For more than 50 years, my people have suffered what I considered to be a slow-moving genocide under the repressive military occupation of Indonesia. During the second world war, the "Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels" of West Papua came to the aid of Australian soldiers. Now it is the West Papuans that need Australia's help in order to end human rights abuses so that my people can be free to live in peace.

Indonesia's response to West Papua advocacy abroad has been frighteningly vehement. After the opening of our UK office in 2013, Indonesia made a diplomatic complaint to the British government. Foreign minister Natelegawa said he could not understand why the British government was "unwilling to take steps against the Free West Papua office", and the president even tweeted about it. The British ambassador in Jakarta was summoned and had to remind Indonesia of the protections enjoyed in democracies, pointing out that no steps would be taken against our office, since it "does not require [government] permission to open".

Bob Carr revealed in his recent memoir that he had discussed the prospect of us opening an Australian office with Indonesia's foreign minister at that time, and was told that Indonesia would "prefer [Australia] not to allow an office to open". During his state visit to Indonesia last year, prime minister Abbott said last year that West Papuan activists were not welcome in Australia, and that Australia would not tolerate West Papuans' demonstrations against Indonesian control.

But we hope that the Australian government will follow the example set by the British government: reminding Indonesia that, unlike in West Papua where people are sent to prison for 15 years for merely raising a flag, Australia is a democracy where freedom of speech is protected and where West Papuans and those who support us can speak out about our desire for self-determination.

The Australian public clearly has much sympathy for West Papua and for our cause – both historically and today. Australia initially prepared to go to war with the Dutch to prevent Indonesia's invasion of West Papua in the early 1960s. As a result of Cold War real-politik and US pressure, Australia stepped out of the dispute. Much like the support for Indonesian control over East Timor until 1999, the Australian government has so far refused to acknowledge West Papua's claim to self-determination out of concern for its relationship with Indonesia. Like in East Timor, the law is on our side. If Australia can change its position on East Timor, it can change its position on West Papua.

Despite the government's current position, the Australian public remains supportive. An opinion poll commissioned in 2006 showed over 75% of Australians support self determination – including the option of independence – for West Papua. My last visit to Australia was for a 2013 TEDx event where I spoke alongside my lawyer, Jennifer Robinson. We received two standing ovations from a packed out Sydney Opera House, and I was overwhelmed by the support and encouragement we received from the audience.

Predictably, Indonesia was concerned. Some officials argued that Indonesia should cut diplomatic ties with Australia for allowing me the opportunity to speak about my people's cause. A few days later, Australia's then foreign minister Bob Carr responded in the Senate, saying that Australians supporting West Papua's claim to self-determination was "an appalling thing to do". In his memoir, Carr refers to our office opening in Oxford, alleging we are "provocateurs who encourage Papuans to put their lives on the line", and spoke with concern about the prospect of an office opening in Australia.

What is appalling is how my people have been betrayed by the United Nations and by the international community and left to suffer at the hands of a brutal Indonesian military regime. What is appalling is Indonesia asking Britain and Australia to compromise on their own values and freedoms in order to silence us.

We are not provocateurs, but advocates for the rights of the West Papuan people. As a leader in exile, I have an obligation and duty to my people to use the democratic freedoms I enjoy abroad to speak out about their suffering. The only people putting Papuan lives on the line are those who kill peaceful activists with absolute impunity (more than 22 of them were killed in 2012 alone).

My people's lives remain on the line – and the nations who continue to support Indonesian control are complicit. We aim, through opening the office in Australia, to raise awareness about the illegality of Indonesia's occupation, and about this ongoing violence.

Raising awareness is important, especially when Tony Abbott claims that West Papuans are "better not worse off" under Indonesia. This is just not true. It is estimated that more than half a million West Papuans have been killed since Indonesian occupation in the 1960s. We are the poorest province in Indonesia, despite being the richest in natural resources. Literacy is very poor – the worst in Indonesia. Health statistics are grim. We are suffering an HIV/AIDS crisis with the highest rate of infection in Indonesia. There are at least 73 West Papuan political prisoners in Indonesia today. I cannot and will not remain silent while my people suffer.

Australia has before taken a stand against Indonesia in order to respect international law and protect West Papuans. In 2006, Australia granted asylum to 42 West Papuans after concluding (correctly) that, as activists advocating independence for West Papua, they would be persecuted if they were returned to Indonesia. This decision was taken in accordance with Australia's obligations under international law, and Australia should be commended for standing by that decision despite Indonesia recalling its ambassador.

We hope that Australia will withstand pressure from Indonesia over the opening of our office. Lest we forget: by the time Australia changed its political position to support East Timor, close to a third of its population had been killed by the Indonesian military. My people need Australia's help before it is too late.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/28/west-papua-my-people-need-australias-help-before-it-is-too-late

Two TNI soldiers shot in armed group attack in Papua

Jakarta Globe - April 25, 2014

Banjir Ambarita, Jayapura – Two Indonesian Military officers were injured after yet another exchange of gunfire on Friday between the military and an armed group suspected to be part of the Free Papua Movement in Puncak Jaya district, Papua.

The two soldiers were identified as Polang Harahap and Rahman Hakim, who were shot in the forehead and right shoulder, respectively, after an armed group ambushed a military (TNI) outpost in Gurage village, Puncak Jaya on Friday afternoon. The assailants managed to flee the scene.

"[Both injured soldiers] are being evacuated to Mulia Hospital," Lt. Col. Rikas Hidayatullah, spokesman for the Papua military command, said on Friday. "Other [TNI] members are chasing after the shooters. We don't know yet if anyone [from the attackers] was injured."

The village of Gurage is located near the Tingginambut area, where a faction of Papua's separatist group, or OPM, led by Goliat Tabuni is known to launch attacks on Indonesian security personnel.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/2-tni-soldiers-shot-armed-group-attack-papua/

TNI commander orders removal of election boycott graffiti in Jayapura

KNPB News - April 24, 2014

Jayapura – The call by the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) chairperson to boycott the July 9 presidential election in Papua has become a threat for Indonesia and West Papua. The call was not just spread widely through the online and print media but also by the mass base through SMS messages and graffiti drawn on walls, buildings, on roads and public places in several parts of Jayapura city.

The message, "Boycott the 2014 presidential election and the solution is a referendum" that was widely seen by many people, was viewed as a threat by the colonialists in general and the Papua Regional Military Command (Kodam) and the Papua regional police (Polda), who felt particularly disturbed.

Apparently, the Cenderawasih regional military commander has already ordered its members to remove the graffiti and today, Wednesday April 23 between 8.30-10am, soldiers could be seen painting over walls with graffiti in various parts of Jayapura.

One of the locations that draw their attention today was on Jl. Kamwolker, where the KNPB headquarters is located, directly in front of the Cendrawasih University Unit 6 dormitory.

As the soldiers were cleaning off the graffiti on the walls beside the road, three senior KNPB members passed by. One of the TNI members who was cleaning the graffiti said, "We're painting over and removing this graffiti on the orders of the regional military commander because there are visitors who will pass by".

Hearing this, KNPB general secretary Ones Suhuniap told the TNI member, "If the regional military commander ordered that the graffiti on the walls be cleaned it means that we, the KNPB will order our members to draw it again in every city in the Land of Papua, from Sorong to Merauke".

At the same location, KNPB national spokesperson Bazoka Logo told the TNI members, "You go ahead and repaint and wipe off the graffiti because we'll draw it again, that's the project, so please keep working".

What was odd was that the ones removing the graffiti were indigenous Papuans with black curly hair who were members of the TNI, while fully- armed TNI and Polri personnel with strait hair who were their bosses, stood guard on the side of the street.

[Slightly abridged translation by James Balowski.]

Source: http://knpbnews.com/?p=3896

Aceh

Police, govt urged to act in Aceh child abuse cases

Jakarta Post - April 25, 2014

Hotli Simanjuntak, Banda Aceh – Female activists in Aceh, affiliated with the 231 Monitoring Network, have urged the government and police to investigate child abuse cases in the province.

Indecisiveness on the part of the government and law enforcers is deemed to have contributed to the rising incidence of sexual abuse cases, due to the lack of a deterrent effect.

"This is reflected in the number of sexual abuse cases involving children in Aceh between 2012 and 2014, which increased," said 231 Monitoring Network coordinator Destika Gilang on Thursday.

According to Destika, many rape and murder cases against children in Aceh have yet to be completely resolved by law enforcement agencies. The network cited the rape of 9-year-old girl; a 6-year-old girl by six people in Bener Meriah, Central Aceh; and the rape of a daughter by her step father in Banda Aceh.

"Indecisiveness on the part of the government and law enforcers has a big impact on the suffering of victims and their families," said Destika.

The activists urged the police across the province to respond quickly to sexual abuse cases involving children. They also urged prosecutor's offices and courts to hand down stiff sentences and intensify the prosecutions of those committing sexual abuse against children.

"The Aceh provincial administration must also play an active role in implementing child and women protection policies, as stipulated in Qanun [Islamic bylaw] No. 6/2009 on child and women protection," said Destika.

The latest incidence of child abuse was allegedly committed by an officer of the Aceh Police headquarters, known as Brig. M, against two elementary school students aged 7 and 8. The allegation came to light after the students' parents reported the matter to authorities on April 14.

The police, however, reportedly attempted to cover up the case, but following pressure from various parties, they finally revealed some details, including the identity of the suspected perpetrator, who is in active service.

It was initially suspected that Brig. M had sexually abused five children, but only two reports have been filed with the police. If Brig. M is proven guilty, he will be charged with violating Law No. 23/2002 on child protection and could face 15 years' imprisonment.

Activists from the 231 Monitoring Network also handed the police data on child sexual abuse cases taking place in Aceh in the past few years.

Based on observations by the network, 27 and 70 child sexual abuse cases were recorded in 2012 and 2013, respectively. A majority of the cases involved adults who were close to the victims, such as step fathers, uncles, teachers and neighbors.

In response to the demands made by the activists, Banda Aceh City Police chief Sr. Comr. Moffan said his force would work even harder to investigate and resolve the cases.

Moffan also called on members of the community to be more proactive in overseeing their families to prevent the crime. Citizens are expected to immediate report to the police if they suspect sexual abuse and rape has occurred.

"There's no exception with law enforcers, including the police. Report it to us so we can react fast to help victims," said Moffan.

Activists in North Sumatra have urged a thorough investigation into the alleged molestation of an 18-month-old girl by her father, who is a member of the Air Force's National Air Defense Command in Medan.

The Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) North Sumatra branch has urged the Air Force's internal affairs division to seriously investigate the case.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/25/police-govt-urged-act-aceh-child-abuse-cases.html

Human rights & justice

The Act of Killing and Washington's secret files

Pacific Scoop - April 29, 2014

Richard S. Ehrlich, Bangkok, Thailand – Encouraged by the international success of his nonfiction film, The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer is now pushing Washington to publicly expose how "the US enthusiastically participated in the genocide" in Indonesia during the 1960s.

"We are currently working with [US] Senator Tom Udall's office, and the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network, and Amnesty International in the US," Mr. Oppenheimer said in an interview after appearing in Bangkok where he showed his film at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand.

"Senator Udall is drafting a 'Sense of the Senate' resolution to argue that the US must be totally transparent about its role in the genocide," he said. Senator Udall, a New Mexico state Democrat, is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and showed the film to Washington audiences.

"Others have filed Freedom of Information Act requests – unsuccessfully so far – for the CIA job documents pertaining to Indonesia 1963-66 to be declassified, and also for US Embassy defense attache documents to be declassified," the film maker said.

Mr. Oppenheimer's film, nominated for an Oscar for best documentary, focuses on a handful of civilian Indonesian executioners. They agreed to re-enact how and why they tortured and murdered people nearly 50 years ago while helping Indonesia's military kill as many suspected communists as possible.

Mr. Oppenheimer now wants Washington to open its secret files because "in the late '50s and early '60s, the US advised and funded the Indonesian army's deployment like an octopus with tentacles reaching into each village. "This was done so that the army would be effective in exterminating the communists when the opportunity arose," he said.

Robert J. Martens, an American Embassy political officer in Indonesia's capital Jakarta from 1963-66, gave "kill lists" totaling about 5,000 names to Indonesia's military, to ensure suspects were quickly executed, Mr. Oppenheimer said.

But the lists of doomed individuals – described as Indonesian Communist Party (P.K.I.) members or suspected sympathizers – were less damning than the US State Department official's symbolic act of naming names.

"Martens seemed to feel like he had provided crucial intelligence," Mr. Oppenheimer, 39, said. "Because, in fact, all the names he provided were public figures at the national or regional level, they would have been available to the army, which was deployed already in every village.

"The kill list was less crucial intelligence than an unmistakable signal from the US that the army should kill all potential opponents of the new regime," the film maker said.

"I, and I alone, decided to pass those 'lists' to the non-communist forces," Mr. Martens wrote in a letter to The Washington Post in 1990, attempting to limit public blame after retiring in Maryland.

Of the 5,000 names on the lists, "my understanding is that 100 percent were killed," Mr. Oppenheimer said.

"They were killed because they were potential enemies of the emerging Suharto dictatorship. The US, by providing the lists, made it very clear that we wanted these people killed.

"Were they communists? Some of them, but many would have been journalists, intellectuals, artists, trade unionists, leaders of the ethnic Chinese community, land reform advocates, loyalists to President Sukarno," who was ousted when Gen. Suharto gained power.

"They were mostly public figures, which is why Martens was no James Bond in compiling these lists. Just a diligent reader of the national and regional newspapers," he said. "The US wanted the army to go after any potential enemy of the regime."

Mr. Oppenheimer expects Washington's secret documents to shed some light on how "the US enthusiastically participated in the genocide." Overall during 1965-66, Indonesia's army and its civilian death squads killed, with permanent impunity, more than 500,000 people.

"I think we would up that estimate to perhaps close to 500,000 people," Marshall Green, the American ambassador in Jakarta during those years, told a secret Senate Foreign Relations Committee session.

"Of course, nobody knows. We merely judge it by whole villages that have been depopulated," Mr. Green told the committee, according to Tim Weiner's book, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA".

The CIA had failed in its 1957 coup attempt against President Sukarno, who was perceived by Washington as soft on communism. But in 1965, a new, bloodier strategy enabled US-backed Gen. Suharto to gain power from Sukarno in 1966, orchestrate more massacres, and rule as a dictator until Suharto was toppled in 1998.

In 2004, when Mr. Oppenheimer interviewed Mr. Martens, the film maker also interviewed Joseph Lazarsky who was the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy chief of station in Jakarta in 1965.

"Notes from [my] phone call with Lazarsky on 15 April 2004 shows he confirmed ticking the names off the list of those who were confirmed by T.N.I. – the Indonesian army – as killed," he said. "The [Indonesian] army returned the lists with the names of the dead checked off," Mr. Oppenheimer said.

The Act of Killing, horrific to watch, was gruesome to film. Civilian Indonesian death squads "were boastful and open, and would tell the most horrible details of the killings," Mr. Oppenheimer told an audience while screening his film in Bangkok.

"When I started hearing the perpetrators speak this way, I felt that the big story, certainly the overwhelming story, was the one right now in front of me – impunity today. It was this feeling of wandering into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust, only to find the Nazis still in power."

He coaxed executioners to appear in The Act of Killing by saying: "Show me what you've done in whatever way you wish, and I will film your re- enactments.

"But I will also film you and your fellow death squad veterans discussing what you want to show and, as importantly, what you want to leave out, and in that way, document how you want to be seen, and maybe how you really see yourself."

The film maker knew, "If I could show that, the whole moral lie that the genocide was heroic, the whole facade that it was heroic, should come crashing down."

Bizarrely, the documentary became a film within a film, with self-confessed killers performing as actors portraying themselves murdering victims, who are sometimes also played by the executioners themselves.

"The release of my new film, The Look of Silence, is the second film in a diptych with The Act of Killing," Mr. Oppenheimer said. "The Look of Silence will hopefully premiere in late summer 2014, and come out in theaters around the world, over the following 12 months."

Mr. Oppenheimer is a dual American and British citizen who grew up in Washington DC and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was based in London from 1997- 2011, and currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark.

[Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final chapter, "Ceremonies and Regalia", in a new book titled King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.]

Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1404/S00230/the-act-of-killing-and-washingtons-secret-files.htm

Indonesia's next president must prioritize human rights: Amnesty

Antara News - April 29, 2014

Jakarta - Indonesia's next leader must urgently tackle the ongoing human rights violations and repeal repressive and discriminatory laws, UK-based international NGO Amnesty International said in a press statement on Tuesday.

"It is disappointing that during the campaigning period the candidates have so far mostly ignored human rights. Indonesia has come a long way over the past decade, but there are still serious challenges remaining which the candidates should address," said Rupert Abbott, Amnesty Internationals Deputy Asia Pacific Director.

There have been some human rights improvements during President Yudhoyono's administration (2004-2014), including the introduction of new human rights regulations for policing as well as legal reforms which strengthen witness protection.

Indonesia has also played an important role in the establishment of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), a body which could play a powerful role in enforcing rights standards across the region.

But serious violations have continued, ranging from suppression of freedom of expression and torture or other ill-treatment by the security forces, to almost complete impunity for crimes under international law committed during the Suharto era and the period of reform that followed. Further, executions resumed in Indonesia in 2013 after a four-year hiatus.

Although Indonesia has signed key international treaties guaranteeing rights protections, in most cases they have not been incorporated into domestic law or implemented in policy and practice.

"Indonesia's next president must go beyond paper promises and ensure that the daily reality in the country matches its lofty international commitments," said Rupert Abbott.

"The past decade has been marked by only patchy progress on human rights, and even regression in some areas."

In particular, the freedom of expression has deteriorated in recent years, and Indonesia's next president must work to amend or repeal legislation that is used to criminalize peaceful political activities.

More than 70 people, mainly activists from the eastern provinces of Papua and Maluku, are currently in prison for "rebellion" (makar) for taking part in peaceful political protests or raising banned independence flags. A 2007 regulation banning "separatist" flags has led to scores of arrests.

Harassment and attacks on religious minorities also increased under President Yudhoyono's administration, fuelled by discriminatory laws at both the regional and national level.

The minority Ahmadiyya community is prohibited from promoting its activities and teachings in many parts of Indonesia. The group has been the target of frequent attacks across the country in recent years, and there are credible reports that local government officials have sometimes allied with hardline religious groups to threaten or harass Ahmadiyya members into renouncing their beliefs.

"As long as discriminatory laws against religious minorities are in place, the violence and harassment which groups like the Ahmadiyya's face are effectively state-sanctioned. The new government must urgently work to repeal all laws which threaten freedom of religion or expression," said Rupert Abbott.

Women and girls continue to face barriers in exercising their rights, and there are laws and regulations which discriminate against women. The government has also failed to prohibit and take effective and appropriate action to eliminate practices which are harmful to women and girls, such as female genital mutilation, and impose appropriate criminal penalties on those who perform such acts.

Source: http://www.antaranews.com/en/news/93802/indonesias-next-president-must-prioritize-human-rights-amnesty

Sexual & domestic violence

Abuse against women shows no sign of abating

Jakarta Globe - April 30, 2014

Islam does not forbid a wife from reporting her husband to the authorities for committing domestic violence (KDRT) and therefore such an act is not sinful, a member of the country's top Islamic organization said.

"KDRT is a violation. It is against the law of the land and it is against the teachings of Islam," Abidin Wakano, Nadhlatul Ulama's Maluku deputy chairman, said on Tuesday. "It is perfectly permissible for a woman to report her husband to the police if she feels she has been a victim of domestic violence."

Abidin, who is also a lecturer at Ambon's State Islamic University and a director of the Inter-Faith Institution (LAIM), said that Islam regulates clearly the functions and responsibilities of a husband and wife in a household with the stress on love.

