartanegara regent Samsuri Aspar and former director general of Law and Public Administration Zulkarnaen Yunus were among the corruption convicts whose prison terms were cut by between 15 days and two months.

"In accordance with the law, the Justice and Human Rights Ministry awards the remission to those who have spent one third of their jail terms and shown good conducts," Cipinang warden I Wayan Sukerta told reporters on Friday.

A total of 580 inmates received the remission. Remission to corruption convicts in conjunction with the Independence Day on Aug. 17 sparked a controversy. Critics said the leniency displayed the government's breach of commitment to the fight against corruption which had been deemed as an extraordinary crime. (rlc)

Foreign affairs

Indonesia welcomes Rudd's 'knowledge'

Australian Associated Press - September 11, 2010

Indonesia has welcomed Kevin Rudd's appointment as Australia's new foreign minister, saying the bilateral relationship will benefit from his knowledge and experience of the Asia-Pacific.

A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Julia Gillard has confirmed Mr Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat who was Labor foreign affairs spokesman in opposition, would take over the job from Stephen Smith.

Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said that while it was somewhat "curious" for Mr Rudd to go from being prime minister to foreign minister, it was a welcome appointment.

"While he was prime minister the bilateral relationship was steady and growing," he told AAP. "We have had close cooperation with him in the past and we can always benefit from his knowledge and experience in the region."

Mr Faizasyah said Indonesia was looking forward to continuing to work with Mr Smith in his new role as defence minister.

Economy & investment

Finance ministry planning 2011 tax holiday for investors

Jakarta Globe - September 14, 2010

Jakarta – Mochamad Tjiptardjo, general director of taxation, said on Tuesday that the Finance Ministry was preparing to offer investment incentives in the form of a tax holiday.

"The [ministry] has formed a team that is currently working on the tax holiday incentive," he said after a gathering at the ministry in Jakarta. "If possible, it can be given on Jan. 1 [next year]."

The tax chief said the ministry would announce the schedule for the tax holiday after a review.

Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said in June that the ministry was considering granting a tax holiday. He said lost revenue from the scheme would be offset by increased investment, if the tax holiday was implemented correctly.

Indonesia had granted tax breaks in previous years. In 1967, the state suspended tax on foreign direct investment, but the plan met with limited success and was dropped in 1984.

Later, requests from the private sector to include a tax holiday in the 2009 law fell short.

Ministers believe the policy may have a better outcome in a more stable economic climate.

Officials who support the tax break proposal are seeking to revise the tax code, which holds that any activity generating revenue is subject to tax.

Tjiptardjo said tax holidays are not included in taxation laws, but are instead regulated by the Investment Law. He said both laws should be "harmonized."

The tax chief said other tax facilities are in place. "Other subjects like tax rate depreciation, accelerated restitution and tariff derivation are already available."

He said potential revenue losses from foreign entities are insignificant since these companies are not subject to property tax. "Of course, there is a potential lost if they are freed. But according to the law, they are not tax subjects," he said.

Tax holidays exempt companies from paying taxes during a certain period. (Antara, JG)

Govt to maintain conservatism despite infrastructure backlog

Jakarta Post - September 13, 2010

Jakarta – Indonesia will maintain a conservative fiscal policy despite pressure to fast-track infrastructure projects, the Coordinating Economic Ministry says, insisting on public-private partnership (PPP) schemes.

"We will continue to promote Public Private Partnership [PPP] programs focusing on the improvement of our infrastructure facilities, instead of burdening our state budget with excessive infrastructure development costs," Coordinating Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa said on the weekend.

Government spending should be allocated only to infrastructure development projects that are not attractive to private investors, he said.

"With better infrastructure we will more competitive, but we cannot depend too heavily on the state budget to develop our infrastructure," he said, responding to a 2010 World Economic Forum (WEF) report saying that Indonesia should improve its infrastructure.

