Alex Rayfield, Yapen In dramatic scenes outside a remote West Papuan prison, local community leaders on Monday forced the Indonesian police to release to two independence activists jailed on charges of rebellion.
Earlier in the day the two activists, Edison Kendi (37) and Yan Piet Maniamboy (35) were sentenced to 2 years and 18 months respectively, in a Serui Island court house on trumped up charges of rebellion, an antiquated law used extensively by the Suharto regime to repress dissent in Indonesia. Although Suharto was overthrown in May 1998, the legislation remains on the statute books, and is regularly employed by Indonesian police to repress dissent.
According to witnesses Kendi was dragged naked into the court room while Maniamboy remained forcibly detained in his cell, unable to attend his own trial. Hundreds of Papuans from all over Yapen and the neighbouring islands and towns attended the trial. Some arrived by boats decked out in large Morning Star flags, the banned symbol of West Papuan independence. Scores more waved Morning Star flags in the crowd while the police appeared unable or unwilling to do anything.
Following the verdict, the accused's lawyers immediately filed an appeal. As Kendi was returned to prison, re-joining Maniamboy, a large crowd gathered outside the jail demanding the men's release. After intense negotiations between the men's lawyers, police in charge of the prison and protest organiser George Ayorbaba, Kendi and Maniamboy were released to a jubilant crowd. The men are now free pending their appeal due to be set down for a later date.
The two men were part of a large group from the West Papua National Authority, a mass-based pro-independence group allied with the Federal Republic of West Papua. Maniamboy was reportedly appointed chief of Yawama Regency by the Federal Republic of West Papua, after that group declared the restoration of independence at the Third Papuan People's Congress in October 2011.
Edison Kendi and Yan Piet Maniamboi have been detained by Indonesian police since 9 August 2012. The two activists were arrested for organising a nonviolent march in support of the United Nations International Day of Indigenous People.
According to Papuans Behind Bars at the end of June 2013 57 Papuan political prisoners were in jail. All are held for nonviolently expressing political opinions, a right acknowledge by the Indonesian constitution. However, in the case of pro-independence activists in West Papua, Papuans right to free speech is not upheld.
The treatment of Papuan political prisoners is gaining increasing international attention and sparking some new forms of protest. Australian Aboriginal Elder, Kevin Buzzacott from the Arabunna nation in South Australia, together with Jacob Rumbiak, Foreign Affairs Minister for the Federal Republic of West Papua and a large group of West Papuans and Australian supporters are currently travelling by land and sea to West Papua where they plan to meet pro-independence activists.
Activists from the West Papua National Authority are planning a welcoming ceremony. Both Buzzacott and Rumbiak say the Freedom Flotilla is part of a plan to revitalise ancient cultural ties between Australia and West Papua.
"We have a responsibility to care for our brothers and sisters from across the water" said Buzzacott.
The Indonesian government has not yet made a public statement about whether the Freedom Flotilla will be allowed to enter West Papua.
Banjir Ambarita An armed civilian group shot at an ambulance carrying a patient in the restive Papua district of Puncak Jaya on Wednesday, killing one and injuring two others.
"An ambulance has been shot in the village of Puncak Senyum in Puncak Jaya. We suspect that an armed civilian group was responsible," Col. Inf. Lismer Luban Siantar, a spokesman for the military's Cenderwasih Command, which oversees the province of Papua, told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.
The ambulance, which was transporting a sick patient, was heading to the Mulia Regional Hospital in Puncak Jaya from Tingginambut when a group of gunmen opened fire from 30 meters above it.
The three people sitting in the front seats of the ambulance were hit, while eight others, including the patient, were not. "We suspect there were five to 10 shooters," Lismer said.
The deceased victim has been identified as medical worker Erik Yoman, 35. Prins Baransano, another medical staff who was shot in the arm, and ambulance driver Darson Wonda, who was hit in the shoulder, are being treated at Mulia Hospital.
"Even after he was injured, the driver kept driving to the hospital," Lismer said.
Earlier this month, an unidentified gunman fatally shot a passing motorcycle taxi driver in Puncak Jaya.
Papua's highland districts of Puncak Jaya and Jayawijaya are especially prone to violence and shootings mostly directed against soldiers, police officers and migrants. Authorities have tended to blame armed groups such as the the separatist Free Papua Organization (OPM), which has been waging a low-profile resistance since the 1960s.
The Hague, West Papua The Free West Papua Campaign is to open a new office in the Netherlands.
Earlier this year the Campaign, which is fronted by exiled West Papuan Independence leader Benny Wenda, opened an office in the British city of Oxford.
Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa voiced disappointment that the British government was unwilling to take steps against the office.
The Campaign's Oditek Ap says the new office in the Hague will be opened on August 15th, the 51st anniversary of the New York Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesia under which control of the former Dutch New Guinea was ceded.
"It is our task to inform the youth in the Netherlands about their own history, about our history, the West Papuan story, by opening an office so that people will know that there is an office where we can get more information about the situation in West Papua and about why the people in West Papua are struggling for freedom."
Jayapura Five Papuan Freedom activists were arrested while taking part in a demonstration on 29 July, in support of the discussion on Self- Determination for the people of West Papua which took place at the United Nations Human Rights Committee which met in Geneva, Switzerland earlier this month.
The names of the five people arrested are: Usamah Yogobi, chairman of SHDRP, who is also the chairman of National Reconciliation Team for General Mobilisation and the co-ordinator of the peaceful demonstration, as well as Alius Asso, who helped to organise the demonstration, Johannes Elegani and Benny Hisage.
People from many parts of the territory who took part in long marches towards the meeting place were forcibly dispersed by the police for failing to have a permit.
According to investigations by Bintang Papua, the police dispersed the demonstration because the actions were not in accord with what had been stated in the request for permission to hold the demonstration.
Two of the five activists who were arrested were taken to police headquarters in Jayapura City while the other three were taken to the police headquarters in Abepura.
The chief of police of Jayapura, AKPB Alfred Papare, along with several other senior police officers, were seen moving among the crowd of demonstrators, attempting to halt the demonstration. One police officer said that of those taken into custody, two would be released and allowed to return home after having been interrogated.
The secretary-general of SHDRP, Jubedius Selegani said that he was deeply disappointed with the actions of the police to disperse the demonstrators because those organising the event had submitted a request for permission to hold the events.
He said that the government of the Republic of Indonesia should realise that their actions would eventually be seen as a victory for the Papuan people when they finally win their independence.
Selegani also called for the release of all the five people who were arrested. Similar views were expressed by the head of the district of Domberai of the WPNA (National Committee of West Papua) who said that during the dispersal of the demonstraation, many people taking part in the demonstration were beaten by the police.
Saireri Marthinus, head of the Transitional Administration of the WPNA, said that news about the dispersal of the demonstration would be reported in the international media, as well as the news of the arrest of the five activists which would only help to advance the struggle of the Papuan people for their demand for freedom from the NKRI the Republic of Indonesia.
Jayapura The Second Secretary for Political Affairs at the US Embassy in Jakarta, James P. Feldmeyer, declared that he will pay close attention to any information or complaints, however small he receives from Papuan people.
He urged NGOs in Papua not to despair and to continue to provide information to his embassy about developments in Papua. He said that any information he received from NGOs in Papua would be passed on to officials of the US Government.
He was speaking at the office of Foker (Co-Ordinating Forum) of NGOs in Papua when he made this comment.
According to information obtained by Bintang Papua, the US diplomat held a private meeting at the Foker office, when he was accompanied by a female colleague. From there, they visited the office of ELSHAM Papua.
The Executive Secretary of a Papuan NGO, Lienche F. Maloali said that the aim of the meeting had been to urge NGOs in Papua not to stop providing information to the US Embassy about the situation in Papua including information about various human rights violations that continue to occur in Papua.
Mr Feldmeyer made it clear that they are always keen to get the most up-to-date information from those who are members of various Papuan organisations which could be sent to senior officials at the embassy or to members of the House of Representatives or the Senate. Such information would also be made available to members of the US Congress and possibly also to the President of the USA.
Lienche, as Malioli is known to his friends, said that they felt very frustrated because they continue to send information about the latest situation in Papua, but they had never received any serious response.
"Initially we felt frustrated because information about human rights violations, however great or small, has been sent to people abroad. Now we are being told not to feel frustraated and to continue to provide information about the latest events in Papua."
One member of Foker Papua, Bas Wamafma said that the US Government should urge the Indonesian Government to provide the space for democracy in Papua and to allow foreign journalists to have the freedom to carry out their journalistic activities in the Land of Papua.
Oxford, UK Benny Wenda has been many things in his 38 years. Among them, student and activist, prisoner and wanted man, a child of indigenous farmers in the West Papua province of Indonesia and a father of six in this English university town.
From 2011 to 2012, he was the subject of an Interpol red notice, an international order for his immediate arrest and extradition to Indonesia, where he staged a daring prison break in 2002 before seeking asylum in Britain.
To the Indonesian government, he is at once a "non-issue," a "criminal" and a headache.
For Wenda, it's all been in the service of a single goal: independence for West Papua and an end to what he describes as decades of oppression at the hands of the Indonesian government and military.
"They look at West Papuans as subhuman," he said over coffee near his office in Oxford. A man of compact stature and gentle demeanor, Wenda says Indonesia has never treated West Papua as an equal partner. "We are a different color. We are a different race. Self-determination is the goal."
One of 16,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago, West Papua covers an area just smaller than California and is located on the western half of New Guinea. (The eastern half of the island, Papua New Guinea, is an independent nation.)
Home to some 3 million people, most indigenous ethnic minorities, it is one of Indonesia's poorest provinces.
Its forests and earth, however, contain some of the richest natural resource reserves in Indonesia, the targets of millions of dollars in foreign investment. That means Indonesia and other governments with a financial stake in the region won't let it go quietly.
West Papuan independence is an extremely sensitive issue for Indonesia, as Britain found out in April, when Wenda prompted a diplomatic row by opening the Free West Papua Campaign's small office.
Fearful of offending a country with which it's hoping to build lucrative trade and diplomatic ties, the UK has been quick to distance itself from any challenges to Indonesia's territorial sovereignty.
"It is vital that we do not allow the West Papua issue to damage our work with Indonesia," a government source told the Telegraph newspaper in June.
The UK and the rest of the world has officially recognized West Papua as part of Indonesia since 1969, when residents voted unanimously to incorporate themselves into the archipelagic country in a UN-backed referendum.
Critics of the Act of Free Choice maintain that the select Papuans allowed to participate were forced to vote that way under threat of violence.
Wenda and fellow campaigners allege that Indonesia's police and military have subjected West Papua to violent oppression since the country took de facto control of the province even earlier, in 1963.
Their claims are buttressed by research from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other independent organizations that have documented political intimidation, torture, rape, disappearance and extrajudicial killings of Papuans at the hands of state forces.
"There have been human rights abuses in West Papua actually since day one," says Andreas Harsono, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Jakarta.
When the Indonesian government has been confronted with evidence of those offenses, "sometimes they responded. Sometimes they do arrest soldiers or police officers. But consistently, the punishment is only a slap on the wrist," Harsono said. "There is a sense of impunity in West Papua."
Wenda's asylum claim in the UK he is now a British citizen stems from his arrest on suspicion of conspiracy in the murder of a police officer in West Papua in 2000, a charge he firmly denies.
Placing his foot on a cafe bench, he pushes down his sock and rolls up his jeans to reveal lash-like scars around his ankles from what he says were shackles put on him in jail.
On a windy night in 2002 that masked the sounds of his escape, he broke through the prison's ventilation system, scaled a wall and made his way to Papua New Guinea, then to Britain, where supporters met him at Heathrow Airport. His palms bear scars from glass shards embedded in the prison gates.
Friends smuggled out his wife and infant daughter, who joined him in 2003. The couple now has six children.
Indonesia issued Interpol's highest alert, the red notice, for Wenda in 2011, but was forced to remove it the following year after an investigation by the international police organization determined that the case against him was "predominantly political in nature." As far as Indonesia is concerned, however, he remains a criminal on the lam.
"I question Benny Wenda's claim that he is a peaceful activist who would want the freedom of Papua. His hands are bloodied," said Dino Kusnadi, spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy in London. "We do not negotiate with him, and we see him as someone who is hiding from the law."
"The book hasn't been closed yet," he added, on whether Indonesia will continue to fight for his extradition.
Wenda praised Britain as a good host to him and his family. He's adjusted to the cold and the food, and his initial shock at seeing a landscape relatively denuded of trees and forest has subsided.
However, he is adamant that his stay is only temporary. "I'm not looking for a better life or a good house," he said. "I'm on a mission, and one day I will go back."
Wenda sees West Papua as similar to East Timor, the Indonesian province that broke away to become an independent state in 2002. However, analysts say West Papua's enormous oil and mineral resources make it different.
The American company Freeport-McMoRan runs the world's largest gold mine and third-largest copper mine there, and BP struck a $12 billion liquid natural gas deal there in December. Observers say companies and the governments of investing countries have clear incentives to back Jakarta's stance on Papua's status.
"It's unlikely the USA would play the same peace-broker role in Papua that it did in East Timor, where there was little American capital investment on the line," wrote Gary Hogan, Australia's former defense attache to Indonesia.
Wenda remains undaunted. He wants to open Free West Papua offices in the Netherlands, Australia and the United States.
Real change may take another five or six years to begin, he predicts, but even the British Empire fell. "My people will be free," he says confidently. "No doubt. One hundred percent."
Members of the House of Lords held a debate about West Papua on Wednesday in which they raised serious concerns about the human rights situation and called on the British government to take a stronger stand.
Lord Harries, who initiated the debate, noted the alarming pattern of ongoing political arrests in the Indonesian province, citing evidence collected by the London-based human rights group TAPOL.
He also challenged the UK government about its funding of Special Detachment 88, the elite counter-terror squad which has allegedly been used in the arrest, torture and shooting of political activists in the Papua provinces.
He questioned whether the training provided by the UK and others was doing anything to improve the human rights record of the unit.
Lord Hannay called the Indonesian government's policy of restricting access for foreign journalists and NGOs misguided, adding that where secrecy prevails, rumour and allegations flourish.
Lord Avebury suggested the situation in West Papua is almost certainly a lot worse because of the barriers to access.
Lord Harries criticised the Special Autonomy law as a total failure which fails to address the political aspiration of the Papuan people.
He called on the UK to request an inquiry into the Act of Free Choice and support an internationally-monitored referendum.
Lord Avebury noted the outstanding request of the Papuan people for self- determination, and called on the UK government to invite Indonesia's President to visit the UK next year for the Scottish referendum on independence, to see how they deal with requests for self-determination.
Lord Hannay added the Indonesian government should demonstrate respect for the culture of Papuans, and that any attempt to homogenise or encourage migration into Papua will bring tensions.
The government response was given by the Senior Minister of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Baroness Warsi.
In responding to the concerns raised, Baroness Warsi noted the high level of concern about freedom of expression during the debate, and agreed that freedom of expression in West Papua is too often stifled.
She echoed statements of all those who spoke in the debate, that all those with a stake in Papua's future need constructively to engage in peaceful dialogue.
A newspaper chief editor in West Papua says journalists in the region are pressured by police and government not to publish material about West Papuan pro-independence groups.
Victor Mambor of the Tabloid Jubi newspaper, says it's not uncommon for media outlets in West Papua to be called or visited by police for special meetings about issues of publishing.
Mr Mambor, who is also the chairman of the Papua branch of the Indonesian Independent Journalists Alliance, says police don't even have to tell newsrooms not to report about groups such as the KNPB.
"They just come to the office, take a picture and you know, it makes the journalists... in West Papua they have a fear of the police to write. Most of the newspapers in West Papua they have (been) directed by the government to stop publishing KNPB activities."
Victor Mambor says the visits by police reflect a lack of understanding about the role of media.
The Pacific Freedom Forum has condemned the confiscation of a magazine by police in Indonesia's Papua province.
Local police have reportedly taken six copies of the new Papua Pelita magazine from the publication's head office for inspection.
The first edition has the symbol of the Free Papua Movement on its cover, which is banned in the province. But police say their actions are not an attempt to ban the magazine.
Titi Gabi, chair of the Pacific Freedom Forum, has told Radio Australia her organisation supports Indonesia's press council in criticising the move.
"We stand together with our colleagues in Indonesia condemning this," she said. "(We are) calling on the Indonesian government to use available means to voice their complaints and to allow freedom of expression."
Ms Gabi says Indonesia has very firm laws supporting freedom of speech.
"Indonesia has got to be seen to be promoting that and living by that," Ms Gabi told Radio Australia. "It's a vital right, freedom of expression and access to information, access to information and the freedom to express yourself."
Nurdin Hasan, Ketol, Central Aceh The sound of a hammer banging on tin echoes through this small village hemmed in by hills. Perched atop a ladder, 65-year-old Diarah Kardi pounds nails through the roof of a rickety wooden structure.
"This used to be a storage shed. But it got badly damaged during the earthquake," he tells the Jakarta Globe.
This is where he plans to move his family and his daughter's family after their homes, built of bricks and mortar, collapsed as a result of the magnitude 6.2 quake that struck this region on July 2.
An estimated 90 percent of all the buildings in Ketol subdistrict were damaged in the disaster. For more than three weeks now, the families have lived beneath a tarpaulin tent erected near the ruins of their homes.
And as accustomed as they are to the powerful quakes that routinely rock this part of the world, they have run out of patience waiting for the government to either help them rebuild their homes or move them into decent temporary housing.
Further down the road, 78-year-old Suud and his wife, Salamah, 60, have already built a small wooden shelter using material salvaged from the debris of their own home.
For the couple, this is the fourth time they have had to rebuild their home since 2000. An arson attack by a now-disbanded guerrilla group and a brace of earthquakes were the previous culprits.
"We didn't want to stay too long in the temporary refuge," Salamah says. "It was so crowded there. Things got worse whenever it rained. We have our eight-month-old grandchild with us; that's why we decided to move back as soon as we could. At least now, when it rains, we're not cold and wet anymore."
Khairul Asmara, the deputy chief of Central Aceh district, acknowledges that no reconstruction work has started, but says his office is doing its best in trying to speed up the process.
"We've set a target of commencing the rebuilding project after Ramadan," he tells the Globe. Ramadan this year is expected to end on Aug. 7 or 8.
"We don't want to leave the people out in the temporary shelters and tents for too long. So we hope to get started immediately after Idul Fitri," he adds, referring to the holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month.
"Besides, a lot of people have already taken the initiative to rebuild on their own with whatever material they can find."
Khairul says the district administration will pay for the repairs, but it will be up to the residents themselves to do the work.
Residents whose homes are deemed badly damaged will receive up to Rp 40 million ($3,880). Owners of homes that have sustained moderate or minor damage will each get Rp 20 million and Rp 10 million, respectively.
The authorities have received reports of more than 5,500 homes in the worst-hit category, 2,750 with moderate damage and 5,600 in need of minor repair. Khairul says these figures are currently being verified by officials on the ground.
"Once that's done, we'll put the residents into groups," he says.
"There will be 10 to 15 households per group, and the money will be transferred to each group in two stages. Then it will be up to them to decide on how they want to rebuild their homes."
He insists the district administration will not be directly involved in the endeavor, but will only play a monitoring role, and has called for nongovernmental and development organizations to also keep an eye on the process.
However, Khairul says the funds promised by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when he visited the stricken area a week after the disaster will not be enough for all the affected families.
"We've told the governor and the provincial legislature that we need more money to rebuild the homes. They say they'll try, but I don't know how much more we'll get," he says.
Kardi and Suud both agree that Rp 40 million apiece will not be enough for them, saying it will take at least twice that amount to rebuild their homes.
"But if that's all that they're going to give us, then I'm thankful for it," Suud says. "I won't make a big fuss about it because this is a test from God. So it the government wants to help, then I'm grateful."
Robertus Wardi Officials in Jakarta have lashed out at the Aceh administration for its insistence on flying the flag of a now-disbanded separatist group as its provincial standard.
Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said in Jakarta on Thursday that he would take all steps to ensure that the flag, branded "separatist," was not raised on Aug. 15 as planned by Aceh authorities after talks with the central government aimed at ending the controversial plan fell through.
"I'll write a letter to the Aceh governor, as will the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs," he said. "The qanun on which the plan is based is not yet official, so the new flag can't be used," he said, referring to Aceh's adopted Islamic title for bylaws issued in the province. As with local regulations issued elsewhere in the country, qanun are trumped by national laws.