Husbands and wives should respect each other's rights and obligations and encourage each other to carry out their roles and responsibilities as well as they can.

"Islam teaches people to form harmonious and blessed families and therefore KDRT, whether it is committed by a husband to his wife or vice versa, or by parents to their children, is an act of sin that violates religious teachings," said Abidin.

Abidin said that in Islam, there are several stages that husbands and wives can take in settling a conflict.

First by sitting together to talk about the problem and if that doesn't work then turning to a third party as a mediator to offer a solution. If that still failed to produce a solution and the domestic violence continues, the victim can report it to the police and take legal action, he said.

"Reporting spousal abuse is not about humiliating a family. The peaceful process has failed to bring results so the problems must be taken to the next level because at the end of the day there has been sin committed," he said.

Discriminatory bylaws

Yuniyanti Chuzaifah, chairwoman of the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), said that cases of violence against women continue to rise with an estimated 279,000 cases since the era of reformation until this March.

Yuniyanti pointed out that 342 bylaws issued since Reformation also had the potential to discriminate women. Speaking at a discussion on women's issues at the House of Representatives on Monday, Yuniyanti said there had been little progress from "Kartini's struggles and the gender equality in the early 21st century," referring to the Indonesian women's rights pioneer. "Komnas Perempuan knows of 342 bylaws that have the potential to criminalize women," she added.

Yuniyanti also said that Kartini Day, celebrated annually, was mostly about substance and paid little attention to the struggle many women face in education, the workplace, the family or politics

"Kartini's message was an intellectual one. It was about improving the minds of women, not just parading in a kebaya once a year," she pointed out.

Yuniyanti went on to bemoan the lack of state support for victims of spousal abuse across the country. "What makes it painful is that the state does not provide services for the recovery of victims of domestic violence. It's no surprise to see women eventually become sex workers because of the way they are treated. They feel helpless and alone and are prone to manipulation," she said.

Yuniyanti also cited the forms of violence endured by female migrant workers working far from home. The case of Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, for example, the maid who was badly beaten while working in Hong Kong, is currently going through the courts in the territory.

Returning to the general theme of spousal abuse, Yuniyanti claimed Indonesia wasn't doing enough. "All this violence can happen and offenders can get away with it because the state condones violence towards women as there is a lack of harsh punishment against the perpetrators," she said.

Divorce rates

At the same discussion, a government official said domestic violence was a contributing factor in many divorce cases. West Jakarta recorded the highest divorce rates in Jakarta with around 600 cases over the past four months with domestic violence contributing the most to the divorce.

"Seventy percent of couples [who wanted to break up their relationship] filed for divorce because of KDRT," said Rizal, a spokesman for the West Jakarta Religious Court.

Rizal said that 420 of the divorce cases were caused by KDRT in which 5 percent to 10 percent of the violence was directed against men. "So far only 30 percent have been settled while the rest are still being processed," he said.

Rizal said that the divorce process becomes complicated when it involves child custody and assets to be divided. Financial reasons were another common factor in divorce cases and Rizal revealed it was usually women who started the divorce process.

State violence against women

Arimbi Heroepoetri of Komnas Perempuan said that around 100,000 cases of violence against wives were reported last year, while 3,530 violent incidents against women occurred in public spaces in the form of rape, harassment and molestation.

Violence against women by the state was reported in 445 cases – up eightfold from 2009 – of which 395 were victims of evictions in Jakarta. But there were also several cases reported of women suffering at the hands of the state in the name of religion and morality.

This included the burning of places of worship, forcibly preventing women from engaging in religious activities and even trafficking of people who had been charged under the controversial anti-pornography law.

Arimbi said that domestic violence makes up almost 96 percent of all the violence cases against women and attributed it to power gap between men and women and weak laws to protect women from violence.

Ninik Rahayu, a Komnas Perempuan commissioner, criticized the government for its lack of commitment to provide support for victims of violence. "The structure, facilities and infrastructure to ensure victims can get the justice and support they deserve have not been met as promised."

The Women Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry's deputy assistant on matters related to violence against women, Retno Adji Prasetiaju, said that the ministry is currently coordinating with the National Police chief, Gen. Sutarman, to have a women and child protection unit in every station at subdistrict and ward levels in order to provide maximum service for the victims of violence.

Easy targets

Earlier this year a retired police general and his wife allegedly held 16 domestic workers in captivity and tortured them in their Bogor, West Java mansion. Such captivity is a form of modern-day slavery and is believed to be the tip of the ice-berg. What makes the case remarkable is that the victims went public. It is widely believed many more women are scared to go down that path.

Anis Hidayah, executive director of Jakarta-based Migrant Care, told the Jakarta Globe that such practices are physically concealed but occur all around us, stripping those silent victims of their most basic of human rights: freedom.

Mutiara Situmorang and her husband, retired police general Mangisi Situmorang, were reported to the police after one of their 16 domestic workers – half of whom were under the legal working age of 17 – fled the mansion, claiming she had suffered from physical abuse. Anis said this case was far from unique in Indonesia.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/abuse-women-shows-sign-abating/

Harsher penalties for child abuse

Jakarta Post - April 26, 2014

Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta – The alleged sexual assault of a 6-year- old boy at Jakarta International School (JIS) has sparked debate over whether the country is protecting children enough, prompting legislators to revise the 2002 Law on child protection to impose harsher punishments on child predators.

Under the existing law, the heaviest punishment for a person convicted of crimes against minors is 20 years' imprisonment or paying Rp 500 million (US$43,233) in fines, which is considered by many as too lenient. Lawmakers and child rights activists believe that the light sentencing has made Indonesia a "safe haven" for pedophiles and other child abusers.

Article 81 of the law, for example, imposes between three and 15 years' imprisonment or between Rp 60 million and Rp 300 million in fines on those who sexually assault children. Meanwhile, according to Article 88, those who sexually exploit children for economic gain will face a maximum 10 years' imprisonment or a maximum fine of Rp 200 million.

"It [the current law] has obviously failed to provide a deterrent effect as there has been a series of sexual assaults against children," leader of the House of Representatives Commission VIII overseeing religious and social affairs, Ida Fauziah, told the press after a meeting with the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) on Friday.

"Thus, it is critical that we revise the current law and hand down harsher sentences. Those who commit crimes against children should be sentenced to life in prison, for example," she said.

Ida, a politician from the National Awakening Party (PKB), added that the revision would also give the KPAI the authority to investigate crimes against minors nationwide. According to Ida, discussions on such revisions would start as soon as the House resumes a new session in mid-May after more than two months of recess.

In addition to endorsing the revision of the Child Protection Law, the KPAI also requested additional financial support, because according to KPAI secretary Erlinda, "the current budget is not enough to support KPAI's work in 33 provinces."

It was recently revealed that another JIS student might have fallen victim to sexual assault.

The JIS case has sparked an online petition on activism site change.org calling for heavier punishments for child rapists. The petition has gained 71,307 signatures as of Friday evening.

The National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) called on the government to declare 2013 as a "year of emergency" given the increased incidences of child abuse. Last year, an 11-year-old girl was raped by her father, who was later sentenced to 15 years in prison. The girl had contracted gonorrhea, which her father had passed on to her.

Komnas PA received 2,046 reports of violence against children in 2010, 42 percent of which were sex-related. The figure had risen to 2,637 cases in 2012, 62 percent of which involved sexual abuse.

Recently, Aceh-based female activists also urged the government and police to investigate child abuse in the province, The activists blamed the increasing number of child abuse cases, particularly in Aceh, on the indecisiveness of the government and law enforcers.

The activists, affiliated with the 231 Monitoring Network, recorded between 27 and 70 child abuse cases in Aceh in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Such cases included the rape of a 9-year-old girl and a 6-year-old girl by six people in Bener Meriah in Central Aceh and the rape of a daughter by her step father in Banda Aceh.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/26/harsher-penalties-child-abuse.html

Labour & migrant workers

Another migrant worker returns a victim of violence

Jakarta Globe - April 30, 2014

Yuli Krisna, Bandung – Another Indonesian migrant worker has emerged as a victim of violence during her time in Saudi Arabia, where she worked as a maid before abruptly returning to her home in Indramayu, West Java, in January.

Tati, who left her hometown for Saudi Arabia in October 2010, said her employer never paid her monthly salary during her one-and-a-half years of employment, and that she often suffered from beatings.

"She often called asking for my help, because she wanted to go home after being beaten several times," Tati's husband Carla told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

In 2012, after two years of working without a salary, the 26-year-old approached her employers to ask for her monthly payments. The entire family, including the children, allegedly responded by attacking Tati, beating her so severely that she fell into a coma. Tati woke up in the local hospital covered in bruises, her limbs paralyzed from the brutal physical assault.

"I knew of her situation from her friend, who is also a domestic worker; she called me," Carla said, adding his wife ended up staying in the hospital for two years, without appropriate medical treatments or help from the Indonesian government.

Carla also said Tati was not sure whether her employers have been reported to the local authorities for the attack. "After the beating, she was hospitalized and couldn't work," he said.

Tati eventually returned to Indonesia in January, but her husband said he did not know how she got home, or who had made the travel arrangements.

Unfortunately, Tati, who was still suffering from injuries she sustained during the attack, was unable to seek immediate medical attention due to financial constraints.

"A wound on her backside only got worse, as if there is a hole, and you can even see her bone," Carla said, adding that he had sought help from Berkah Guna, the company responsible for sending Tati to Saudi Arabia, to no avail.

A local non-governmental organization eventually stepped forward to take Tati to the hospital. "It was only last night that my wife was taken to the Indramayu General Hospital. I hope the government will offer help, and the people of Indonesia can pray for my wife," Carla said.

Netty Prasetiyani Heryawan, chairwoman of the West Java Integrated Service Center for the Empowerment of Women and Children, vowed to seek help from the West Java Manpower Office to investigate the agency that had sent Tati abroad.

"We call on the authorities to impose strict actions on the company or individuals proven to be involved in this case; starting from the recruiters to those who arranged her departure, and so on," she told the Jakarta Globe.

Netty said she has asked various government agencies to help in overseeing Tati's treatment, emphasizing that the domestic worker's medical expenses should be covered by her agency.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/warning-talent-shortage-indonesias-education-system-fails-nation/

Grim message to workers

Jakarta Post Editorial - April 30, 2014

The Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) last Thursday conveyed a rather grim message to workers who are set to celebrate Labor Day tomorrow, saying that most new investors over the past three years shunned labor-intensive businesses, preferring instead capital-intensive ventures.

BKPM chief Mahendra Siregar, who briefed the media on the latest developments in realized domestic and foreign investment, said that though the amount of new investments continued to increase, the trend was not great for jobseekers because of investor preferences for capital-intensive industries.

Realized investment in the first quarter rose to Rp 106.60 trillion (US$9.3 billion) from Rp 93 trillion in the same period last year but the number of jobs created by the new investments decreased to 260,156 from 361,930. This means that the low-wage, labor intensive manufacturing sectors in Indonesia such as the garment, shoe, toy, electronics and electronic appliances industries have become increasingly less competitive compared to those in other Asian countries, notably Vietnam, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This trend should serve as a wake-up call to trade unions that have fought by way of violent street rallies and strikes to get hefty wage increases every year.

Businesses always cite the uncertainty about the mechanism for negotiating minimum wages and the increasing radicalization of trade unions, which have also grown in number, in demanding annual wage rises. The uncertainty renders investors unable to project their production costs within the medium-term because trade unions tend to demand wage increases that counter the inflation-indexed reference set by the government.

Even without steep wage rises every year, most labor-intensive manufacturing companies are at a disadvantage due to higher interest rates and higher logistics costs compared to those in other Asian countries.

The rupiah's sharp depreciation since last June has further eroded the competitiveness of labor-intensive manufacturing firms, which depend largely on imported resources, components or intermediate materials.

A study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last year concluded that the average minimum wage in Indonesia increased by 30 percent between 2010 and 2013, compared to 14.20 percent in Thailand, 8.4 percent in China, 6.7 percent in Vietnam, 5.2 percent in Cambodia, 3.3 percent in Malaysia and 3.1 percent in the Philippines.

The CSIS has warned that if the minimum wage continues to rise at such a steep rate, many labor-intensive industries will price themselves out of the international market and new investment will tend to focus on capital- intensive industries.

There is nothing wrong with wage increases as long as they are justified by higher productivity because in the long run increases in wages that are not supported by a corresponding rise in productivity will lead to higher unemployment as factories reduce payrolls or investors shun labor-intensive industries.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/30/editorial-grim-message-workers.html

Thousands set to mark Labor Day

Jakarta Post - April 30, 2014

Indah Setiawati, Jakarta – As many as 100,000 workers are expected to take to the streets of Jakarta on Thursday in the first ever Labor Day in Indonesia, on May 1.

Confederation of Indonesian Workers' Unions (KSPI) chairman Said Iqbal said preparations for the day were in full swing. He expected to see 100,000 workers at the rally, which will head from the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta to the Presidential Palace.

"After the rally, we will gather at Bung Karno Stadium [in Senayan, Central Jakarta]. On Monday we received confirmation from over 70,000 workers who bought tickets to our event," he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono decided in July last year that May 1 would be a national holiday from 2014 onward.

Said explained that the event in Senayan would feature dangdut music and statements from workers regarding the presidential election on July 9. "We will favor presidential candidates who are willing to sign a political contract related to 10 issues," he said.

He added that, as of today, no single presidential hopeful had signed the contract. However, he said that out of all potential candidates, only Gerindra Party chief patron Prabowo Subianto had confirmed his attendance.

Meanwhile, Obon Tabroni, the chairman of the Bekasi chapter of the Indonesian Metal Workers Federation (FSPMI), which is under the KSPI, said 30,000 workers in Bekasi had confirmed their attendance.

According to Said, besides the KSPI, which claims to have 1.4 million members, Thursday would see rallies from other federations. They are the Joint Indonesian Workers Secretariat (Sekber Pekerja Indonesia), the National Workers Union (SPN) and the Congress Alliance of Indonesian Labor Unions (KASBI).

"Our stances on certain issues are different. For example, Sekber rejects the election, while we support it. Meanwhile, SPN and KASBI reject the BPJS [the Social Security Management Agency], while we demand improvements in it," he said.

Indonesian labor observer Kirsty Hoban said Labor Day might not see workers in high spirits, as the three biggest labor confederations – KSPI, the All-Indonesia Workers Union Confederation (KSPSI) and the Confederation of Indonesian Prosperity Trade Unions (KSBSI) – were not united like they were in 2012.

She said the KSPSI and KSBSI deemed the KSPI too extreme when it strived for a 50 percent wage increase in 2013. Said added that the split in unions only occurred at the elite level. He said he believed workers at the grassroots level still shared the same agenda.

The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry says there are six union confederations, 92 federations and 11,852 company level unions that boast 3.4 million members in Indonesia.

Thousands of workers in other cities across the country will also use the holiday to promote their demands.

FSPMI North Sumatra head Minggu Saragih said 5,000 workers would rally in front of the governor's office and the North Sumatra Police, to demand the better handling of labor cases. Saragih said because Thursday was a national holiday, the union would not have to go to factories to persuade members to rally.

In Dumai, Riau, the administration has organized social events to better manage crowds and to forge better relations between workers and employers. Dumai Workers' Union coordinator Syaiful Azhar said the union agreed to the plan and would participate in the event.

In Batam, Riau Islands, the FSPMI will send 20,000 workers to rally in five spots there. However, many workers will still attend work on Thursday, as many employers have offered higher overtime wages for the day.

Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union (SBSI) Batam head Surya Dharma Sitompul said he hoped the workers would not work overtime.

"They are not prohibited from working on Labor Day but if they do, our struggle is a waste," he said. "Workers must remember this. The national holiday is not a gift from the government, but a result of our struggle," Surya said.

[Apriadi Gunawan, Fadli and Rizal Harahap contributed to this story from Medan, Batam and Dumai.]

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/30/thousands-set-mark-labor-day.html

Thousands of workers to stage Labor Day rally in Medan

Jakarta Post - April 29, 2014

Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – Thousands of workers under the Federation of Indonesian Metal Workers Union have announced their plan to stage a rally on thoroughfares in Medan, North Sumatra, as part of their observation of International Workers' Day, which falls on May 1.

The federation's coordinator, Minggu Saragih, said as many as 5,000 workers had confirmed they would join the rally.

"We will march our way to the governor's office and the North Sumatra Police headquarters, to ask [whether there are] any updates on previous reports made by our colleagues," he said.

He said the workers would demand that the government raise their salaries by 30 percent to help meet increasing living costs.

When asked whether the federation would involve workers who did not get the chance to join the rally, Minggu said it would not be an issue because Labor Day is treated as a national holiday. "Workers will have the chance and opportunity to run with us, demanding improvements," he said.

North Sumatra Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Heru Prakoso said he expected the workers would abide by regulations when staging the rallies. He warned the workers not to be easily provoked by any parties that may want to turn peaceful rallies into violent demonstrations. (dic)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/29/thousands-workers-stage-labor-day-rally-medan.html

Police gear up to secure Labor Day demonstrations

Jakarta Post - April 29, 2014

Yuliasri Perdani, Jakarta – National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Agus Rianto says officers are prepared to maintain security during planned Labor Day demonstrations.

"To secure the gatherings, all regional police chiefs have been instructed to deploy additional personnel as needed. The Jakarta Police, for instance, will deploy 18,000 officers to watch the protesters and manage traffic," he said at National Police headquarters in Jakarta.

On Monday, National Police chief Gen. Sutarman and all regional police chiefs participated in a video conference to arrange security measures ahead of the public holiday known for protests by workers. Agus said that according to the law, the labor unions were allowed to hold protests from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m.

The National Police did not give an estimate on the number of people who would participate in demonstrations this year. Last year, around 30,000 people in Greater Jakarta took to the streets on Labor Day.

Army chief of staff Gen. Budiman said all relevant military commanders had communicated with labor union leaders regarding planned rallies. "Labor union leaders have presented their plans to the Army, so we will help them stay safe on Labor Day," he said.

Budiman did not elaborate on what measures the Army would take to guarantee security. Budiman said that the Army supported all workers and acknowledged Labor Day as a special time for them to celebrate their professions.

He added that the Army hoped all workers who wanted to voice their concerns on Labor Day would be peaceful and avoid any provocation. "We are all workers. As a soldier, I am also a worker just like all people. I am also convinced that the leaders of the unions will hold peaceful rallies," he said. (gda)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/29/police-gear-secure-labor-day-demonstrations.html

Unions prepare for May Day

Jakarta Post - April 26, 2014

Jakarta – Less than a week before the first ever May Day holiday this year, the Confederation of Indonesia Labor Unions (KSPI) is preparing for a large demonstration.

"We workers are consolidating our May Day plan. One of our demands is to raise the 2015 minimum wage by 30 percent and revise the basic living costs to number 84," KSPI president Said Iqbal said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Thursday evening.

The KSPI also demanded the removal of the outsourcing system and a pay rise for contract teachers' salaries.

In his speech in a youth community hall in Rawamangun, East Jakarta, Iqbal also called on the government to protect domestic and migrant workers. He also asked that the government stop the common practice of companies withholding workers' salaries.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared last year that starting in 2014 May 1 would be a national holiday, Labor Day.

Iqbal said the national holiday was not a gift from the government but rather a result of workers' struggle. "Giving us a day off on May Day is not enough, that's why we have to be well prepared this May Day," KSPI secretary-general Sahat Butar Butar said.