The report, issued Sept. 9, says Indonesia has improved its competitiveness through a more sound and sustainable macroeconomic environment and improved education indicators amid the ongoing global financial crisis.

However, Indonesia had failed to reach its full potential for growth because of bottlenecks in infrastructure development, the report says.

Hatta played down the comments suggestions saying the government would have to increase its budget deficit of Rp 115.7 trillion (US$12.84 billion) or 1.7 percent of GDP in its 2011 budget, if it wanted to accelerate infrastructure development.

"A 1.7 percent budget deficit of the GDP is quite prudent for us," Hatta said, adding that this would support economic growth of 6.3 percent in 2011. The government may not be able to finance all infrastructure development projects, he said, even if it used all the state budget by imposing a 3 percent deficit, because this would require massive amounts of funding, he said.

Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo also said a 1.7 percent deficit would be sufficient to maintain a sound state budget.

"We shouldn't make the budget deficit too big. The most important thing for us is to maintain a positive primary balance and reduce our debt-to-GDP ratio," he said.

The government is targeting a 27.8 percent debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of this year, as stipulated in the revised 2010 budget.

"This is part of our effort to maintain a sound and sustainable budget. In this regard, we have to prevent an increase of the budget deficit, while promoting a positive primary balance and decreasing the debt-to-GDP ratio," Agus said, adding that a budget deficit of more than 2 percent would cause a negative primary balance.

Hatta said there were huge opportunities in PPP programs for the development of infrastructure, introduced in 2005. However, none had been accomplished because they were impeded by three main obstacles: difficulties in land acquisition, the complexity of PPP project procedures and a lack of financing.

Analysis & opinion

Electricity rate hikes unite Indonesian opposition

Direct Action - September 2010

Vivi Widyawati, Jakarta – Around 800 demonstrators from the National Movement for the Cancellation of Basic Electricity Rate Hikes and the Reduction of Prices held a protest action at the State Palace in central Jakarta on August 7. The movement is a broad alliance involving more than 45 organisations. Actions were also held in Medan (North Sumatra), Bandung (West Java), Makassar (South Sulawesi), Ternate (North Maluku), Surabaya (East Java) and Samarinda (East Kalimantan). Earlier, around 80 protesters from Perempuan Mahardhika (Free Women) held a one-hour action at the Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry and then joined the protest at the palace.

The national action was a concrete form of united people's power against the puppet capitalist regime of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice-President Boediono, the parliament and the bourgeois political parties.

On July 1 the Yudhoyono government began the gradual withdrawal of the electricity subsidy, resulting in an average increase to the basic electricity rate of 10%. It is proposing a further increase of 15% in early 2011. The justification for this was increases in the cost of electricity generator components, resulting in a blow-out of basic supply costs for the state electricity company, PLN. It was also influenced by the rising cost of Indonesian crude oil, which is expected to reach US$80 a barrel, and an expected increase in electricity demand of 6.6% in 2010 and 7.4% in 2011.

Many have rejected these arguments. PLN trade union chairperson Daryoko said that the real reason for the price hikes was the government's desire to privatise PLN, particularly in Java and Bali. Daryoko added that PLN recorded profits of 10.36 trillion rupiah ($1=8100 rupiah) in 2009, so there are no grounds to increase prices.

Indonesian Labour Movement Union (PPBI) general secretary Budi Wardoyo agreed, asserting that the government is lying. The real reason for the increases is to meet standard business profit levels prior to the privatisation of PLN. Wardoyo also said price hike was closely linked to the 2011 draft state budget, the largest portion of which will be used to pay foreign debt, which has now reached 116.4 trillion rupiah, while the budget for social welfare stands at only 61.5 trillion. The government has been cutting the electricity and other subsidies since it signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Monetary Fund in 1998.