Gamawan said a team sent to Aceh to negotiate with the provincial administration would return on Aug. 31, at which point he would hold talks with them. But until then, he warned, the local authorities were prohibited from flying the flag.
Gamawan's remarks came in the wake of an announcement late on Wednesday by the provincial administration that it would raise the flag for the first time on Aug. 15, to mark the eighth anniversary of the peace deal that ended the three-decade-long insurgency waged by the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), now defunct.
Aceh Governor Zaini Abdullah, a former GAM official, and the provincial legislature dominated by the Aceh Party, founded by GAM ex-members insist that the decision to adopt the GAM flag as the provincial standard reflects the popular sentiment in the province.
However, the central government argues that it goes against national laws banning the display of separatist insignia.
Angela Buensuceso Ask the chief executive of one of the country's largest banks what it takes for a woman to excel in the workplace and the answer is clear.
"You have to manage everything well," says Parwati Surjaudaja, the president director of Bank OCBC NISP.
While countries in the West continue to aim for reductions in yawning pay gaps and a gradual dismantling of the glass ceiling, the developing world is, for the most part, a long way behind in building the foundations for greater female participation in the workforce.
Not so in Indonesia. According to World Bank data, 51 percent of women are employed in the workforce, compared with 78 percent of men, which compares favorably with the numbers of women in Malaysia and India's workforces, at 44 percent and 29 percent respectively, in comparison to the 77 percent and 81 percent of males employed in those countries, respectively.
"The way society is constructed now is much more conducive to allowing women to succeed," Parwati says. But the Indonesian labor market is a broad canvas and a woman's ability to succeed in it is equally varied.
Women in white-collar jobs may find it less difficult to break through the glass ceiling in Indonesia, but the "sticky floor" of the nation's factories makes it harder for women in blue-collar lines of work to get off the ground.
Only 51 percent of working women held labor jobs, compared with 84 percent of men.
In a country where participation in education has, in fact, seen a reverse gender gap at the introductory level, with a 101 to 100 ratio of female to male enrollment, Hana Satriyo, the director of gender and women's participation at The Asia Foundation, says that the primary issue is not access to education.
The illiteracy rate among females, however, is of greater concern. The Central Statistcs Agency says 8.8 percent of women are unable to read or write more than double the 4 percent of men.
A higher illiteracy rate among women inevitably erodes the country's headline female-employment figure, but for many working-age women, the barriers to entry are more abstract and are made of perception.
"Women who work face a double-burden in society. They can work but are also perceived to have the main responsibility of caring for the family at home," says Miranda Fajerman, an equal-opportunities adviser in Indonesia with the International Labor Organization.
Parwati agrees that professional women are forced to prioritize because the expectation that they are responsible for the family unit is deep-rooted in most of Indonesian society. The consequences of such expectations, however, are more keenly felt where there are fewer opportunities.
"Research shows that women tend to find it more difficult to enter the labor force after giving birth to children," Fajerman said. "They are less likely to be hired in the labor industry because they are seen as vulnerable."
Most of the women earning a living in blue-collar employment do so in in the informal sector or as migrant workers.
Female-led enterprises are often smaller, more unstable and less capitalized than businesses run by men because women have less access to the credit and resources on which growth is predicated.
Women in Indonesia continue to earn less than men for similar work in all sectors, but, according to the World Bank, the pay gap in the labor industry here is one of the largest in the East Asia and Pacific region.
This is in part, due to the regrettable but no less common practice of hiring women as temporary employees, regardless of whether that accurately reflects their work situation.
Employers hire female workers on temporary contracts because they can, Fajerman says, and because it is instructive of a widely held view that women will be absent more frequently as a result of motherhood, incurring greater cost to the employer.
"Hiring a woman may be more expensive in the short term, but in the long term investing in a female employee is worth it," says Yulia Immajati, a consultant on gender.
The World Bank's most recent report on Indonesia's quarterly economic performance highlights that, in the last decade, blossoming GDP and a commensurate reduction in poverty have gone hand-in-hand with improved gender equality.
"If done properly, the greater integration of women in the workforce would positively influence Indonesia's economy," Yulia says.
The World Bank does, of course, support greater female participation in the workforce, saying that greater gender equality and access to resources and opportunities could result in higher productivity that would benefit both women and men.
The allocation of resources on the basis of skills and abilities, as opposed to gender, could, it says, increase productivity by as much as 14 percent per worker, with measurable improvements in poverty reduction.
According to Yulia, the status of women in the working world has improved significantly over time and Indonesia has enshrined some sound laws protecting women's rights and encouraging participation.
"How serious the government is in upholding and enforcing these laws, however, is a mixed picture," Hana says.
"There is a strong political commitment but this commitment has not, so far, been translated as significantly into the national budget," Yulia says.
The picture is likely to remain mixed. Yulia says that Indonesia has much work to do, "but we're getting there," while Parwati adds that the juggling of family and work responsibilities is not an issue that is going to disappear any time soon.
"You have to manage everything well," she says. "But that's why God created women we can handle it."
Jakarta On the occasion of the National Children's Day on July 23, the Indonesian people were urged to protect children and fulfill their basic rights as child abuse and child sexual assault are still rampant in this country.
According to the National Commission for Child protection's data, around 535 cases of sexual abuses of children were recorded from January to July 2013.
Child sexual abuses constituted 52 percent of all child abuse cases reported in Indonesia, the Commission's Chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait said in Jakarta on July 23.
Other crimes against children included physical assaults (294 cases or 28 percent) and psychological assaults (203 cases or 20 percent), he said.
Ironically most of the perpetrators of the sexual abuses were people who are close to the victims, such as the victims' fathers, uncles, and neighbors, as well as school security guards, he added.
In 2012, the National Commission for Child Protection received reports of 2,637 cases of violence against children 62 percent of them or 1,634 cases were sexual assaults and abuses, according to a media report.
Last year, there was a ten percent increase in the number of sexual abuses as compared to 2011, despite the fact that rape cases and sexual abuses are serious crimes and the perpetrators of such crimes can be sentenced to a minimum of three years or a maximum of 15 years in prison.
According to the Commission, last year was termed "emergency situation of sexual crimes against children" in Indonesia.
To help protect the country's children, the National Commission for Child Protection plans to form working groups for child protection in every neighborhoods with active participation of the people, he said. He reminded that the child abuse prevention is the responsibility of all parties including the government, the community and families.
The whole community must play active roles in protecting children and preventing child abuses, he said, adding that they could at least report it to the authorities if they knew about abuses against children.
A similar call was also voiced by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when leading a function to observe the National Children's Day 2013.
"The fulfillment of children's basic rights is in line with the mandate of the constitution stating that every child has the rights to live, grow and develop as well as to be protected from violence and discrimination," he said.
He emphasized four child's basic rights, namely right to care and upbringing, health, education and recreation, and to protection from violence, exploitation and discrimination.
According to the head of state, children constituting 34 percent of Indonesia's total population, are the future of the nation.
The government has already designed several policies including developing child-friendly cities (KLA program) to improve the condition of children.
"Thank God right now there are already 60 cities and districts that have developed to become child-friendly (KLA)," he said adding that 44 of them were able to develop by themselves using their regional budget.
He said the government has also widened access to education for children by providing "School Operational Aid" and "Poor Student Aid."
"The aids are given to increase participation of children from the economically-weak families in backward and isolated regions, fishermen families and migrant workers' dispatching centers," he said.
He said the government also gave support to and facilitate various innovative programs that could increase their brightness, fitness, security and welfare. "We wish more Indonesian children and teenagers would be able to make achievements in the fields of science, sports, arts and others at national as well as international levels," he said.
To the national police and the ministry of justice and human rights President Yudhoyono appealed to cooperate to prevent, save and protect children from crimes such as abduction, trafficking for exploitative purposes such as employment, illegal adoption, narcotic abuse and others.
According to the social affairs ministry, around two million Indonesian children do not live with their biological parents but they live in nursing homes or live with their relatives or adoptive parents.
Ideally children should live with their biological parents because it has positive impacts on the development of their personality, Samsudi, the social affairs ministry's social rehabilitation director general, said on July 23.
Improper parenting could lead to problems such as violence, drug addiction, and criminality, he said.
Child rearing by biological parents could help prevent children from having deviant behavior, he said, adding that parenting by relatives or adoptive parents should be one of the last options.
He cited a study that children living with their biological parents usually develop better personality and well-behaved.
Good parenting is important because children could also become perpetrators of crimes, apart from being victims.
The Jakarta Globe daily quoted data from the Justice and Human Rights Ministry's Directorate General of Corrections in June 2013 that 1,182 children had committed sexual crimes.
Justice and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsuddin said sexual harassment has become the second highest crime committed by Indonesian children, after robbery, the English daily reported on July 24, 2013.
He said the increase had occurred in several provinces in the country since 2011. The minister attributed such behavior to, among other things, technological advancement and weak supervision from both parents and society.
The number of children detained in Indonesia reached 5,709. The minister announced sentence reductions for 684 child prisoners in coinciding with National Children's Day this year.
Dyah Ayu Pitaloka, Novianti Setuningsih & Rizky Amelia, Jakarta/Malang As people across the country marked National Children's Day on Tuesday, a minister said sexual harassment has become the second highest crime committed by Indonesian children, after robbery.
Justice and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsuddin said the increase had occurred in several provinces in the country since 2011.
"Over the past two years, cases of sexual harassment, both committed by street children and students, has become a trend and this has occurred in several provinces and districts," he said in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Data at the ministry's Directorate General of Corrections in June showed that 1,182 children had committed sexual crimes, with only one of them a teenage girl.
Amir attributed such behavior to, among other things, technological advancement and weak supervision from both parents and society.
Aside from sexual harassment, Indonesian children have also become the victims of violence committed by their teachers.
Data from the Women Empowerment and Child Agency in Malang recorded 83 cases of violence against children so far this year with most taking place on school grounds.
"Until now, reports on violence mostly came from the school environment," Malang Women and Child Protection Agency chief Pantjaningsih said on Tuesday.
Pantjaningsih attributed the violence at schools to poor economic conditions, family discord and children's behavior in school. "Many schools still haven't adopted the anti-violence strategy in teaching children," Pantjaningsih told the Jakarta Globe in Malang.
In Batu, East Java, a child refused to return to school after his teacher hit him in class for talking to a friend. Moch Sohibul, a fifth-grader, has stopped going to school for eight months and is now helping his father sell fried bananas.
"His teacher hit him in class around September [last year]. Since then he has been afraid to return to school," Sohibul's relative, Sukadi, said.
He said the teacher hit Sohibul on the eye. "He was hit from the back. It was probably because his teacher was angry at him because he did not do well in his school work," Sukadi said.
He added that Sohibul did not want to return to school because he was afraid that he would get more of the same treatment. "He did go back to school for a little while after he got hit but he felt that his friends shunned him," he said.
Batu Police spokesman AKP Yantofan said no police report was filed related to the incident because both parties agreed to settle it amicably with the help of the police as the mediator.
Indonesian Commission for Child Protection deputy chairman Apong Herlina said physical punishment will not solve any problem.
Apong said corporal punishment for misbehaving students does not serve as a lesson for them, while physical punishment on a quiet students would traumatize them and embarrass them in front of their peers.
"The psychological factors between a quiet and a naughty student are very different," Apong said.
Justice Minister Amir announced sentence reductions for 684 child prisoners in coinciding with National Children's Day.
"The sentence reductions on National Children's Day were given based on the Justice and Human Rights Ministerial decree," Akbar Hadi, spokesman for the ministry's directorate general of corrections, said on Tuesday.
He said the number of children detained in Indonesia had reached 5,709.
Jakarta Gen. (ret) Djoko Santoso claims he has told Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Adm. Agus Suhartono that he wants to run for president in the 2014 election.
"I have met with the TNI commander, Pak Agus Suhartono, to convey my intention to run for president in the 2014 presidential election. We had a meeting in Cilangkap some time ago," he told journalists at his home on Jl. Bambu Apus on Monday as quoted by Antara news agency.
Djoko, who served as TNI commander from 2007 to 2010, said he felt that he needed to tell the military leader of intention to run for president so that it was officially understood.
"I told the TNI commander that I will run for president as a private citizen and will not use any military insignia in my candidacy, let alone mobilize TNI personnel," said Djoko, adding that all his campaign team members were civilians.
Several retired generals, such as Maj. Gen. (ret) Kurdi Mustofa and Maj. Gen.(ret) Prijanto, have joined his political lobbying team. Responding to the issue, Djoko said the two figures were no longer active military personnel but private citizens.
He asserted that during the 2014 presidential election, the TNI should remain neutral. Djoko said, "Such a neutral position is one of core elements of internal reform within the TNI that has taken place since the start of the reform era." (ebf)
Carlos Paath Golkar chairman Aburizal Bakrie said he is considering asking the Democratic Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle to form a coalition with his party in the presidential election, claiming that the three parties had formed close ties.
"Golkar is close with the Democrats and the PDI-P [Democratic Party of Struggle] so politically it would make sense if we formed a coalition. We share the same vision for the country," he said.
But he quickly added that he would not consider being a vice presidential candidate, saying Golkar had chosen him to run for president. Aburizal said he has already decided on a running mate for next year's election and he would make the announcement in due course.
"Of course [I] have a vice presidential candidate. God willing, it will be announced in due course," he said on Saturday after breaking a fast with the Jagakarsa Betawi community.
He declined however, to reveal the identity of his running mate and said that person could be a politician or a professional. "It could be both. Politicians are not all good or bad just like reporters, not all of them are good or bad," he said.
Aburizal said that he would be ready if Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo was prepared to be his running mate. "I'm prepared to run with anybody. There are many smart Indonesians, but they must share my vision," he said.
Aburizal cited several criteria for someone to be his running mate. "The first criteria it has to be a good person. It's not enough to just be popular, but not a good person, because that will cause problems later," he said.
He said it was vital that his partner was on the same wavelength as himself.
"It has to match. I want the state to be prosperous. That means the state has the right to intervene and launch programs aimed to create prosperity for the people. "I cannot see me running with someone who has liberal values," he said.
Aburizal said winning the 2014 presidential election was not a priority. "A candidate with a liberal vision might just win but I won't vote for him. It is not just about winning but ruling well."
Aburizal said he was not bothered with polling results about his electability, saying he remained determined to run for president.
"We just carry on. Some said ARB's [Aburizal Bakrie's] electability is high. Some said at number 1, number 2, number 3, number 4, well just let them [say anything]. Let's not pay attention to that."
Aburizal said polls have got things wrong in the past both at home and abroad. "Surveys said the current Philippines president had no chance, but he still got elected. The same also happened to Jokowi [Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo], everyone said he would lose."
Previously, former Golkar chairman, Akbar Tanjung, now the party's chief advisor, called on his party to re-evaluate its decision to nominate Aburizal as the presidential candidate because of his low poll ratings.
"Pak Akbar was just trying to work out the strategy. Let's just see which one is better. But I'm confident with the solid foundation we have and with people's love for our party, I see no reason why we can't win," he said.
Stephanie Hendarta Aburizal Bakrie may not be the most popular presidential hopeful, but a new poll suggests the businessman and Golkar politician may at least be the among the most notorious ahead of the 2014 elections.
In a survey conducted by the United Data Center (PDB) his name was the first to be mentioned by 22 percent of 1,200 respondents across 30 provinces, in regards to next year's presidential bid.
Running neck-and-neck with Aburizal in the poll was Prabowo Subianto of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), who scored 21 percent of first mentions, while Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo of the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), who in most surveys emerged as a top potential candidate, ranked third with 17 percent.
The result contrasts with voting intentions, which according to another poll by PDB, places Aburizal in a distant fourth spot with just 12 percent support.
Muhammad Qodari, the executive director of survey agency Indo Barometer, says that polls notwithstanding, Aburizal has a good chance in next year's election because of support from Golkar. "I think there's definitely a good chance that he will end up among the top [candidates]," Qodari told the Jakarta Globe.
Earlier this year, Golkar officially nominated Aburizal as its candidate for the presidential election. The party was able to do so since it satisfies the "threshold" requirement of holding at least 20 percent of seats in the national legislature.
Aburizal remains the only candidate to have been endorsed by a party or coalition of parties who meet the 20 percent threshold. Other major political parties are either split between rival candidates or still seeking to form a coalition.
"The electability of the Golkar Party is already at its peak, and my popularity is still on the rise," Aburizal told the media recently, confident about his chances.
"God willing, I will try my hardest to go to different provinces and ask for the support and blessing of the public."
Solid background Aburizal has years of political and government experience. In addition to being Golkar chairman since 2009, he served as coordinating minister for the economy from 2004 to 2005, when he become coordinating minister for people's welfare, a role he performed until 2009.
According to Qodari, Aburizal's leadership track record, both in government and in his family-owned company, Bakrie Group, shows that Aburizal has what it takes to serve as president.
Aburizal's business credentials may also attract some support. "The way people see it, if their president is already financially secure, there is less chance they'll take the people's money," Qodari said.
"His status as a successful businessman might make it difficult for some people to see him as a down-to-earth people's leader, but I think his finances will primarily become an advantage."
Aburizal's appointment as coordinating minister of the economy by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was initially controversial. But Aburizal pushed on, announcing he would seek to reduce the number of Indonesians living below the poverty line by 3 percent through reallocation of government subsidies.
Despite Aburizal being equipped with impressive qualifications, some people remain doubtful of his presidential chances.
"To speak candidly, the chance of Aburizal staying in the presidential race is rather unlikely, even if the Golkar Party tries to boost Bakrie from all sides and familiarize him from Sabang to Merauke," Siti Zuhro, a senior researcher at the Indonesia Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said, invoking the idiom that refers to the nation from its western tip in Aceh to its east in Papua.
"This election will involve all 33 provinces and 497 regencies and cities. The majority of the voters are from the middle and lower class. It's going to be hard to convince them to use their votes to elect Aburizal," she said.
Siti said Aburizal's involvement in the Sidoarjo mudflow disaster, which affected 16 villages in East Java in 2006, will complicate his campaign.
Lapindo Brantas, the gas firm accused by some people of being responsible for the mudflow, is owned by Aburizal's family. According to PDB, the disaster is the reason Aburizal is the most immediately memorable presidential candidate in its latest poll.
"If there's something that would most likely trip up Aburizal, it would be his Lapindo scandal. For East Java, especially, the case isn't over. It's not something that people can decide to turn a blind eye to," said Siti.
"Cases like the Lapindo disaster, its violation of human rights and transgressions against the law, need to be resolved before we can deem a candidate worthy to lead. The public will scrutinize the candidates because no one wants to buy a pig in a poke."
To popular ire, in June the government allocated Rp 155 billion ($15.1 million) from the state budget to reimburse the losses of the mudflow victims. The government was accused of funding corporate welfare, relieving the Bakrie Group company of its financial obligations.
Siti said that Aburizal's non-Javanese ethnicity may also dim his chances.
"Looking at previous patterns, people in Java are more willing to elect a Javanese leader as the head of state," Siti said, suggesting it could disadvantage Aburizal, whose family origins lie in Lampung in southern Sumatra.
Siti cited Aburizal's recent advertising campaign advocating preservation of Javanese culture, saying it was likely a sign of recognition that the Javanese vote is important in his bid for the presidency.
"Trying to get Aburizal more support than he already has will be difficult, compared to, for example, Joko Widodo," Siti said, referring to the Jakarta governor, whose origins are in Central Java.
But Aburizal may get more support if he finds a running mate with high approval ratings, the academic added. Indo Barometer's Qodari, however, argued that Aburizal's ethnicity would not have a big impact.
"Personally, I don't think ethnicity is an important factor. A leader should be chosen because he is capable and has the character that the public seeks," Qodari said.
"Indonesian voters are not as 'primitive' as many experts deem them to be. A lot of people are starting to overlook similarity in backgrounds and seeking similarity in perception and personality. If Aburizal is going to be chosen, it's going to be for his qualifications and character."
PDB and the Jakarta Globe are both part of the Lippo Group.
Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Robertus Wardi Joko Widodo, the governor of Jakarta, may be the pollsters' favorite to win the 2014 presidential election, but the final decision and the makeup of the future government remains firmly in the hands of his party's chief, an analyst says.
Jeffrie Geovanie a member of the board of advisers for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, said on Thursday that the question of whether Joko ran next year and, more crucially, who he ran with would be determined by Megawati Sukarnoputri, the chairwoman of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
Jeffrie said that with Joko topping recent opinion polls, other parties without a clear figurehead or whose own candidates were flagging in the surveys were naturally interested in hitching themselves to the PDI-P's bandwagon.