KSPI has said that the confederation would hold a May Day Fiesta on May 1 at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, which was expected to attract 120,000 workers.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/26/unions-prepare-may-day.html

Political parties & elections

As options dwindle, Prabowo pitches Aburizal on coalition

Jakarta Post - April 30, 2014

Margareth S. Aritonang and Bagus BT Saragih, Jakarta – After thus far failing to win the support of another political party for his presidential bid, Gerindra Party chief patron Prabowo Subianto held a meeting with Golkar Party chairman and presumptive presidential nominee Aburizal Bakrie to propose a political partnership ahead of the July 9 election.

After a 90-minute closed-door meeting, the two politicians spoke to reporters about their optimism that Gerindra and Golkar could join forces to form "a formidable coalition" to win the presidential race. "We are serious in thinking about working together for the sake of the country," Prabowo said.

Aburizal declined to give details about the meeting and was noncommittal when asked about possibly pairing with Prabowo on one presidential ticket. "We are still exploring what options we have to set up a possible coalition. Both still can be presidential candidates," Aburizal said with a chuckle.

Aburizal was joined in the meeting by Golkar secretary-general Idrus Marham and party treasurer Setya Novanto. Prabowo was accompanied by Gerindra deputy chairman Fadli Zon and party secretary-general Ahmad Muzani.

According to quick counts, in the April 9 legislative election, Gerindra got 11 percent of the vote while Golkar garnered 14.3 percent – both failing to meet the 25 percent threshold required to nominate a presidential candidate.

If the Golkar-Gerindra coalition materialized, Aburizal would likely be named its presidential candidate, given Golkar's stronger showing in the legislative election.

Aburizal, however, is less popular than Prabowo and consistently scores below the retired general in polls. Analysts have therefore suggested that Aburizal could become Prabowo's running mate.

Golkar senior politician Luhut Binsar Panjaitan has previously said that Aburizal would not accept being in the number two spot on a ticket, given the party's impressive performance in the legislative election.

Political analyst Arya Fernandes of Charta Politika also said a Golkar- Gerindra coalition would spell trouble as Prabowo would never give up his ambition to become president. "Being a presidential candidate is non- negotiable for Prabowo and Gerindra," he said.

Arya suggested that the coalition could take shape only if Golkar dropped Aburizal's bid in exchange for Cabinet seats in a possible Prabowo administration.

"Golkar politicians may be disappointed about the option but they must also be aware about Aburizal's low electability. So whether Golkar is willing to support Prabowo or not now pretty much depends on what kind of 'compensation' Gerindra is offering Golkar," he said.

Both Aburizal and Prabowo also said that they had agreed to conduct more meetings in the future to more comprehensively discuss possible political cooperation.

Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politicians, meanwhile, suggested on Tuesday that its presidential candidate Joko "Jokowi" Widodo was on the verge of officially getting pledges of support from the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the United Development Party (PPP).

"We are in deep discussion [on collaboration] with PKB and PPP," said PDI-P senior politician Pramono Anung, who is also a deputy speaker at the House of Representatives. Jokowi has also earlier said: "[We are] almost there."

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/30/as-options-dwindle-prabowo-pitches-aburizal-coalition.html

PKB and PPP cozying up to Jokowi

Jakarta Globe - April 28, 2014

Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Robertus Wardi, Jakarta – After making official its coalition with the National Democratic Party (Nasdem) earlier this month, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has also sealed a coalition deal with the National Awakening Party (PKB), officials from both parties said on Monday.

Founded by former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as Gus Dur, the PKB is reportedly offering two potential names to be PDI-P presidential candidate Joko Widodo's running mate. PKB central executive board chairman Marwan Jafar said on Sunday evening that Muhaimin Iskandar and Mahfud M.D. were both potential contenders.

"Joko will be selecting the vice president because this is personal. This candidacy is very subjective. Sure, the political party will push forward [names] but the vice presidential candidate will depend on the presidential candidate – who will be the most fitting? Because this has to do with an individual, a partnership and chemistry," Marwan said.

Previously Nasdem officials suggested Jusuf Kalla as the most suitable vice presidential candidate for Joko. Marwan also added that both parties have thoroughly discussed their partnership and that the coalition will soon be announced officially, emphasizing that the PDI-P and PKB had a similar vision, mission and values.

"Members of Nahdlatul Ulama, [the biggest Islamic organization in Indonesia, who comprise the PKB] and the Sukarno loyalist s [PDI-P] have a very good relationship. They can unite and win the presidential election for the betterment of the people's welfare," he said.

Marwan said the two political parties were looking for the right time to announce the partnership. "What's sure is that the PKB central executive board and the members are all solid, in one accord, and are all under one command: Muhaimin's leadership," Marwan said.

Separately, PDI-P deputy secretary general Ahmad Basarah also confirmed that both parties have reached an agreement to form a coalition together, but underlined that all parties will work together under Joko's leadership.

"Everyone has to unite totally in being ministers under Joko Widodo," Basarah said on Monday, adding that the partnership between the two parties was not based on transactional calculations.

"The partnership between the PDI-P and PKB is similar to that of PDI-P and Nasdem. There are similarities in ideology, platform and on having the same purpose. As such, the PKB has also agreed not to hold negotiations in terms of naming vice presidential candidates and ministries in the cabinet," he said.

Meanwhile, "king of dangdut" Rhoma Irama, who had previously been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate from the PKB, has said he will continue communicating and maintaining a good relationship with the party, despite his apparently diminishing chances of a presidential bid.

"I don't want there to be any friction or confrontation in the development of this nation. The PKB and I have agreed to maintain good relations," Rhoma said on Monday.

He remained hopeful, however, saying that the PKB was yet to name their official presidential candidate and vice presidential candidates and that his name, along with that of Mahfud M.D. was still being mentioned.

The PKB's inclusion of Rhoma as a potential candidate has been cited by many as a factor that increased the party's appeal in the recent legislative elections.

Rhoma said that he would trust the PKB's decision even if he ends up not being nominated, but said that ideally the PKB should hold a national working meeting to clarify its final stance.

"I am very ready to be nominated as president or as vice president, and I'm also ready not to be anything. I'll leave everything to the party," he said.

"I've met with Muhaimin recently, we talked privately about the latest political situation. And he is still committed to offering Rhoma [myself] and Mahfud as a presidential or vice presidential candidates. It is not true that I've has been scrapped. They are still holding political communications, and there have not been any political agreements."

Aside from the PKB, the PDI-P is also likely to form a coalition with the United Development Party (PPP), with former PPP chairman Hamzah Haz reportedly visiting the PDI-P chairwoman Megawati at her home on Monday.

During the meeting, Hamzah was accompanied by PPP deputy chairman Soeharso Monoarfa, who claimed the two have been granted permission by the PPP board of advisers to attend the meeting. Speaking to reporters afterwards, Hamzah Haz said the visit was intended to congratulate the PDI-P on their performance in the legislative elections.

"It's about time for the PDI-P to lead the government, because it emerged a winner in every region, despite not reaching its maximum potential," Hamzah said, adding that there was room for cooperation between the two parties.

Hamzah Haz said the PPP was the first party to mention Joko's name as a presidential candidate in its national working meeting a few years back.

PDI-P secretary general Tjahjo Kumolo said plans to partner with the PPP were still in an early phase. "We are still communicating, [looking at] the PPP's condition at the moment. That's what was discussed earlier," Tjahjo said after the meeting on Monday.

PDI-P central executive board chairwoman Puan Maharani, also said that there was a possibility for partnership with the PPP. "On behalf of PDI-P chairwoman Megawati I would like to thank Hamzah as an old friend and an icon who assisted Megawati during her time as president," she said. "This is our initial base in carrying out political communication with the PPP."

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/pkb-ppp-cozying-jokowi/

Joko Widodo lays out agricultural manifesto for Indonesia

Jakarta Globe - April 27, 2014

Deti Mega Purnamasari & Markus Junianto Sihaloho, Jakarta – Over a month after officially entering the presidential race, Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo, nominated as presidential candidate by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P, has begun introducing his vision and mission to the voters.

Visiting local farmers at the Tanjungrasa village in Bogor district's Cariu subdistrict, Joko on Sunday addressed six points in the field of agriculture and food security that would be his focus should he be elected president in the election set to take place on July 9.

Productive agricultural lands, Joko said, should not be converted into other use, such as residential or industrial areas, and should instead be preserved. Additionally, he said farmers would have to be assisted in making sure that even the smallest plots of lands were used productively and that farmers were educated not to use chemically engineered seeds or pesticides.

Joko also emphasized the need to build better infrastructure for farmers, the need to monitor the quality of water in the fields, as well as improved monetary benefits for farmers and better access to capital and financial support.

"I asked farmers, how many tons [of rice] can be produced from one hectare [of land]? Apparently it was six tons, because farmers here are using a good mix," Joko said during his visit on Sunday.

According to him, the average amount of rice produced on Indonesian farms was between four to five tons for each hectare of land, while the population grew by three million each year.

"Like it or not, we need to prepare more food for this growth. Additionally, in the past five years there has been a significant increase in food imports," he said, citing hikes in the imports of several staple food items such as rice, corn, soy, flour, sugar, salt, beef, onions and fruits.

"We import fish. We are a maritime nation but our fish imports have spiked," Joko said "These are issues that need to be sorted out. These things are the reason why inflation on certain basic commodities easily occurs for a long period of time and repeatedly."

Joko was adamant that the issue would see major risks unfurl in the next five to 10 years should the government fail to take strict and extreme policies. "Without that, we are risking our sovereignty and food security," he said. As such, Joko said it was important to ensure the production sector was improved so as to limit imports.

"We have to concentrate the production. Imports have to be cut and eventually eliminated. With some effort and hard work, I think we can achieve this within four or five years," he said.

A change of mentality

Aside from his vision for the Indonesian agricultural sector, Joko on Sunday also introduced what he called a "mental revolution," which he cited as one of the main requirements needed to see positive changes in Indonesia in the future.

"A mental revolution, because we have to change ourselves, so that this nation can reach its potential, because we are a big nation. Let's change our mentality from the negative to the positive," Joko said on Sunday, emphasizing that the issue would be one of his biggest focuses if elected president and would cover areas such as education, health and agriculture.

"We cannot be stuck in negative thoughts and instead should be positive, we have to be sure that we can do this well and in the right way," Joko said.

A member of Joko's national secretariat team, Eva Kusuma Sundari, said that with the program, Joko would become an icon of transformative leadership bringing new values to be practiced by government.

"[Joko is] a leader who seeks to promote a mental revolution for the sake of transforming Indonesia into becoming a sovereign, independent nation, the embodiment of a 21st-century Trisakti [ideology]," Eva said in Jakarta on Sunday, referring leadership principles espoused by Sukarno.

A mental revolution, she said, was part of an effort to build a fair and prosperous society that adheres to the Pancasila state ideology. "A nation that never leaves behind nation and character building projects," Eva explained.

She emphasized that Joko had started this mission in Jakarta, with people becoming more aware of their responsibility not to litter in the areas surrounding the Angke river in West Jakarta following the city administration's revitalization program.

"The Indonesian culture of working together has to be developed and strengthened for it to become the base of our [development]," Eva said, adding that education played a pivotal role in ensuring the strengthening of this culture among Indonesians. "Of course people and human resources are the engine of any public transformation projects and, as such, the spirit of education has to be made the center of character-building efforts."

PDI-P central executive board chairman Maruar Sirait said Joko was ready to build up the country by focusing on three indicators: Indonesia's political sovereignty, economic independence and a positive image in the cultural sector.

"It is important for us to move towards a mental revolution, as explained by Joko, because our nation is yet to unite mentally, but it will. We have to be confident with our capabilities," he said.

Despite having a vast supply of natural resources, such as marine, mineral and energy resources, Indonesia remains hampered by bigger issues such as uneven economic growth, poor law enforcement as well as other leadership and mental issues, he said.

"That is why the mental revolution explained by Joko is very relevant," Maruar said, adding that the program would inspire optimism throughout the nation's stakeholders.

Furthermore, Maruar also explained that Indonesia's diversity has yet to be well understood by the public and that the concept of pluralism remained in tatters as a result of years of colonialism and imperialism by the Dutch, who at the time used divisive rule to prevent the people from uniting against them.

"The mental revolution will have to nurture a mentality of unity, Indonesians have to come together in building a better Indonesia," he said. "[It's called] a mental revolution because we have to change ourselves, so that this nation would have hope. Because we are a great nation."

Search for a running mate

Maruar also said on Sunday that the mental revolution concept also proved PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri had made the right decision by appointing Joko as the party's candidate and that she would also elect the right running mate for Joko.

"We are sure Mega will elect the right vice presidential candidate for Joko, one who will not merely be a spare tire," Maruar said. "Let the decision be based on dialectics and public discussions. They [the public] have proved receptive towards the PDI-P's presidential candidate, and now we hope they will react in the same way towards the PDI-P's [appointment of a] vice presidential candidate."

He added the party wanted to make sure any vice president would work with the president in following through party policies and was not burdened with past misdeeds.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/joko-widodo-lays-agricultural-manifesto-indonesia/

Political parties' legislative campaign funds total Rp 3.1t: KPU

Suara Pembaruan - April 25, 2014

Anastasia Winanti Riesardhy, Jakarta – The 12 political parties that competed in the April 9 legislative election had campaign funds totaling Rp 3.1 trillion ($272 million), according to the nation's election committee.

The Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) topped the list with the most funds, at Rp 434.9 billion, while the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI) had the least, at Rp 52.9 billion, according to the General Elections Committee (KPU).

The KPU set the deadline at 6 p.m. on April 24 for parties to submit their reports on final campaign funding for the legislative election.

The report showed that the party with the most votes in the legislative election, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), wasn't the party that spent the most on campaigning.

The PDI-P – which by some quick count surveys had about 19 percent of the votes – reported it had spent Rp 404.7 billion. Final election results are scheduled to be released on May 9.

Nur Syarifah, head of the KPU legal bureau, said that the reports will be audited by an appointed public accountant office.

"Today all political parties on the national level have submitted the reports. All parties are free from sanctions. The accountants will work for the next 30 days," she said on Thursday at the KPU's headquarters in Central Jakarta.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/political-parties-legislative-campaign-funds-total-rp-3-1t-kpu/

1998 icon Amien Rais backs Prabowo

Jakarta Post - April 25, 2014

Ina Parlina and Bambang Muryanto, Jakarta/Yogyakarta – Politician Amien Rais, an icon during the 1998 reform movement to topple former president Soeharto, amplified a call on Friday to support Gerindra Party founder and presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto, Soeharto's former son-in-law.

Amien, the cofounder of the National Mandate Party (PAN) who now heads the party's advisory council, said that the party would forge a coalition with Gerindra to help Prabowo meet the minimum vote requirement to be nominated as a presidential candidate.

In exchange for the support, said Amien, the party would nominate its chairman, Hatta Rajasa, as Prabowo's running mate in the July presidential election.

"I always said yes [to supporting Prabowo]. I tend to support him," said Amien, who was the mastermind behind the "central axis" alliance in 1999 that paved the way for Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid to become president despite the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) winning the election.

It was earlier speculated that PAN would join an alliance of medium-sized parties initiated by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party. According to quick counts following the April 9 legislative election, PAN pocketed around 7 percent of the vote while Gerindra about 12 percent. The law requires parties to have a combined minimum of 25 percent of the popular vote to nominate a presidential candidate.

Although Amien said he had yet to meet with Prabowo to discuss the coalition, he was upbeat that Prabowo would be the right candidate to lead the country against the constraints of globalization advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

"Prabowo scores 9 out of 10 in terms of intelligence, firmness and stance on refusing to bow to outsiders," said Amien.

According to him, Hatta had met with Prabowo eight times, while PAN was also communicating intensively with other Islamic-based parties such as the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) to join Prabowo.

PAN's election division head Viva Yoga Mauladi said, however, that the party was still waiting for the Democratic Party to set its coalition course.

"It's [Democratic Party] presidential candidate remains unclear. PAN is still waiting for their decision. But at the same time, we are also intensively communicating with Gerindra." Quick counts have indicated that the Democratic Party garnered around 10 percent of the vote.

Despite Amien's support for Gerindra, Hatta's coalition preference remains in question given his personal ties with Yudhoyono. Hatta's daughter married Yudhoyono's youngest son in 2012.

Political observer Arie Sudjito of Gadjah Mada University predicted that despite Amien's blunt support for Prabowo, PAN would prefer joining the Democratic Party's coalition over those formed by Gerindra.

"The coalition decision will surely depend on the course set by the Democratic Party," said Arie. Until now, the Democratic Party has yet to indicate any plan to form an alliance with Gerindra.

While PAN's support remains fluid, Amien has also floated the idea of an Islamic-based party alliance as a new axis that could nominate its own presidential candidate. However, Amien admitted that it would be hard for the alliance to decide on a candidate, and thus he suggested throwing support behind Prabowo.

Quick counts found that the PKB, which heavily relied on the support of members of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country's biggest Muslim organization, garnered at least 9 percent of the vote.

The United Development Party (PPP) is estimated to have gained 6 percent, while the PKS around 5 percent and the Crescent Star Party (PBB) 1.5 percent.

In total, the five political parties, including PAN, will garner around 30 percent of the vote, more than enough to collectively endorse a candidate in the upcoming presidential election.

PPP's senior members, however, have just recently eased internal infighting, and have forced chairman Suryadharma Ali to revoke his support for Prabowo.

[Margareth S. Aritonang also contributed to this story.]

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/26/1998-icon-amien-rais-backs-prabowo.html

With no coalition yet, Bakrie's refusal to budge affecting Golkar's chances

Jakarta Globe - April 25, 2014

Kennial Caroline Laia, Jakarta – This year's legislative election result doesn't look too good for the Golkar Party. With only 14.3 percent of the votes, the party needs to form a coalition with at least one political party if it wants to nominate its own candidate in the July presidential election, just around the corner.

Yet, while other political parties are busy approaching potential allies, Golkar has reportedly been slow in building ties with others. Golkar's closest competitor the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) swiftly formed a coalition with the National Democrat Party (NasDem).

The Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) has moved quickly to talk of a coalition with the United Development Party (PPP), despite divisions among the latter over chairman Suryadharma Ali's support for Gerindra's leader, Prabowo Subianto.

Analysts also warn that Aburizal Bakrie's insistence on running as Golkar's presidential candidate is impacting the party's desirability as a coalition partner.

Aburizal's poor polling figures suggest Golkar would fare better if the business tycoon settled for a vice presidential nomination and offered the top spot to an alternative candidate.

Change of plan

Political analyst Andrinof A. Chaniago said that with a slim chance of winning the presidential election, Golkar needs to change its plans, if it still wants to run in the July 9 election. Andrinof said that the party should focus on promoting its potential members to be in the cabinet.

"Since the chance to win is slim, they have to change the goal from winning the presidential election to supporting another presidential candidate from another party by forming a coalition. But most importantly Golkar should promote its members," he said.

From the party itself, there are two politicians that have openly expressed their intention to become a running mate for other presidential candidates, namely Akbar Tanjung, the party's chief patron, and Jusuf Kalla, a former vice president and Golkar's former chairman.

Moving at a snail's pace

Analysts have described Golkar as being too slow in building bridges with other parties to form a coalition. Andrinof said that if Golkar keeps its snail's pace, it could be far behind other parties.

However, Muhammad Qodari of Indo Barometer, a polling institute, said that even though Golkar had not been seen meeting with other parties, it didn't mean that it hadn't.

"Many considered Golkar as not as attractive as other political parties because it has not been seen making approaches... but who knows? They could be playing behind the scenes," Qodari said.

Qodari continued that even though Aburizal's electability is not as high as PDI-P's Joko Widodo, or Gerindra's Prabowo, the Golkar chairman still has a chance to compete in the election.

Joko, the Jakarta governor, is widely tipped to win the presidential contest, with Prabowo second. But the appeal of Golkar as a party is still quite high as evident in the legislative election in which the party garnered more than 14 percent of votes, according to quick count results. Official results are due out on May 9.