Movement dynamics

There have been ongoing efforts to build movement unity in Indonesia and to take advantage of different issues to do this. One successful form of this was the establishment of the National Unity Front (FPN) in 2008, which was dominated by left organisations and independent trade unions. Although it survived for less than three months, the political atmosphere created by the FPN was quite broad, as proven by the establishment of FPN not just in Jakarta, but also in other parts of the country.

Another attempt was made in late 2009 by a united front called the Indonesian People's Opposition Front (FORI) which was initiated by the People's Working Association (PRP). Unlike the National Liberation Front (FPN), FORI was largely dominated by NGOs and organisations linked with the PRP, and the involvement of the left was limited and eventually ended because of the minimal democratic space within FORI.

When the Yudhoyono government withdrew the electricity subsidy, it was seen as an opportunity to consolidate the movements. The first consolidation meeting occurred on July 21, initiated by the Workers Challenge Alliance (ABM), the Indonesian Transportation Trade Union of Struggle (SBTPI), the PPBI, the Greater Jakarta Workers Front of Struggle (FPBJ), the Student Struggle Centre for National Liberation (Pembebasan), the Indonesian Student Union (SMI), Perempuan Mahardhika, the Political Union of the Poor (PPRM), the Indonesian Struggle Union (PPI) and the Political Committee of the Poor-People's Democratic Party (KPRM-PRD). It was attended by 66 people from 28 organisations, including trade unions, student groups, women's organisations, youth groups, urban poor organisations and non-sectoral groups such as the PPI, the KPRM-PRD, the People's Democratic Party (PRD) and the PPRM. During the preparatory process, the number of organisations grew to 45, with the PRP and FORI joining later.

This was the first occasion in a long time that left and democratic elements were able to hold united mobilisations and build political unity. There were many organisations, and of course many different interests. One of the very positive things that came out of the alliance was the democratic space available for different opinions and debate.

The debate on political issues was a long one. Some were of the opinion that it would be better if the political target were just the Yudhoyono government, others were of the view that it should not be just Yudhoyono and Boediono but also the parliament, while others said the target should be just PLN. Through this discussion a joint agreement was born on what political position to take, namely that the Yudhoyono government and the parliament had failed to bring prosperity to the people.

Following this, there was discussion on the solution for the Indonesian people, in which PPBI's Wardoyo offered the proposal of nationalisation under people's control. Bin Bin Tresnadi from the PRD disagreed, saying that there was no one solution because a longer discussion was needed and the PRD has a different position on nationalisation. This kind of dynamic was extremely positive in improving a still very new spirit of unity.

Crimes against the people

The August 7 national actions were a fight against the growing crimes against the people by the Yudhoyono government and the parliament, as part of their subservience to the owners of capital, particularly foreign capital.

The national actions brought a new hope for maintaining and broadening unity among the movements. As conveyed by SBTPI chairperson Ilhamsyah, in order to replace the Yudhoyono government, what is needed is democratic and broad unity from the movement groups, free of intervention by the political elite and their political parties, unity that has a national structure and is capable of holding simultaneous actions across the country.

Although considered quite successful in terms of uniting resistance, the August 7 actions were still not enough to drive back those in power. The strength of the movement must be broadened further and provide the impetus for ordinary people to become involved in it.

"The political movements are working together and developing. Our problem in the movement is how to make them stronger. Strength together with the people is what is most formidable, with unity between the people's movement itself as one front. Not unity with the capitalist regime (the government and parliament), which have been proven to have failed and not be part of the people's movement front", said Pembebasan chairperson Mutiara Ika Pratiwi.

Following the August 7 actions, the alliance will be organising other events, the next being a discussion on the theme: Challenging 65 Years of Independence of the Republic of Indonesia, Building a New Politics.

[Vivi Widyawati is the international relations officer for the Perempuan Mahardhika and a member of the KPRM-PRD.]

What lurks behind show of unity?

Jakarta Globe - September 13, 2010

Armando Siahaan, Jakarta – We are not in competition with each other. That was the message Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie and media mogul Surya Paloh, who chairs the National Democrats, aimed to convey by Sunday's surprise public appearance at the home of former top Golkar leader Jusuf Kalla.