"It makes sense that many figures are starting to approach Megawati. The wheels of politics are really turning now," he said, adding that the PDI-P chairwoman would be undoubted kingmaker in 2014.
Among the parties whose officials have publicly expressed interest in having Joko on their ticket is the ruling Democratic Party, which does not have a prominent figure to put forward and will hold a convention next year to decide on its candidate.
Another is the Golkar Party, which has formally decided to nominate its chairman, Aburizal Bakrie, and which has toyed with having Joko as his running mate in order to make up for Aburizal's poor showing in the opinion polls.
Agung Laksono, a deputy Golkar chairman, confirmed that the party would decide on its vice presidential candidate after next year's legislative election, but did not rule out the option of going with Joko.
"Joko obviously belongs to the PDI-P, so you should ask them first. But that's something that we'll talk about after the legislative election," he said on Thursday. However, analysts say that the PDI-P, if it allows Joko to run for president, is unlikely to let him play second fiddle to another party's candidate.
In that case, Jeffrie said, a possible tie-up with Golkar could see Joko running with Ginandjar Kartasasmita, one of the stalwarts of the party who is aligned with Akbar Tandjung the former Golkar chairman who has publicly questioned the wisdom of choosing Aburizal as the party's candidate and shutting out the possibility of nominating a more popular figure.
Jeffrie, a former Golkar legislator, said that if Megawati chose instead to team up with the Democrats, she could decide to pair Joko with Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan, who is being widely touted as one of the favorites to emerge as the winner of the Democrats' convention.
Tjahjo Kumolo, the PDI-P secretary general, agreed that Joko's candidacy was in Megawati's hands, saying on Wednesday that regardless of his overwhelming popularity, he was only one of several potential candidates being considered for the party's nomination by the chairwoman.
He added that the PDI-P would not be rushed into announcing its candidate for 2014, arguing that with the election still a year away, there was a lot could happen in local and international politics in that time that could impact voter sentiment.
"We can't make that decision now because the regional, national and international dynamics keep changing," Tjahjo said in Jakarta.
"We don't know what the situation will be like in 2014. We can only hope that the results of the surveys that we're seeing today will be consistent with the outcome of the polls in 2014."
Tjahjo was speaking in response to a poll by the Soegeng Sarjadi School of Government, published on Wednesday, that showed Joko was the most popular public figure in the country by far.
Some 25 percent of respondents named him the most popular figure of 2013, far ahead of Prabowo Subianto, the founder and chief patron of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), who got just 10 percent. Megawati was a distant seventh with around 2 percent.
The poll comes a week after a survey by the United Data Center (PDB) affirmed that Joko had the highest electability of all potential presidential candidates.
Joko was the candidate of choice for some 26 percent of the 1,200 respondents from 30 provinces, while Prabowo was second with 20 percent, followed by Megawati with 13 percent.
The lineup was unchanged from a PDB poll conducted in January, which gave Joko 21 percent, Prabowo 17 percent and Megawati 11 percent.
SP/Anastasia Winanti R Disgraced Garut district head Aceng Fikri has filed to run for a vacant seat on Indonesia's Regional Representatives Council (DPD) in a move that left one observer wondering whether the politician knew the difference between confidence and narcissism.
Aceng was charged with fraud and defamation over his brisk and public divorce from his unregistered teenage wife with a text message doubting her virginity. The allegations sparked days of angry protests outside Aceng's office as his constituents called for his dismissal.
He was fired from his post in April to await a court hearing. Now Aceng is eyeing a return to public office.
His name was included on a list of 36 candidates for the DPD released by the General Elections Commission (KPU). He expressed an interest in running for one of four seats representing West Java.
Under Indonesia's elections laws, a candidate is ineligible to run if they have been convicted of a crime with a sentence in excess of five years in prison.
Since Aceng is still awaiting trial and only faces a maximum sentence of four years he is eligible to run in the election. But whether the people of West Java will vote for him is another matter, said Fadjroel Rachman, executive director of the Soegeng Sarjadi School of Government.
"Legally there is no problem," Fadjroel said. "[But] what is left is whether the people of West Java really want to be represented by someone with a history of ethical problems and contempt against women."
Hamdi Muluk, an expert on political psychology at the University of Indonesia, said many Indonesian politicians fell victim to overconfidence.
"Some people do not look at themselves in the mirror and... believe they are good-looking despite the reality," Hamdi said. "Politicians sometimes cannot tell the difference between self-confidence and narcissism."
Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta Major political parties have jointly attacked Jakarta Governor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo for conducting another of his trademark unannounced visits known locally as blusukan a move which many said would damage Jokowi's chances in the 2014 presidential election.
The political parties used the report from the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra) that found the visits were a waste of government money, as the basis for their attack.
According to the antigraft watchdog, the Jakarta administration has doubled spending for Jokowi's impromptu visits for 2013 to Rp 26.6 billion (US$2.6 million), which according to Fitra, resulted in nothing but the soaring popularity of Jokowi.
Jokowi has criticized Fitra by saying the report was baseless, his deputy Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama said the publication was politically- motivated.
"I don't understand what Fitra is trying to achieve with this report. It seems there are political parties that feel threatened by Pak Jokowi's popular impromptu visits, which apparently are very difficult to imitate for some," Ahok told reporters at City Hall.
Ahok's statement quickly raised the ire of political parties' officials.
"I don't understand why Ahok politicized the matter because Fitra was specifically referring to the budgeting issue, not politics. He shouldn't have tied the issue with his [Jokowi's] electability," Democratic Party (PD) deputy chairman Max Sopacua told reporters.
Max added Ahok had unfairly targeted Fitra with his statement. "Is he saying that Fitra is somehow linked to the Democratic Party, for example?" he said.
Leader of the PD faction at the House of Representatives, Nurhayati Ali Assegaf, said Jokowi could not claim the unannounced visits were not solely his own creation. Nurhayati said the practice had been conducted by many politicians before, including PD chairman and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"Pak SBY as well as many other officials, such as East Java Governor Soekarwo [a PD politician], conducted such visits long before Jokowi did. We just didn't talk about it so much. It's wrong to say Jokowi first came up with the move, which was later copied by the country's officials," Nurhayati said.
The secretary of the Golkar Party's faction, Ade Komarudin, also joined the fray, saying that Golkar leaders also practiced the tradition long before Jokowi, starting with former president Soeharto.
Ade added Golkar party chairman Aburizal "Ical" Bakrie had also carried on the tradition. "There is no need to compare which one is better than the others. The most important thing is that the style is good and we need to support it," he said.
Earlier this year, Yudhoyono made a departure from his usual style by making an impromptu visit to a poor neighborhood near Jakarta, a move which many said was only a ploy to shore up support for his embattled PD.
Analysts said with the general election a year away, it was never too late for Yudhoyono to make a change in his leadership style, including by making such visits more often. Many also said Yudhoyono's decision to make such visits indicated he was disappointed with the performance of some of his ministers.
Jakarta A survey published on Tuesday has found that the internet has alienated voters who have political efficacy and high interest in politics, but are distrustful of political institutions.
The survey, which was conducted by Indikator Politik Indonesia (Indonesian Political Indicator) from June 19 to 27, showed that people who often access the internet were more interested in politics, but were likely to be skeptical of political organizations.
In the survey, which involved 2,290 eligible voters for the 2014 election from 33 provinces across Indonesia, 10 percent or 229 respondents had often accessed the internet in recent months, either every day or several days a week. Of that number, 89 respondents expressed their interest in politics, while 153 kept abreast with political news through the internet.
Meanwhile, 81 percent of the total number of respondents said that they never accessed the internet, with only 26 percent of that showed interest in politics, and only 43 percent following political news.
Indikator Politik Indonesia executive director Burhanuddin Muhtadi said that the internet had become a political news source with faster and more variety of information than print media for many people. He also said, however, that just like television or print news media, most online media delivered news coverage focused on the negative behavior of politicians.
"That kind of news, both online and in other media, informs the public of the workings of political institutions, but gives rise to distrust in them. This makes those accessing the internet more politically alienated than those who do not," he said.
The survey showed that only 35 percent of the total number of respondents who often accessed the internet trusted the House of Representatives, while 42 percent of the respondents who never accessed the internet trusted the House.
House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Pramono Anung Wibowo said that a lot of online media often focused only on misbehaviors of lawmakers. "When a member of the House falls asleep during a meeting, the media would cover that, but when he visits different regions the media do not cover that," he explained.
The survey also showed relatively low levels of trust from those with internet access toward other political entities, such as politicians and the President.
According to the survey, only 27 percent of total respondents who often accessed the internet trusted in politicians and 63 percent trusted the President. Meanwhile, 31 percent of the respondents who never accessed the internet trusted politicians and 70 percent trusted the President.
Burhanudin said that the survey results were a bad sign for many politicians and political parties, because there could be a higher abstention rate in the next election. He said, however, that the internet, especially social media, could also be a vehicle for politicians and political parties.
"Social media like Facebook and Twitter could be very good vehicles for politicians and political parties to communicate and attract those who often access the internet," he said.
The survey, which has a margin of error of 2.1 percent and a confidence level of 95 percent, found that 14 percent of the respondents had Twitter and Facebook accounts. This percentage would represent over 26 million voters in the 2014 election. (koi)
Jakarta More than half of voters are confused about the current political situation. A survey by the Soegeng Sarjadi School of Government indicates that as many as 51.45 percent of respondents have yet to make their choice of political party. Yet the 2014 legislative and presidential elections are less that a year away.
Speaking in Jakarta on Wednesday July 24, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) senior researcher J. Kristiadi believes there are many reasons why the public has not yet made up their minds. However one of the strong possibilities is the growing levels of political apathy among the public. One indication of this is the steadily falling participate rate in the election of regional heads (pilkada). In many pilkada, the "winners" are those that don't vote or golput.
This apathy is growing stronger because of the disintegration of the credibility of state institutions. It is as though there is no head of state in the midst of many problems that need immediate attention. All of the political parties have been hit by corruption cases, and the public's sense of hope has been shattered.
"This could become a time bomb for democracy in Indonesia. The public has lost hope and no longer cares about its role in politics. In order to restore the 2014 elections as a victory of the ordinary people and return sovereignty back to the hands of the people, civil society, whether it is the mass media, activists as well as academics must be active. Because the state as an actor is weak and cannot be relied upon to anticipate this political apathy by the public", explained Kristiadi.
In the Soegeng Sarjadi School of Government survey between June 3-22 covering 2,450 respondents in the 10 largest cities in Indonesia with a margin of error of 2.61 percent, it was found that 51.45 percent of respondents had yet to make a choice and 12.88 percent did not reply. The most popular political party was the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 9.25 percent, followed by the Democrat Party (6.64 percent), the Greater Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) (6.45) and the Golkar Party (6.11 Percent). The other political parties only obtain a vote of 0-2 percent.
In an explanation of the results of a national telepoll by the Indonesian Youth Alliance for Change (API Perubahan) in Jakarta yesterday, it was found that a section of the public with the right to vote but who have taken a political position of not voting or golput represents a danger.
This danger is not simply a technical or administrative matter related to the voter list, but a political outlook resulting from a decline in the public's trust of the political parties. The telepoll survey was conducted in 33 provinces with a total of 650 randomly selected respondents.
"The percentage that will golput in the 2014 elections is expected to rise again compared with pervious elections. This needs a solution", said API Perubahan general chairperson Salman Dianda Anwar.
The survey found that if the presidential election was held now, respondents would give the largest number of votes to Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo with 20.7 percent, Gerindra Party patron Prabowo Subianto 11.2 percent and State-Own Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan 7.8 Percent. The golput rate would be as high as 31.5 percent.
For the legislative elections, the golput rate would be as high as 30.8 percent. The Golkar Party, which received the highest number of votes, only obtained 10.5 percent, followed by the PDI-P (8.2 percent), the Gerindra Party (6.0 percent) and the Democrat Party (5.6 percent).
The survey classified voters based on age. Golput among young people aged between 23-35 years was a high as 37.2 percent, the 36-45 year age group 36.2 Percent and the 17-22 year age group 7.0 percent.
Meanwhile for golput based on region, the highest level was in Java at 63.3 percent, followed by Sumatra (22.6 percent), Kalimantan (8.0 percent), Sulawesi (3.5 percent), Maluku and Papua (1.5 percent), and Bali, West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara (1.0 Percent).
Speaking separately, M. Qodari from Indo Barometer said that the declining trend in participation rates in elections represents part of an effort to find a new balance. The public has begun to view national and regional elections as something ordinary. (INA/OSA/NWO)
Jakarta Nielsen Indonesia on Wednesday said the Indonesian middle class topped the global consumer index in the second quarter of 2013, making them the most optimistic group in the world.
Catherine Eddy, Nielsen Indonesia managing director, said Indonesia topped the Nielsen Global Survey of Consumer Confidence and Spending Intentions index with 124 points the country's highest level since 2009 followed by the Philippines with 121 points and India with 118 points.
"The average global consumer index is 94 points. In Asia Pacific it is 105 points," she said at her office in Jakarta as quoted by kontan.co.id.
According to Catherine, the index is based on consumer confidence indicators, such as local employment prospects, consumerism and personal finance. In Indonesia the index level was boosted by consumer credence in facing the 2014 presidential election.
"If we take a look at previous data, the index usually went up between six to 12 months before the elections," she said.
Catherine said the research was conducted between May 13 and 31, via an online survey that had 29,000 respondents in 58 countries. "We select the respondents randomly. There were 500 people surveyed in Indonesia," she said. (fan)
Environment & natural disasters
Jakarta Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya's remark made on July 17 that he would not publish the concession had sparked criticism from environment activists.
The remark Balthasar made was a response to Singapore Minister of Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan, who had asked him to reveal to the public the name of any individuals or companies that had been allowed to exploit Indonesian forests.
Carole Excell of the World Resource Institute said Balthasar's remark had contradicted Indonesian government's commitment in practicing Open Government Partnership (OGP).
Within the OGP platform, Indonesia has pledged to provide a map portal which would support efficiency in forestry management and support transparency, accountability and public participation in the environment, natural resources and special data management.
"As we know, the statement is [also] against the spirit of the free information era in Indonesia, as stipulated in Public Information Law," Carol said.
Echoing Carol, executive director of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) Henri Subagiyo said that the government has made a commitment to provide good environmental management and therefore was expected to comply with it wholeheartedly.
"Balthasar and Forestry Ministry Zulkifli Hasan [and also other ministers] should act transparently as part of the commitment," Henri said.(hrl/dic)
Yuliasri Perdani, Jakarta An animal rights activist who initiated an online petition calling for a criminal probe into the killing of four elephants in Aceh claimed to have faced intimidation.
Aulia Ferizal, along with members of social activism platform Change.org, came to the National Police headquarters in Jakarta on Friday to urge the force to take action on the killings of the protected animal.
Aulia said that police must immediately take actions, considering the activists efforts to divulge the case has been hampered by intimidation.
He claimed that some people tried to find him after he made a petition at Change.org, calling on the government to a launch probe into the death of a Sumatran elephant, named Papa Genk, in a vacant lot in Ranto Saboh village, Aceh, last week.
Genk had sustained injuries to his head and his tusks and eyes had been removed, while his trunk was detached from his body. The petition had garnered support from more than 14,000 netizens.
"I feel insecure. I am being hunted after launching the petition. This makes me unable to go home in Aceh," he said after the meeting in the headquarters in South Jakarta.
He added that the Aceh Conservation Response Unit (CRU) elephant trainers, who found the carcass while patrolling, received the same intimidation, prompting them to temporarily move to the Sare Elephant Training Center in Aceh Besar.
In response to Genk's death, the Aceh Police have named five suspects who allegedly killed the elephant due to economic hardship.
The police failed to put the suspects, who are affiliated with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), behind bars as they are being protected by the local villagers.
Another activist, Nurjanah Husein, said that another elephant was killed following Genk's death. "Yesterday, another elephant was found dead due to poisoning. This means that four elephants had been killed in the last two months," Nurjanah said.
The Aceh Police found the carcass of two elephants at an oil palm plantation area in Aceh Timur regency.
In order to provide better protection for wild animal, activist Dian Paramitha urged the government to set up a National Commission tasked to supervise and design regulations on animal protection.
Responding to the call, National Police Deputy Chief Comr. Gen. Nanan Sukarna said the Forestry Ministry held the authority to handle the cases. However, he said that the force was ready to back up the ministry's investigation.
He added that solving the matter was "dilemmatic". "We have to protect both the rights of people and animal. The killing location used to be an elephant habitat before people settled there. Elephants and locals fight over the land, that then results in death on both sides," he said.
A group of 14 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has signed an online petition urging a drug manufacturer to offer Hepatitis C drugs at lower prices.
The petition launched via public campaign platform change.org urges Roche Indonesia to immediately lower prices of Hepatitis C drugs, the patent of which belongs to its parent Swiss multinational pharmaceuticals company.
Indonesia has an estimated 7 million people suffering from Hepatitis C, although the actual figure is likely higher due to low awareness of the need to have a Hepatitis C test. The high cost of the test aggravates the problem.
For people living with HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C infection has become a particular source of concern because coinfection of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) exacerbates their condition and can lead to death.
The campaign's public campaigner, Ayu Oktariani, said many people with Aids (PWAs) managed to survive and were still healthy because the government provided HIV-infected people with antiretroviral drugs for free.
"But PWAs coinfected with Hepatitis C makes their life expectancy lower because in Indonesia, Hepatitis C medication is costly," said Ayu.
Currently, Hepatitis C medication costs around Rp 25 million (US$2,425) per month, with medication costing more than Rp 250 million per patient.
Nadya Natahadibrata, Jakarta More than half of children under the age of six have no access to early childhood education, the Education and Culture Ministry says.
The ministry's early childhood, non-formal and informal education (PAUDNI) director general, Lydia Freyani Hawadi, said on Thursday that in 2012 only 37.8 percent of children had access to preschool in Indonesia, despite the ministry's drive to increase the percentage to 72 percent by 2014.
"We acknowledge that we are facing tough challenges in fulfilling that target of 72 percent," Lydia said.
However, she said that the directorate general had successfully increased the gross participation rate (APK) of children below six years old in preschools to 37.8 percent from 34 percent in 2011.
Even though preschool education is not compulsory in Indonesia, it is crucial for the development of social, cognitive and motor skills of children, education expert Arief Rachman Hakim said.
"A preschool environment introduces children to social situations and teaches them manners. It has an affect on the future lives of these children," Arief told The Jakarta Post on Friday. "It is the most crucial time in one's life," he added.
Preschool is not only essential to introduce children to literacy and numeracy but it also makes them more confident in their abilities during elementary school.
According to Lydia, the directorate suffered from a lack of funding, which limited them from expanding the early childhood education facilities throughout the country.
The government allocated Rp 2.4 trillion (US$232.8 million) to early childhood education this year. Lydia said the money would be used to establish more preschools, improve the quality of teachers and educate the public regarding the importance of early childhood education.
"With this amount, we can only develop 1,491 new preschools this year: Far less than the government's program to establish a preschool in every village in Indonesia. As of 2012, there were 25,834 villages without early childhood education institutions," Lydia said. "As such, with funds at the current level, it would take around 15 years to complete the program," she added.
Lydia said the ministry would not build new infrastructure, such as buildings or classes, this year as the ministry aimed to up the gross participation rate using existing public spaces.
"We aim to develop new preschools by utilizing existing public places, including mosques, churches, temples and Posyandu," Lydia said.
She said it would only take around Rp 45 million to develop new preschools using this method, much less than the Rp 300 million or so it would cost to build a new building.
Separately, Ella Yulaelawati, the ministry's public education director under the PAUDNI directorate general said that Indonesia had aimed to reduce the number of illiterate people to 7.5 million by 2015, but by 2011, the country had surpassed this goal and reduced the number to 6.7 million.
However, she said that even though the country had exceeded the target nationally 34.5 percent of Papua residents are illiterate.
"We will concentrate our program more on improving literacy in Papua," Ella said. "Based on a study, an area with more than 30 percent of illiterate residents is more prone to conflict," she added.
Margareth S. Aritonang and Ina Parlina, Headlines The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has won this year's Ramon Magsaysay award, which is considered Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in recognition for its tireless anti-graft campaign in the country.
The anti-graft body was one of five award winners announced by the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) on its website www.rmaf.org.ph on Wednesday.
The Manila-based Ramon Magsaysay Foundation said that the KPK was being recognized for "its fiercely independent and successful campaign against corruption in Indonesia".