"[Because of this] it's quite easy for Golkar to attract other parties," Qodari said. "Aburizal is a cooperative and egalitarian figure. He has a big chance to get figures from other political parties to form a coalition. Therefore it's still very possible for Golkar to run in the presidential race."

Qodari said that Golkar does not need to worry about its chances of forming a coalition or to nominate its own presidential candidate.

"Golkar needs only one party for a coalition. It can take it easy and not panic," he said. "Most other parties will try hard to find a partner for a coalition. Let's just wait and see what happens next month."

Intense communication

Hanta Yuda, executive director of the Pol-Tracking Institute, said that despite the probability that Golkar will fail to win in the presidential election, the party still has a great asset to form a coalition with other parties as well as with the "Prabowo axis" or "Joko axis."

"That is why the Golkar needs to communicate intensively with other parties," Hanta said. "It is quite difficult for Golkar to find partners for a coalition, so they must move actively to convince other parties to form a coalition."

Hanta said that other parties would likely prefer the PDI-P or Gerindra in their priority list as a political partner. "However, anything could happen. This is just one prediction," he said. "In addition, within Golkar, the highest electability lies in Aburizal and Jusuf Kalla. So, Aburizal still has a chance to run."

Hanta agreed that should Golkar decide to cancel its plans to nominate Aburizal as a presidential candidate and seek only to secure a vice presidential seat, it would create more dynamics for the party to form a coalition with others.

"[Then they] could join any party whether it is the PDI-P or Gerindra," he said. "In addition, Golkar needs only one party to meet the presidential threshold."

"Interestingly, the Golkar axis is somehow in a difficult position. They have always been a 'queen' when it comes to the governmental coalition but on the other hand when it comes to a presidential coalition, it is a bit tough for them because they lack strong figures," Hanta added.

Other possibilities Qodari said that Golkar was not the only party that might struggle to find a coalition partner.

"Gerindra is also in jeopardy. The party only garnered 11.8 percent of votes. If it wants to be safe, it needs support from two mediocre parties. But, it had just recently failed to secure support from the United Development Party," he said.

"On the other hand Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, could also form its own coalition. SBY has unique bargaining power. Things could change. Rather than there being the Jokowi axis, ARB axis, and Prabowo axis that there is perceived to be now, things could switch to a Jokowi axis, Prabowo axis and SBY axis," Qodari said.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/coalition-yet-bakries-refusal-budge-affecting-golkars-chances/

Golkar stands firm with Aburizal Bakrie as its presidential candidate

Jakarta Globe - April 24, 2014

Suara Pembaruan, Jakarta – Golkar Party will decide on Aburizal Bakrie's running mate and the party's coalition partners in next month's national leaders meeting, as it dismissed speculation that it was considering another presidential candidate.

The party will hold the meeting in mid May, Golkar deputy secretary-general Nurul Arifin said on Wednesday. The meeting will neither discuss nor evaluate the party's decision to nominate Aburizal as its presidential candidate, and Nurul said that it was standing by its decision to pick Aburizal.

"Once [Golkar made its decision on nominating] Aburizal Bakrie, it will always be him. The meeting is not for an evaluation," Nurul said. She says that the meeting will discuss who will be Bakrie's vice presidential running mate and to will evaluate the party's performance in the April 9 legislative election.

Golkar received the second most votes, at 14.20 percent, in the election two weeks ago, according to a quick count tally by LSN. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) received the most, at 19.64 percent. Final results will be released by the General Elections Committee (KPU) on May 9. Golkar must form a coalition with other political parties in order to meet the minimum 25 percent requirement to field a candidate.

"Golkar hasn't chosen a vice presidential candidate because we're still waiting for the KPU's official result. We will decide who will be our coalition partners and Pak ARB's [Aburizal Bakrie] running mate," she said.

Nurul expressed her disappointment with the Indonesian media's focus on this year's presidential race primarily on two hopefuls – Joko Widodo of the PDI-P, and Prabowo Subianto of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra).

"Lately it's always about Jokowi [Joko Widodo] and Prabowo, whereas we have ARB. Golkar also got the second most votes in the legislative election," she said. "I read in the media that it seems like there are only two candidates, Jokowi and Prabowo. ARB is seldom talked about, even though he can be a dark horse [candidate]. If we talk about his capacity, I can say that ARB is capable and has the potential."

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/golkar-stands-firm-aburizal-barie-presidential-candidate/

Surveys & opinion polls

Indonesian democracy dictated by money: Survey

Jakarta Post - April 29, 2014

Slamet Susanto, Yogyakarta – Politics and democracy in Indonesia during the past decade have tended to be stagnant, according to a report based on a survey conducted in 30 regencies and municipalities nationwide.

Even more worrying is that one of the factors considered key to democratic success is money. "In every democratic process, such as in a legislative election, money is the number one element, although it is not everything," said Eric Hiarej, one of the report's researchers, on Tuesday.

Eric, who is also a lecturer of international relations at the University of Gadjah Mada's (UGM) School of Social and Political Sciences in Yogyakarta, was speaking at the launch of the report, which was commissioned jointly by UGM and the University of Oslo.

Olle Tornquist, a professor of political sciences from the University of Oslo, said that in the current democratic processes, Indonesian people had tended to coordinate their societal elements by themselves.

That may explain why candidates who want to win an election can no longer depend solely on a popularity, but must come into direct contact with constituents, and must communicate well with civil society organizations to get support from the middle classes.

"Depending only on figures' popularity, such as Prabowo [Gerindra Party chief patron Prabowo Subianto] or Jokowi [Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle presidential candidate Joko Widodo] won't be enough," said Olle.

"We have seen many cases in which candidates who were active in pro- democracy movements failed in elections because of money politics," he went on.

The survey involved 592 pro-democracy activists from 30 regencies and municipalities nationwide as respondents. "We have conducted the survey since 2013 and all elements of the survey will be fully completed by the end of this year," survey team coordinator Amalinda Savirani said.

Apart from the survey, Amalinda added, her institution would also build a pro-democracy movement that would involve societal elements in 30 regencies and municipalities. "The partnership to develop this democratic movement will be conducted until 2017," Amalinda said. (ebf)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/29/indonesian-democracy-dictated-money-survey.html

Environment & natural disasters

Riau haze investigation focuses on companies

Jakarta Post - April 24, 2014

Pekanbaru – The Riau Police are intensifying their investigation into haze by probing a number of companies in Bengkalis and Indragiri Hilir regencies in connection to forest and peatland fires in Riau.

Riau Police chief Brig. Gen. Condro Kirono, however, have refused to reveal the names of the companies. "The cases are still under investigation. We are also digging deeper into the PT NSP [for alleged involvement in forest fires in Meranti Islands regency]. We have questioned 18 witnesses so far," said Condro on Wednesday.

"One thing is for sure, we will bring all offenders, be they individuals or companies, to justice because they have caused great losses on many fronts, including health, education and the economy. They have also tainted Riau's image in the international world."

Condro said the Riau Police were currently handling 70 cases involving forest and peatland fires. As many as 116 individual suspects have been detained. "The dossiers of 62 cases have been completed and will soon be handed over to the court by the prosecutor's office," he added.

Meanwhile, Riau provincial administration is preparing for an extreme dry season, which is expected to start in May.

"The dry season will come at the end of May. We need to stay alert because the upcoming dry season is forecast to be drier than usual and will last until the end of August," said a weather analyst at the Pekanbaru Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), Ardhitama.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/24/riau-haze-investigation-focuses-companies.html

Disability rights

Groups seek new disability law

Jakarta Post - April 24, 2014

Bambang Muryanto, Yogyakarta – Advocacy groups for disabled persons are seeking a new law to replace the current 1997 disability law, which they say is ineffective.

"One thing we want to highlight is that we want a disability protection law that adopts a totally different philosophy. The current situation and condition is different from 17 years ago when the Law No. 4/1997 was created," Fajri Nursyamsi of the Disability Draft Bill Working Group told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Thirty-five disabled community groups and 15 civil society organizations from areas across Java are attending a two-day meeting in Yogyakarta to discuss the disability draft bill currently included in the 2014 National Legislation Program (Prolegnas).

Fajri said there were still opportunities for disabled persons to provide input in the ongoing deliberations of the draft bill.

"The most fundamental weakness of the Law No. 4/1997 on disabilities is that disabled protection principles stipulated in the law are based on charity whereas disabled communities have rights the state must fulfill as part of human rights protection," said Fajri, who is also a researcher for the Legal and Policy Studies Center (LPSK).

Fajri further said Indonesia had ratified the Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities (CRPD) through Law No. 19/2011 on CRPD ratification. The CRPD requires the state to respect, fulfill and protect the rights of disabled persons. (ebf)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/24/groups-seek-new-disability-law.html

Graft & corruption

Indonesian politics remain graft ridden

Jakarta Globe - April 29, 2014

Kennial Caroline Laia, Jakarta – Sixteen years ago, Indonesians of all stripes took to the streets to demand the ousting of former President Suharto, the dictator who had ruled the country for more than 30 years.

The cry of Reformasi echoed across the archipelago as young and old took to the streets in the hope of effecting some real change to their lives and the country. Call it naive, and with hindsight no doubt some will, but there was a real hope a new government could bring change.

But while the dictator was replaced by a democratic government and Indonesians can now vote directly for a president, the rampant corruption that blighted the Suharto years remains.

Government positions, be they lowly district officials to ministers responsible for massive budgets and national development, are seen as an easy way to feather one's nest at the expense of others.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will step down in July after serving an unbroken 10 years as a democratically elected president. In itself, that is progress and something to remember. However, the era will also be remembered for the dozens of officials who have been caught with their hands in the nation's cookie jar.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has named several top politicians as suspects in graft cases. And as you go down the greasy pole of Indonesian politics, more and more have been called to give their evidence or explain their wealth.

Trillions of rupiah have been lost, money that could have been used to build new roads, improve the schools or provide better health care to the regions where people lack the cash to visit a doctor in Singapore or Malaysia.

Political Hall of Shame

Andi Mallarangeng, the former minister of sports and youth affairs for instance, earned the dubious honor of being the first active minister to be locked up after he was detained by the KPK over his alleged involvement in the graft-tainted Hambalang sports center construction project.

Last week, the KPK named Hadi Poernomo, former Finance Ministry director general of taxation, as a suspect in a tax case involving Bank Central Asia, only a day after he stepped down from his position as the head of the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK).

The KPK claims he illegally overturned a decision made by a subordinate who had rejected BCA's appeal against a Rp 375 billion ($32.6 million) tax bill.

The chairman of the nation's anti-graft agency said that top officials were susceptible to corruption but he assured them the KPK was on their case.

Highlighted graft cases

The KPK has recently named the director of the Home Affairs Ministry, Sugiharto, as a suspect in the e-KTP procurement project. KPK spokesman Johan Budi this month also stated that the minister, Gamawan Fauzi, would be summoned as a witness if needed for questioning.

The KPK also says that former Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari was involved in a scheme to mark up the price of crucial medical equipment during the height of Indonesia's bird flu epidemic in 2006-07.

As for former Forestry Minister M.S. Kaban, the KPK has filed for a travel ban on him as the commission regards his risk of flight to be high. He is allegedly involved in the Integrated Radio Communication System (SKRT) graft case which also involved the owner of Masaro Radiokom, Anggoro Widjojo, who allegedly bribed a number of officials to soothe the SKRT's budget proposal in 2007. In the case, the KPK had summoned M.S. Kaban as a witness.

Another minister involved in a graft case is Suswono, from the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) who was named in an indictment against graft suspect Anggoro Widjojo.

In their indictment, prosecutors from the KPK alleged that Suswono, who back then served on the legislative oversight committee on forestry and agriculture, took a Rp 50 million bribe to approve the procurement of the equipment.

Then we have Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Jero Wacik, who was questioned as a witness in the KPK investigation into graft at oil and gas regulator SKKMigas. The case, in which the disgraced head of SKKMigas Rudi Rubiandini was named a suspect, has been described as one of the biggest corruption cases in history.

Tempting position

Zainal Arifin Mochtar from Gadjah Mada University's Anti-Corruption Study Center (Pukat UGM) said a ministerial office is prone to graft due to the absence of strong regulations to limit their authority in carrying out government affairs. "There is no law which stipulates the parameters of ministers' or other top officials' authority," he said.

"This loophole then becomes a free-for-all with politicians and their officials basically able to do what they want. They can make up their own rules for their department, they can delegate tasks as they see fit and they can sign contracts with whoever takes their fancy," he said. "In addition, the lack of transparency and accountability makes it easier for top officials to act with impunity," he said.

Zainal added that the ministers who come from a party – as opposed to technocrats brought in from elsewhere – were especially liable to graft as they, in effect, served two masters; their party and their department.

Decisions that should be taken in the public interest have thus been hijacked by both partisan influences and sheer greed.

"Many top officials are political officials closely linked to the upper echelons of a political party. It is very difficult for them to act rationally or to divide their official responsibilities from their responsibility to the political party machinery," he said.

Priority list

Ade Irawan, a researcher with Indonesia Corruption Watch, said that besides investigating corruption cases among government officials, the KPK should prioritize ministers from the parties in its investigations.

"Within the government, the top officials have direct access to planning and executing the budget and this is where their commitment to the voter becomes blurred," he said. "It is important to investigate the officials, because they often abuse their power for political interest," he said.

Ade added that before the law, no matter how high the position of the person, if they commit acts in violation of the law and disrupting the country's interest, they should be immediately brought before the courts.

"Before the law, all the citizens are equal. There is no discrimination. If you are proved to be committing crimes you have to face the law," he said.

Political talks

Political analyst Arbi Sanit from the University of Indonesia said a position as minister would be always be open to political meddling all the while coalitions were needed to form a government.

"Small parties have inordinate power beyond their actual votes when it comes to forming a government and can make, and get away with, outlandish demands," he said.

"The president then feels beholden to his coalition partners who have allowed him to take the top job so we often see incompetent ministers who have only got their jobs because of the political horse-trading that comes with coalition forming."

Ideally, says Yunarto Wijaya, the executive director of consultancy Charta Politika, ministers should not come from parties but should be appointed based on their competence, ability and experience.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/politics/indonesian-politics-remain-graft-ridden/

Islamic party leader dragged further into SKRT graft case

Jakarta Post - April 24, 2014

Haeril Halim, Jakarta – The trial of graft suspect Anggoro Widjojo has revealed that former forestry minister MS Kaban – who is chairman of the Islamic-based Crescent Star Party (PBB) – allegedly asked for bribe money from Anggoro in return for a multimillion US dollar government project.

Anggoro, the owner of PT Masaro Radiokom who was arrested in China in February after being on the run for nearly four years, attended his first hearing at the Jakarta Corruption Court on Wednesday.

He is accused of bribing lawmakers and ministry officials, including Kaban, to secure the Forestry Ministry's Rp 180 billion (US$15.4 million) project to procure an Integrated Radio Communication System (SKRT) in 2007.

Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) prosecutors told the court that after sending the project's budget proposal to the Finance Ministry for approval, Kaban demanded that Anggoro buy two elevators, worth $58,581, and pay the Rp 200 million cost to install them in the Menara Dakwah building where PBB activities were usually conducted.

"After a meeting conducted at Kaban's official residence in March 2008, the defendant agreed to Kaban's request to provide two elevators for the Menara Dakwah building," KPK prosecutor Riyono read aloud from the indictment.

The SKRT project was frozen in 2004, but once Kaban took the helm, the project was reinstated in 2007 after receiving the go-ahead from House of Representatives Commission IV overseeing plantations.

According to the indictment, on Aug. 6, 2007, Kaban texted Anggoro: "Please come to my official residence now and if you can please bring the $15,000." Anggoro visited Kaban's house the following day and gave him the money. "Ten days later, Kaban again texted the defendant: 'This is an emergency, can you send [me] $10,000? Just like the other day, bring it to my house'," the prosecution said.

It was also alleged that Anggoro gave $20,000 to the ministry's secretary- general, Boen Mochtar, and $10,000 to the ministry's planning division head, Wandojo Siswanto. It is unclear whether the money was handed over based on Kaban's instructions or not.

Prosecutors added that on Feb. 13, 2008, Anggoro instructed his driver, Isdriatmoko, to deliver $20,000 to Kaban via the latter's driver, Muhammad Yusuf. Then, on Feb. 25, 2008, Kaban again asked Anggoro to provide him with traveler's checks worth Rp 50 million. "The traveler's checks were given to Kaban at the Forestry Ministry."

The graft case has already resulted in the conviction of a number of politicians, including former House Commission IV chairman Yusuf Erwin Faisal, who was sentenced to 4.5 years in 2009; former Golkar Party lawmaker Azwar Chesputra; former PBB lawmaker Hilman Indra; and former Golkar legislator Fahri Andi Leluasa, who was sent down for four years in 2010.

The indictment stated that Anggoro had paid bribes, of an unspecified amount, to Yusuf for persuading Commission IV members to approve the ministry's request to relaunch the SKRT project in August 2007.

"After accepting the money, Yusuf then distributed it to a number of Commission IV members: Rp 50 million to Suswono, now the agriculture minister; Rp 50 million to Mukhtarudin, and Rp 50 million to Nurhadi Musawir," prosecutors added.

In March 2008, Anggoro once again allegedly paid Yusuf money, who passed it on to several Commission IV colleagues: $30,000 to Fahri; S$5,000 to Azwar; S$20,000 to Hilman; S$30,000 to Mukhtarudin; and Rp 20 million to Sujud Sirajuddin.

Kaban and Yusuf were slapped with travel bans in February this year, a move by the KPK that many predicted would see the pair named suspects in the case. Kaban did not return The Jakarta Post's calls on Wednesday night for his comments.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/24/islamic-party-leader-dragged-further-skrt-graft-case.html

Terrorism & religious extremism

Illicit funds may have paid for anti-terror program

Jakarta Post - April 30, 2014

Haeril Halim, Jakarta – The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) questioned on Tuesday former National Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief AM Hendropriyono and National Land Agency (BPN) chairman Joyo Winoto as witnesses for graft and money laundering suspect Anas Urbaningrum, who is also former Democratic Party chairman.

"He [Hendropriyono] was questioned in relation to Anas' money laundering case," KPK spokesman Priharsa Nugraha said on Tuesday. As for Joyo, Priharsa said he was questioned as a witness in the Hambalang sports complex graft case, which also involved Anas.

Hendropriyono said KPK investigators asked him about the procurement of trilingual dictionaries of English, Indonesian and Arabic, which the intelligence agency initiated with a traditional Islamic boarding school run by Anas' father-in-law Attabik Ali in Yogyakarta.

Hendropriyono did not give details of the link between the procurement and the alleged money laundering activities of Anas, raising suspicions that Anas channeled ill-gotten money to the boarding school, financing the production of dictionaries proposed by the school.

Hendropriyono said the distribution of the dictionaries was part of efforts to eradicate terrorism. "When I was in charge of BIN, there were a lot of bombings taking place. The price the school offered to us was very cheap, Rp 100,000 [US$8.7] each. Later, we distributed thousands of dictionaries to Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia for free," Hendropriyono said.

He further said that Attabik proposed distributing the dictionaries. "I forget the value of the project, but it was reasonable. It took place years ago," he said. Hendropriyono failed to give details on the link between the distribution of the dictionary with BIN's terrorism eradication program.

Meanwhile, Joyo was summoned to give details on the issuance of a land certificate in the Hambalang project. According to an audit by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK), the issuance of the land certificate was marred with irregularities.

In the dossier of former youth and sports minister Andi Alfian Mallarangeng, another suspect in the Hambalang case, it was revealed that Anas had instructed Democratic Party lawmaker Ignatius Mulyono to lobby Joyo so that he could issue the land certificate for the project.