The bickering and demands two months ago of Golkar members, including party secretary general Idrus Marham, for members to shun the National Democrats seem to have ended up on the back burner.

It was one of the few occasions when both heavyweights have been seen together since Golkar's heated fight for the chairmanship last year that ended in strained relations between the two.

Surya lost to Aburizal and the relationship was further fractured when Surya set up the National Democrats as a social organization and then won the backing of a string of well-known political figures.

The organization is seen as Surya's future political vehicle. However, statements by the two men on Sunday have raised the possibility that reconciliation between the organizations could be possible.

"Why should there be any talk of reconciliation when we never had a problem with the National Democrats?" Idrus told the Jakarta Globe on Monday. He said his party had never seen the National Democrats as a political threat, as long as it remained a social organization.

Idrus also said Golkar had made no effort to recruit the National Democrats as a wing of the party. The statement was in stark contrast to recent remarks by Golkar leaders who had said they expected party members to quit the National Democrats.

On Sunday, Surya said his group had never considered Golkar an enemy. "We are of different streams but we have to struggle together for the country's welfare."

The media tycoon said he supported any effort to unite the two entities when it came to the national interest. But this did not mean the National Democrats would formally join Golkar.

He said his group was not affiliated with any political party and would not evolve into one anytime soon.

In May, he said that the group would only become a fully fledged political party if it had 10 million to 15 million members, whereas at the time it had just 30,000 on its books.

Surya said he would meet Aburizal again, without specifying when and where.

Yunarto Wijaya, a political analyst from Charta Politika, said: "Learning from the history of conflict that there has been between Aburizal and Surya, it would be difficult to reunite them. There have been too many traumas, and both have built their own power infrastructure."

Yunarto said both men had been trying to use Sunday's event to raise their profiles.

"Both were aware the event would received significant media exposure," he said. "The Golkar leaders were trying to attract the public's attention because most of the focus has been on SBY," he said, referring to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

By being photographed together, Kalla, Aburizal and Surya wanted people to think that Golkar had national-scale leaders, Yunarto said. However, he added that Aburizal and Surya had also wanted to show their individual power.

Aburizal seemed to want to show that the National Democrats were still part of Golkar because many of its members were from the party, and that Surya's group was too small to compete.

Meanwhile, Surya's presence among Golkar leaders suggested he was capable of building the National Democrats into a group to rival Golkar one day, Yunarto said.

NZ aid fosters impunity, status quo by Indonesian security forces

New Zealand International Review - September/October 2010

Maire Leadbeater – New Zealand's diplomacy with respect to Indonesian-controlled West Papua, especially in light of its aid to the Indonesian military and to the police in West Papua, has worrying aspects. The Indonesian military is not yet accountable to the civilian authority, and both the police and the military in West Papua have a grievous record of human rights violations. Although the New Zealand government view is that we are supporting reform of these institutions, New Zealand's aid instead supports the status quo and ongoing repression. A more constructive role for New Zealand would be that of a facilitator in a peaceful dialogue between Jakarta and West Papuan representatives.

New Zealand is a trusted friend and supporter of Indonesia. There is much benefit to be gained from people-to-people ties, cultural and educational links and from most trade ties. But there are strong reasons to oppose the aid that is given to the most repressive forces in Indonesian society - the police and the military.

In explanation, first some historical context and then a more detailed case example looking at West Papua, the Indonesian- controlled western half of the island of New Guinea. This analysis draws on Ministry of Foreign Affairs documentation, some of it heavily censored, obtained under the Official Information Act.

During the time of Suharto's authoritarian regime in Indonesia, the General knew he could count on us. "Good relations" were established around the time of Suharto's ascension in 1966 – a period marred by the bloody purge of up to half a million "dissidents" and "communists", one of last centuries largest massacres. New Zealand backed the highly contested annexations of both West Papua in 1969 and East Timor in 1975.

