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)