Also on Tuesday, the KPK questioned East Kutai Mining Agency head Timur Firly Sandi, to further investigate a claim that Anas controlled 10,000 hectares of coal mining in the regency.

Timur was summoned to give information on the issuance of a mining permit. Earlier on Tuesday, the antigraft body also summoned East Kutai Regent Isran Noor, a Democratic Party politician, to question him about the permit.

Speaking after his questioning last week, Isran defended Anas by saying that mining firm PT Arina Kotajaya, which controlled the mining operation, had nothing to do with Anas. "From the documents I've read, I've never seen Anas' name. The only names I recall are Saripah and Fauziah, not Anas," he said.

It remains to be seen if Anas is connected with the two names registered in the mining permit. Anas was named a suspect in the graft-ridden Hambalang sports complex project in West Java for allegedly accepting a Toyota Harrier sedan from the construction firm that won the tender.

KPK investigators accused Anas of accepting Rp 2.2 billion from the same company to fund his campaign during the Democrats' congress in 2010, during which he was elected chairman. Later, the KPK charged him with money laundering.

Anas was accused of violating articles 3 and 4 of the 2010 Money Laundering Law and articles 3 and 6 of the 2003 Money Laundering Law, which combined carry a maximum 20 years' imprisonment.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/30/illicit-funds-may-have-paid-anti-terror-program.html

Hard-line & vigilante groups

Police arrest 12 Pancasila Youth suspects in brawl with FBR

Jakarta Globe - April 25, 2014

Bayu Marhaenjati, Jakarta – Twelve members of Pancasila Youth were arrested by the Jakarta police for the attack on rival group Betawi Brotherhood Forum that left at least one person seriously injured.

"For now, 12 members of PP [Pancasila Youth] have been taken into custody. All will be detained," Jakarta police spokesman Sr. Cmr. Rikwanto said on Friday. The police confiscated evidence, including some wooden logs, a machete, bottles and a sword.

Rikwanto said seven of the suspects faced charges of group assault, while the rest would be charged for being accomplices. The reason behind the attack remained unclear. Clashes between PP and the Betawi group, known as FBR, are common and often involve control of turf and illegal parking areas.

The brawl between the two groups – which are known for their thuggish behavior – broke out when about 50 members of the PP attacked a post controlled by the FBR in Sawangan, Depok in West Java on Wednesday.

An FBR member identified as Irgan Marzia suffered wounds on his head, left hand and shoulder after being attacked with a machete.

Rikwanto said the police have summoned leaders from the two groups and asked them to reconcile and ordered their members to stop fighting.

Last year a member of the FBR named Ramlan died after being badly beaten in an attack. He had suffered stab wounds to his head, back and chest during a brawl that was triggered by members of the Kebayoran Baru chapter of the national PP who reportedly saw FBR members removing PP banners that hung along Jalan Barito.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/police-arrested-12-pancasila-youth-suspects-brawl-fbr/

Freedom of religion & worship

Business as usual for Ahmadis in West Java, despite threat

Jakarta Post - April 26, 2014

Arya Dipa, Bandung, West java – Ahmadis in Ciamis, West Java, are observing their religious activities as usual at the Nur Khilafat Mosque, despite a call from the local Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) for them to cease worshipping in a bid to maintain security and order.

"Everything is normal and secure as of now. Hopefully, it will always remain the same," said Ahmadi preacher Syaiful Uyun on Friday.

Earlier, the MUI's Ciamis chapter called on the Ahmadis to discontinue every form of activity at the mosque to create a conducive atmosphere in the regency. The call was conveyed through a letter signed by the MUI Ciamis regency chapter head and secretary on April 23.

Syaiful expressed the hope that he and the other Ahmadis could still carry out their activities and worship as usual.

The previous day, Uyun said his group had sent a written response to the MUI. The four-page letter, containing 26 points, was signed by the Ahmadiyah Congregation Ciamis chapter head Kamal Abdul Aziz and preacher Fadhal Ahmad.

The letter was also addressed to the West Java governor, police chief, military command chief, prosecutor's office head, religious office head, MUI head and Ciamis regent, as well as the Bandung Legal Aid Institute.

In the first point, Kamal said Indonesia was a Pancasila-based state and not a theocratic country. According to him, Indonesia has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees every citizen's right to adhere to their respective religion and worship according to their faith.

For every Ahmadi, added Kamal, the state-based ideology of Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution and the principle of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) were fixed, so he warmly welcomed the MUI's call for every community to create a favorable situation and unity.

"With all due respect, we cannot fulfill the plea from the MUI Ciamis chapter," Kamal wrote.

In the letter, the Ahmadiyah community ensured that the local community did not object or was not disturbed by the presence of the mosque, or activities taking place there.

They also quoted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as saying, "the state does not ban Ahmadiyah, but the state regulates." The following point stated, "the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto said the government had apparently not decided on the Ahmadiyah sect in Indonesia, but the government's stance is clear, it is a faith that cannot be banned."

The MUI said the letter was issued based on the Joint Ministerial Decree in 2008, which stated the sect was not allowed to propagate its beliefs. "None of the articles in the joint decree banned Ahmadis from carrying out activities at the mosque," said Kamal.

In the past few years, Ahmadiyah communities across the country have been subject to violence from religious hard-liners who refuse to share a religious platform with Ahmadis.

West Java Police chief Insp. Gen. M. Iriawan said the police would protect every member of society irrespective of their views or faith. "Our efforts are aimed at protecting against undesired developments," said Iriawan.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/26/business-usual-ahmadis-w-java-despite-threat.html

Ahmadis unequivocal in response to ban by MUI

Jakarta Globe - April 24, 2014

Camelia Pasandaran, Jakarta – An Ahmadiyah community in West Java has lashed out at a call for a ban on its activities by the country's highest clerical council, which only days earlier backed a declaration of jihad, or holy war, against another maligned minority group.

In an open letter sent on Thursday to the Indonesian Council of Ulema, or MUI, the Ahmadiyah congregation in Ciamis, West Java, questioned the clerics' authority to forbid them from practicing their faith.

"If the Ciamis chapter of the MUI or any residents' group has any objections with the Ahmadiyah, please address them according to the proper procedures, and don't take the law into your own hands," the letter said.

It noted that there was nothing in the law that permitted the MUI or any other group from trying to force a ban on Ahmadiyah activities, and that doing so would be a direct violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of worship.

The letter was in response to a letter issued by the local MUI chapter on Wednesday demanding a halt to all activities by the Ahmadiyah congregation at Nur Khilafat Mosque in Ciamis.

The MUI claimed the move was necessary to safeguard "the brotherhood among the Islamic faithful" in the district, and cited a 2008 joint ministerial decree and a 2011 West Java gubernatorial decree that both ban the spread of Ahmadiyah teaching – but not its continued practice by adherents of the faith.

In its response, the Ahmadiyah congregation pointed out that the Constitution safeguarded the right of every citizen to worship in accordance with their individual religion and belief."

"We gladly accept your advice as the MUI to create a peaceful climate in Ciamis district and brotherhood among Islamic people," the letter said. "The Ahmadiyah is indeed polite, tolerant and peaceful, and has always campaigned everywhere on the principles of loyalty, freedom, equality, respect and peace; and love for all, hatred for none.

"But concerning your request of halting all activities at Nur Khilafat Mosque, with all due respect, please accept our apology but we have to reject it," it said.

A mosque official said there had been rumors swirling even before the letter was issued that hard-liners from the notorious Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, planned to forcibly close the mosque.

"We heard before the legislative election" – on April 9 – "that the FPI, which doesn't like the Ahmadiyah, planned to shut down the mosque," Syaiful Uyun, the mosque's imam, told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday. "What we don't understand is, why did the MUI issue this letter?"

Nur Khilafat Mosque was built in 1965, and serves a daily congregation of five to seven families, Syaiful said. He added that they had never had problems with their neighbors before.

"We have a close relationship with our neighbors," he said. "For example, there was wedding recently and we sat and ate together with those who are not Ahmadiyah."

Syaiful stressed that the MUI had no right to call for the congregation to stop worshiping. "The MUI is just a mass organization, so it has no right to ban us," he said. "We said we're really sorry, but we can't fulfill their demand because praying is the obligation of every believer in Islam. So we can't stop the mosque activities."

The MUI's letter came just three days after the council backed a call by Sunni hard-liners in Bandung, the West Java capital, for a jihad against Shiites, another oft-persecuted minority Islamic community.

Ahmad Cholil Ridwan, a leader of the MUI, told the thousands in attendance at Sunday's declaration that the Shiites needed to be "purged" from the country.

"As long as we [Islamic parties] are not in power, we will never be able to purge the Shiites," he said. "We need to strengthen our political base. The ruling coalition must be controlled by Islamic parties."

Like the Shiites, the Ahmadiyah have long been the target of attack by Sunni hard-liners, particularly in West Java, where the governor, Ahmad Heryawan, has made no secret of his hostility for the minority groups, saying last year that religious intolerance against the Ahmadiyah would end if they gave up their beliefs.

In October last year, the FPI sealed off an Ahmadiyah mosque in West Java's Sumedang district after accusing the small congregation of flouting the ban on proselytizing.

In March last year, the Al-Misbah Mosque in Bekasi was likewise boarded off by officers from the Bekasi Public Order Agency, locking several Ahmadiyah members inside. They also sealed off the property with iron sheeting to prevent followers from getting into the mosque, but the Ahmadiyah are still able to get in and out through a house that abuts on the back yard of the mosque.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/ahmadis-unequivocal-response-ban-mui/

Islamic law & morality

Big brother watches young lovebirds in Jakarta's parks

Jakarta Post - April 25, 2014

Corry Elyda, Jakarta – Security guards at a public park in West Jakarta have been on an undercover mission in the past few months: in pairs, they pose as young couples dating in Cattleya Park but are in fact spying on the numerous lovebirds under the trees in the evenings.

One of the undercover guards, Casmadi, said that since a few months ago, they had caught three young couples in flagrante delicto. "When we see a couple doing obscene things, like taking off their pants, we immediately nab them," Casmadi told The Jakarta Post recently.

He said he usually did not mind if couples only kissed in the park. "I would usually only blow my whistle so that they stop kissing. However, if they have sex in the park, they are going to be in a lot of trouble," he said.

Casmadi said that nabbed couples were taken to the Parks and Cemeteries Agency office for questioning. "We ask them how to get in contact with their parents so that we can call the parents and ask them to pick them up," he said.

The 62-year-old security officer said it was not easy to call the parents of such couples, mostly junior high school students, as they did not carry identity cards and refused to give the correct information. "I usually threaten to take them to the police office if they don't give the real phone numbers of their parents," he said.

Casmadi, who is also a community head in the subdistrict near the park, said the drama did not stop there as when the parents arrived, the first thing they did was get mad at the guards. It was hard for them to believe that their children did such things.

"Once a mother scolded me for picking up her child for no reason. I finally had to tell her the whole story in detail to prove that I wasn't making it up," he said, adding that the mother swooned after hearing the graphic story.

Cattleya, a 3-hectare park near Taman Anggrek mall, is a popular hangout among youngsters. However, responding to reports from local residents who raised concerns that many youngsters used the park to have sex, the security guards of the Parks and Cemeteries Agency have conducted several raids in recent months. Agency head Nandar Sunandar said his agency would make improvements to prevent such things from recurring.

"We will raid the park more often and install more lamps, so people will be reluctant to act inappropriately," he told the Post.

Nandar said the legal basis of the measure was Bylaw No. 8/2007 on public order. "Anyone is prohibited from acting immorally or behaving indecently on the streets, green strips, parks and other public spaces," he said, citing the bylaw's Article 42.

He said that although the agency did not require parents to make the couples marry, he urged them to do so.

In his perspective, marrying off the teenagers to each other was amal (a good deed in Islam) as it would save the children from sinning, he said.

Premarital and extramarital affairs are considered a serious sin in Islam. He argued that it was better than fining or imprisoning the couples. The maximum penalty for violating the bylaw article is 90 days in jail and Rp a 30 million (US$2,580) fine.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama said previously that half of the parks in the capital city had been equipped with CCTV and other parks would have them by the end of June in order to reduce crime.

"We target that the installation will be finished by June," he said as quoted by kompas.com. Ahok said workers were installing optic fiber as all CCTVs would be integrated.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/25/big-brother-watches-young-lovebirds-jakarta-s-parks.html

Regional autonomy & separatism

Government wants power to punish rogue regional heads

Jakarta Post - April 26, 2014

Hans Nicholas Jong, National – The revision of the 2004 Regional Administration Law would grant the central government the power to punish regional heads whose policies were considered to be inhibiting development, a minister said.

Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi said on Thursday that the revision should be able to fix the flaws of the current decentralization system, which many have said had yet to benefit people in the regions.

"In Law No. 32/2004 on regional autonomy, there is no slot for the central government to directly punish the local government," he told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar to commemorate the 18th anniversary of regional autonomy at the Grand Sahid Jaya hotel in Central Jakarta.

Under the existing law, the authority to punish regional heads lies in the hands of the Regional Legislative Council (DPRD), which is also required to propose the form of punishment to the Supreme Court for approval.

Gamawan argued that the current mechanism was flawed because the regional administrative power was actually bestowed by the central government, and for that reason the central government should be given the authority to punish local leader who broke rules.

The Home Ministry's regional autonomy director general, Djohermansyah Djohan, said the central government would have the right to fire governors and regents.

"There will be warnings for those who are recalcitrant. There will also be suspensions and dismissals," he said. Djohermansyah added that the mechanism would give accused local heads the opportunity to defend themselves. "So this is a fair mechanism," he said.

While the current law is still flawed, it does not mean that it is impossible to dismiss local heads who are proven guilty, according to Djohermansyah. "It has been proven by the removal of former Garut regent [Aceng Fikri from his office]. The most recent case involved Karo Regent, who is in the process of being dismissed," he said.

Aceng was dismissed after he made national headlines in late 2012 for ending his days-long marriage to a high school student while he was still married to Nurrohimah, with whom he had three children.

The scandal sparked public outrage, especially from women's rights activists, as Aceng reportedly divorced the student because he believed she was not a virgin.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also made at least two public statements about "respecting women and the sanctity of marriage, particularly those serving as public officials" within weeks after the scandal was revealed. Aceng was impeached by the Garut legislative council and the President endorsed the move.

The revision of the Regional Administration Law is also aimed at creating a comprehensive map that will be used to clearly define borders among the 539 autonomous regions in 34 provinces, 412 regencies and 93 cities in the country. Such a map is needed to avoid border disputes that have been a prevalent feature of decentralization in the country.

"Therefore, we can estimate what the ideal number of provinces, regencies and cities is in Indonesia for the next 10 years," Gamawan said.

The functions of the DPRD must also be clearly defined, according to Gamawan. "There has been confusion over its role as the existing law only stipulates its role as an element of the local administration organizer. Is DPRD a legislative body or a mere local administration organizer?"

James Gilling, the head of Australia's aid program for Indonesia, said that decentralization in Indonesia had left much to be desired. "The most pressing challenge is planning. There are inconsistencies and conflicting regulations in all levels of government," he said.

Gilling added that decentralization had not been able to solve Indonesia's welfare gap across the archipelago. "For example, the maternal mortality rate remains high and I think it is still a challenge in Eastern Indonesia," he said.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/26/government-wants-power-punish-rogue-regional-heads.html

Regional autonomy needs revising: Government

Jakarta Globe - April 26, 2014

Basten Gokkon & Kennial Caroline Laia, Jakarta – The government, as part of its ongoing bid to abolish local elections and return to a system of appointing regional leaders by legislature, has once again begun highlighting the shortcomings of the regional autonomy policy that it introduced in 2001.

Led by the Home Affairs Ministry, the government's drive has focused on the high level of discord – up to 95 percent, according to government figures – between election regional heads and their deputies and the slow pace of regional development throughout the country.

Djohermansyah Djohan, the ministry's director general for regional autonomy, says such rifts extend not only to the local bureaucracy, but also to the people of the region.

"That makes for an adverse working environment, in which public officials are haunted by the feeling that the colleague next to them is an enemy," he says.

Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi says a revision of regional autonomy is needed to make the policy more effective without compromising on the spirit of decentralization and democracy.

"We fully realize that there is a mechanism in the implementation of regional autonomy that needs to be revised, including regional elections, to make it more efficient without annihilating the spirit of democracy," he says. Djohermansyah said that regional autonomy has also not contributed much to the improvement of the country's human development index.

"The HDI has not increased significantly and it even seems to be declining. The infant mortality rate in most regions has increased and water management has not reached national standards," he says. The HDI is a gauge for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living.

Indonesia's HDI was 0.629 in 2013 (a level of 1.0 is considered the ideal), from 0.617 in 2012, according to the United Nations Development Program.

The Home Affairs Ministry points out that the HDI today is down from the figure of 0.658 in 1995, a year before the regional autonomy policy was conceived – but that fails to account for the fact that a new method of calculating the HDI was introduced in 2008. (In 2007, for instance, the HDI was 0.734, compared to 0.593 in 2009).

World Bank data also belie claims that infant mortality has worsened. The data show a steady decrease in the infant mortality rate since 1996, from 49 deaths per 1,000 live births that year, to 26 per 1,000 births in 2012.

Money trail

Gamawan also argues that most of the funds disbursed to regional governments are used for "political agendas" than for the public good. "About Rp 600 trillion" – or $51.6 billion – "from the state budget is allocated for regional funding each year," he says.

"At the end of 2013, [the budget] was increased by around Rp 60 trillion for villages. Despite all this [money] there is still not much improvement in the regions. Something is wrong here and that's why we are evaluating it."

Gamawan blames political interests for poor governance in the regions. "Local officials should not be involved in politics, but what happens now is exactly that," he says.

Djohermansyah says that ideally at least 60 percent of each region's budget should be allocated for infrastructure development and improvement of public services, and the rest for bureaucrats' salaries.

"[However], the budget portion for the infrastructure development and public services has been reduced and most of the budget is allocated for civil servants' salaries," he says.

Election headaches

Regional elections, which the government is seeking to abolish through a bill that is now at the House of Representatives, are costly affairs that breed conflict and encourage corruption, Gamawan says.

"According to our data, 70 people have been killed during regional elections [in the past nine years] and many buildings have been set on fire in regions throughout Indonesia," he says.

He says that of the 1,027 regional elections – for governor, district head and mayor – held since 2003, 95 percent of the winning candidates have gone on to break with their running mates, often competing against each other in the next election.

That, Gamawan argues, means development issues are put on the back-burner as the regional leaders focus on their own political squabbling.

Ministry data also show that 321 regional heads and their deputies have been charged in criminal cases, predominantly corruption, between 2004 and 2014. In the majority of cases, the ministry says, the graft is compelled by a winning candidate's need to repay funding and favors to campaign donors and local businesses.

Gamawan says the 2004 Regional Governance Law falls short in this regard because it carries no sanctions for regional heads who commit crimes.

"There's no channel through which the central government can impose direct punishment on governors, district heads and mayors," he says.

"Although governance is decentralized, we're still under one government. Regional heads' authority is vested in them by the central government. Yet if they commit any violations, the central government is powerless to punish them directly."

Changing the law

The Home Affairs Ministry is pushing for amendments to the regional autonomy law to create effective regional governments that will eventually improve the people's welfare, Gamawan says.

"There are two articles that are being discussed intensively with the House. We have entered our 10th meeting [with legislators]," he says, adding that the articles in question concern regional elections.

The amendments are expected to define punishments for regional officials who violate the law, with penalties to range from warnings to temporary suspension to firing, Djohermansyah says.