I have extensively documented this history in the case of East Timor, showing how New Zealand supported Indonesia in the United Nations and in other forums. New Zealand also helped the Indonesian military with officer training, from 1973 on. Defence ties were only suspended after the worst of the 1999 post- referendum violence in East Timor, and quietly resumed again in 2007.

Indonesia is now twelve years on from the dark days of the Suharto dictatorship, and in some ways the democratic gains are remarkable. But there are worrying hangovers – books and films are still banned, especially if they deal with black chapters in Indonesia's history, such as the invasion of East Timor. Corruption is still endemic and has a grave impact on every of level of the administration, including the justice system.

The biggest roadblock to further democratic reform is the entrenched power of the military, Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI). The military has never faced up to its role in supporting Suharto's tyranny and its officers remain unaccountable for their crimes against humanity. Credible charges of horrendous East Timor crimes have proved no barrier to advancement, as in the case of Syafrie Syamsuddin, who was recently appointed a Deputy Minister of Defence. He is an East Timor Kopassus veteran alleged to have been the key commander of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, and one of the masterminds of the bloody campaign of vengeance wreaked on the Timorese when they voted for independence.

Despite 2004 legislation which required the TNI to quit its business network, the military still draws on off-budget funding from innumerable legal and illegal business interests.

Most of the time New Zealand's relations with Indonesia do not get onto the public radar. But in the 1990s as news began to spread about atrocities in East Timor, the Foreign Affairs Ministry had to perfect a public relations strategy to account for the pro-Indonesia policy position.

Key components

Key components of this strategy are the promotion of "quiet diplomacy" and "constructive engagement" usually through aid. In bilateral meetings behind closed doors New Zealand Ministers raise human rights concerns with their Indonesian counterparts. These exchanges can be pointed, but frequently they are amount to little more than ritual expressions that require minimal response from the Indonesian side. At its worst this "quiet diplomacy" is a blatant exercise in collusion Just before Indonesia invaded East Timor, our diplomats told their Indonesian counterparts that the Government had a "private and public position on the problem". The "private position" was support for integration while the "public" position was to respect the wishes of the Timorese people.

The dramatic end of Indonesian rule over East Timor shook the foundations of our Government's pro-Indonesia policies. New Zealand police and peacekeeping forces played their part in restoring order and in confronting the rump end of the Indonesian-trained militia forces. In 2000 New Zealander Private Leonard Manning paid the price with his life. But the crisis did not have a long term impact on the bilateral relationship – the "East Timor case" was successfully ring-fenced. The parallels between the situation of East Timor and West Papua were not explored.

Yet, the situation in West Papua today has some strong similarities with pre-liberation East Timor. West Papuans still struggle for the freedom they were promised by the Dutch colonial power, and were deprived of after a United States brokered agreement allowed Indonesian troops to occupy West Papua. The United Nations agreed to allow Indonesia to conduct a so-called "Act of Free Choice" in 1969, a voting process that only 1,022 out of nearly a million Papuans took part in, which is widely known today as "The Act of No Choice". Effectively there is a state of de facto occupation by the Indonesian armed forces and the Special Forces Kopassus, which has personnel stationed in nearly every district. Access for foreign journalists and the human rights investigators and humanitarian agencies is severely restricted and at times even New Zealand Embassy diplomats have had their requests to visit put on hold.

Drastic decline

West Papua is richer in terms of resources than any other part of the Indonesian archipelago, but poorer on every index of human well-being – health, income levels, and education. Human rights groups, including the Indonesian Human Rights Commission (Komnas Ham) state that the human rights situation in West Papua experienced a "drastic decline" in 2009. The police treat as criminals and "separatists" those who try to take part in legal peaceful demonstrations. Late in 2009 a police team captured and killed a key Free Papua Movement leader, Kelly Kwalik, despite the fact that he had earlier met willingly with Indonesian police.