"[The KPK] is combining the uncompromising prosecution of erring powerful officials with farsighted reforms in governance systems and the educative promotion of vigilance, honesty and active citizenship among all Indonesians," the foundation said in a statement.
The KPK is also considered successful for having a 100 percent rate of conviction of corrupt officials and has recovered US$80 million in stolen assets.
The KPK and four other winners will receive prizes of $50,000 each at a ceremony set for Aug. 31 in Manila.
Responding to the announcement, the KPK said that it was the recognition for a concerted effort against graft in the country.
"This is an award for the people, anti-corruption NGOs and activists as well as the press in Indonesia, who are fighting against corruption together with the KPK. We, the KPK, only carried out our duty independently and without seeing the labels that are attached to any suspects," KPK spokesman Johan Budi told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday evening.
He said the award could motivate the agency to work harder in the future. "This award will prompt us to work harder and not to stop in combating corruption, a task which is not easy. It will also be a reminder for us to keep the institution on the right track in order to respond to the public demands for a better Indonesia," he added.
Established in 2003, KPK has won support from a public that has grown weary of a corrupt judiciary, the Attorney General's Office (AGO) and the National Police.
The anti-graft body has locked up a number of high-ranking officials as well as prominent figures from political parties; while several others are waiting in line as the KPK has been fiercely hands-on with big graft cases.
The KPK, for example, detained Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq, then active leader of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), over an import beef scandal in February this year.
Earlier in December last year, the anti graft body also locked up an active general, Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo, over a graft-ridden procurement of 700 two-wheeled and 556 four-wheeled driving simulators in 2011, which caused more than US$19.81 million in state losses.
It has also arrested politicians from political parties, including former Democratic Party treasurer Muhammad Nazaruddin and party colleague Angelina Sondakh over bribery linked to the construction of the SEA Games athletes village in South Sumatra.
Other award winners include Ernesto Domingo from the Philippines for his dedication in providing healthcare for the poor; Myanmarese Laphai Seng Raw for empowering members of conflict-torn communities and Afghanistan's first and only female governor, Habiba Sarabi, for her tireless effort to build a functioning government and to promote education and women's rights in Afghanistan's Bamyan province amid escalating violence. Nepalese foundation Shakti Samuha also received the award for its work in tackling human trafficking in the country.
Ina Parlina, Jakarta A coalition of NGOs have joined forces to block an attempt from lawyer and former law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra to relax a 2012 remission policy for corruption convicts.
Representing two graft convicts, Yusril filed a judicial review to the Supreme Court in June against the 2012 government regulation that imposed stricter remission requirements on drug, graft and terror convicts.
He challenged several articles on remission for graft convicts, arguing they contradicted the 1995 Penitentiary Law and the 1999 Human Rights Law. The NGO coalition said the government must continue implementing the regulation.
"We have asked the Supreme Court to listen to our arguments in a session scheduled for next week. The stricter remission policy is aimed at giving a deterrent effect for graft suspects," said Emerson Yuntho of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), one of the NGOs in the coalition.
Legal experts have backed the NGOs' move. Zainal Arifin Mochtar, legal expert and a researcher of Gadjah Mada University's Center for Anticorruption Studies, said Yusril had made a flawed legal argument.
He said Yusril only focused on Articles 5 and 14 Paragraph 1, which considered remission a right for all prisoners.
"He fails to see Article 12 Paragraph 1 of the 1995 law that allows categorizing inmates in criteria tailored to the needs and changing situation of the correctional system," he said. "The idea of stricter remission is based on the provisions."
Constitutional law expert Refly Harun said the government could not be accused of violating prisoners' basic rights by applying the rule.
"Corruption is an extraordinary crime with an extraordinary investigation process, but why should the punishment be ordinary, not to mention the remission?" he said.
"There should be different remission rules for extraordinary and ordinary rimes, or maybe there are people who want to hamper the corruption eradication campaign by using momentum here."
The corruption convicts, backed by some politicians, have raised their demands following the recent Tanjung Gusta prison riot earlier this month, saying they were discriminated against.
The government has also undermined its own regulation on remission with the Law and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsuddin issuing a statement that the government has decided not to implement the 2012 government regulation on remissions retroactively.
Stricter remission and parole release requirements for graft, drug and terror convicts set by the regulation only applied to those who were convicted after Nov. 12, 2012, when the regulation was signed.
Constitutional Court Chief Justice Akil Mochtar, who agreed with a proposal for a stricter remissions, said the government regulation had violated the 1995 law, citing it was better to revise the law.
Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta Almost all political parties, except for the United Development Party (PPP), which is chaired by Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, have issued condemnations of the role of the FPI in the fatal clash in Kendal, which left a pregnant resident, Tri Muniarti, dead.
But when pressed about what to do next with the organization, three major political parties, the ruling Democratic Party, the Golkar Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) maintained that it was up to the National Police and the Home Ministry to deal with it.
After calling for the disbandment of the FPI following a statement from FPI chairman Rizieq Shihab calling President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a "loser" Democratic Party lawmaker Ruhut Sitompul said that Yudhoyono, who is also chairman of the party, would make no efforts to outlaw the FPI, in spite of their violent activities.
Ruhut said that Yudhoyono respected the law by not disbanding the FPI. "I must emphasize that Pak SBY will not disband the FPI. We live in a country where the law and the Pancasila ideology must be upheld. Therefore, we must fully trust law enforcers to strictly enforce the law against violators," he said.
Senior politician of the Democratic Party Melanie Leimena Suharly meanwhile said that "the President will likely take action if he gets support from all elements, especially the country's largest Islamic groups Nahdatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah because he [Yudhoyono] doesn't want to break the law".
Such a tepid stance against the FPI has also been adopted by other political parties. Golkar Party secretary-general Idrus Marham said action against the FPI could only be based on the law.
"I know this sounds normative, but the fact is that Indonesia is a law- based state. The law should govern all aspects of life in this country. Law enforcers, including the police, are responsible for ensuring that everybody, including members of the FPI, abide by the law. So it should be the police who lead the charge against the FPI," Idrus told The Jakarta Post.
PDI-P secretary-general Tjahjo Kumolo said that what the party could do was call on the police to take concrete action against the FPI.
"The police, for example, should have no excuse but to follow up on the President's instruction to enforce the law against members of the FPI who commit violence. Simultaneously, the Home Ministry must implement the [newly endorsed] Law on Mass Organizations to crack down on the organization," Tjahjo told the Post.
Leader of the PPP faction at the House, Hasrul Azwar, however, defended the FPI.
He said the FPI could not be faulted for its actions because its members were fighting for the country's morality. "The FPI would not take over the role of the police if the police, as well as the government, were capable of enforcing the law on morality." Hasrul said the PPP encouraged FPI to resort to "more peaceful means" to promote their values.
The FPI was officially established in August 1998 in Jakarta by a number of local religious figures and Muslim activists. The group has been associated with violence as its members have frequently conducted regular raids and sweeps in places deemed to be promoting blasphemy or immorality, with the authorities rarely taking action against the body.
Leaders of the FPI decided to suspend the organization in November 2002 after the Jakarta Police detained chairman Habib Riziqie over a number of illegal raids by his followers. The suspension only lasted for a month as the group resumed operations later that December.
Markus Junianto Sihaloho As pressures mounts for the government to disband a notorious hard-line Muslim group, one activist expressed concerns about how it should be done.
Ray Rangkuti from pro-democracy group, the Indonesian Civil Circle (LIMA), said many have called the government to implement the controversial Mass Organization Law and use it to disband the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).
Members of the hard-line group more than a week ago clashed with residents of Kendal, Central Java, over a raid on what the FPI said was a brothel operating during the Ramadan fasting month.
Outnumbered, FPI members attempted to flee using a hired truck, but the vehicle hit and killed a bystander, which only served to further fuel local residents' anger.
Days after the clash, 50 members of the Makassar chapter of the FPI wrecked a small shop serving beer in Makassar, South Sulawesi. The incident was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube, causing a sensation online. Police subsequently arrested three men allegedly involved in the attack.
Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said on Thursday that the group, implicated in a long history of vandalism cases across the country, has disrupted public order and could be permanently disbanded under the new law.
But Ray said that using the law to disband the FPI would be a setback to pro-democracy groups' struggle to have it repealed. "It will legitimize the Mass Organization Law as if it has been socially accepted," he said on Saturday.
Last month, a divided House of Representatives enacted the law, despite arguments that it would restrict freedom of assembly and could pave the way for a crackdown of organizations critical to the government.
"Right now, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] are trying hard to get the law repealed through legal and political channels. Using the Mass Organization Law to disband the FPI will undo those efforts," Ray said.
Ray said the government should use other means to dissuade the hard-line group from future acts of violence by ensuring that members who violate the law are no longer be granted impunity and lenient punishment.
In 2011, a court in Bekasi, West Java, gave light sentences to 13 FPI members, including the local head Murhali Barda, who is linked to an attack on members of a Protestant church congregation. Murhali was sentenced to five months and 15 days in jail for "unpleasant conduct."
Golkar Party politician Agun Gunandjar Sudarsa agreed that better law enforcement is key, saying that disbanding the FPI using the Mass Organization Law would only lead group members to form another hard-line organization under a new name.
"These incidents will continue if the government is not consistent in upholding the law," he said.
National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo said the police were developing several vandalism cases of FPI becoming involved in incidents in Kendal and Makassar. Still, many have criticized the police's protracted investigation, saying that they are not taking action fast enough.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said that he will not use his authority to disband the FPI without first consulting the country's major Islamic organizations.
Nadya Natahadibrata and Yuliasri Perdani, Jakarta The government cannot disband the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) using the controversial Mass Organization (Ormas) Law following the deadly clash in Kendal and Temanggung as the group's branches in the two regions had not been registered yet, an official said on Friday.
"The authority to control the organization that was deemed to have caused social unrest, is in the hands of the regent. And the regional administrations have used its authority to warn the FPI members not to conduct any sweeping again," Bahtiar, the Home Ministry's mass organization sub-directorate head, said.
Bachtiar said that the raid conducted by the FPI that led a violent clash between the group and angry residents could not be used as a pretext to invoke the Mass Organization Law, which was deemed as a threat to democracy by human rights activists. The local FPI branches, he said, were not registered, while the law could only be applied to registered organizations.
The government has come under pressure to freeze the FPI following the Kendal incident that left a pregnant woman dead. The police have named several FPI members as suspects for the violent clash.
Bahtiar previously said that the organization could be subject to sanctions imposed in stages as stipulated in the Ormas Law, comprised of three warnings, temporary disbandment and permanent disbandment, should the regional administration have enough grounds to say the FPI has created social unrest.
The ministry's statement came as members of the House of Representatives and social media users were calling on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who condemned the FPI for creating a bad image to Islam, to disband the Islamic group.
Democratic Party politician Melanie Leimena Suharly, who is also the People's Consultative Council deputy speaker, said that the President was waiting for the official statements from the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah over whether the FPI should be dissolved.
"The President wants to do it with the endorsement of all elements of society," she said as quoted by state news agency Antara.
Several parties have said that disbanding the FPI would set a bad precedent for Indonesia's democracy and that it would not solve the real problem, which they said was weak law enforcement.
Hafidz Usman of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country's largest Muslim organization said that the government shared the blame for the clash, saying that the law enforcers have let existing brothels continue business as usual during Ramadhan, which has caused anxiety among FPI members.
"FPI should not be allowed to conduct a sweep, because it was the task of law enforcers. Now, the law enforcers should dig deeper into the case and find the reason why the FPI decided to conduct the raid in the first place," Hafidz said, citing that during Ramadhan, brothels should be closed.
"It's too much that the FPI should be disbanded just because of this incident. The perpetrators should be charged, but the raid was not a policy that came from FPI's head office in Jakarta," he said.
Separately, National Police deputy chief Comr. Gen. Nanan Sukarna said on Friday that the police would use a humanistic approach in handling the FPI. "We should strictly enforce the law, but we also need to provide a solution," he said at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta on Friday.
"If he [FPI chairman Habib Rizieq] has realized that they are not allowed to conduct a sweep, why do we need to put all [FPI members] behind bars?" he continued.
However, Nanan denied the assumption that the force had been lenient toward the FPI, which was notorious for its violent raids on nightclubs, bars and brothels.
Robertus Wardi, Ezra Sihite & Carlos K.Y. Paath The hard-line Islamic Defenders Front is a registered body that can be disbanded if it breaches the new Mass Organizations Law, Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said on Thursday, dispelling suggestions it was merely an informal network over which the state had no control.
Gamawan was speaking after Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam said the group known as FPI was not a registered organization and therefore could not be disbanded.
"It's already registered. It's a mass organization. Here [at the Home Affairs Ministry], it's already registered," Gamawan said at the Presidential Palace.
But Gamawan declined to act swiftly against the hard-line group after members last week clashed with residents of Kendal, Central Java, over a raid on what it said was a brothel operating during Ramadan. A bystander woman being killed in the clash.
Gamawan said the law stated that the local administration had responsibility for taking action against a mass organization disrupting public order.
"The law stated that a governor should take action if the incident occurred in the province," the minister said. "If it happened in a district or a city, the district head or the mayor has to handle it. If it happened in the national level, then I would take action."
Dipo on Wednesday said that because the FPI was not a formal group it had no legal status and authorities must look to legally processing its members individually for breaking the law.
"Whoever took the law into their own hands, violated the law, they should be punished. But from what I heard FPI is not registered yet as a mass organization at the Political and National Unity Office," Dipo said.
Around 50 FPI supporters attempted to raid several "entertainment" establishments in Kendal last week. The men damaged several businesses before locals turned on the hard-liners, forcing the FPI to beat a retreat.
As the FPI members attempted to flee, one vehicle ran down a couple on a motorbike, killing the female passenger and injuring her husband. Three FPI members, including the car's driver, have been charged.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the incident and said that the government would not tolerate the kind of vigilantism or violence that the FPI had exhibited.
"My position is very clear we will not give any form of tolerance," Yudhoyono said on Sunday. "This has to be prevented so that no other entities, including the FPI, engage in any more violence."
The president's statement sparked outrage from the FPI chairman Rizieq Shihab, who called the president a "loser" and a "disgrace to Muslims" for chastising the FPI over the incident.
The president on Thursday before a Cabinet meeting repeated his call for all parties to refrain from violence and to respect Ramadan.
"I have said repeatedly that all parties must respect the holy month of Ramadan and refrain from committing any violence, conflict, vandalism and especially anarchism. Let us all respect the month of Ramadan," the president said at the Presidential Palace.
On Wednesday, Gen. Timur Pradopo, the National Police chief, said his office was considering whether there were grounds to charge Rizieq over the insult. "Our investigators are still looking into that," he said.
Insulting the head of state was a punishable offense under the Criminal Code until 2006, when it was struck down by the Constitutional Court.
The provision has been revived in a raft of amendments currently being deliberated by the House of Representatives. However, if passed, the article would not be retroactive.
Didi Supriyanto, a representative of a legal aid foundation, said the police needed strong grounds if they were to charge Rizieq with defamation for his "loser" outcry.
"Evidence is needed in law. Were there any witnesses? All of that must be proven in court," Didi said. Didi said all citizens, including the president, must obey the law.
Timur said the police were developing several vandalism cases involving the FPI relating to incidents in Kendal and Makassar, South Sulawesi. "Let's give the investigators the chance to solve the legal cases," Timur said at the Presidential Palace on Thursday.
Regarding mounting calls for the FPI's disbandment, group spokesman Muhsin Alattas said his organization would automatically dissolve if the authorities properly enforced entertainment establishment law, which places limits on issues relating to alcohol and prostitution.
"If the authorities and government officials were able to enforce the law the FPI would disband," Muhsin told a news conference.
Muhsin accused the media of failing to provide balanced and accurate coverage of the controversy surrounding the FPI.
He insisted that thugs paid by the bosses of the entertainment establishments attacked the FPI first, and added that FPI members were clashing with paid thugs and not with local residents.
The national police confirmed on Thursday that it set up a special task force to investigate the leader of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) for comments made earlier in the week in which he called President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a "loser."
"The chief of the criminal investigation division has established an investigation team under orders from the National Police chief," National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Ronny F. Sompie said, as quoted by the Antara news agency on Thursday.
"The National Police has decided to directly investigate the issue without waiting for a report [to be filed] because it concerns our country's highest leader."
On Monday, president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono posted a status on his Facebook timeline asking the FPI to refrain from using violence after a woman was killed in a raid the organization conducted in Central Java.
"I call on my brothers in the FPI to stop their use of violence and taking justice in their own hands," Yudhoyono said. "The way to fight sinful activities and religious deviants should not be done by doing something that is more deviant. I'm sure the FPI can do many things that are better and more useful for the people and our society."
FPI quickly responded to Yudhoyono's statement by publishing chairman Rizieq Shihab's comment on its website.
"It's a pity. SBY appears to be...a mere loser who likes spreading lies and remaining silent about sinful activities. Not to mention, he's been protecting the Ahmadiyah and [individuals involved in] various corruption scandals. This Muslim president is a disgrace to Islamic teachings," Rizieq's statement said. Rizieq said that Yudhoyono can criticize the FPI all he wants.
"Because SBY is the chairman of the most corrupt party, he is causing people to lose and suffer. Worse than that, according to Yudhoyono's former minister, President SBY never prays. Those two points mean he's not only hurting Islam, but betraying Islam."
Ronny said that the special investigation team will collect all of Rizieq's statements, both in print and on online, to construct a legal case.
Novianti Setuningsih & Ezra Sihite A hard-line Islamic organization has apologized for causing the death of a motorist arising from its attempt to raid a suspected brothel in East Java, as the police mull citing its head for insulting the president.
Rizieq Shihab, the chairman of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), said in a statement on Wednesday that his organization regretted the incident and that it had banned its members from carrying out further vigilante raids.
"The FPI remorsefully apologizes to the victims. May the deceased be accepted by Allah, and the injured be blessed with a speedy recovery," he said as quoted by the news portal Detik.com.
The incident in question occurred last Thursday, when around 50 FPI supporters attempted to raid several "entertainment" establishments in Kendal district, Central Java. The men damaged several businesses before local residents turned on the hard-liners, forcing the FPI to beat a retreat.
As the FPI members attempted to flee the scene, one vehicle ran down a couple on a motorbike, killing the female passenger and injuring her husband. Three FPI members, including the car's driver, have been charged in the case.
Rizieq said the FPI would compensate the family of the deceased. "The FPI is prepared to give a scholarship to the victim's son until he has finished university. We will give Rp 500,000 [$50] each month," he said.
He added that the group would also expel any of its members who engaged in acts of violence. "FPI members are strictly prohibited from conducting raids and destroying public property, much less causing death," Rizieq said.
The apology comes two days after Rizieq released a statement calling President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a "loser" and a "disgrace to Muslims" for chastising the FPI over the East Java incident.
On Wednesday, Gen. Timur Pradopo, the National Police chief, said his office was considering whether there were grounds to charge Rizieq over the insult. "Our investigators are still looking into that," he said.
Insulting the head of state was a punishable offense under the Criminal Code until 2006, when it was struck down by the Constitutional Court.
The provision has been revived in a raft of amendments currently being deliberated by the House of Representatives. However, if passed, the article would not be retroactive.
Timur, who has courted controversy in the past by saying he welcomed vigilante groups such as the FPI helping to enforce the law, said the hard-liners would definitely face charges for their shenanigans in East Java.
"Clearly there was a legal violation there," he said, adding that the "legal process will speak for itself."
However, he said the police were not authorized to disband the FPI, amid mounting calls to that effect in response to the group's raids and violent conduct throughout the country.
He added that police had reminded all mass organizations to respect the rule of law and not to take the law into their own hands for any reason.
The State Palace, meanwhile, has shrugged off the insult to Yudhoyono by Rizieq, saying the invective from the hard-liners did not warrant a response.
Julian Aldrin Pasha, a spokesman for the president, said on Wednesday that Yudhoyono had other more pressing matters to address. "Is it so important that we respond to [Rizieq's statement]?" he said.
He added that the president would not back down from his earlier statement that the government would not tolerate the kind of vigilantism or violence exhibited by the FPI last week.
"My position is very clear we will not give any form of tolerance," Yudhoyono said last Sunday. "This has to be prevented so that no other entities, including the FPI, engage in any more violence."
Julian said this message had been impressed on law enforcers and that there would be no exceptions made for any violators, including the FPI.
"The president has instructed [law enforcement agencies] to bring in line anyone who breaks the law or commits violence," he said.
"Our position is very clear. There must be no more organizations or individuals who commit violence against others, whether in the name of religion or any other cause."