But the main amendment, and one that critics have taken the most issue with, is the abolition of direct elections for district heads and mayors, who will instead be appointed by district legislatures and city councils, respectively.

Provincial governors will still be directly elected, under the ministry's proposed amendment. As part of the planned changes, the candidates running for regional head will be allowed to pick a deputy after winning.

This move, the central government says, will ensure they are partnered with someone with whom they can work effectively – and not someone chosen out of political expediency, with whom they will likely fall out before the end of their first five years in office.

James Gilling, the head of Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Decentralization, says it is important that the government clear up the inconsistencies in the regional autonomy law.

"There are inconsistencies and conflicting regulations at all levels twat require adjustments and amendment," he says. "For the government, the revisions to the laws on regional autonomy and decentralization are an important part of the improvements [...] to decentralization."

But Gilling notes that regional autonomy has become an important part of democracy in the country, aprticularly the direct regional elections.

"Local governments are now determined to make development their priority and give accountability to the locals. The central government also recognizes the unique characteristics of certain regions such as Aceh, Jakarta and Yogyakarta," Gilling says.

Siti Zuhro, a researcher with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or LIPI, says the revision should be properly managed and coordinated at all levels of government, from the national to the regional, to avoid confusion.

"If a revision is needed, the government has to thoroughly consider the need for it and determine whether autonomy should be centered at the provincial level. It is a big task," she says.

Siti says Gamawan's proposal to abolish direct regional elections for district heads and mayors needs to be in line with the Constitution. A system of regional legislative appointment was practiced under the iron- fisted rule of the late Suharto, and critics say reviving it will set a bad precedent for the country's still developing democracy.

Siti also takes issue with a suggestion by the home affairs minister that if the elections for regional heads are not to be abolished, then they should all be held on the same day, preferrably at the same time as the national and regional legislative elections.

Gamawan says the costs – for printing and distributing the ballots and setting up and manning polling stations, on the government's part; and for campaigning, on the candidates' part – can be lowered significantly under such a system. "To hold all the elections at the same time is not really effective or efficient," Siti says.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/regional-autonomy-needs-revising-govt/

Police arrest head of Maluku separatist group

Jakarta Globe - April 25, 2014

Jakarta – Maluku police on Friday have reportedly arrested Simon Saiya, an activist wanted for masterminding the display of a separatist flag during a performance for the president almost seven years ago.

Simon was arrested with nine companions in Nusaniwe subdistrict, Ambon, and that a South Maluku Republic (RMS) flag called "Benang Raja" as well as two United Nations flags were confiscated as evidence, Sr. Comr. Martuany Siregar – who is the operational unit head of the Maluku police – told state-run Antara news agency.

Simon is transition president of the Maluku Sovereignty Front (FKM) and RMS, both of which were established in April 25, 1950 to seek an independent state in Indonesia. The government has called the organizations separatist groups and have arrested activists. Meanwhile, the leaders and a dozen other members sought refuge in the Netherlands.

Simon has been on the national police's wanted list after allegedly ordering RMS activists to unfurl an RMS flag during the celebration of National Family Day in Ambon on June 29, 2007. The event was attended by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife, ministers, governors and district heads.

In the middle of the event, the RMS activists – who posed as dancers performing the traditional Maluku war dance known as Cakalele – unfurled the flag before Yudhoyono and his entourage. Police promptly arrested 39 RMS followers after the event, but Simon remained at large. The 39 activists were charged with subversion and their sentences ranged from 12 years to life in prison.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/police-arrest-head-maluku-separatist-group/

Armed forces & defense

Army thinking local to modernize weapons system

Jakarta Post - April 30, 2014

Jakarta – The Indonesian Army is planning to transform its primary weapons defense system through increased collaboration with local universities and homegrown military industries.

Army chief of staff Gen. Budiman said that the plan, which will cover 2015 through 2019, had been approved by the government and the House of Representatives.

"We have stated in our work plan submitted to the House that more funds in our budget will be allocated for the weapons system," he said at a press conference following the unveiling of a speedboat from the project at Ancol Beach in North Jakarta on Tuesday.

Budiman said upgrading the weapons system was greatly important as the trend in battle and warfare was to rely more on higher-speed, more accurate and better-measured weaponry.

Budiman said the House approved a total budget of Rp 36 trillion (US$3.09 billion) for the Army this year. A large portion of the budget, 72 percent, will go toward salaries. Around 17-18 percent is allocated for operations and maintenance and 9 percent for weaponry and equipment.

"We are using the 9 percent, which means around Rp 3.5 trillion, to fund the weapons system and all research needed for that," he said.

To prevent graft and wasteful spending in the modernization program, Budiman said he had asked generals and high-ranking officers in the Army to sign an integrity pact to ensure that all procurement and research programs for the weapons system would be transparent and efficient.

On Tuesday, the Army unveiled a new model of speedboat called the "Komando", built in collaboration with a group of technicians and experts from local universities, including Surya University, a campus established by prominent Indonesian scientist Yohannes Surya.

Other universities involved in the project are the Surabaya-based 10 November Institute of Technology (ITS), Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and the Semarang, Central Java-based University of Diponegoro (UNDIP). The Army also invited PT KKB, PT Tesco Indomaritim and PT Dok and Perkapalan Kodja Bahari Galangan IV to manufacture the boats.

Budiman said that as of now, the Army and its partners had built two of the speedboats, but planned to have another eight this year. He said that one of the boats cost Rp 12 billion, cheaper than buying from abroad.

"Finland manufactures the same type of speedboat and it costs Rp 24 billion, so it's far cheaper if we build them by ourselves," he said.

Budiman said the Army would use the speedboats to patrol border areas such as Natuna, Bangka Belitung, Aceh and East Nusa Tenggara.

The "Komando" speedboats can be operated on the high sea, coastlines, rivers and swamp areas, and have a capacity of 31 passengers and three crewmembers. "Currently, the boats can only reach a maximum of 35 knots, but we are developing newer ones that can reach 45 knots," he added.

Also in the pipeline are programs to build laser guns, remote weapon systems, UAV/Super Drone, Integrated Optronic Defense System, Gyrocopter, Multi Rotor and Flapping Bird.

Another piece of sophisticated equipment in development by the Army and its contractors is the nanosatellite, which can be used for land-imaging and monitoring. "We plan to export more of our locally made weapons and equipment, but currently we are focusing on research and improving capability," Budiman said. (gda)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/30/army-thinking-local-modernize-weapons-system.html

Analysis & opinion

Is this year's Labor Day a milestone?

Jakarta Post - April 30, 2014

Agung Pamungkas, Nottingham, UK – A milestone is defined as an important event in the development or history of something or in someone's life.

For Indonesia's workers and unions, 2014 could be a milestone. It is the first time in Indonesian history that Labor Day, also known as May Day, is officially a national holiday.

In the commemoration of International Workers' Day in 2013, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono joined other Southeast Asian countries that had established May 1 as a national holiday. But what does this really mean for workers? Is it merely a day off well spent with their families?

Labor Day should go beyond a celebration. It is the pursuit of better living – improved working conditions and wage raises. The unions' plan to hold marches comprising 1 million workers across 20 provinces stresses the theme of "Restructuring Indonesia toward a prosperous country", to increase reform demands in labor welfare policies.

Of the 10 demands made by the Indonesian Worker Confederation, two fundamental issues are highlighted: wage hikes and inclusive social protection. These concerns seem to be in line with the International Labor Organization (ILO) report on labor and social trends in 2013, highlighting that access to social protection and wages remain the challenges for workers in Indonesia.

First, workers are demanding an increase in the national minimum wage of 30 percent in 2015. The minimum wage is one instrument to lift them out of poverty. In 2013, we witnessed an increased provincial minimum wage of 40 percent in Jakarta.

Despite the fact an increased minimum wage in Indonesia in the last four years being the highest in Southeast Asia, the figure shows that Indonesia still has a relatively low minimum wage compared to Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.

According to the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), however, the increase in the minimum wage has not been followed by higher labor productivity. According to the ILO and the World Bank, Indonesia's average minimum wage rose by 5.5 percent between 2000 and 2011, but its productivity merely increased by 3.4 percent. In China and Vietnam, an increased minimum wage has led to a higher percentage of labor productivity.

As the ASEAN single market comes into force in 2015, the government is obliged to protect the welfare of workers from the competitive market. How do we ensure that wage raises contribute to labor productivity? The answer might be related to the workers' second demand – a fully fledged social safety net.

Workers are demanding a basic level of social protection: pensions, health care, education, housing and affordable public transportation.

On Jan. 1 the government launched a universal healthcare program that merged all other social insurance programs under a single-payer umbrella.

This program is being delivered to 121 million people, or 48 percent of the population, comprising 86.4 million beneficiaries of the former healthcare program (Jamkesmas), 16 million Askes holders among civil servants and 7 million state-insurance program Jamsostek holders.

Even though workers are entitled to their basic rights, they are not out of the woods yet.

The ILO report identified significant policy gaps and implementation issues, which exclude "non-poor" workers (workers not officially categorized as poor but with low income) in the informal economy. Social security coverage is limited due to both high levels of contribution evasion and inefficient targeting.

One way to realize these demands is to empower workers with relevant job- training. Also, both employers and the government have to provide assurances that workers are covered by social protection as well as the minimum wage.

That way, Labor Day could be seen a milestone in Indonesia's history.

[The writer has recently completed a study on immigrants' social and labor rights in the UK.]

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/30/is-year-s-labor-day-a-milestone.html

Prabowo and human rights

Inside Indonesia - April-June 2014

Gerry van Klinken – As everybody knows, one of the strongest candidates for the presidency has an image problem, related to his army days. But abducting a couple of dozen student activists in 1998 is not Prabowo's worst human rights problem, though it's what he's best known for. Fifteen years earlier he was in the middle of a counter-insurgency operation in East Timor that claimed many hundreds of lives. It started on 16 September 1983 with the massacre of dozens of people, including women and children. They had surrendered to Indonesian soldiers after coming down from Mount Bibileo near Viqueque. A survivor told the East Timorese truth commission CAVR:

"Three Hansip [civil guards] led the way and other military personnel surrounded the group of people so no one could escape... We started to walk at around 3.00pm and arrived at the location on the mountain at approximately 4.00pm... We sat down and again military personnel surrounded us to avoid any escapes... Then more Indonesian soldiers arrived... When they arrived we were given the order to stand up. I was standing, along with everyone else, facing the valley. Then we were told to walk. I took one step and the Indonesian soldiers opened fire on us. I fell to the ground, along with my brother. People who had been shot fell on top of me. The Indonesian soldiers shot everyone in the back. Then the gunfire ceased and the soldiers were having a rest and a cigarette. One member of the Indonesian army told M303 [a Hansip commander] to speak in his language, Tetum, and tell anyone who was still alive... to stand up. No one answered this command. Then the soldiers opened fire again, on the bodies lying there. Then I heard two small children, one girl and one boy, [who were] about 1-2 years old. When they shot, they had missed the children. Then M303... went over to the two babies and took a knife and stabbed them to death. Then the Indonesian [soldiers] and Hansip took another break and had a cigarette."

Chega!, the CAVR report, has 55 names of people killed on that day. On the next day, another massacre took place nearby, again of East Timorese who had surrendered off Mount Bibileo. Chega! lists 141 names for that one. Altogether Chega! has 530 names of people killed or disappeared during a counter-insurgency operation that ran into 1984, throughout East Timor. A large number also died of hunger in the closely guarded concentration camp for survivors from Mount Bibileo.

All journalists know about the abductions in 1998 that ended Prabowo's military career. Few seem to know about this operation in East Timor in 1983, at the start of it. When Jakarta Post journalist Aboeprijadi Santoso last December did remember, Prabowo took the trouble to send a reader's letter saying it was an 'unproven allegation.' So what do we know for sure about his involvement in these events, and what would we dearly like to be surer of?

Career breakthrough

In 1983 Prabowo Subianto, aged 32, was a captain in the Special Forces, Kopassandha. Later renamed Kopassus, this force was the New Order's most trusted, most capable, iron fist. It is a miracle we know anything at all about his activities – elite forces mostly work in secret.

Prabowo's career was on the verge of a breakthrough. He was intelligent and came from an elite family. But in the lower reaches of the Indonesian military of the early 1980s, that was not enough. Advancement required connections, and violence. Everything came together for Prabowo in 1983.

His astuteness won him repeated invitations to overseas training courses – to the American Fort Bragg in 1980, to the German GSG-9 probably in 1981, and later to Fort Benning in 1985. Each time he scored 'top graduate.' In 1982 he was invited, with Major Luhut Pandjaitan, to form a new anti-terror unit called Detachment 81 within Kopassandha, to try out his skills. He also commanded a new Kopassandha counter-insurgency unit called Chandraca 8. He probably took this Chandraca unit to East Timor in March or April 1983. Indonesia had invaded East Timor in 1975, and this was his second tour of duty there. (The first was as a lieutenant in 1977-78, at the height of the fighting. He was involved in the killing of East Timorese resistance hero Nicolau Lobato, whose head was reportedly sent to Jakarta in triumph so President Suharto could verify the death for himself.)

Connections? Prabowo married the president's daughter, Siti Hediati Harijadi (Titiek), in May 1983. They divorced in 2001, but throughout the New Order the access she gave him to the president was the envy of his fellow officers. He could afford to behave above his rank.

And then the violence. In April of that same year 1983, East Timor's guerrilla army Falintil had signed a ceasefire with the Indonesian armed forces. For the Indonesian high command, it was the prelude to complete victory, but for the Timorese, it was a chance to regroup. Prabowo shared the view of some officers who opposed the ceasefire for that reason. During subsequent months, he would pop into East Timor without reporting to the commander responsible for the ceasefire, much to the latter's discomfort. What did he have in mind?

Resurgence

On 8 August 1983, Falintil commander Xanana Gusmao made his move. The Indonesian military had put captured Falintil guerrillas to work as their auxiliaries. Xanana's man in the east of the island, Ular Rihik (Virgilio dos Anjos), now persuaded an entire detachment of such auxiliaries in the hamlet of Kraras to kill their Indonesian superiors and rejoin Falintil in the hills. Kraras was located on a plain just west of the town of Viqueque, and south of Mount Bibileo. The men killed 14 Indonesian army engineers. Three similar attacks were launched elsewhere, on 10 and 19 August and 6 September 1983, which resulted in fewer casualties. The attacks ended the ceasefire – Falintil says the agreement was only for three months and had thus already expired. The uprising that began on 8 August 1983 is known in East Timor as the levantamento, or rising, because it signified the resurgence of a resistance movement that was almost beaten.

Knowing retaliation would follow, civilians and combatants alike then fled into the forests covering Mount Bibileo. Repression certainly did follow, and it seems Prabowo played a central role in it. Just how central is something we urgently need to know. Indonesian Armed Forces Commander General Benny Moerdani was furious about the attacks and immediately ordered a counter-insurgency operation, which lasted for several months. The campaign resulted in hundreds of deaths. Some were of combatants. Increased fighting caused fatal Indonesian military casualties to rise from 163 the previous year to a reported 269 in 1984 (still much lower than the 600-700 deaths a year Indonesia had suffered immediately after the invasion). Falintil forces no doubt suffered extra casualties at this time too, but nothing is known of them. All the 530 killings and disappearances reported in Chega! for this period, however, were of civilians or of combatants who were no longer taking part in combat. International law regards such killings as unlawful.

Kopassus

Who was responsible for these unlawful killings and disappearances? Of all the perpetrators of abuses in East Timor throughout the period 1974 to 1999 reported in Chega!, Kopassandha/Kopassus is the one unit associated with the highest number of violations. And the highest number of violations associated with the role of Kopassandha occurred during the 1983-84 suppression of the levantamento. (Kopassus indirectly caused even more suffering. Throughout the Timorese war it played the central role in the formation of militias that carried out so much of the Indonesian military's vicious work for them, not least in 1999. Militias were a big part of Prabowo's work with Kopassus. 'I have this philosophy: the people's army,' he once told a foreign journalist. 'We have to have the people on our side.')

What was Prabowo's involvement in the 1983 violations? Cornell University's journal Indonesia (October 2003) quotes a report that Prabowo arrived in East Timor for his third tour of duty on 28 August 1983, together with his Chandraca 8 unit of Kopassandha. Jill Jolliffe, in her book Cover-up: the inside story of the Balibo Five (2001), quotes an eyewitness who saw Prabowo scouring the Bibileo mountainside with his troops in early September, before the first big massacre. The levantamento was less than a month old. He remained in the eastern region around Mount Bibileo until early in 1984.

The township of Ossu lies less than 20kms north of Viqueque, on the road that runs across East Timor. Captain Prabowo had a base here throughout the counter-insurgency operation. Joao Caetano, an East Timorese who then worked for Indonesian intelligence, told Jolliffe that Prabowo directed the counter-insurgency operations in the region where revolt had first broken out from this place. Catholic nuns say they had to evacuate the girls schools for Prabowo and his men. None of the men wore insignias.

As the Indonesian operation swung into action, reports of death and torture quickly multiplied. Chega! lists the following incidents:

The first reprisal by Indonesian military units took place on 7 September, resulting in all the houses at Kraras hamlet being burnt and the deaths of 4-5 civilians who had stayed behind.

Many arrested civilians were tortured at a camp of Battalion 745 at nearby Olobai in subsequent days.

Between 18 and 55 people who had surrendered to the Indonesian armed forces from Mount Bibileo, including women and children, were executed at Welamo near Caraubalau village on 16 September (the incident above). Chega! has 55 names.

The biggest single atrocity occurred on 17 September. Between 26 and 181 individuals, all men who had been separated from a Kraras group who had surrendered from Bibileo, were executed by machine-gunning them in a riverbed at Tahubei. Chega! has the names of 141 victims, all male. Again, there is no information on whether these were civilians or non-active combatants. Chega! writes:

"Indonesian military personnel approached a large group of refugees from Kraras who had fled to the nearby village of Buikarin. The village of Buikarin was surrounded and those from Kraras were rounded up. The men were separated from the women and were told that they would be marched to Kraras under the supervision of the military to carry food. According to one report, 6-8 Indonesian soldiers and two East Timorese Hansip escorted dozens of men to Wetuku River in an area known as Tahubein, where they were surrounded and shot. Only four people are reported to have survived the massacre."

Chega! includes many other descriptions of individual executions, sometimes in public, and of many disappearances and deportations, throughout September and October 1983 and into early 1984. They come from every district in East Timor but particularly from its eastern regions where Prabowo has been located by several eyewitness accounts.

Survivors of these immediate horrors then faced more anguish in the months that followed. Everyone who once lived or hid on Mount Bibileo was relocated to a concentration camp at Lalerek Mutin, near the by-then abandoned Kraras on the flats west of Viqueque. The 1,300 inhabitants, among them a large proportion of women, children and old people, were kept on such a tight leash by their Chandraca guards that they could not tend their subsistence fields. The hunger was severe. One eyewitness told the CAVR: 'I remember four or five people dying every day. We just wrapped them in mats and buried them.' Jose Gomes, Lalerek Mutin village head at the time, estimates that more than 1,000 persons died between the events in Kraras and a census he conducted in 1984. Life only improved once the Chandraca 7 unit (not the one commanded by Prabowo) returned to Java in December 1985.

Research

The CAVR report on the killings of 1983-1984 runs to 27 pages. Other sections describe the hunger deaths, forced displacement, torture (including sexual abuse), and arbitrary detentions arising from the campaign. The unlawful killings alone were comparable in scale to the Santa Cruz massacre of November 1991, which shocked world opinion. The chain of one-sided murder that characterised the counter-insurgency operation following the levantamento was started by two horrendous massacres – at Caraubalau and Tahubei on 16 and 17 September 1983 respectively. It is these two bloody events, and not (as Prabowo has suggested) the initial killing at Kraras on 8 August, that together carry the name 'Kraras massacre' in the memory of those who know the story.