In the 47 years since Indonesia assumed control, West Papua, (named Irian Jaya by Indonesia until 2000) is believed to have lost at least 100,000 of its people to the ongoing conflict. Resistance to Indonesian rule has changed over time from a low level guerrilla struggle in the mountains to a wider campaign of non-violent resistance.

New Zealand diplomats make regular visits to West Papua and their reports indicate that they have a clear-eyed awareness of the level of unrest and suffering. The Embassy officials, whether representing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or NZAID, are no doubt sincere in wanting to make a positive difference, but are partisan in a situation of strong internal conflict. New Zealand consistently supports Indonesia's right to preserve its "territorial integrity" and by implication its antagonism to "separatism."

In the past decade this has meant that New Zealand has supported Jakarta's 2001 Special Autonomy legislation for Papua, even though Papuans were never consulted about it. Official statements consistently express the view that the "best route to a peaceful solution in Papua" is the full implementation of the Special Autonomy package.

One report has some essentially patronising advice for Papuans who hoped for greater freedom ("merdeka" in Indonesian):

Papuan leaders should be encouraged to make the most of the opportunities given to them by special autonomy. No matter how understandable their desire for merdeka, it is a dangerous distraction. Health and education needs are urgent. The money is already there. It is up to the Papuans to use it wisely.

Softening process

There is considerable evidence that New Zealand's aid projects have been used to help soften the edges of questionable foreign policy practice. At the time of the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, New Zealand made much of a package of aid sent through the Red Cross to both East and West Timor. In 1978 when even the Red Cross was excluded from East Timor, news of a devastating famine leaked to the outside world. When Indonesia's Foreign Minister visited that year New Zealand successfully negotiated to send food aid and the New Zealand Herald headlined the story "Aid acceptable if Indonesia can call the tune."

A key component of New Zealand's current aid to Indonesia, the largest bilateral aid package in the Asian region, is presented as peace building and human rights training. To what extent does this aid provide our Government with a handy rejoinder to challenges that it is soft on human rights in Indonesia? And is this aid supporting genuine reform and change or is it being carefully directed in ways that will not challenge the established order and vested interests? In 2006 the New Zealand Government pursued the resumption of defence ties with Indonesia and the commencement of a programme to offer training in community policing to the Papuan police force.

Dramatic year

2006 was a dramatic year for West Papua. It opened in January with the much publicised arrival of 43 Papuan asylum seekers at Cape Horn, Australia. They had barely survived their journey by traditional wooden boat and all put forward claims of abuse and persecution which were eventually accepted.

In March a student demonstration against the presence of the Freeport McMoran mine escalated into a violent confrontation between demonstrators and the police. Four officers of the Police Force and a member of the Indonesia air force died. In the aftermath 23 were arrested, and hundreds fled across the border as the Brimob paramilitary police raided dormitories and fired on students they believed to have been involved. Human rights groups and the churches reported that the detainees had been beaten and tortured and later alleged that the trials were deeply flawed. At the end of the year there were reports of military sweeping operations in the Highlands area.

Early in 2007 thirty two West Papuan police (only 10 of them indigenous Papuans) attended a workshop in Jayapura at which participants were told how New Zealand police try to build community relations and anticipate and prevent conflict.

The Ministry memos record how the Police Area Commander in Jayapura asked for New Zealand assistance with community policing and said he had instructions from the National Police Chief to "get back the confidence of the community" following the March riots. During the same meeting the Police Chief, General Tommy Yacobus also told the Second Secretary that one of his priorities for 2007 was to increase the percentage of indigenous Papuans within POLDA Papua which was currently at 4%.

When the programme was being rolled out in 2008, I wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, and to the Minister of Police, Annette King. Both sent replies suggesting that the programme would improve police adherence to international human rights standards and help the Papuan police to improve the way they work with local communities. Peters suggested that he did not favour isolating Indonesia.

