ABRI militia plan 'needs to be debated further'

ABRI militia plan 'needs to be debated further'

JAKARTA (JP): The Armed Forces' (ABRI) plan to establish a
civilian militia to support security forces needs to be debated
further to gain more popular support, a leading rights campaigner
said here on Tuesday.

"It has to be accepted by the public much more widely than it
is now," chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights,
Marzuki Darusman, told The Jakarta Post in a telephone interview.

Marzuki said that the idea in setting up the militia is to
reinforce the capability of ABRI and the police to control
rioting. "We are concerned that there is now a semi-anarchic
situation and therefore we need ABRI to maintain minimum order so
that human rights can be protected," he said.

In recent months, various cases of violent unrest have
occurred, including clashes between troops and students, and
riots with religious overtones that have damaged mosques and
churches.

"So that is why we would favor reinforcing the capability of
ABRI to handle riots and potential violence professionally,"
Marzuki added. However, he agreed with Minister of Justice
Muladi's comment on Monday that the plan to set up the militia
must first be regulated by law.

"It is something that the (defense) ministry would have to do,
because the foundation of the civilian militia would have to be
based on law," Marzuki said.

Marzuki also said that there is a basic difference between
civilian guards (Pam Swakarsa) and a civilian militia, because
the latter would be trained personnel.

"They would be trained personnel rather than people taken from
the street like Pam Swakarsa," Marzuki said, adding that "very
bad experiences with civilian guards need to be taken into
account".

ABRI Commander Gen. Wiranto is already facing sharp public
criticism over last month's mobilization of 125,000 untrained
civilians to help secure the Special Session of the People's
Consultative Assembly. Four such volunteers were killed by mobs
during demonstrations on Nov. 12 and Nov. 13.

Activists, legislators and analysts criticized the deployment
of these civilian guards as they regularly ended up in clashes
with residents and student protesters.

Marzuki said that in principal he would not object to the
establishment of a civilian militia as long as the selection of
the personnel was transparent, the training was professional and
the militia was "equipped with basic knowledge of human rights".

However, Marzuki added that ABRI needs to clarify what the
procedures will be for the use of civilian militia in riot
control situations.

Such clarification would prevent the misunderstanding "that
any action taken by the civilian militia is out of line ..." with
the authority entrusted to them, he said.

He added that the idea to set up a civilian militia had been
discussed within the cabinet for some time but "it is only now
that they have been able to reach an agreement".

"There were some push and pull on the matter within the
cabinet," Marzuki said without elaborating.

Meanwhile, a political analyst at the National Institute of
Science, Indria Samego, also suggested that the government should
have discussed such an important issue with the people before the
decision went into effect.

"The establishment of the civilian militia is constitutionally
correct, but may not be the people's choice," he told reporters
on the sidelines of a seminar on press freedom.

He said that there should not be a monopoly in the process of
making decisions that affect the public.

He said that deliberation on the issue should at least have
included the House of Representatives, the signatories of the
Nov. 10 Ciganjur Declaration -- chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama
Islamic organization Abdurrahman Wahid, National Mandate Party
chairman Amien Rais, Megawati Soekarnoputri of the splintered
Indonesian Democratic Party and Yogyakarta's monarch Sri Sultan
Hamengkubuwono X -- figures from the National Front and
political party officials. (byg/imn/nur)