The cautiously worded CAVR report does not name most of the Indonesian officers involved. But they can be read in, among others, the eyewitness accounts in Jill Jolliffe's book, and in a long interview with the Indonesian governor of East Timor at the time, Mario Carrascalao, published in Cornell's Indonesia (above). That Prabowo played a significant role in this operation seems clear, but precisely how significant is less clear. His rank and the Ossu base suggest he held a field command post in the eastern part of the country, where the levantamento had begun.

According to Joao Caetano, the massacre at Tahubein on 17 September was perpetrated by members of Kodim 1630/Viqueque, Infantry Battalions 328, 501 and 745, and Kopassandha. Such a mix of military units was typical of Indonesian operations in East Timor throughout the war. Kodim 1630/Viqueque was the local 'territorial' command (with associated civil guards, or hansip); Battalion 745 was a combat unit based in East Timor; Battalions 328 and 501 were 'green beret' Kostrad infantry units that spent much time on tour in East Timor. The Kopassandha officers were in charge, following normal practice. Two other Kopassandha officers mentioned in connection with the operation in the eastern region were Major Slamet Supriyadi (Chandraca 6) and Captain Harry Pisand Pinem (Chandraca 7, sometimes incorrectly listed as Heri Pisang). Caetano said he saw Pisand and his troops leaving Viqueque on the morning of the Tahubein massacre. The fact that Prabowo has not been identified by any living eyewitnesses as having been participating in killing does not mean he was not coordinating it from nearby.

Whatever exactly he was doing, it is clear that Prabowo's bosses noticed his work and approved of it. Late in 1983, still in East Timor, he was promoted from captain to major – a high rank for a 32-year old.

The levantamento triggered a serious escalation of a guerrilla war that the Indonesian armed forces had considered settled in its favour since the mass Fretilin surrenders of late 1979. The Indonesian response was ruthless and claimed many hundreds of civilian lives. The CAVR report that describes the atrocities in such horrifying detail has never been reviewed in any Indonesian mainstream publication, let alone acted on by Indonesian justice officers. This silence has permitted Prabowo to claim they are 'unproven allegations.' Indonesian readers can now check for themselves – an Indonesian translation of the report is available online and is on sale in major bookstores in Indonesia. When confronted with the Kraras story in 1998, Indonesian armed forces commander General Wiranto said of it nonchalantly: 'To kill or be killed can't be avoided in a war situation like this.' There will be some who agree with Wiranto. But the president of a great nation like Indonesia must above all else protect human life. The people of Indonesia should hope that military indifference to human life won't be carried into the presidential palace after 9 July.

[Gerry van Klinken (Klinken@kitlv.nl) is professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Amsterdam. Chega! was published in 2005 and is available online in various languages at http://www.cavr- timorleste.org/en/chegaReport.htm. A new English edition will be published in book form later in 2014.]

Source: http://www.insideindonesia.org/current-edition/prabowo-and-human-rights

Money Politics

Inside Indonesia - April-June 2014

Edward Aspinall – At a meeting between a sitting member of the provincial parliament of Yogyakarta, and about 30 youths and men in a village on the outskirts of the city, the parliamentarian has just wrapped up a 20 minute appeal for support. He is from PDIP (Indonesia Democracy Party-Struggle) and all the men are party supporters, so it should have been an easy pitch trying to convince them to back him again. But then one youth pipes up, telling the candidate that people from other parties have been coming into the village, long a PDI-P base, and offering 'envelopes' (ie. money) in exchange for votes.

The candidate barely draws breath: 'Well if we have to give them envelopes, we'll give them envelopes, because PDIP has to win here. Ibu Mega [ie Megawati Soekarnoputri, the party leader] has forbidden this, but Bu Mega has never come to this village.' Then he corrects himself, telling the crowd that he would prefer not to hand out money on a person-by-person basis, but would rather provide support for whatever small-scale development programs or collective business activities they have in the village. At the next meeting in a neighbouring village, things are smoother, but here the candidate had arranged before the meeting that he would pay for volleyball equipment and uniforms for the youths. The village coordinator announces this to the meeting, and everyone looks satisfied.

Later that evening, the candidate complains how much worse things are this year than during the last election, in 2009. The open list electoral system, in which candidates have to compete for the highest personal vote in order to be elected, is destroying the parties, he says, and destroying their relations with their traditional supporters. Now, everywhere he goes, people ask him for money, including in areas that for years have been intensely loyal to PDIP. 'I started out by telling them that they shouldn't use money', he says, 'In the end, I got sick of it. Now I just ask them: How much do you want?' Despite what he told the group earlier in the evening, he hasn't quite decided whether he'll hand out individual payments to voters, but he seemed to be tending strongly that way.

Part of the system

I heard versions of this lament many times during a 40-day trip through 18 provinces in the lead up to Indonesia's parliamentary elections on April 9, speaking to about 60 candidates at all levels (district, province and national), as well as campaign workers. Almost everywhere, candidates complained about how Indonesian voters have become increasingly 'pragmatic' or 'transactional', and how they are unprepared to vote for people who do not provide them with a tangible material benefit – money or some other gift. The other side of this lament, of course, is expressed by voters, many of whom are alienated from the political system and believe that parliamentarians provide them with nothing useful apart from the handouts they distribute once every five years. Why not, in this view, take what you can when it's on offer, even if that means waiting for the highest bid, or taking money and gifts from several candidates and then voting for only one of them?

Not surprisingly, almost all the candidates I spoke to featured patronage distribution – the distribution of money, gifts or other material benefits – as a central, indeed most often as the central, pillar of their campaign strategy. Only two or three candidates claimed to give nothing at all to voters. But patronage distribution comes in many different categories, each attendant with its own costs and risks.

Gift giving

A first category is simple gifts that candidates present to voters as a way of introducing themselves, or in order to try to create or strengthen an 'emotional bond' (ikatan emosional – another phrase that rolls constantly off the tongues of candidates in Indonesia) between them and the recipients. Often such gifts are distributed when the candidate attends a community-level meeting (sosialisasi is the Indonesian term) to introduce him or herself to the voters, or when members of the candidate's campaign team (known as tim sukses, or 'success team') makes initial contact with a voter at home or at a meeting.

The variety of gifts provided in such contexts is virtually limitless, but especially common are gifts imbued with some sort of religious or other symbolic meaning: krudung or head scarves, prayer mats, sarung that men can wear when they go to the mosque, prayer books, bibles, and the like. It's precisely their symbolic meaning that makes such gifts attractive to politicians; they are hoping that some of that meaning will rub off onto them. As one candidate put it to me, he liked to hand out prayer mats so that 'people remember me when they pray.' Equally common at such times is the distribution of basic foodstuffs, typically, bags of noodles or rice, or bottles of cooking oil, though here too the variety is virtually endless. Candidates often talk in a more frankly calculating way about such gifts of food, stressing the poverty of the recipients and their gratitude at receiving such assistance.

Such 'opening' gifts are rarely considered to be sufficient in themselves to ensure that the recipient will vote for the giver; instead they can be seen as the equivalent of an icebreaker or a keepsake – something that will smooth the initial connection between the candidate and the voter, a memento of a pleasant shared experience, a reminder of the connection between them, as well as a sign that the giver is someone who cares about the community and is willing to help the poor. Interviewees often compare such gifts to oleh-oleh, the small presents one distributes to one's friends and family after going on a journey. They describe them as a way of building a 'familial' relationship between the politician and the voter.

Typically, politicians will say that such gifts only help to deliver a vote if they are backed up with some other sort of appeal or strategy: for example, the candidate may have a highly personable style which succeeds in building a personal rapport with the recipients. Or it could be that the initial gift will be reinforced by further gifts down the track, or by a promise (or a record) of development programs for the village or urban community in which the recipient lives.

A second category of gift is those that are handed out at larger public campaign events, such as public rallies, village parties, musical performances or competitions (involving anything from dominoes to birdsong to fishing) sponsored by candidates, or other events. Food, drink and 'transport money' are all but ubiquitous at such events, but so too are 'door prizes'. Door prizes can be cash or goods and can range from small items (kitchenware and other household items were the most common variety I saw) through to the major gifts given by really cashed-up candidates, such as motorbikes or umroh (minor haj) trips to the holy land. At public events, too, candidates and their support teams will often provide services of some sort for those present: free medical checkups and treatment are particularly common (this has long been a central campaign strategy of the PKS (Prosperous Justice Party) but is now mimicked by many candidates from across the political spectrum).

If the door prizes are designed to provide a bit of excitement for what might otherwise be dull campaign events, medical services are intended to demonstrate the candidate's social conscience and public mindedness. Hence, many candidates also provide ongoing services between elections, such as ambulances that provide free transport to hospitals, or which carry corpses to cemeteries; fire trucks; garbage disposal; and so on.

Collective goods

A third category of gifts is collective in character: donations made by a candidate to members of a community to help build or repair some sort of community facility. Sometimes called club goods by political scientists, the most common form of such gifts in Indonesia are donations in cash or kind to help build or repair a place of worship (a mosque, mushollah, church, etc), followed closely by assistance for roads, irrigation canals, or other community infrastructure. Also very common are donations to community organisations, such as gifts of equipment (sound systems, tarpaulins, crockery, plastic chairs and the like) to women's groups such as prayer groups (kelompok pengajian or majelis taklim) or PKK (Family Empowerment and Welfare) units, or of sports equipment, uniforms and playing fields to village sport clubs. Almost every candidate will give at least some of these sorts of gifts if they can afford it.

Often, these donations are made after a meeting between the candidate and members of the local community. Such deals – especially if they are for village infrastructure – are usually brokered by the village head, or the head of a smaller geographic unit (such as an RW, neighbourhood association), or some other community leader, who will then promise a 'commitment' (komitemen) or 'political contract' (kontrak politik) that the community will vote for the candidate. Some candidates rely wholly on this sort of gift, feeling that individual gifts are a form of morally questionable 'money politics', while gifts that benefit an entire community are acceptable either as community development or as charity. Accordingly, candidates often describe such donations as part of their religious obligations in the form of alms-giving.

The problem for candidates who use a strategy of providing collective gifts is whether they are truly effective in instilling a sense of obligation on the part of recipients to vote for the giver, and whether village heads and similar community leaders are really able to deliver on their side of the bargain. One candidate in Yogyakarta recalled that he had made a major donation to help renovate a village mosque in the lead up to the 2009 election, but received hardly any votes in the village in question. When he visited the village leaders after the election and asked them about this result, one of them told him: 'Sorry sir, the problem is that it's not the mosque that votes. It's the people.' Apparently another candidate's team had come into the village shortly before voting day and handed out cash to residents.

The picture is thus very mixed: some candidates still rely heavily on community donations and on the brokerage of community leaders, others try to reach down directly to the individual voters; many mix both strategies.

Vote buying

This brings us to a fourth category: vote buying. This approach entails the provision of individual cash payments, or goods, to voters in the immediate lead up to the election. Almost all of the opprobrium directed toward 'money politics' in Indonesia is reserved for this phenomenon. Most candidates don't regard the varieties of gift-giving described above as part of money politics at all, though they are in fact on a close continuum. Indeed, I often heard phrases like 'I reject money politics, that's why I only give out head scarves'. Others will explain in great detail how they pay for community facilities whenever asked, but they insist that they reject 'retail' vote buying.

Even so, vote buying itself is very common and members of the large research team I was involved in found evidence of it almost everywhere, though with great variety in its levels of intensity, its social acceptability and the sums paid. The amounts given vary greatly, from figures as high as Rp. 400,000 (about US$40) for a 'packet' of three votes for the DPR and two DPRD in resource-rich parts of the country, down to Rp. 30,000 in parts of Central Java.

Indeed, we were surprised by quite how open many candidates were in discussing this practice, despite its illegality. For example, in one Central Java constituency, most candidates freely admitted that they engaged in vote buying and some were willing to explain how they did it in detail.

The methods of distribution vary from candidate to candidate, but the vast majority follow a standard pattern that goes like this. In the months leading up to the election, the candidate establishes a 'success team' (though not all candidates like this term) that consists of district, subdistrict and village level coordinators and then 'volunteers' – basically, vote brokers – in the villages themselves. Hundreds, even thousands, of people can thus be involved in a single team, spread throughout the entire constituency, or concentrated through the areas which the candidate views as his or her base.

Each village vote broker (the terms used locally for this person vary greatly too) collects a list of names and addresses, sometimes also with ID numbers, telephone numbers and signatures, usually of somewhere between 10 and 50 individual voters, typically people who know the broker well. In exchange, the brokers are paid modest honorariums, or are promised future deals entailing access to village development projects or other benefits (again, the inventiveness and the range of rewards is remarkable). They are often also promised bonus payments in cash or kind (e.g. a gift of a motorcycle) if they do exceed their target of votes. Sometimes, the brokers collect names at 'sosialisasi' events where the candidate is present, but they usually draw up their lists by visiting the homes of their close neighbours, relatives, or friends. Sometimes the voter will be given a small payment or gift at this point; sometimes the broker simply explains a bit about the background of the candidate and his or her promises for the community.

In order to ensure that they are genuinely comprised of people who have promised to vote for them, candidates will typically check the lists that are given to them at the end of this process. Often they will visit or telephone a random sample of the names on the lists (often candidates have a special, secret team that does this cross-checking). Sometimes, they will send out team members to do a full recheck of the list as voting day draws near to ensure that the voters have not changed their minds or made a commitment to another candidate in the meantime.

Finally, in the days leading to the election, the payment is made, usually by the village-level vote broker who knows the recipient intimately. Candidates have different views on when it is best to make the payment: too many days before the vote and you run the risk you'll be trumped by someone coming in and offering a later payment; leave it too late and it can be a logistical nightmare to make sure the money actually gets to all the voters on your list. All candidates also worry that their brokers will steal a good chunk of the money that passes through their hands.

Usually the payment is presented in a way that describes it as recompense for the inconvenience and loss of income that going to the polling booth supposedly entails. Even so, most candidates admit that there is no way of ensuring that those who receive money will vote for them (many use the term 'margin error' – in English – to explain the discrepancy between the number of people who are paid and the number of votes they obtain). However, a hit rate of 50 per cent is generally considered to be a success, and enough to ensure election in a well-organised campaign.

The institutionalisation of patronage

This brief review in no way summarises the full range of patronage politics encountered in the last election. To do that would require many more pages. And though 'money politics' is ubiquitous, many people – candidates and voters alike – feel dissatisfied with its influence and are seeking ways out. Some of these methods, however, are pointing toward the institutionalisation of patronage at the very heart of the political system.

In particular, many incumbent legislators are turning toward government programs rather than private funds to help them build ties with local constituents. In some regional parliaments, there are specially designated 'aspirations funds' (known in other countries as constituency development funds, or more colloquially, as pork barrel funds) that allocate a set budget for each legislator, which they can then direct toward development projects and assistance grants in their constituency. Members of legislatures that lack such schemes (including the DPR) access funds by way of sitting on the commissions that are such an important part of legislatures in Indonesia. Sitting on a suitable commission (the commission in charge of infrastructure is often seen as the most lucrative, though agriculture is also highly beneficial) provides a legislator with the ability to lobby government officials from relevant ministries to direct projects and programs toward their constituencies.

However they access the funds, the basic model is relatively simple. First, you direct government programs – for village infrastructure projects, grants of hand tractors, fertiliser, seedlings or other materials to farmers' cooperatives; training programs for members of religious networks; building grants to schools; virtually anything – to areas where you won a high vote in the last election, or where you want to expand your support base. Second, you build personal links with the chief beneficiaries of the program (the head of a farmer's cooperative that receives a donated cow might not only be very grateful to you personally, but also hopeful about receiving future largesse) and make sure they know it was you who got them the program. Third, you promise the recipients a steady flow of benefits for them and their community from future programs, provided they keep supporting you in elections. In this way, out of a web of government programs a legislator can build for himself or herself a political network, and a home voter base. This is what almost every incumbent legislator I encountered was trying to do, albeit with varied levels of success.

Some incumbents see this strategy as an alternative to personal gifts and vote buying; others still feel they need to supplement such programs with individual gifts or cash payments, in order to ensure that the beneficiaries of 'their' programs actually go to the polls and cast their ballots. Whatever happens, given the ubiquity of money politics and political gifts, this sort of institutionalised pork barrel politics is probably the best that Indonesia can hope for in the near future. So long as Indonesia retains an electoral system that encourages a strong personal vote, the incentives for politicians to build support by offering pork and patronage will remain very high. Even though so many people are sick of money politics, few seem to be able to point to a way out.

[Edward Aspinall (edward.aspinall@anu.edu.au) researches Indonesian politics at the Australian National University. During the elections he was helping coordinate a large research project that involved collaboration between the ANU and the University of Gadjah Mada. Fifty researchers were distributed across the country, interviewing over 1000 candidates and campaign workers, observing campaign events and analysing the results. He is very grateful to the insights provided by all those researchers, and to the Centre for Democratic Institutions for supporting the research.]

Source: http://www.insideindonesia.org/weekly-articles/money-politics-2

Rise of China dampens local squabbles between Australia and Indonesia

WA Today - April 29, 2014

John Garnaut – John McCarthy was Australia's ambassador to Indonesia when militia lobbed Molotov cocktails into his embassy in Jakarta, physically assaulted him in Sulawesi and shot at his car as he drove across Dili.

"It didn't actually hit the car," McCarthy told me, playing down the 1999 shooting encounter, which took place in the midst of bloody pogroms after the independence of East Timor. "It was just a sighting of a fellow taking aim and firing his gun."

The bullet may not have hit his car but the former ambassador to Jakarta, New Delhi, Tokyo and Washington speaks with authority when he says Australian naval incursions, phone-tapping and related diplomatic furores have sunk the Australia-Indonesia relationship to its lowest point since 1999. Equally, when he says the relationship has the potential to recover quickly – because much bigger strategic imperatives are at play – it's a good time to sit up and take note.

The rise of China and China's muscle-flexing on its maritime periphery are altering the strategic calculus of all nations across the Asia-Pacific. The force of rising China is acting to push Jakarta and Canberra closer together (and both of them closer to Washington) even as domestic political "irritants" are pulling them apart.

Indonesia has had a vexed relationship with China since new republics were established in both nations within three months of each other, in 1949. While sticking to an ostensible policy of "non-alignment", Sukarno steered Indonesia towards Beijing and his replacement, Suharto, swung hard the other way. Now in the democratic era, with presidential elections due in July, Indonesia's foreign policy neutrality is under strain again.

Most pointedly, Indonesia's policy of non-alignment is being challenged by armed Chinese maritime law enforcement vessels contesting the right of Indonesia to detain Chinese fishermen in the Natuna Islands region, which lie north east of Singapore and 2000km south of mainland China. This year, in response, Indonesian leaders have broken with their tradition of public reticence to voice concerns.

In February, one day after a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa warned China against attempting a repeat of the Air Defence Identification Zone which it established last year in the East China Sea, prompting protests from the US, Japan and Australia. "We have firmly told China we will not accept a similar zone if it is adopted in the South China Sea," said Natalegawa.

The same month the commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI), General Moeldoko, returned from visiting Beijing to advise he would increase air, land and maritime forces around Natuna in order to "anticipate possible infiltration as a result of instability in the South China Sea".

And last month a senior defence strategist, Commodore Fahru Zaini, warned against China's "map warfare", as others have called it, by which China is hardening previously amorphous claims to a vast expanse of the South China Sea. "China has claimed Natuna waters as their territorial waters," he said. "This dispute will have a large impact on the security of Natuna waters."