Basic tenet

The right to free expression is a basic tenet of international human rights yet there are some 45 political prisoners in Papua, including many arrested for daring to raise a banned Morning Star nationalist flag. Police even interrogate women in the market- place for selling handicrafts decorated with a nationalist symbol.

It will take more than workshops about community policing to win the hearts and minds of a people scarred by decades of police and military abuses and the killing of revered leaders. And as for the Police Chief's hope of recruiting indigenous Papuans to the almost entirely migrant force, Papuans describe a rigorous selection process for new recruits: An interrogation process ensures that anyone joining up must deny or hide any connection however remote to those who support independence.

New Zealand's military training for Indonesia largely consists of bilateral officer exchanges: each year an Indonesian officer attends the New Zealand Defence Force's Command and Staff College to participate in the senior staff course while NZDF officers attend courses in Indonesia. Our Government defends this programme on the grounds that engagement with the Indonesian military will promote positive reform.

Will Indonesian practice improve by osmosis if we continue to work alongside their officers? The advocates of engagement would say New Zealand continues to criticise human rights abuses, but which is the stronger message – our polite, mainly private exchanges about human rights or our increasing co-operation with the forces of repression?

Good example

The following episode is a good example of how engagement opens a door for Indonesia to co-opt New Zealand to support its local agenda. In September 2008, New Zealand Embassy representatives, (deputy head of mission and second secretary) visited West Papua to discuss matters such as New Zealand's support for the full implementation of Papua Special Autonomy Law and the New Zealand Community Policing Initiative, which had "emerged as the centerpiece of New Zealand's engagement in Papua and West Papua." The Embassy reported on their first visit in two years as a success: In the past Embassy visits to the two provinces have been confined to information gathering. This time it was very different – we had something concrete to offer. That was reflected in the warm reception accorded to us. The NZAID-funded, NZ Police Community Policing (CP) project is now the centerpiece of New Zealand's constructive engagement approach with Indonesia on the Papua issue. It demonstrates New Zealand is serious in its desire to make a real difference on the ground in the two provinces.

However, one meeting during this visit seems to have been more challenging as the sub-heading for the meeting at TNI Kodam XV11 headquarters indicates: "An encounter with TNI: Some old bugbears". Chief of Staff Brigadier General Hambali, who was accompanied by the Head of Intelligence, appears to have put the diplomats to the test:

In outlining New Zealand's policy we said we did not speak with a forked tongue – what we were saying to him we had said to others we had met during our visit. Our comment that the New Zealand Government did not support separatism elicited an animated response from Hambali, who said he was pleased to hear that.

This meeting was written up in the Papua Pos newspaper and also on the military website. These accounts suggest that the Embassy team had been critical of media and non-governmental organisations for exploiting "the negative side of developments in Papua and West Papua". This is unlikely to be a simple "lost in translation" situation as the comments in the report indicate:

Attached are clippings and English language translations of articles that appeared in the Papua Pos and on the TNI website. Large chunks of the articles, including purported criticism by the DHOM of NGOs and the media were a complete fabrication, as was our alleged commendation of TNI.

Aid issues

I also fear that the emphasis on programmes supporting the police or military, may edge out expenditure on humanitarian aid. Recent New Zealand Government statements promote using aid to help other countries achieve "sustainable economic growth", but most indigenous West Papuans cannot join the economic mainstream without improvements in basic health and education levels. NZAID currently grants eleven Indonesians scholarships for post- graduate study at a New Zealand University each year. However, only two indigenous Papuans have been granted a post-graduate scholarship since 2007.

New Zealand does support the UNDP People Centred Development Programme, a complex co-ordination project involving non- governmental organisations and other international donors aimed at improving living standards. To some extent Papuans are cautious about engaging with at this level of official aid which is always carried out with close involvement of the Indonesian authorities. A strong case can be made for an alternative aid approach based on working with small local projects led by local non-governmental organisations or churches.