Djoko Suyanto, the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, also took a hard line on the issue when he demanded on Tuesday that the FPI be brought to justice for both the raid and the subsequent deadly clash.
"Arrest them, drag them to court and punish them if they vandalize property," he said. "It's as simple as that."
However, other officials in the Yudhoyono administration have opted to mollycoddle the hard-liners.
Suryadharma Ali, the minister for religious affairs, said he would immediately hold discussions with the FPI, and urged patience from the government and the public over the FPI's continued antics.
"I believe we must be patient, because many local chapters of the FPI have honestly reformed," he said on Tuesday.
"I find their recent views about the president highly regrettable, and I call on them to introspect on why the president holds the opinion of them that he does." He added that it would "take time" for the FPI to understand that it could not conduct raids or commit violence at will.
The Setara Institute, a watchdog for interfaith tolerance and longtime critic of the FPI over its oppression of religious minorities, said in statement on Wednesday that the hard-liners' latest controversy had hurt the reputation of the police, given the latter's patronage of the group and long history of overlooking its illegal actions.
"It seems the police aren't serious about investigating the clash," the statement said, noting that the Kendal Police had tried to paint the FPI as the victims in the case.
"The National Police leadership has repeatedly said it would prohibit and crack down on any raids carried out by mass organizations. But the reality on the ground belies this rhetoric. This reluctance by the police to act against the FPI is attributed by the public to the police's siding with the group and fear of taking legal action against it," Setara said.
"It is this kind of attitude from law enforcement officials that gives the FPI the idea that it is above the law, because the fact is that the FPI has long been free to perpetrate anarchy and break the law while being nurtured by the authorities."
Bagus BT Saragih and Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta Chairman of the hard-line Islam Defenders Front (FPI), Rizieq Shihab, has apologized to the family of the woman who died during a clash between members of the hardline group and locals in Kendal, Central Java, and instructed all of the organization's members not to engage in raids and vandalism.
"On behalf of the FPI, I apologize to the victims. May the deceased be accepted by Allah, and the injured be blessed with a speedy recovery," Riziek said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
He also said that the FPI would pay compensation to the victim's family. "The FPI will pay for the education of the victim's son until he gets his bachelor's degree. We will give Rp 500,000 [$50] each month," he said.
Rizieq also promised any of FPI members who were involved in violence could face legal charges and be dismissed from the organization.
He also said that the FPI would withdraw a police report it filed against locals who allegedly assaulted FPI members or damaged its properties. "But if they were provocateurs who were actually responsible for the incident, the FPI would ask the police to continue legal processes against them."
Kendal native Tri Munarti, who was pregnant, was killed in the fatal clash last week. She and her husband were on a motorbike when a vehicle allegedly driven by FPI members hit them. Three other people were also injured.
The FPI members were reportedly attempting to flee an angry mob that ran amok following the FPI's raids of a red-light district in Sukorejo, Central Java. Following the incident, Central Java police named seven suspects, three of whom were FPI members.
In his statement, Rizieq pledged no FPI member would conduct any kind of violent acts again in the future. "FPI members are strictly prohibited from conducting sweeps and destruction of public property, let alone causing death," he said.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, several hackers managed to deface the FPI's official website fpi.or.id. On early Wednesday, the homepage of the site was turned into a picture of a woman in a hijab with a darkened background.
Minutes later, the picture turned into a "fearsome long-haired ghost" with a text "Hacked by Besideo7. Serius, gan [Serously, Sir]?". Then all the backgrounds changed to white with before "The FPI has offended the law", and "Under maintenance forever by fake admin FPI" appeared
Later on Wednesday, the top panel of the website was replaced with a banner of JKT48, a 51-member girl group, who are wildly popular among male teen.
In a related development, Home Ministry Gamawan Fauzi said that his ministry could not enforce the newly endorsed Law on Mass Organizations against the FPI yet, because it could not take effect until early next month pending the issuance of a government regulation for its implementation.
The Mass Organization Law mandates the government to issue three reprimands to any groups causing public disturbance before finally lodging a formal request of temporary suspension to the Supreme Court.
Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam, meanwhile, said that the government would not be able to disband the FPI because the organization itself had never been formally registered. "The FPI is just like an informal forum where people get together and hang out," he said at the State Palace.
Separately, Deputy Chairwoman of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Melanie Leimena Suharli has joined other lawmakers calling for suspension of radical groups, including the FPI, but encouraged to seek support from the country's largest Islamic organizations, Nahdatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah.
"Support from both groups is important because they have a large number of followers. Once they make the move, all of their followers will follow suit, which make efforts to suspend FPI finally work," Leimena of the Democratic Party said.
Carlos Paath & Ezra Sihite Any mass organization that engages in violence and vandalism should be brought to justice, a senior government minister has said days after a deadly raid on an alleged Central Java brothel by the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front.
"Arrest them, drag them to court and punish them if they vandalize property. It's as simple as that," Coordinating Minister for Political, Justice and Security Affairs Djoko Suyanto said at the State Palace on Tuesday.
He added that individuals and groups should be sanctioned regardless of their background.
The minister said that under the recently introduced Mass Organizations Law, the Home Affairs Ministry can suspend mass organizations involved in violence. He added that authorities need to enforce the law to maintain public order.
Djoko's remarks follow a raid on Thursday by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) that escalated into a violent confrontation with hundreds of local residents in Kendal, Central Java. One person died in the violence fueling public anger and prompting calls to disband the hard-line Islamic group.
But Hayono Isman, a lawmaker from the House of Representatives, said only courts, and not the government, had the authority to disband a mass organization.
"[The authority] to disband lies in the hands of the court, not the ruler. The government cannot disband any mass organization unless through the court," Hayono said at the parliament building on Tuesday.
He added that the government has instructed law enforcement bodies to take action against violators. "It was clear that the president has instructed the National Police chief to take firm action against whomever is guilty, regardless of who they are," he said.
National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo said on Monday that the police will legally process the violators in the Kendal incident. The police have named as suspects two FPI members, for possession of sharp weapons, and four local residents, for the vandalizing of FPI vehicles.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Sunday criticized the FPI's actions and said he would not tolerate the acts of violence that occurred on Thursday.
"My position is very clear we will not give any form of tolerance," the president said in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, on Sunday. "This has to be prevented so that no other entities, including the FPI, engage in any more violence."
He commended the police's response during the incident and condemned religiously motivated violence.
"If the violence was in the name of Islam, that is against Islam itself," Yudhoyono said. "Islam is not compatible with violence, vigilantism and destructive acts. If there is an individual who has engaged in violence, he has embarrassed and hurt Islam."
Yudhoyono also called on the public to remain calm.
FPI leader Rizieq Syihab called the president a "loser" for criticizing his group and denied that the hard-line organization committed any wrongdoing.
Rizieq on Monday said that none of the FPI members were armed when they conducted "peaceful monitoring" of an alleged brothel in Kendal.
"The FPI was not playing judge. We came to the [Kendal Police] and asked that the prostitution parlor be shut, especially since it's Ramadan now," Rizieq said in a statement.
"In Kendal, the FPI was the victim and not the perpetrator. It was the FPI who was victimized by hundreds of armed thugs at the brothel." At least two FPI members were reportedly beaten by the angry mob, while several cars being used by the group were torched at the scene.
"It's a pity. SBY appears to be... a mere loser who likes spreading lies and being silent about sinful activities. Not to mention, he's been protecting the Ahmadiyah and individuals involved in various corruption scandals. This Muslim president is a disgrace to Islamic teachings," Rizieq said.
Rizieq further accused Yudhoyono of believing media reports that Rizieq claimed had failed to accurately depict what happened during the Kendal clash.
Ramadhan Pohan, the deputy chairman of House Commission I, lashed out at Rizieq for calling the president a loser, saying that he was being irrational.
"Calling the Indonesian president a loser just because he made a criticism shows that FPI is irrational. FPI cannot challenge the president who is speaking on behalf of all groups. Rizieq gave a wrong reaction," Ramadhan said on Tuesday.
"The clash in Kendal occurred during the holy month. FPI conducted the provocative raid. FPI clashed with the local residents. A local woman who knew nothing got killed. We must show our concern."
He added that Islam is a peaceful religion, not provocative and violent. He called on the FPI and Rizieq to retract his insults directed at the president.
"In the month of Ramadan, Muslims usually ask for forgiveness when they make a mistake. Rizieq Shihab's remarks toward the president are counterproductive for the FPI," Pohan said.
Yudhoyono lamented how Islam is sometimes associated with violence. Indonesia can set a good example by showing that Islam is a peaceful religion for all, he said.
The president cited a former religious affairs minister's conversation with an Arab leader who criticized the violence and vandalism often committed by hard-liners.
The Arab leader said that such actions could hurt the image of Islam and Arabs. "Let's make the followers understand what real Islam is teaching," the president added.
Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam called on the FPI to reassess its actions and reminded them that the president represented the people.
Dipo added that the president was elected by the people and the government was set up constitutionally and therefore the FPI should comply with and respect the government.
Dipo said the president regretted the FPI's clash with the local residents in Kendal and his reaction was an attempt to encourage people to respect each other. "The people can judge for themselves whether the president made a defamatory statement. I think not," Dipo said.
Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta In spite of their stance on pluralism, major political parties in the House of Representatives have condoned, if not outrightly supported, discrimination against religious minorities.
Except for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), political parties continue to seemingly support Bogor Mayor Diani Budiarto's decision to revoke Indonesian Christian Church (GKI Yasmin)'s building permit despite throwing their weight behind the beleaguered church congregation in public statements.
Only the PDI-P officially withdrew its support for Diani following the Supreme Court's ruling in 2010 that annulled the mayor's ruling. Other political parties, including the Democratic Party, the Golkar Party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the United Development Party (PPP), the National Awakening Party (PKB), the Great Indonesian Movement (Gerindra) Party and the People's Conscience Party (Hanura), have all given Diani a pass.
"We, as a party, decided to officially withdraw our support for him [Mayor Diani] following the Court's ruling because his insistence to seal the church is a blatant disregard of the law. We refuse to support his policy as it will set a bad precedent for law enforcement in the country," PDI-P lawmaker Eva Kusuma Sundari from House Commission III overseeing law and human rights told The Jakarta Post.
Meanwhile, executives from two other parties, the Democratic Party and Golkar, rehashed their old arguments, saying that they had little control over what their politicians did at the local level.
"I, as a leader of House Commission III, fully support freedom for all, including the freedom to worship, as long as it is consistent with the law, which is already clear in the GKI Yasmin case.
The Democratic Party has also stated clearly that we support the rights of GKI Yasmin to occupy the premises. But, we can't deny that several of our members at the regional councils, for example, may not share our perspective for different reasons," lawmaker I Gede Pasek Suardika told the Post on Tuesday.
Separately, Golkar deputy secretary-general Nurul Arifin said that local members of the party were being pragmatic by not protecting the rights of minority groups.
"Some of our members in different regions have admitted that they were forced to support policies deemed discriminatory to get support. But we can assure you that Golkar, as a party, doesn't support such practices," Nurul said.
Human rights watchdog Setara Institute recorded that several political parties were responsible for religious discrimination, allowing members of local administrations to support attacks on churches, Ahmadiyah mosques, as well as other faith groups.
PPP lawmakers, for example, had condoned discrimination against Ahmadis and Shiites in North Sumatra, West Nusa Tenggara and East Java, among others.
Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta Political pragmatism by major political parties, that have long pandered to majority Sunni voters, has prevented the parties from protecting the rights of minority Muslim groups such as the Ahmadiyah and Shia.
Although nine political parties in the House of Representatives have provisions in their statutes to protect the rights of minority groups, some of them, particularly the Islamic-based National Awakening Party (PKB), the United Development Party (PPP) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), have openly supported the Religious Affairs Ministry's decision to maintain regulations deemed discriminatory against minorities groups, including the 2008 Joint Ministerial Decree that bans Ahmadis from practicing their faith over fears of blasphemy.
For Islamic parties, religious freedom is acceptable as long as it does not contradict the basic tenets of Islam or aqidah principles, which according to them, have been breached by Ahmadis and Shiites in Indonesia.
"This is why we believe that there is no other solution for them [Ahmadis and Shiites] but to repent and submit themselves to true Islam," Hasrul Azwar, leader of the PPP faction at the House, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, who is also chairman of the PPP, has repeatedly said that Ahmadis and Shiites have "deviated" from the true path of Islam and that they had brought discrimination upon themselves on account of their deviant teachings.
Both the PKS and the PKB, whose politicians applauded Suryadharma's ongoing attempts to engage in dialogue with the Sampang Shiites in East Java, said that conversion to the "true path" of Islam was the only solution to the stand-off.
"We do uphold the rights to worship the faith. However, we must not forget that we have rules in this country, including the joint ministerial regulation, which must apply to every single citizen," PKS lawmaker Ledia Hanifa told the Post.
Ledia, who is also the deputy chairman of House Commission VIII overseeing religion, added that all laws and regulations had clearly identified only six religions recognized by the state. "The violation of any of these rules is the cause of religious conflicts in the country," she emphasized.
Nationalist political parties, including the ruling Democratic Party, the Golkar Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) claimed that they had tried to convince Suryadharma to change his policies on minority groups, but their calls had fallen on deaf ears.
The PDI-P recently issued a statement asking President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to disengage Suryadharma from the current reconciliation process involving Shiites from Sampang, Madura, East Java.
"The President must appoint somebody else to mediate the conflicting groups [in Sampang] because he [Suryadharma] is not the right person in charge of the project. It is obvious he favors the majority Sunni groups," PDI-P senior lawmaker Eva Kusuma Sundari said.
Golkar said political expediency, sometimes at the local level, had hobbled its attempt to protect minority groups.
Golkar deputy secretary-general Nurul Arifin, for example, said that the party did order all of its members to promote pluralism but that politicians had often disregarded the directive, bowing to pressure from local majority groups.
"We are strongly against such practice. We have reprimanded those who have openly supported discriminative bylaws. However, this kind of practice is very difficult to monitor," Nurul said.
Jakarta "I don't want my friends to turn away from me when I tell them who I am," said 13-year-old Ardan, not his real name, on Saturday during a story-telling event at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) office in Central Jakarta.
The boy, from an Ahmadi family, then recounted an incident when his home in Manislor village in Kuningan regency, West Java, was ransacked by locals.
"I saw people throwing stones at our house," he said. "I asked my mother 'what have we done wrong' and she was just silent," said the boy, who bowed his head and sobbed.
Ardan and two other Ahmadi children came to the LBH Jakarta office to join other children whose families were from an ethnic or religious minority group such as Sunda Wiwitan, Shia and the Rohingya Muslims, to celebrate National Children's Day over the weekend.
Also joining them were children of members of the Batak Protestant Church (HKBP) Filadelfia and the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) congregation.
EM, a child from GKI Yasmin, took the chance to read a letter, addressed to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in front of his new friends.
The 13-year-old boy's words called on the President to reopen GKI Yasmin, which was sealed off by the Bogor City administration in 2011, he just wanted to celebrate Christmas this year in peace at the church.
"I want to be able to pray inside the church and not on the roadside like we have to now," he said.
LBH Jakarta said that the event was part of an effort to heal their trauma from constant discrimination.
LBH Jakarta director Febi Yonesta said that discrimination could impact negatively on their mental and psychological condition. "In areas of conflict, children are often on the receiving end of human rights abuse because they are the most vulnerable," Febi told The Jakarta Post.
Febi said that children who were most effected included dozens of Ahmadi kids in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, where they lived transient lives because of the beliefs of their families.
More often than not, Ahmadi children drop out of schools because of the constant attacks from locals. Activists have also raised concern over the future education of displaced children relocated because of religious clashes.
Ilma Sovri Yanti, the coordinator of a government-sanctioned Task Force on Child Protection, cited a case in Sidoarjo, East Surabaya, where 235 Shiites were moved to public housing in Puspa Argo Village in Sidoarjo, East Java.
"Fifty percent of the 80 Shia children who are with their parents in Sidoarjo don't go to school. This is their future at stake," she said.
Ilma said that the Shiite children, who went to school in their home villages in Nangkernang and Blu'uran in Sampang, had not been to school since August 2012, following a clash between Sunni and Shiite communities in Madura. Many Shia children who joined a free schooling program at a displaced persons center said they had experienced trauma, stress and depression.
Activist Nia Syarifudin from the National Alliance of Unity in Diversity (ANBTI) said the government needed to step up its efforts to protect minority groups, especially children.
"Don't allow these kids to become victims of hatred and bigotry. The government should protect their rights," she said.
Arientha Primanita Sampang's persecuted Shiite Muslim minority, fearful of another round of forced conversions by Sunni Muslims, called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to ensure their religious freedom after a forum meant to negotiate the exiled group's homecoming placed the matter in the hands of Sunni clerics accused of inciting sectarian tensions in Madura Island.
"We reject all statements from state officials and local figures that ignore our religious freedoms and right to practice our own beliefs as Shiites," said attorney Herstaning Ikhlas in a statement sent to the Jakarta Globe. "The reconciliation forum must give more space to grassroots dialogue and not accommodate local figures known for their hate speech."
Sectarian violence has plagued the Sunni-majority island in recent years, culminating in an anti-Shia rampage through two villages late last year that left two dead and forced 233 Shiites into exile, first in a squalid sports center and then in subsidized apartments in Sidoarjo, East Java.
The central government has promised a solution to the island's woes and held a meeting last week between provincial leaders and representatives from both the Shiite and Sunni communities in East Java. The Ministry of Public Housing, which will lead the reconstruction efforts, trumpeted a plan that would return the Shiites to their destroyed villages and promote infrastructure investment island-wide at the meeting's close.
But the plan's reliance on acceptance by local Sunni leaders has some Shiite representatives concerned.
The Minister of Public Housing, Djan Faridz, said the rebuilding and infrastructure development projects will go hand-in-hand with a push at the local level for Shiites to embrace the "right way," or Sunni Islam, Herstaning said.
Soekarwo, the governor of East Java, supported the plan and said Sampang's problems stemmed from controversial claims made by Shiite leader Tajul Muluk a man later convicted of blasphemy in a trial heavily criticized by human rights groups.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's Minister of Religious Affairs Suryadharma Ali, who has insisted the Sampang violence was a family conflict, not a religious one, allegedly agreed with Sunni clerics' calls for another round of conversions, Herstaning said. Suryadharma did not return a text message for comment on Sunday.
Iklil Al Milal, a Shiite cleric and representative of Sampang's community in exile, said numerous meetings with Sunni ulema from the Board of Madura Clerics (Bassra) hinged on the same assertion: that the Shiites must renounce their beliefs and convert to Sunni Islam.
"They asked us to do Taubatan Nasuha [sincere repentance]," Iklil said. "[The] Shiites [have to first] embrace Sunni beliefs and then they would accept us back in Sampang."
More than 30 Shiites have been forced to convert to Sunni Islam on the threat of violence in Sampang.
The cleric called on the president and local law enforcement to remain neutral in the matter. Yudhoyono plans to visit Sampang during an Idul Fitri tour of East Java later this month.
"We hope the president will keep his promise and help us return home," Iklil said. "As a leader he can make it come true. "We only want to live in peace in our hometown."
Camelia Pasandaran Two Ahmadiyah teachers and a school attendant have left a state elementary school in Cianjur following pressure from local residents.
"There have been threats from local people since last year," Indonesian Ahmadiyah Congregation (JAI) spokesman told the Jakarta Globe on Friday. "They threatened to take the law into their own hands if the headmaster refused to move them. They've moved to different schools but still remain in Campaka subdistricts."
Firdaus said the names of the teachers and the school attendant would not be revealed out of fears for their security. Ten Ahmadi students have also decided to move to other schools as a direct result of the teachers' departure.
"These students joined the school in Sukadana village because they felt protected with the Ahmadiyah teachers there," Firdaus said. "But after news of their departure spread, the students felt unsafe at the school."
The new school is around two kilometers away. "They have decided to move to Cibeber because local people there are not as strongly opposed to Ahmadiyah," Firdaus said.
Firdaus said discrimination against Ahmadiyah students and teachers in Cianjur has been going on since 2005.
"Many teachers have been moved to other schools due to the same problem," he said. "One of the biggest cases happened last year when eight teachers in a state elementary school in Cisalada, Bogor, were moved because of their religious beliefs. There has been a systematic effort to oust Ahmadiyah people."
The headmaster of the school, Sunarya, said, as quoted by Tempo, that he decided to move the teachers and the school attendant to prevent public anger at maintaining them as employees.