This series of public comments shows that Indonesia has altered its public stance if not its underlying strategy. "I would characterise this as the public expression of undeclared policy on China," says Greta Nabbs-Keller, who wrote her PhD thesis on Indonesia-China strategic relations and is director of a consultancy called Dragonminster.

China has been put on notice that the harder it pushes its territorial claims the more Indonesia will stretch its famously malleable policy of non-alignment in the opposite direction. "I explained that we are a sovereign country, we will protect our territory, and we will do whatever is necessary to protect our sovereignty," Commander Moeldoko said this month, recounting his earlier exchanges in Beijing.

Like Australia, Indonesia's policy is to engage with China wherever and whenever it can, including welcoming Chinese investment, while strengthening regional ties and pushing back when China's demands are deemed unacceptable. It's a hedging policy that will wax and wane with China's actions, especially around the Natuna Islands.

Last week 20 Asia-Pacific nations including China, the US and Indonesia signed a code of conduct to improve communication to prevent naval encounters accidentally erupting into conflict. The code was proposed a decade ago, by Australia.

Former ambassador McCarthy says this is the kind of constructive response to evolving strategic imperatives that should force Jakarta and Canberra to transcend the domestic issues that regularly flare between them.

"You could argue that we could have a reversion in our relationship with Indonesia to the sort of pattern that was extant in the 1960s and 1970s," says McCarthy, referring to an era when global and regional strategic concerns trumped local political ones.

"I think you could see a reversion to this as tensions increase in the East China Sea and South China Sea," he says. "We have to concentrate on serious issues which reflect national interest rather than play games, with the Australian side showing how tough we are and the Indonesian side allowing national sensitivities to weigh too heavily."

[John Garnaut is Fairfax's Asia-Pacific editor.]

Source: http://www.watoday.com.au/comment/rise-of-china-dampens-local-squabbles-between-australia-and-indonesia-20140429-zr191.html

Is Jakarta's popular governor just an empty suit?

Jakarta Globe - April 29, 2014

Josua Gantan, Jakarta – "Do you want to be led by a puppet? A puppet president?" asked Prabowo Subianto, the Gerindra Party's chief patron at the Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta one month before the legislative election.

His question alludes, of course, to Joko Widodo, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle's (PDI-P) presidential candidate. Although voiced in March, Prabowo's question is enduringly relevant.

Joko Widodo was nominated as the party's presidential candidate only after Megawati – the party's chairwoman – gave her approval on March 14. And it was Megawati's determination of Joko's nomination that gave grounds to the claim that the Jakarta governor is not a man in control of his destiny.

Megawati's puppet?

The claim that Joko Widodo lacks the independence to be a strong presidential candidate is one of the most-cited arguments against him during this election season. Skeptics question whether Joko has the ability to make his own decisions in policy-making if he is elected.

"In his detractors' view, Jokowi appears to be very much controlled by Megawati," said Burhanuddin, a researcher from Indonesia's Survey Circle (LSI). "The concern is that, should he be elected later, his policies might be determined by Mega."

However, he contended that this is true only to a certain extent. Burhanuddin pointed out that PDI-P's choice of a vice-presidential candidate would be an example of Megawati's control over Jokowi.

"With respect to his running mate – whether he likes it or not – he has to consult the matter with Megawati as the party's chairwoman," he said "In certain areas, there is some truth to what the anti-Jokowi groups claim."

M. Qodari, executive director of Indo Barometer, shares Burhanuddin's concerns. "Mega is very much his leader," he said.

'He can say no to everyone'

But despite Joko's perceived deference to Megawati, Burhanuddin said Joko is not completely under her thumb.

"It would be wrong to say that Jokowi is just a puppet who has no power against Megawati," explained Burhanuddin, who referred to Joko's track record, saying that in the past Joko had resisted even those who used to support him. "He has at some points said no to everyone, including Mega.

"For example, he became a governor partly due to Prabowo's support, but at one point, he was able to go against him. In the gubernatorial election, Jokowi was supported by Djan Faridz who has interests in Tanah Abang. Yet, when he saw it necessary to settle the problems in Tanah Abang, he resolved the problems with no considerations of Djan Faridz's support for him."

Qodari, similarly, believes that Joko's track record as Jakarta governor evidenced that he is an independent public servant. "Look at the policies that he implemented as a governor, or even when he was a mayor, he appeared very independent," Qodari said.

Burhanuddin argued that Joko's victory in the PDI-P's internal struggle is in itself a testament to his political power, and by extension a reflection of how much independence he has in the PDI-P.

"The fact is, he managed to become PDI-P's presidential candidate. That nomination is not something that can be easily achieved," said Burhanuddin.

"His nomination was the result of a great internal struggle within the party. There were struggles between his group and the groups which are pro-Puan and pro-Mega. That shows Jokowi survived the vicious political atmosphere within the party. You cannot take that nomination for granted – it didn't just fall down from the sky."

Burhanuddin contended that Joko may not be as obedient to his chairwoman as many believe him to be, pointing out the governor's disapproval of Megawati's choice for his running mate as a possible reason behind the party's delayed vice-presidential nomination.

"The truth is, Mega herself is not fully certain she can control Jokowi. That is the reason behind PDI-P's delayed vice-presidential announcement," said Barhanuddin. "For instance, Ryamizard Ryacudu is Mega's right-hand man. One would assume that his nomination as running mate would build a stronger hold over Joko."

The impact

There is certainly some weight behind the persistent argument questioning Joko's strength and convictions as a politician with his own mind.

While an LSI poll conducted in mid-march showed only 12 percent of Indonesians are convinced of Joko's role as a "puppet leader," Ade Irawan of Indonesia Corruption Watch contended the smearing campaign made a lasting impression. "It has certainly made an impact," Ade said.

Burhanuddin, who conducted the survey, admitted the attack on Joko's integrity has contributed to his recent drop in popularity.

"I'm not sure about now. The survey came out in mid-march. But, If we look at the exit polls and the one currently being done [by the General Election Commission], the impact seems quite significant. Joko's popularity is now in decline. Conversely, Prabowo's is rising."

Qodari, however, begged to differ, arguing that Joko's likability depends solely on his own performance and not on the attacks others have launched against him.

"His fate lies in his own hands. The people's opinions of him are determined by the degree to which his work in Jakarta is thought to be successful," he said.

"Look at the data taken in the aftermath of the Jakarta floods this year; Jokowi's popularity remained high, because the public was able to see him working hard. Flooding, traffic jams; these are complex problems. "First and foremost, the people are able to see for themselves whether the politician is willing to work hard or not. There is nothing surprising about getting attacked. Back in [the gubernatorial election in] Jakarta, he was heavily attacked. Yet, he still won."

It is a truism that the ideal public servant should only serve the public's interests, and no one else's. Therefore, there is clearly something amiss when a public servant, and in this case the holder of the nation's highest office – the presidential office – is someone who is bound to follow the orders of an influential third party.

Ade of ICW explained that for the sake of good governance, it is necessary for a political leader to be independent. "An independent public servant must have his own rational considerations when making public policies. He does not merely follow somebody else's decisions."

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/jakartas-popular-governor-just-empty-suit/

Mirroring West Papua

Jakarta Globe - April 29, 2014

Rohan Radheya – In 1969, Indonesia took over West Papua with the now infamous Act of Free Choice, a mock referendum where West Papuans were forced to relinquish their independence through intimidation and threats.

Today, fifteen years after a democracy replaced President Suharto's dictatorship, West Papua is still one of the most policed places on the planet – with approximately 30,000 security personnel dealing with an indigenous population of around two million.

Human rights records speak of atrocities, with disappearances and tortures happening on a daily basis. What is even more troubling is that some Indonesian military officers who committed and supervised tortures and genocide in East Timor are now serving in West Papua, and they are committing the same crimes.

What triggered Indonesia's annexation of West Papua are its rich natural resources. The US and other Western countries have huge investments in West Papua's copper and gold. The US giant McMoran operates in Freeport, the largest mine in the world, making the company Indonesia's largest taxpayer.

For decades now, parts of West Papua and the Grassberg mine especially have been restricted to foreign journalists, making any assessment of the humanitarian crisis almost impossible.

I first became interested in West Papua a year ago when I had the chance to visit the capital Jayapura – When I arrived at the Sentani airport, I was told by the Indonesian immigration officers to go to the police station and pick up a "surat jalan", or visiting permit, which is issued to all foreigners.

At the police station, the head commissioner who was going through my passport noticed previous journalist visas from other countries. He asked me if I was a journalist. I thought it would be useless to deny it and I confirmed that indeed I was a journalist, but that for this particular trip I had no intention of working.

What came after was most surprising. He quite simply Googled me and imposed upon me to leave my photographic gear at the police station. I could pick it up again on my way out of the country.

And so it is that I went through West Papua without a camera. I visited Wamena, Jayapura and Vanimo. I met with key leaders of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), the freedom movement for the liberation and independence of West Papua. I spent time with them at their headquarters hidden in the jungle, where their military wing is still fighting a low scale guerrilla campaign against the Indonesian military in the jungles of West Papua. OPM is designated as a terrorist organization by the US state department.

When I came back to my home in the Netherlands, I looked for a way to bring forward the plea of West Papuans. I visited the International Criminal Court in The Hague and talked to Simon Sapioper, the President of the National Government of West Papua in exile.

Simon sat down with me and told me about the horror of the 1998 Biak Massacre, where hundreds of West Papuans were chained and then dumped in the ocean by the Indonesian Special Forces Command (Kopassus). When their bodies washed ashore, the Indonesian authorities claimed they were victims of a tsunami that occurred one thousand miles away somewhere in Papua New Guinea.

Simon hinted this could be a strong case for the International Criminal Court to start investigating crimes against humanity in West Papua. Fatou Bensouda, the head prosecutor of the ICC, told him to gather as much evidence as possible.

I wanted to help and this is where my photos came into play. I needed strong pictures and I was inspired by the work ofJames Mackay and his project Abhaya, about political prisoners inside Myanmar. I was introduced to many West Papuan political refugees and started photographing each of them holding a board of a place in West Papua where war crimes have taken place.

This is only a humble first step towards understanding, representing and offering exposure to West Papua's independence struggle that would be strengthened if it gains an international awareness.

[Rohan Radheya is a Dutch Surinamese contract photographer and videojournalist. He is one of the very few press photographers from his country of origin covering stories on an international scale. With his work he hopes to reach out to the younger people in his community and to motivate them to explore their artistic side. Rohan is currently represented by Zumapress. Visit his website here. This article originally appeared on Warscapes.]

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/blogs/mirroring-west-papua/

Military reform swept under the rug

Jakarta Post - April 28, 2014

Fitri Bintang Timur and Puri Kencana Putri, Jakarta – Recently, Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen. Moeldoko stated that "democratic transition should be concluded this year" as Indonesia had yet to achieve political stability.

The commander's responsibility is to ensure that national defense is in top-notch condition and to oversee internal military institutional reform. Does his statement mean he is eyeing a political position beyond his current defense role? Does his reference to the protracted transition and yearning for stability mean he subscribes to the New Order fixation, which insinuates that civilians are not ready to lead the country and that the military should lend a hand again?

One analyst has suggested moving from questioning security sector reform to security sector "transformation", arguing that the focus should change from making the military accountable for its conduct to arming the TNI with the latest weaponry Indonesia can afford, especially with the regional turmoil over the South China Sea.

Others similarly view that Indonesia's military reform has been completed successfully. Such complacency has led to unsuccessful reform issues being swept under the rug.

Yes, there have been huge improvements within the TNI since the end of the New Order. The dwifungsi (dual role in defense and civilian life) has been removed, no military member obtains a free seat in the legislature, business units have been restructured from the corps to being under the Defense Ministry or State-Owned Enterprises Ministry, and the police are no longer part of the military. Yet we should also remember the shortcomings of military reform.

First, reform is incomplete regarding the military's respect for human rights. In 2000, the TNI published a Soldiers' Guideline for Human Rights Implementation.

However, there is no guarantee that soldiers will behave according to the guidelines, as long as there is no commitment of the institution's willingness to be bound by human rights standards.

It has been just a little over a year since the Cebongan attack in Sleman, Yogyakarta, when members of the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) raided a prison, killing an inmate who they said was a thug who killed a colleague.

This incident ruined the decade-old image of fairly successful TNI reform as its weapons storage was compromised and the soldiers involved did not show any respect for human rights, nor for international norms respecting civil-military relations, as stipulated in the 1949 Geneva Convention.

The attack occurred in an area relatively accessible for the media; pressure instantly mounted for an investigation and an open trial for the suspects.

But what would have happened if this incident had taken place somewhere in Papua, with limited media access? What would happen if journalists themselves were the victims, like the "Balibo Five" in former East Timor?

In 2012 alone, the independent Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) recorded more than 90 cases of violence involving military members, including maltreatment (55 cases), destruction (10) and shooting (four cases). As these violations were not widely reported, the public has no idea whether the TNI addressed the cases internally, or whether it turned a blind eye due to a lack of internal accountability supervision.

This condition leads to the second shortcoming in military reform: the sluggish progress regarding military tribunals. The open tribunal on the Cebongan attack, held after mounting public pressure, was a rare event. The legislature has been debating revisions to the Military Tribunal Law since 2004. The bill stipulates that military personnel suspected of criminal acts will be brought before a civil court, rather than a military tribunal, as the latter usually gives administrative penalties rather than penalties aimed at deterrence.

Analyst Wahyudi Djafar has noted that even if accused military personnel were to be brought before a military tribunal, the tribunal should adhere to principles such as transparency and accountability, besides handing out punishment befitting the crime. Apparently, these requirements have become major obstacles to the amendment of the Military Tribunal Law. As a result, today's military tribunals still preserve impunity, giving lenient punishment and freeing masterminds from individual responsibility.

The pattern is similar to the tribunal of Kopassus members found guilty of abduction and forced disappearance of student activists in 1998; perpetrators were brought to court, but the one giving the assignment is still protected by law.

The third issue is the untouched territorial commands (Koter) at the local level, which were used by the New Order to spy on and influence the population. There is no reason for the military to persist having operations in the local areas, as it should focus on being the first line of defense against outside threats in the frontier areas.

Because military personnel are still deployed at the local level, the Koter will always be suspected as effective political tools, for instance to conduct voter mobilization and intimidation around each election time. Hence, Koter needs to be reformed, or else military personnel or retired officers might use its network to gain political support up to the local district.

Returning to Gen. Moeldoko's wish of the conclusion to democratic transition to make way for political stability, it is not his position to provide such a statement.

Unless he is subtly hinting an underlying motive that he is ready to leave his military throne to join politicians and the business crowd – just like several former generals leading political parties and several others taking commissioner positions in state owned enterprises.

[Fitri Bintang Timur is a researcher at the Institute for Defense Security and Peace Studies and a Fellow of Marthinus Academy, Jakarta. Puri Kencana Putri is a researcher at the independent Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), and a graduate student of international law and human rights at the University for Peace, Costa Rica.]

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/04/28/military-reform-swept-under-rug.html

Prabowo the patriot: Presidential hopeful produces propaganda flop

Asian Correspondent - April 24, 2014

Patrick Tibke – In recent times Prabowo Subianto's presidential campaign has often manifested as a peculiar spectacle, characterised by colourful and highly unpredictable politicking. In one such unorthodox campaign manoeuvre, earlier last month, Prabowo released an autobiographical documentary entitled Prabowo Sang Patriot ('Prabowo the Patriot'), in which he is self-indulgently portrayed as the mortal embodiment of myriad, vainglorious Javanese and Indonesian stereotypes – from ancient, indefatigable warrior descendent, to paternalistic agro-lover and solider of 'the people.' In light of this particular item of propaganda, there seems to be no limitations as to what kind of rhetoric or medium Prabowo is willing to appropriate in order to clinch and index his strongman, populist credentials.

Prabowo Sang Patriot, a cinematic experiment produced and funded by Prabowo's billionaire younger brother, Hashim Djojohadikusomo, was released via the Gerindra party's exclusive YouTube channel on March 4, though so far to scanty acclaim. And in typically obstinate fashion, the brothers have subsequently denied that the film is intended as campaign propaganda, even though its release seems to coincide uncannily with the run-up to the 2014 elections. Technicalities aside, Prabowo Sang Patriot is clearly a very high-budget production, bolstered by extensive use of archive footage and slick direction from Helmi Adam, as well as an orchestral score and a catchy little campaign ditty, unreservedly entitled Prabowo Presidenku ('Prabowo, my president').

In terms of casting, Prabowo has shrewdly chosen not to feature personally in the film, presumably so not to be seen as blowing his own trumpet on- screen, so to speak. Instead, Prabowo Sang Patriot employs the assistance of a motley crew of hand-picked talking heads, each commissioned to narrate the life-story of the presidential hopeful and heap seemingly munificent praise on his pre-eminent, elite lineage.

Thus, in a rather noticeable academic about-turn, esteemed Oxford historian Peter Carey can be seen selling his soul on-screen as he delivers a cheery exposition of Prabowo's intricate family tree; despite his former rendering of the late New Order Prabowo as an "unpredictable" ruffian known for his "hot temper and cold heart", who previously "earned a sinister reputation for violence against the local population" during the Kopassus domination of East Timor.

Through an amusingly inventive mix of Indonesian and English, Carey establishes Prabowo's direct blood relation with the revered Sultan Agung of 17th century Mataram, as well as Raden Tumenggung Kertanegara III, who fought with Prince Diponegoro during his much-vaunted 19th century rebellion against Dutch rule. Then in classic English parlance, Carey concludes that such intrepid ancestry is unlikely to produce a "lickspittle", "yes-man" or "tag-along" (orang yang ikut-ikut saja). The subtext here presumably implies that Prabowo, by biological default, is a natural born leader embodying the same noble and courageous principles as those exemplified by his centuries-old forefathers.

Further on in the film, in another key scene, Prabowo's participation in the bloody occupation and even ghastlier retreat from East Timor and West Papua is spun off as little more than a cunning enterprise in saving Western hostages – a remarkable feat which Prabowo could have hardly achieved without perfidiously masquerading as a Red Cross contingent in the heat of battle. Similarly, Prabowo's later involvement in the abduction, torture and disappearance of pro-democracy activists in 1998 is conveniently expunged and glossed over by another designated expert, author Fadli Zon, who incidentally happens to be the deputy chairman of Prabowo's Gerindra party. Essentially, all contentions and accusations of malpractice levelled at Prabowo prior to and during Suharto's downfall are cleverly sidestepped in favour of 'courageous' or 'patriotic' scenes, such as the one regaling Prabowo's ascent of Mt. Everest in 1997, in which he is pictured atop the summit valiantly raising Indonesia's red and white flag and clamouring "God is great!"

Thankfully, for those voters eager to see an Indonesian president untarnished by the violence, pomp and impunity of the New Order period, Prabowo's platitude-ridden, policy-devoid bio-doc has so far failed miserably to put momentum behind his presidential campaign. With only 70,853 YouTube views as of April 23, I think it's fair to say that Prabowo Sang Patriot constitutes an embarrassing flop for the Gerindra party campaign team, and an expensive one at that. Indeed, there is no doubt that Prabowo Sang Patriot might strike a chord with Indonesia's more nostalgic voters, many of whom still prefer the archaic dwi fungsi argument and look towards the military for competent, judicious leadership. But with such poor exposure the film is unlikely to have any significant effect on voting. For now we may as well sit back and revel in the gay melody of Prabowo Presidenku, and wonder what's next in Prabowo's weird inventory of campaign tricks.

[Patrick Tibke is a Jakarta-based writer and a recent graduate from the Southeast Asian Studies program at SOAS, University of London. His interests include politics, human rights, labour and narcotics-related issues.]

Source: http://asiancorrespondent.com/121972/prabowo-the-patriot-indonesia-presidential-hopeful-produces-a-propaganda-flop/