In June 2010, the Papuan People's Assembly or MRP, a kind of "upper house" in the governance structure with limited powers, held a consultation which resolved to reject the Special Autonomy Law and symbolically hand it back to the regional Parliament. The community responded with support demonstrations of up to 20,000 people calling for a referendum on independence and genuine dialogue with Jakarta. The security forces were unusually restrained in the face of the unprecedented size of the mobilisations.

In parallel with these developments, West Papua's Melanesian neighbour, the Republic of Vanuatu, resolved on a new foreign policy direction which explicitly mandates Vanuatu to take a number of initiatives in support of West Papua's independence. Vanuatu will sponsor a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly calling for the International Court of Justice to arbitrate on the legality of the 1969 "Act of Free Choice."

Tipping point

Will these events form the tipping point to prod Jakarta into listening to West Papuan voices? It is nearly two years since the respected Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) published the Papua Road Map which addressed the marginalisation of the indigenous West Papuan people and proposed a dialogue along similar lines to that which helped to bring peace to Aceh in 2005.

The concept of a dialogue has been given a cautious welcome by the Governor of Papua, but as yet there is no clear indication how this dialogue might be facilitated and mediated, and some resistance groups sound a note of caution that any dialogue must have genuine independent facilitation preferably from the United Nations.

Over the years many Papuan leaders have raised the possibility that New Zealand could help to facilitate a peace dialogue for West Papua – drawing on the successful process mediated by New Zealand which helped to resolve the crisis in Bougainville. To the best of my knowledge there is no current New Zealand offer on the table. Eight years ago a guarded offer of mediation was briefly floated but the Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, Phil Goff, stressed that the decision rested with Indonesia and did not pursue the suggestion.

There is still time for New Zealand to make a new beginning and put the aspirations of the Papuan people first before the need to please Indonesia. This is the moment when the Papuan people urgently need international advocates to support their call for a genuine dialogue that can address all the problems in West Papua including the "forbidden" topics of political status and West Papua's troubled history.

Notes

NZ Dept of External Affairs Annual Report for the year ended 31 March, 1967: "Since the new Indonesian Government has embarked on a more constructive international policy...the New Zealand Government has been able to look forward to increased contacts and rewarding relationship with the Republic."
Maire F Leadbeater,. "Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand's Complicity in the Invasion and Occupation of Timor-Leste", (Nelson, 2006)
Syafrie Syamsuddin is named as having "command responsibility" in UN-funded human rights reports including the 2001 Report of James Dunn and the 2005 Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
Komnas Ham and Kontras, Papua Joint Presentation on Human Rights, 17 Jan, 2010
The territory was named Papua in 2000, but is still generally known internationally as West Papua, especially in the solidarity movement. In 2003 the territory was controversially subdivided into two provinces named Papua and West Papua.
Phil Goff, to Maire Leadbeater for the Indonesia Human Rights Committee, 1 Dec 2003
NZ Embassy Jakarta to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wellington: 16 Dec 2002, memo "Indonesia:Visit to Papua: Separatism and Independence"
Ibid., 10 April, 2007, cable "Indonesia: Papua: Community Policing Workshop"
A Partnership Approach
Ibid., 9 Jan memo: "Indonesia: Papua: Community Policing"
Winston Peters to Indonesia Human Rights Committee, 9 June, 2008
NZ Embassy Jakarta to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wellington, 23 Sep 2008 "Indonesia: Visit to Papua and West Papua-Overview",
Papua Pos, 11 Sep 2008 and TNI website article, 15 Sep 2008: translations provided in ibid.
NZAID Website downloaded 14 May, 2010
Examples of this is are: the "Mama Mamas" project supported by Pax Christi empowering and strengthening the women who run market-place craft enterprises in Jayapura and the Oxfam New Zealand livelihood project in Nabire.

[Maire Leadbeater is the spokesperson for the Indonesia Human Rights Committee (Auckland).]