"We could not do anything else," he said on Thursday. "We moved them out of the school because of the demands of the local people. For the sake of the security and peace of the Sukadana village, especially in this school, we submitted to the local people's request by moving them."
The head of the Campaka subdistrict education agency, Deden Wahyudin, told Tempo on Thursday that he was not involved in the case. "I don't know the details, I'm a new person here," he said.
Ibnu Hamad, a spokesman for the Ministry of Education and Culture, told the Jakarta Globe on Friday that the ministry was powerless when it came to problems at the regional level.
"It is administratively the authority of the principal and the head of the education agency," Ibnu said. "I hate to say this again, but this is regional autonomy. The policy or decision of an education agency head is related to the policy of local leaders."
Ibnu said that the ministry could only advise schools and local education agencies, but had no capacity to take action against them. "We have suggested that they should not discriminate," Ibnu said.
Corry Elyda, Jakarta Prosecutors sought on Thursday a suspended sentence for Abdul Azis, the defendant of a harassment case in last year's attack against the Congregation of Batak Protestant Church (HKBP) Filadelfia in Bekasi.
Prosecutors demanded the Bekasi District Court sentence Abdul to three months in jail and six months of probation after saying that all substances related to the charge had been proved.
"We demand the panel of judges to sentence the defendant for violating the Criminal Code's Article 335 on offensive behavior," prosecutor Asvera Primadona said.
She said all witnesses confirmed that Abdul did threaten to kill HKBP Filadelfia Pastor Palti Panjaitan by saying, "Palti, I will slash your neck".
According to Asvera, there were mitigating factors about the defendant that made the prosecutors seeking jail sentence more lenient than the maximum one-year jail term.
"The defendant is a local young religious figure who admitted his wrongdoings and showed good behaviors at the court," she said.
Abdul Azis and his friends were reported by Filadelfia congregates to the Jakarta Police for allegedly inciting local residents to use violence and intimidation to prevent the congregation from worshiping in their church in April last year.
Filadelfia lawyer Judianto Simanjuntak said the congregates were not satisfied with the demand, saying that the sentence was too light.
Judianto said the prosecutors should have demanded maximum sentence for Abdul as the case was not personal. "The is a threat against religious freedom, not merely a personal matter," he said.
Judianto said, however, that he could not blame the prosecutors as the police seemed to be not serious enough in handling the case in the first place. "The police charged Abdul with only one article; offensive behavior."
Judianto said Abdul could at least be charged with three articles of the Criminal Code, including preventing people in conducting religious practices and the use of violence.
Based on the video recorded by witness Lexi Santosa, a reporter for alternative media outlet Pantau, Abdul did threaten to kill HKBP pastor Palti Panjaitan.
The trial of Abdul Azis is the first that has been brought to court of four reports filed by the congregates who were banned in conducting their services at their church site since 2010.
The HKBP Filadelfia conflict started in December 2009 when a former Bekasi regent, Sa'duddin, issued a decree sealing the church building and stopping the congregation from worshipping there.
In September 2010, the Bandung State Administrative Court annulled Sa'duddin's decree and ordered him to issue a permit for the church. However, he did not comply with the court's orders.
The congregates have never attempted to pray at the church site again since January this year, preferring to conduct a Sunday service in front of Presidential Palace in Central Jakarta with other beleaguered congregates of Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) Yasmin every two weeks.
SP/Mikael Niman Prosecutors demanded a three-month sentence for a man who threatened to kill the pastor of Bekasi's embattled HKBP Filadelfia church during a tense Easter protest by hard-line Islamists outside the congregation's shuttered church.
Abdul Aziz Bin Naimun admitted to threatening pastor Palti Panjaitan, telling prosecutors the death threats were meant to deter HKBP Filadelfia members from worshiping at their sealed church.
According to witnesses, Abdul told the pastor, "Palti, I'm going to cut your throat," while swiping his fingers across his neck as hard-liners hurled rotten eggs and cow feces at churchgoers.
"He admitted to what he did and [said] he did not know that he had violated the law," presiding prosecutor Muhasan said before the Bekasi District Court.
The prosecution argued for a lenient sentence, telling a panel of judges that Abdul was young, cooperative and had promised not to threaten Palti again.
Abdul, a local religious leader, faced a maximum sentence of one year in prison and Rp 300,000 ($30) in fines for "committing unpleasant acts" under Indonesia's Criminal Code.
Additional charges of hampering a religious service and making threats were dropped by the prosecution. He could have faced a maximum sentence of two years, eight months if charged with threatening Palti's life.
The two men have been entwined in a separate legal cases since Christmas Eve of 2011. Abdul, who has long opposed the protestant church, filed a complaint with police after he was pushed during a Christmas protest that ended with rotten eggs thrown at the congregation.
Palti was questioned over the assault allegations following Abdul's complaint but never charged.
Months later, as the church met for an outdoor Easter service near their sealed house of worship, Abdul arrived again, pelting Palti with eggs and cow dung before issuing the threat during an impromptu speech.
The church regularly holds public holiday services in protest of the Bekasi district administration's decision to seal their church. A local district head sealed the church over claims that it lacked a building permit.
Indonesia's Constitutional Court ruled in favor of HKBP Filadelfia's appeal, but the local administration has ignored the ruling and, with the backing of intolerance groups, refused to allow the congregation to reopen the church.
Religious intolerance is on the rise in Indonesia where local governments routinely cow to pressure hard-line Islamist organizations, according to several prominent rights groups.
Church closures and demolitions have occurred with alarming frequency in the province of West Java. In Bekasi alone, five churches have been sealed or demolished since 2005, according to church leaders.
A central government plan to allow Madura Island's persecuted Shiites to return home from exile in Sidoarjo, East Java, hinges on the proposal's acceptance by local religious leaders including those accused of inciting violent anti-Shia sentiment among the island's Sunni majority.
The Ministry of Public Housing presented its reconstruction plan for affected communities in Madura before an assembled crowd of local government, police and religious officials at Surabaya's IAIN Sunan Ampel Islamic state college.
The plan, which includes the construction of new homes and an Islamic boarding school, aims to improve facilities across Madura, not just in Shiite-heavy villages, Public Housing Minister Djan Faridz said, according to the state-run Antara News Agency.
"It's not about the [displaced people]," Djan said. "The President held coordinating meetings several times stating that the development must be pro-Madura [and aim] to build a better Madura."
Still, the return of 233 Shiites to their villages in Sampang depends on the opinions of local Muslim clerics and provincial officials, Djan said. "If the ulema and the East Java governor say 'go,' then we will do it," he said.
Reactions to the plan have been mixed. A representative from a Madura ulema association said Sunni leaders would welcome the Shiites home, as long as they stood by the Sampang court's ruling that local Shia leader Tajul Muluk was guilty of committing blasphemy.
"We are willing to accept them back to Sampang, but they must comply with the court's verdict, which said that Tajul Muluk's case was blasphemy," said Jakfar Shodiq, of the Madura Ulemas Association (Bassra).
Tajul was sentenced to two years in prison on blasphemy charges filed by his brother, local Sunni cleric Rois Al Hukuma. The cleric was accused of preying on local anti-Shia sentiment to incite violence against his brother over a family dispute.
According to witnesses, Rois delivered a screed calling the Shiites heretics. A mob of 500 Sunnis then rampaged through Shiite villages, burning homes and attacking residents in a wave of violence that left two dead.
Rois was arrested following the attacks, but was later released after being found not guilty of all charges.
Sampang's Shiites spent nearly a year living in squalid conditions at a cramped sports center. The community was moved to subsidized apartments in Sidoarjo last month.
An attorney representing the displaced Shiites said there was still resistance on the ground in Sampang.
"It will take strong leadership from the president to solve this issue and help the Shiites," Herstaning Ikhlas said. "There are still parties that resent the idea of them returning to Sampang. There are so many differences of opinion in the reconciliation."
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will visit Sampang during a Ramadan tour of East Java, spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said. "We expect the president's visit to help the settle the issues there and help the Shiites," Julian said.
But the Shiite's lawyer warned of another push for forced conversions on the island. More than 30 Shiites have been forced to convert to Sunni Islam on the threat of violence.
"They said if the Shiites want to return home, they must recant their Shiite beliefs," Herstaning said. "Tajul Maluk has been declared guilty of blasphemy, therefore the Shiites must become Sunnis. That is dangerous because that is coercion."
A member of the East Java chapter of the Indonesia Ahlul Bait (ABI) Shiite organization said the community was willing to enter a discussion with local Sunni leaders and push for peace between the two groups.
"We are ready to support the reconciliation with dialogue and friendship," said Zahid from East Java ABI. "We don't want to be forced. Coercion will not deliver change. We must make a change with enlightenment."
Jakarta The latest Indonesian Ombudsman report has found that five ministries could be rife with corruption as indicated by low quality public services and a lack of transparency.
"The lowest ranked ministries all scored badly in public services. They also lacked public transparency, which is a prime indicator of corruption," the Commissioner of the Indonesian Ombudsman Muhammad Khoirul Anwar said earlier this week.
Khoirul added that of 18 ministries surveyed, the Public Works Ministry came last, with the Education and Culture Ministry placed second worst, followed by the Social Affairs Ministry, the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry. "These ministries don't have commitment to Public Service Law No. 25/2009," he said.
The report also found that close to half of the 18 ministries lacked procedures for transparency and also failed to provide sufficient information on requirements for joining government tenders.
The Ombdusman report also found that the Public Works Ministry was among the ministries that failed to announce details on price and deadlines on government projects and issuance of permits.
"The absence of time and price details on permits give leeway for illegal levies and manipulation by government officials,"he said.
The Ombudsman report appeared to support a fresh allegation leveled at the ministry, which alleged that ongoing roadwork on Java's northern coastal highway (Pantura) was rife with graft.
"The Pantura roadwork project appears to have no end with an unlimited amount of budget. It involves annual repairs of the same roads and locations, like Karawang and Cirebon in West Java," coordinator of FITRA, Uchok Sky Khadafi told The Jakarta Post.
The Ministry of Public Works, has set aside Rp 1.28 trillion (US$130.56 million) to carry out works on the Pantura road network this year, up from Rp 1.03 trillion in 2012.
"There is not enough oversight and budget audits on the Pantura roadwork project and there are no project evaluations by the House of Representatives despite repeated complaints," he said. " Indications of corruption are very strong in this project."
Khoirul also said that the Ombudsman commission had urged the five ministries with the lowest scores for public services and facilities to improve their performance.
"The Ombudsman can't impose punishment, but as external supervisor we can force the ministries to take action and can make recommendations on penalties to the President," he said. (tam)
Hotman Siregar A fatal MetroMini bus accident on Tuesday has led to calls for the Jakarta city administration to take over the long-running public transportation operator.
"The city administration should just take over MetroMini. The developers are illegal and out of control," Jakarta Transportation Board chief Azas Tigor Nainggolan said at City Hall on Wednesday.
According to Azas, the company behind the MetroMini, the city's red-and- blue mid-sized buses, had been prohibited from operating in the city since 2009, with its operating permit frozen, therefore making its current activities illegal.
"Those buses have no documents, the drivers do not have driving licenses," he said, adding that such issues had been a major contributor to various public transportation accidents on the city's streets. "The transportation office is not brave enough to crack down [on them]. Their operational licenses should just be revoked altogether," Azas said.
Not only were the city buses operating without official documents, most of the mid-sized and big buses were in very poor physical condition, he added.
His remarks came a day after a MetroMini bus serving the route between Senen, Central Jakarta, and Pondok Kopi, East Jakarta, was involved in an accident that claimed the life of a middle school student and injured two others.
An investigation into the crash by the East Jakarta Police found the vehicle was not roadworthy, with the clutch held together using a piece of rubber from an inner tube.
"The investigation revealed that the MetroMini bus involved in the crash was not certified for use," Adj. Comr. Agung Budi Laksono, the head of the police's traffic accident unit, said on Wednesday.
Police identified the victim as 13-year-old schoolgirl Benity. She was hit by the bus while crossing the TransJakarta bus lane with two friends, Rahmi and Revi, who suffered serious injuries.
The bus driver, identified by police as W.S., admitted that he did not have a driver's license and that he had been cited by police several times before. He faces up to six years in jail if convicted.
Azas said he appreciated the city administration's plan to revitalize Jakarta's public transportation system but asked that emphasis also be placed on traffic law enforcement efforts.
"Before revitalizing transportation, law enforcement has to be strictly implemented," he said.
Udar Pristono, the head of the Jakarta Transportation Office, echoed Azas's indignation over MetroMini's operations, which he said had often placed the lives of commuters in jeopardy, and suggested that the operator be disbanded.
"MetroMini has been operating without a license. It has no operational license. When its buses are stopped [by law enforcement officers], the company still insists on taking other opportunities to operate. This is no longer just the transportation office's problem," Udar said on Wednesday, adding that his office had many other transportation-related issues to deal with besides law enforcement.
He suggested that the closure of MetroMini would be the best option, as the operator's own monitoring efforts had failed. "MetroMini no longer qualifies to operate in Jakarta. The buses are inadequate. So just disband them," he said.
Separately, the city administration plans to add a number of mid-sized and bigger buses, including those operated by PPD, a state-owned operator, in an attempt to boost city's the public transportation fleet.
Slamet Susanto and Bambang Muryanto, Yogyakarta The Yogyakarta District Court on Monday sent four defendants involved in an attack against an Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) member, First Sgt. Sriyono, to prison.
Sriyono was a member of the intelligence division at the 0734/Yogyakarta Military District Command (Kodim).
The attack on March 20 was carried out by Marcelius Bhigu, alias Marcel, 37, Zainal Arifin Karabi, 22, Januarius Ponis Putra, alias Ian, 25, and Sulhan Makmun, 23.
The attack was one of the reasons that incited anger among a number of Kopassus members. They raided the Cebongan penitentiary in Sleman, Yogyakarta, and shot four suspects in the murder of another Kopassus operative, Heru Santoso, at Hugo's Cafe in Yogyakarta.
The suspects were being detained after being transferred by the Yogyakarta Police.
Marcel and Zainal were sentenced to four years, while Ian and Sulhan were sentenced to three years. The sentences were lighter than the six-year jail terms demanded by prosecutors for all defendants.
"The defendants have been proven guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, to have assaulted and caused serious injuries to the victim," said presiding judge Susanto Isnu Wahyudi.
One of the defendants' lawyers Paulinus Peter said his clients were not guilty of carrying out the attack and caused severe injuries to another person, such as indicted in Article 170 of the Criminal Code.
"This indicates that our arguments against the primary charge was accepted by the judges hence the lighter verdicts," said Paulinus. "We will consider the sentence. We still have seven days, but could likely file an appeal."
Separately, the People's Coalition for Military Court Monitoring (KRPM) deemed the trial process at the II-11/Yogyakarta Military Court, which involved 12 Kopassus operatives in the shooting and killing of the four detainees was not serious and at risk of failing to uphold justice.
"The military judges and prosecutors, as well as legal advisors, are not digging for substantial facts. This is the most serious form of violence," Yogyakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) director Samsudin Nurseha told a press conference at the Indonesian Islamic University (UII) in Yogyakarta on Monday.
KPRM, a coalition of several non governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Yogyakarta LBH and Pusham UII, recorded at least 18 violations since the trial commenced on June 20, which was divided into four dossiers.
Military prosecutors will read out the sentence demand on Wednesday. The defendants are indicted with multiple charges, including premeditated murder and military disciplinary violation. They face either the death sentence, or a 20 year prison sentence.
"The trial is not serious. If court evidence is used as a basis, there will not be a maximum sentence demand," said Samsudin. The KPRM also recorded that some soldiers and intelligence officers carried weapons, including firearms into the courtroom.
Bambang Muryanto and Slamet Susanto, Yogyakarta The trial of 12 of the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) members who allegedly attacked a prison in Sleman, Yogyakarta, has once again drawn harsh criticism from a scholar, who says the trial is against the Criminal Code Procedure (KUHAP) as the court allowed witnesses to testify at the same time.
According to lecturer Oce Madril of Gadjah Mada University's school of law, the witnesses should have been presented one by one to the court, especially as the case constituted an alleged human rights violation.
"Examining witnesses together will influence each others' testimonies and lead to bias," Oce said.
The trial, which is being held at the II-11 Yogyakarta Military Court and involves 12 defendants who are members of Kopassus Group 2 Kandang Menjangan, Kartosuro, Central Java, is nearing the reading out of the military prosecutors' sentence demands on July 31. The Kopassus members allegedly killed four detainees at the prison on March 23.
Nine of the defendants have been charged with premeditated murder, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and death.
During the trial, all the witnesses who were detainees in the same cell as the four murdered inmates at the prison were presented to the court in groups. They allegedly witnessed defendant Second Sgt. Ucok Tigor Simbolon shoot dead the four detainees.
Military prosecutor Lt. Col. Budiharto told the court that to conserve time, the witnesses needed to be examined together because their testimonies, as mentioned in the dossiers, were almost the same.
"Such a process violated the KUHAP. The Supreme Court and the Judicial Commission [KY] should have warned [the court]," Oce said. He quoted Article 160 (1a) of Law No. 8/1981 on the KUHAP and Article 154 (1b) of Law No. 1/1997 on military courts as the basis for his statement.
He said he found no strong reason for the trial of the case to present the witnesses in groups. "The KY has to issue a special note over the legal process of the case," he said.
A similar view was also expressed by the Indonesian Court Monitoring (ICM) director Tri Wahyu KH, who said the problem was that the military prosecutors had never presented objections to the practice.
Meanwhile, KY chairman Suparman Marzuki said the witnesses could be presented in groups if they witnessed what happened together at the same time and at the same place. "If they see or hear different incidents they cannot be presented [in court] together," Suparman said.
In a related development, a group of people calling themselves Kopassus supporters staged a rally on Friday in front of the Yogyakarta Military Prosecutor's Office, demanding sentence waivers for the defendants in the case.
"The Kopassus members have acted against the thugs that caused restlessness in the community and who always managed to escape the law. They should instead receive an honor and not be tried," said the protesters' field coordinator Agung Murharjanto.
The group comprised the Jogokaryan Mosque volunteers, Kawulo Rakyat Ngayogyakarto, Paksi Katon, Gafatar, Tatar Pasundan, Malioboro pedicab drivers, Forum Jogja Rembuk, Srikandi and Ansor.
Paksi Katon chairman Muh. Suhud said the situation in Yogyakarta had returned to normal after the alleged killing of the four thugs by the Kopassus members.
Ina Parlina, Jakarta President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has selected former law and justice minister Patrialis Akbar as a Constitutional Court justice, a move many have said could be a setback to democracy given the lack of transparency and accountability in its vetting process.
The Constitutional Court, which is expected to settle a lot of electoral disputes ahead of the 2014 general elections, could become political with the appointment of Patrialis, who is currently a member of the National Mandate Party (PAN).
Patrialis is expected to replace justice Achmad Sodiki, who will end his tenure on Aug. 16. Patrialis is a former lawmaker of PAN, chaired by Hatta Rajasa, an in-law of the President.
Activists from the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) and the Indonesial Legal Roundtable (ILR) blasted the President for making the politically-charged pick.
"Why choose someone with such a political background. We have Hamdan and now Patrialis. The Constitutional Court is supposed to be neutral ground to judge laws produced through a political process in the House," Wahyudin Djafar of Elsam said on Tuesday.
Wahyudin was referring to justice Hamdan Zoelva, who was a former Crescent Star Party (PBB) lawmaker and was also Yudhoyono's pick in 2010. "Such a discrete selection process has raised suspicion and will set a bad precedent, a setback to our democracy," Wahyudin said.
Wahyudin added that Yudhoyono had also violated articles 19 and 20, paragraph 2 of the 2011 Constitutional Court Law, which stipulate the nomination of justice candidates should conducted transparently and with participation from the public.
Patrialis is also known for his lackluster performance as minister. Under Patrialis' leadership, the ministry was frequently criticized as being too "generous" in granting sentence reduction to graft convicts, especially when it granted remission to former Bank Indonesia deputy governor Aulia Pohan, another in law of Yudhoyono.
Patrialis was sworn in as law and human rights minister in October 2009. During his tenure, the ministry was deemed an underperforming ministry. He was removed from Yudhoyono's Cabinet in 2011.
In 2009, Patrialis, who was a lawmaker, joined the justice selection but failed during the fit and proper test. In late February, Patrialis dropped out of the race to replace then chief justice Mahfud MD, whose term expired in April.
"Why choose someone who has failed in the race once and has a bad record? We urge the President to drop Patrialis' appointment or we will file a suit against the decree to the PTUN [Jakarta State Administrative Court]," ICW's Emerson Yuntho said.
The NGOs also expected to meet the Presidential Advisory Council on Wednesday to state their objections, as well as to urge the council to form a committee to conduct another search for a new justice.
Chief Justice Akil Mochtar confirmed his office had been notified of Patrialis' appointment.
Akil said regardless of their political background, all justices must be impartial. "In this institution, what matters most is independence and this is essential to guard our Constitution," Akil said.
Patrialis shrugged off the objection, saying he deserved the position. "Please convey my message to the NGOs. I have enough knowledge of the Constitutional Court as I once was a member of People's Consultative Assembly [MPR] committee and worked to amend the Constitution," he said.
Novianti Setuningsih The recent arrest of a lawyer for allegedly bribing a Supreme Court official has sparked a debate between those who say the case is just the tip of the iceberg, and the bar association, which has played it down as an isolated incident.
Hifdzil Alim, a researcher with Gadjah Mada University's Center for Anti- Corruption Studies (Pukat), said on Tuesday that the arrest last week of Mario Bernardo, from the law firm of Hotma Sitompoel & Associates, signaled that graft in the judiciary was a major problem.
"The scale of corruption is simply massive because it has pervaded into all levels of the state," he said.
He said the case corroborated long-held public perceptions that many lawyers were dishonest and tended to bribe their way to favorable verdicts. "They're paid to be as slick as they can in defending their clients," Hifdzil said.
While he admitted to not being surprised at news that a lawyer had been arrested for bribery, he maintained that not all the details in Mario's case had come to light yet and that he should not be presumed guilty at this point.
However, Hifdzil said the case should nonetheless spur the country's bar association to implement stronger internal controls to crack down on corruption and other illegal acts by its members.
Mario was arrested on Thursday in a sting operation by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) after allegedly handing Rp 78 million ($7,570) in cash to Djodi Supratman, a Supreme Court official.
Johan Budi, a spokesman for the KPK, said that antigraft investigators had suspected for some time that Djodi was on the take and had received information that he had allegedly taken an initial bribe of Rp 50 million from Mario last Wednesday.
Based on information gleaned from a phone tap, the KPK learned that he was due to pick up a second payment on Thursday at Mario's office in Central Jakarta, and that he would go there by ojek, or motorcycle taxi.
Armed with this information, a KPK team staked out the office. Djodi duly turned up at the office on an ojek and went in carrying a bag. When he left shortly afterward, the KPK investigators noticed a prominent bulge in the bag that hadn't been there before.
They tailed the ojek to the National Monument area, where they stopped it and searched the bag, confirming that it contained Rp 78 million in cash.
Some of the investigators then returned to the law office, where, pretending to be clients, they asked to meet with Mario. When he appeared, they arrested him.
Both Mario and Djodi are now in the KPK's custody and have been charged under the 1999 Anti-Corruption Law. "For now we've seized Rp 128 million: Rp 78 million from the bag that D.S. was carrying, and Rp 50 million from his home," Johan said.
He added that the figure was part of up to Rp 300 million allegedly promised by Mario to Djodi in return for a favorable verdict in an appeal mounted by Hutomo Wijaya Ongowarsito.
Hutomo, a businessman, was earlier this year convicted of fraud by a court in Payakumbuh, West Sumatra, and sentenced to a month's probation. His appeal was submitted to the Supreme Court this April and is still being heard.
But no direct ties connect the three individuals in question. Mario is not Hutomo's lawyer, while Djodi is a clerk at the court's education and training department, and not a judge.
Taufik Basari, a lawyer who has extensively researched the phenomenon of the "judicial mafia," said the system was set up in such a way that none of the actors had to be linked to one another in order for the corruption to work.
Each lawyer, he said, had their own particular "turf" or court where they had built up close ties with officials and judges.
"If there's another lawyer who doesn't have a foothold in that particular court but has a case being heard there, he can ask the first lawyer for help," Taufik said.
Febri Diansyah, a researcher with Indonesia Corruption Watch, agreed that the "foundations" for leveraging favors were laid long before cases came up in court. He said it was considered de rigueur for lawyers to cultivate close relations not just with court officials and judges, but also with police and prosecutors.
"The judicial mafia stretches across the entire range of the country's justice system," he said.
Tommy Sitohang, Mario's lawyer, admitted that his client was cozy with Djodi and often leaned on him for information, but said the money seized was far too little to constitute a bribe for a judge.
"He often asked for information from Djodi about cases being heard at the Supreme Court. For instance, whether a verdict had been handed down or not, because the announcements on the court's website always come out late," he said.
"But there's no way he would give just Rp 78 million to bribe a judge. A judge's lunch alone costs more than Rp 20 million," Tommy added.
The Indonesian Bar Association (Peradi) insists that the country's lawyers are for the most part clean, and has played down Mario's case as an isolated incident that has "shamed the legal profession."
"This matter is highly regrettable because it tarnishes the reputation of all lawyers," said Otto Hasibuan, the Peradi chief.
He said the association would support all efforts by the KPK to get to the bottom of the case, but added that there were no plans yet to dismiss or even suspend Mario's membership in Peradi.
"We don't know yet whether he's guilty or not. If he is, then he'll be automatically stripped of his license to practice as a lawyer. And if he's convicted, that also means that he's contravened [Peradi's] code of ethics," he said.
He added that the association had strived to boost the professionalism of its members and had made it a point to dismiss members if proven guilty of even the most minor of infractions.
Sugeng Teguh Santosa, the Peradi deputy chairman, said the association would crack down on all members suspected of being part of the judicial mafia. "This is a good time to completely rid the lawyer's profession of all dirty acts like these," he said.
The KPK has said it could call in Hotma Sitompoel, a high-profile lawyer who is also Mario's uncle, for questioning in connection with the bribery case. "I'll have to check on that, but there's a chance that he'll be summoned, as long as the investigation calls for it," Johan said.
Investigators also plan to question Supreme Court officials. Painting Mario and Djodi as small cogs in the system, the KPK has vowed to go after all those involved in the bribery conspiracy and the wider judicial mafia.
Ina Parlina, Jakarta In the latest scandal exposing the corruption that plagues the judiciary, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) on Friday detained and charged a low-ranking Supreme Court staffer with graft after he was caught red-handed accepting Rp 100 million (US$9,700) bribe from a lawyer.
The KPK accused Djodi Supratman of receiving a bribe in connection with a case handled by the country's highest judicial institution.
His case adds to a long list of judiciary members arrested for committing the crime that they are supposed to fight against.
Djodi was caught on Thursday at around 12:15 a.m. while riding an ojek near the National Monument, Central Jakarta, only meters from the Supreme Court. The KPK also named lawyer Mario C. Bernardo of Hotma Sitompul legal office after it took him from his office on Jl. Martapura, Central Jakarta, on Thursday at around 1:20 p.m. KPK investigators confiscated more than Rp 100 million in cash from Djodi. Before the arrest, Djodi went to Mario's office and left the building at around 11:30 a.m. with a bag of money.
KPK spokesman Johan Budi said the bribery was allegedly linked to a fraud case implicating businessman Hutomo Wijaya Ongowarsito. The fraud case was filed to a cassation panel at the Supreme Court on April 9, upon request from prosecutors. According to the Supreme Court's website, the case was currently in process.
Djodi is merely a staff member of the general affairs unit at the Supreme Court's training center in Mega Mendung, Bogor, West Java. According to Supreme Court spokesman Ridwan Mansyur, Djodi, a grade 3C civil servant with a salary between Rp 3-4 million a month, "cannot handle cases".
Johan said the KPK was still investigating the involvement of other officials, including justices, in the case, as Djodi as a low-ranking official may have acted purely as a middleman.
Judicial Commission chairman Suparman Marzuki said the case only confirmed the belief that many people were playing around with our law enforcement. "The trust in our law enforcement has been destroyed," he said.
The Supreme Court said it would not hinder the KPK's investigation into the case. "We are leaving it to KPK. We fully support the KPK," Ridwan said.
He admitted difficulty in monitoring thousands of staff and judges, saying his office had boosted their efforts to create a clean judiciary. "Here we have so many staff members. We have around 8,700 judges, 12,000 staff members and around 864 working units across the country," he said.
Djodi is the seventh Supreme Court official to be charged with bribery since 2006, when the KPK arrested Supreme Court clerk Pono Waluyo who helped a lawyer in an attempt to bribe former Supreme Court chief justice Bagir Manan in business tycoon Probosutedjo's case.
Earlier this week, KPK named former ad hoc graft judge Asmadinata as suspect in the case only two weeks after he became the first ad hoc corruption judge to be sacked by an ethics panel after he was found guilty of a breach of ethics for having dinner with two other judges to discuss former Grobogan legislative council speaker M. Yaeni, a defendant in a corruption case he was handling.
Two other judges disgraced Semarang Corruption Court ad hoc judge Kartini Marpaung and Pontianak Corruption Court ad hoc judge Heru Kisbandono are now in jail for accepting bribes to acquit Yaeni of corruption charges.
Amir Tedjo, Surabaya The death of a drug suspect during an allegedly brutal interrogation by Sawahan Police on April 1 has cast a light on what human rights groups call the widespread torture and abuse of drug addicts by Indonesian police.
Deny Saputra reportedly collapsed after being beaten and repeatedly electrocuted with a stun gun at a police station in Surabaya's Sawahan subdistrict on April 1. The man's friend Decky Angga Setiawan said he was subjected to similar abuse as police officers tortured eight suspects detained after testing positive for crystal methamphetamine use.
"We were electrocuted with a stun gun on our back and neck," Decky told the Jakarta Globe from his jail cell in Surabaya's Medaeng Prison. "Denny collapsed and died. It happened at 2 a.m. on April 2. Afterward, the police stopped the torture."
Sawahan Police have denied the allegations, pointing to the results of an official autopsy listing the cause of death as complications resulting from an unspecified illness. The officers involved have been questioned and cleared by the internal affairs department, Sawahan Police chief Comr. Manang Soebeti said.
"Deny died because he was ill," Manang said. "The investigation of the police internal affairs division has refuted the suspect's claims. It is his right to speak. We're ready to be investigated."
A local human rights group has called for an independent autopsy. "If the family allows it, we will demand another autopsy to investigate Deny's cause of death," said Rudhy Wedhasmara, a member of East Java Action, which focuses on the abuse of narcotics suspects.
The organization recorded 26 instances of police torture and abuse of drug suspects in East Java between 2007 and 2011, Rudhy said. The numbers only tell part of the story, he said, explaining that most instances of police abuse go unreported. "That data [suffers from] the iceberg phenomenon," Rudhy said. "Most drug addicts were abused by the officers, but only a few reveal it."
Amnesty International documented several allegations of torture and abuse in their most recent report, writing that "police were repeatedly accused of human rights violations, including excessive use of force and firearms, and torture and other ill-treatment."
Allegations of torture are rarely investigated and the few cases brought to court often fail to bring those responsible to justice, Amnesty International continued.
"Internal and external police accountability mechanisms failed to adequately deal with cases of abuses committed by police, and investigations into human rights violations were rare," the report read.
When the cases are brought to trial, the state rarely takes full responsibility for the actions of police and security forces, a separate report by the Asian Human Rights Commission found.
The Hong Kong-based organization investigated 40 instances of "torture, custodial death and extrajudicial killings from period 2005 to present," and determined that while "there is progress in prosecution of cases... the State continuously denies taking full responsibility for them."
Recently, immigration officers were accused of abusing children at Indonesian detention centers by the New York-based Human Rights Watch in a report titled "Barely Surviving: Detention, Abuse, Neglect of Migrant Children in Indonesia."
Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 100 detainees, recording claims "that guards tied up or gagged detainees, beat them with sticks, burned them with cigarettes and administered electric shocks."
Herawan Sukoaji, deputy spokesman at the immigration directorate general, denied the claims, calling the report "imbalanced."
With fresh police officers hitting the beat just seven months after graduating from high school, it's no wonder some behave childishly, according to the force's top brass.
Deputy National Police Chief Comr. Gen. Nanan Sukarna said the limited time available for training partly explains a brawl between two police units on Thursday.
The three-star police general said his institution was not trying to deny responsibility for its members' conduct, but complained that the current training system entails too brief a training period.
"We only have seven months to turn young people without any experience into officers that deal with the public and handle real crimes. We must provide them with the necessary skills and knowledge while changing their mentality and character into that of law enforcers," Nanan told a news briefing on Friday.
Fifty officers from the specialist Mobile Brigade (Brimob) were found to have visited a Central Java police station looking for a fight.
"They have been confronted and are conscious that they made a mistake," Nanan said on Thursday. "That is the important thing." Nana confirmed three people had been injured in the brawl.
It is understood the incident, which unfolded at the Sabhara police station in the early hours of Thursday, came after an officer from the Sabhara unit, which conducts patrols and provides security details, allegedly sent an insulting text message to a colleague in Brimob.
Nanan did not elaborate but said those involved in the brawl were recent recruits. "They are recently graduated," he said, declining to comment on whether any sanctions would be handed down to those involved.
"From their headquarters in Srondol, they came to ask about the text message," Central Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Dwi Priyatno said.
Around 50 Brimob members, who were not in uniform, arrived on motorcycles looking for a particular Sabhara member. A fight ensued, after which the Brimob members left the scene.
This is the latest reported altercation among the police, with other incidents involving conflict between police and the military.
Every year the police hold an open recruitment for senior high school graduates from across the country to become cadets in its training school in Sukabumi, West Java.
After seven months of training in policing technique, firearms and combat skills, students graduate with the rank of second brigadier, and are posted at police stations across the country.
Nanan said that the incident highlighted the need to revise the training system. "We want to have 11 months of training. However, we don't have the budget. So, we have to live with that," he said.
The National Police top brass waded into a row in Semarang on Thursday after 50 officers from its specialist unit, the Mobile Brigade, were found to have visited a Central Java police station looking for a fight because one of their number had received an insulting text message from a police officer.
"They have been confronted and are conscious that they have made a mistake," Deputy National Police Chief Comr. Gen. Nanan Sukarna. "That is the important thing." Nana confirmed three people had been injured in the brawl.
It is understood the incident at Central Java Sabhara police in the early hours of Thursday was sparked after an officer from the Sabhara unit, which conducts patrols and provides security details, allegedly sent a SMS message to someone in the Brimob.
Nanan did not elaborate but said that those involved in the brawl were recent recruits. "They are those who just recently graduated," he said, declining to comment on whether any sanctions would be handed down to those involved.
"From their headquarters in Srondol, they came to ask about the SMS," Central Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Dwi Priyatno said.
Around 50 Brimob members, who were not wearing uniform, arrived on motorcycles looking for a particular Sabhara member. Predictably, a fight ensued, after which the Brimob members left the scene. This is the latest reported altercation among the police.
Ina Parlina and Yuliasri Perdani, Jakarta Four candidates for the National Police chief position, including a former adjutant of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, have submitted incomplete wealth reports to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), prompting suspicions that they could have amassed ill-gotten wealth.
The KPK, upon request from the National Police Commission (Kompolnas), is currently screening the potential candidates and will verify the wealth reports.
One of candidates for the police top job, Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Putut Eko Bayuseno, a former adjutant to Yudhoyono, came to the KPK headquarters on Thursday to submit his wealth report that was reported to be only Rp 482 million (US$46,754) when he last submitted it to the antigraft body in 2002, while he served as chief of the Jember Police.
"I was busy being the President's adjutant," Putut said when asked why he had only submitted his wealth report in 2002.
The 51-year-old Putut served as the President's adjutant in 2009 before being promoted to chief of the Banten and West Java Police. He was appointed to head the Jakarta Police in October last year.
Putut, who is considered one of strongest candidates in the race, said his assets had increased, especially with his purchases of cars and land.
Putut also shrugged off speculation that he had been tapped to replace Gen. Timur Pradopo by saying: "I will still focus on my work as Jakarta Police chief." Putut has also asked for promotion to a three-star general, to be eligible to lead a force of around 550,000 personnel.
Also submitting his wealth report on Thursday was National Police criminal investigations division chief Comr. Gen. Sutarman, who is also considered a strong candidate.
The 55-year-old Sutarman openly opposed the KPK investigation into Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo, a defendant in a graft case surrounding the Rp 144 billion vehicle simulator procurement project.
The former West Java Police chief was appointed as Jakarta Police chief in October 2010, replacing Timur. Sutarman started his current post as chief detective in July 2011.
His 2012 wealth report shows that Sutarman had Rp 5.346 billion worth of assets and savings of $24,194, a slight increase from Rp 5.315 billion in 2011. He also recorded $24,175 savings in 2011.
Two other candidates in the race for the police's top job, National Narcotics Agency (BNN) chief Comr. Gen. Anang Iskandar and Bali Police chief Insp. Gen. Arif Wachyunadi, submitted their wealth reports to the KPK on Monday and Wednesday, respectively
The last time Anang disclosed his wealth was in 2009. Then, the police general, who was serving at the BNN's drug abuse prevention center, had Rp 2.4 billion in assets. In 2002, his wealth was Rp 1.2 billion.
In September 2012, Arif, who served as West Nusa Tenggara Police chief, had assets worth Rp 4.5 billion, a decrease from Rp 4.5 billion in July 2010.
The KPK is giving the other five candidates another week to submit their wealth reports.
Kompolnas had also asked the Financial Transaction and Reports Analysis Centre (PPATK) and the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to assess the financial and human rights records of the hopefuls.
Kompolnas will then submit the results of the background checks to Yudhoyono. Kompolnas members have suggested that Sutarman, Anang and the force's education division chief Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan will lead the race.
Antigraft watchdogs are skeptical that the candidates can do away with the culture of corruption in the force, especially with the revelation that some high-ranking officials have large amounts of wealth.
Linda Yulisman, Jakarta Indonesia will likely see its trade deficit breach a record high of US$5 billion this year, more than double the figure last year, as the bleak export outlook continues.
A slowdown in China, the country's biggest trading partner, was expected to further hurt the trade balance, Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan said.
"The current situation in China, which is experiencing decelerated economic growth, will highly affect us as it is now our largest trading partner. Demand for our goods will also shrink in line with this development," Gita told The Jakarta Post in an email interview.
Indonesia suffered its first ever annual deficit of $1.65 billion last year as shipments to most of the country's key buyers plunged against the backdrop of the global economy.
In the period of January-May, the trade balance posted a deficit of $2.53 billion, with exports reaching $76.25 billion and imports $78.78 billion. The deficit gave a considerable share in the country's first quarter current account deficit of $5.3 billion.
From January until May this year, non-oil and gas exports to China dropped by 3.67 percent to $8.56 billion, or 13.6 percent of total non-oil and gas exports, while imports declined slightly by 0.25 percent to $11.87 billion, or 19.7 percent of the exports.
This has widened the trade gap by more than one-third to $3.31 billion from last year.
China saw its economy expand by only 7.5 percent in the second quarter, its slowest pace since the 2009 global downturn, with economists expecting the gloomy outlook to persist throughout the upcoming months.
The world's second-top economy once expanded by 10.4 percent in 2010 before the recession.
China's weaker growth might not only lower demands but it might also result in "more lackluster" commodity prices, which would have significant implications on Indonesia, Eugene Leow, a regional economist at the Singapore-based DBS bank, recently said.
At present, China along with India is among the biggest buyers of Indonesia's primary commodities, such as palm oil and coal, due to its hunger for energy sources and robust domestic consumption.
Gita further said that despite the higher shipment of goods to non- traditional destinations, the exports would not be sufficient enough to counter dousing demand from China.
"Exports to non-traditional markets still cannot compensate for the potential slide in the volume of trade with China," he said, pointing out the small base line for such exports.
From 2008 to 2012, exports to new markets grew by an average 11.9 percent per year to stand at $24.61 billion last year. However, during the January-April period, shipments also declined by 3.55 percent to $7.99 billion, according to statistics at the Trade Ministry.
In a bid to reduce trade deficits, the government will start taking an exportation method of not only free on board (FOB) but also cost, insurance and freight (CIF), into calculation in early August, according to Gita.
He said trade balance data would accordingly be more precise as it would include service costs for exports on a CIF basis, which had previously never been part of the calculation.
"The shift in the exportation method [...] is expected to change trade posture in the future and cut the trade gap," he said, referring to the utilization of export services transportation, financing and insurance domestically.
The State Palace on Monday lashed out at foreign governments that allegedly spied on Indonesian leaders, saying the practice was unethical.
"Wiretapping is not good for bilateral relations," presidential spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said at the State Palace on Monday.
The comments come days after allegations resurfaced that at a Group of 20 conference in London in 2009 attended by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, intelligence agencies including Britain's General Communication Headquarters and the US National Security Agency tapped into delegates' personal e-mails and text messages.
The allegations published by Australian media outlets on Friday, which suggested that the Indonesian delegation was among those spied upon, were believed to have flowed from leaks on intelligence-gathering techniques by US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Faizasyah said the Indonesian government would investigate the extent of damage caused by the alleged security breach.
"The way we see it, issues related to information management have become more and more crucial and based on this incident there are several parties interested in obtaining this information. We will continue to update our information security measures," he said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa also voiced his concerns, saying such an act was a serious violation of the code of ethics in international relations.
Last Friday, Marty told the Jakarta Globe the action was concerning and the government was still awaiting a formal explanation from the relevant authorities in Britain.
"I have heard about it. Obviously security breaches of this type are considered to be a very serious offense, therefore we wish to be informed about the truth of this news," he said.
Former Vice President Jusuf Kalla described the spying, which included accessing delegates' BlackBerry smartphones to monitor e-mails and phone calls and setting up Internet cafes where an e-mail interception program and key-logging software spied on delegates' computer use, as "unethical."
"It's very unethical if it really happened especially when the countries that committed it are our friends," Kalla was quoted as saying from Kuala Lumpur by detik.com on Monday.
Kalla, vice president at the time the alleged spying took place, said he was unaware of the intelligence breach but said there was little Indonesia could do now.
"There's nothing that can be done about it because this was an intelligence activity and by their covert nature intelligence activities are hard to prove," he said.
Faizasyah said Yudhoyono learned of the breach in June. The spokesman shared Kalla's view that it was difficult to prove the allegations unless the countries that allegedly committed the act admitted it.
"[We received] the information in June that the host had been intercepting messages, not just from delegates of one or two countries but most of those who attended the conference," Faizasyah said.
The Guardian newspaper in June suggested the Turkish finance minister had been deliberately targeted while the NSA were reportedly trying to listen in on Russian leader Dimitry Medvedev's phone calls to Moscow.
It is alleged that Australia benefited from the intelligence activity at the summit by winning a seat on the United Nations Security Council, according to The Age newspaper.
"Without intelligence support, overwhelmingly provided by US capabilities, we would not have won the seat," an Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officer told the Australian media on the basis of confidentiality.
A document seen by The Guardian refers to GCHQ, MI6 (British Intelligence) and others setting up Internet cafes that "were able to extract key logging info, providing creds for delegates, meaning we have sustained intelligence options against them even after conference has finished." This appears to be a reference to acquiring delegates' online login details.
"The extent of the leak needs to be reviewed. We have a transparent process about which country we choose and support [to win the UNSC seat]. Communications could have been conducted through the normal way without the interception," Faizasyah said.
Yudhoyono has not given any instructions regarding the alleged spying activity. "We don't know what the president's reaction is [on the issue]," Faizasyah said.
Indonesia has not said whether it will renounce the techniques when it hosts Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation delegates at a summit in Bali in October.
Meanwhile, House of Representatives Commission I is planning to summon the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), the foreign affairs minister, and State Code Agency (Lemsaneg) regarding the communications interception.
"If this really happened, then it is negligence. We will ask about this at the next meeting with BIN, Lemsaneg and the foreign affairs minister," Hayono Isman, a member of House Commission I, which oversees defense and foreign affairs, said on Monday.
The Democratic Party politician suspected the G-20 London venue was not secure. "This must be investigated so that it doesn't happen again. There are crucial lessons to be learned from this," Hayono said, as quoted by Okezone.com.
Analysts in Jakarta have raised concerns that Friday's report in The Age could fuel distrust and suspicion between Australia and Indonesia at a time when the bilateral relationship is already fragile.
Quoting Australian intelligence and foreign affairs sources, the Melbourne-based newspaper reported on Friday that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, then in his first spell as Australia's leader, was the beneficiary of British spying on Yudhoyono at the G-20 summit.
According to officials familiar with Australia's participation in the April 2009 leaders' meeting, the Australian delegation received "excellent intelligence support" including "much information" shared by Britain and the United States agencies.
Intelligence and foreign affairs sources told Fairfax Media, publisher of The Age, of the important intelligence received from US and British agencies to support Australia's diplomatic objectives, including the campaign to win a seat on the UN Security Council.
"Rudd had a keen appetite for intelligence, especially on the Asia-Pacific leaders Yudhoyono, [Indian Prime Minister] Manmoham Singh, and [former Chinese president] Hu Jintao," one intelligence source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Satria Sambijantoro, Jakarta Indonesia may face another downturn in its economy as the slowdown in foreign investment would likely continue at least until the next two years as foreign companies would wait for the results of the 2014 general elections before pouring back their money.
Indonesia posted only 18.9 percent FDI growth in the second quarter, its slowest pace in three years. Economists have predicted the slowdown to continue, crippling an economy that is already hurt by surging inflation, weak exports and languid government spending.
"Growth from investments is needed because our exports outlook is bleak," Fauzi Ichsan, a senior economist with Standard Chartered, said on Wednesday. "Our consumption is also affected from the fuel price hike, which is sparking inflation and weakening people's purchasing power."
Investment is the second-biggest contributor to Indonesia's economic growth, accounting for roughly 25 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Household consumption has 55 percent share in GDP, with the rest comprising exports and government spending.
Despite the slowdown in FDI growth, Indonesia still managed to realize Rp 99.8 trillion (US$9.78 billion) in investments in the second quarter, 30 percent higher compared to a year earlier, thanks to the strong growth in domestic direct investments (DDI) that topped an eye-popping level of 59 percent.
The slowdown in FDI was a worrisome because it was the main driver of job creations. Of the 626,376 of additional jobs created from investment realization in the second quarter, 62 percent came from FDI, according to statistics from the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM).
Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) chairman Sofjan Wanandi said that the presence of foreign investors benefited local industries, as both complement each other in terms of employment creation.
"They are controlling sectors that we cannot enter due to the high technology requirements, such as electronics or automotive. Meanwhile, we can [complement foreign investors] by developing businesses that are related to supply chains or distribution," he said.
Observers have warned over possible moderation in investments as foreign investors held back due to political uncertainty, opting to wait until after the 2014 elections.
International ratings agency Moody's Investors Service stated in February that, ahead of the 2014 elections, there would be growing nationalist sentiment that could prompt policy and regulatory uncertainties, consequently affecting Indonesia's investment climate.
Indonesia targeted economic growth to top 6.3 percent this year, but recent slowdown in investments meant that the economy faced risks of only growing 5.9 percent this year, according to Destry Damayanti, the chief economist of state-run Bank Mandiri.
"Historically, FDI always slows down when we are ushering in a political year," she said in a phone interview.
"FDI investors were different from portfolio investors, because they were investing for long term. Hence, they want to have certainty on who would become the president, or which parties are in charge of the legislature," Destry explained.
Finance Minister Chatib Basri has reassured that Indonesia would be able to meet its yearly FDI realization target of Rp 272 trillion. In the first half this year, the government realized only 48.5 percent of the target, or Rp 132 trillion, of foreign investments.
Zoe Reynolds, Contributor, Sydney Putu Oka Sukanta survived one of the greatest atrocities in Indonesia during the violence of 1965-1966. In the second article of a two-part series, Zoe Reynolds writes how the internationally recognized Balinese writer and other artists silenced under Soeharto fared in prison and after their release.
On Oct. 21, 1966; soldiers came to arrest Sukanta in Mangga Besar in Central Jakarta. He was interrogated, tortured and imprisoned, first at the local military district command, then at Salemba Penitentiary in East Jakarta.
There was no arrest warrant, no trial.
Although prisoners were denied pen and paper, Sukanta could not be silenced. "A writer struggling for human rights and dignity will never stop writing, even if he must write on the sky, clouds and wind on light and darkness," Sukanta said in an essay. "Writing became my personal medicine and self-therapy."
There was little medicine, so Sukanta learned acupuncture from a fellow prisoner. It was a remedy for injuries suffered during torture and the ills that came with starvation.
"We ate cockroaches, anything around us even rats," said "Ketut" (not his real name), a Balinese singer and gamelan player, in an oral history titled Memecah Pembisuan (Ending the Silence) compiled by Sukanta. "We planted spinach fertilized with our own feces."
Ketut said in an interview that he once led a troupe of 30 village artists and performers in singing Sukarno's proclamations in the rice fields and village halls. He once led me across a road and pointed to the spot where two men were pursued by vigilantes and hacked to death during the Communist purge.
After 10 years of suffering and detention, Sukanta was among 1.9 million political prisoners released in 1976 as the result of international pressure. Out of prison, the freed political prisoners lived under a type of house arrest, reporting to local authorities, watched, shunned by society and struggling to make a living.
Soeharto's Indonesia, meanwhile, remained a dictatorship behind a facade of democracy.
After he was freed, Sukanta married his first wife, Rasima, and earned a modest wage as an acupuncture practitioner. He, too, was lucky: Former political prisoners were barred from public service jobs or teaching. Papers and magazines feared employing them or printing their work.
Sukanta's poetry became internationally renowned before he was widely read in his own country. His first anthology, Bali Strait, was published in 1982; his latest collection, Flower Letters from Ubud, in 2008.
Alongside poetry readings given in Hawaii and New York, Sukanta has been the guest of 18 nations, including Australia, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, Sweden and the UK.
I have no stamp to post my letter I place a blossom on the envelope in its place Dear honorable world I have grown many colors From the blood of murdered artists My fragrance is that of their names Sukanta
I first met Sukanta in 1982 when working for a daily newspaper in Jakarta. In 2008 we were dining in Sukasari Restaurant in the hills of Bogor, an hour's drive from Jakarta the poet; Hanafi Rustandi, a union leader; and I. Although Rustandi had no associations with the PKI or Lekra, they had much in common. The men compared their experiences of torture over a meal of fish, sate and salad.
"What about the rats? Did they use rats?" one asked of the other.
It had been 10 years since the fall of Soeharto when we ate. However, until the end of the New Order, Sukanta had been periodically arrested, interrogated and tortured.
And the sewer rats run back and forward across my body at will,
the drone of mosquitoes in my ear
And the electric shocks pierce my brain.
Challenging preparations of interrogation to come
Or repeated beatings
Again
And again,
Sukanta, "Back Again".
The abuse typically followed his return from overseas.
Sukanta's second wife, Endah, a dancer originally from a family of the court of Surakarta, Central Java, now runs a herbal medicine business in Bogor. "Every time he left I did not know if he would return," she says.
"Once after he came back from Germany, they came to our house and took him away. The neighbors slammed their shutters and doors in my face and refused to talk to me. I wept. It took three days, baby in arms, to find where he was."
Endah used her connections in Surakarta to get her husband released. "I could tell what had happened," she recalls."But neither of us spoke of it."
Sukanta, whose ID card lists him as a former political prisoner, still works to shine a light into one of the darkest crevices in Indonesian history. He has made four documentaries on the Communist purge and released a collection of oral histories titled "Ending the Silencing" in 2011.
One of the speakers at the launch was Imam Aziz from Nahdatul Ulama, Indonesia's largest Islamic social group. He was on hand to apologize for the organization's role in the violence.
"Soeharto ordered us to kill members of the PKI,"according to one of the stories read that night. "The police chief ordered us. At the time no one had the courage to question whether it was right or not. If we spoke a word of compassion for the victims we would be regarded as in sympathy with the communists and could be killed ourselves."
Later, Sukanta told the guests that it was difficult to imagine that the government would apologize for the past.
"We can, meanwhile, do something good ourselves as individuals, and together fight to reclaim our humanity. We are beginning to have the courage to break the silencing. Even if those in power still refuse to listen," Sukanta said. "But enough words."
The lights were dimmed, the curtains raised and the massacres of 1965 were reenacted in theater, song, dance and poetry.
Murder most beautiful.
Zoe Reynolds, Contributor, Sidney Putu Oka Sukanta survived one of the greatest atrocities in Indonesia during the violence of 1965-1966. In this two-part series, Zoe Reynolds writes how the internationally recognized Balinese writer and others silenced under Soeharto used the arts to voice opposition to persecution and injustice.
So wrote Balinese poet Putu Oka Sukanta on a visit to New York in 2000. Now Sukanta writes from his home in East Jakarta, with funding from a Hellman/Hammett grant for courage in the face of persecution.
The grant, by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, is named for the late American playwright Lillian Hellman and companion, novelist Dashiell Hammett. Both were persecuted during the McCarthy Communist witch hunt in the US in the 1950s. Like Hellman and Hammett, Sukanta, now 74, was a victim of the Cold War.
Sukanta's writings, spanning five decades two novels, short stories, essays, oral histories and documentaries document how many artists found inspiration from the hell of incarceration and how they could not be silenced.
He is foremost among the artists, writers, teachers, journalists and labor leaders who survived the 1965 Communist purge that followed the ouster of the Sukarno government and saw the ascension of Soeharto.
Yet Sukanta was not among his colleagues huddled in the pressroom of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) in July 2012, when it released its 468-page report into the mass killings that followed the purge.
"I have my work to do," Sukanta said. "The President will not apologize," he said, referring to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "The perpetrators will not be imprisoned."
Sukanta grew up in Singaraja in Buleleng, North Bali, as one of five children. His mother and father were illiterate small farmers and he was the first in his generation to go to school. "Before the Revolution under the Dutch, only the rich could afford to send their children to school," Sukanta recalls.
When he was 16, Sukanta was publishing his writings in newspapers and magazines in Bali and Java such as Suara Indonesia, Balai Pustaka, and Waspada. He went on to study and then lecture at Tamansiswa University in Yogyakarta. In 1965, Sukanta was teaching at a private high school in Koja, Jakarta, living with artists and writers associated with the People's Institute of Culture (Lekra), although he said that he himself was not a member.
Lekra was associated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which in turn was an arm of the government. Like the Hindu god Brahma, Sukarno had many arms at play nationalism, religion and communism known by the acronym nasakom.
Sukarno had declared that Indonesia would move toward a socialist economy. Eighty percent of industry had already been nationalized. But the brutal repression of the PKI after they were alleged to have launched the abortive coup of Sept. 30, 1965 changed everything.
It is said the "three greens" turned the rice fields of Bali and beyond red, referring to then-US ambassador to Indonesia Marshall Green, the green of the Indonesian Army and the green of Islam. Muslims were told that the PKI members were kafir, or infidels, and were urged to wage a holy war against them.
The figures on how many were killed in the ensuing violence vary wildly from half a million, according to the CIA, to three million, according to the late Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, President Yudhoyono's father-in-law, who headed the military campaign at the time as commandant of the Army's Special Forces.
"The conservative estimate is 80,000 dead in Bali alone," said Adrian Vickers, professor of Southeast Asian studies at the University of Sydney.
"Bali and East Java had the most intense killings. But whenever people have tried forensic research in Bali they have been blocked. Even now, people doing any study on the killings are harassed by the police," Vickers said in a telephone interview.
An estimated one in 20 Balinese died, typically unarmed, at the hands of vigilante groups dressed in black and armed with machetes and swords between December 1965 and March 1966.
"When the graveyards lit up at night you knew the killings were under way," said Balinese painter Raka Suwasta. "I saw the lights walking home to Denpasar one night and fled. Then the military came. There was a knock on the door. They took me away."
Suwasta now lives on the other side of Ubud's Monkey Forest. In 1965, he was designing political posters something he now regrets.
"Art should be pure," Suwasta said, seated among framed oils of flowers and dancers in his studio. "Politics can ruin art. It should be objective. Like journalism, don't you think?"
There is little objectivity in the accounts of 1965-66. The official version is a very different from the stories told by the victims of the purge. The generals who ruled Indonesia until the fall of Soeharto in 1998 point to the murder of six of their own in the bloody killings at Lubang Buaya (Crocodile Hole) in East Jakarta and the abortive coup.
Others, such as Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and a professor at the University of California, claim that a dalang (or puppet master) maybe the CIA, maybe Soeharto was manipulating the events that led to Lubang Buaya to justify the bloodletting to come.
"The academic jury is still out on that one," Akihisa Matsuno, a professor who studies Indonesia at Osaka University in Japan, said in an interview. "We still don't have enough evidence to conclusively support either version. But there are no doubts about the Indonesian Army's involvement and US support for the civilian massacres to follow."
The US provided arms, communications and logistics during the mass killings, The Washington Post reported. At the height of the bloodbath, embassy cables showed Green assuring Soeharto. "The US is generally sympathetic with and admiring of what the army is doing." After the slaughter, an estimated two million women and men had been imprisoned and detained without trial.
Sukanta was among them.
Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta The Islam Defenders Front (FPI) came under another round of scathing attacks this week in the wake of the latest violence involving its members. Media news and commentaries, as well as social media, are buzzing with condemnations of the group over what happened in the Central Java town of Kendal last Thursday.
There is now a growing chorus to disband the FPI, invoking the Mass Organization Law that gives the government such power. The law, passed by the House of Representatives this month, has yet to be signed into law by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Ironically, the same people who had opposed the passage of the law when it was deliberated in the House due to its draconian nature are also clamoring for the ban. But is the FPI the real culprit?
We are treading a fine line between the need to protect freedom of association and freedom of expression on the one hand, and the need to protect citizens against violent acts perpetrated by groups like the FPI on the other. These rights are guaranteed by the constitution, which also states that the state is responsible for ensuring that those rights are upheld.
Criticisms against the FPI, long notorious for its violent acts, have been misplaced. We are barking up the wrong tree. The FPI is not the real problem. The state is.
Why is the FPI allowed to get away with these violent criminal acts in the first place, tormenting, harassing, injuring and at one time even killing its targets? Only a few of these incidents we could count on one hand ended up in court and jail.
Now, as we saw what happened in Kendal on July 18, we are heading to a dangerous situation where violence is starting to beget violence.
The local people, in a spontaneous move upon hearing that a woman was killed after an FPI car crashed into her during one of its sweeping operations against vice, went after the FPI members with equal violence. Fortunately, the heavily outnumbered FPI members found sanctuary in a mosque and were evacuated to safety only after police arrived to fetch them. The angry mob was waiting outside ready to inflict harm.
Many people, as is clear from their comments in social media, cheered when the FPI finally got a taste of its own medicine: fear.
They did not see the more serious implications of this. More people in the future will organize themselves into a mob to confront the FPI every time it goes out on a sweeping operation. Both sides will be armed for sure, and both would not back down. We can predict that there will be more clashes in the future.
Where is the state, the police, in particular, in all this?
This is the question that many people have repeatedly asked every time they hear of another report of FPI harassment or violent attacks against religious minorities, restaurant and bar owners, or just about anyone who has come under its wrath.
The state has never been more impotent when it comes to dealing with the likes of the FPI.
The FPI's right to exist should be protected, no matter how violent its ideology is. The danger with banning the FPI is that we know it will not be the last one to go, and that soon, organizations critical of the government will be muzzled this way. In the past, we have seen how the Mass Organization Law can become a powerful, repressive tool.
Small organizations like the FPI thrive on media attention. The massive publicity makes them look a lot bigger than it is. The portrayal of the FPI as a violent or "anarchistic" group by the media plays into its agenda, for it helps to instill fear in the public. Even the police are scared, apparently.
As much as some people want to, we cannot ban any ideology. Like faith, people believe what they want to believe. But the state can do something each time these violent groups break the law. Not before.
We should all be venting our anger at the state, in this case, Yudhoyono, the man who, for some strange reason, was in May conferred an international statesman award for promoting religious tolerance in Indonesia by the New York-based Appeal to Conscience Foundation.
He has failed us. On Monday, amid all the social media buzz calling for the FPI ban, Yudhoyono said he would not tolerate acts of violence and instructed the police to do something about it.
Mr. President, we have heard it before. Until we see real action on your part, we will not raise our hopes.
The FPI also did not take Yudhoyono's remarks seriously. No sooner after he made it, FPI chairman Habib Rizieq came out with the most defiant statement, calling the president "a loser".
Therefore, it looks like the violence will continue, but next time around, it may be worse. After Kendal, expect ugly clashes from what our bureaucrats like to call "horizontal conflicts". Only Yudhoyono can put a stop to this. Unless he forgets, in the oath of office that he took in 2004 and in 2009, he pledged to uphold the constitution. That means protecting every citizen against acts of violence, by anyone, even those who claim to represent God.
Yudhoyono is good until October 2014. Indonesia is already a failing state. He should stop it from completely failing.