Activist urges RI not to let freedoms fade
JAKARTA (JP): Failure to institutionalize political openness this time around in a climate of relative freedom will lead to the old trap of gags on freedom of expression, a human rights advocate warned on Wednesday.
Joseph Saunders of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told The Jakarta Post the current political openness must immediately usher in legal and institutional protection for basic rights, including freedom of expression.
"In the late 1960s when the New Order came to power, there was also a period of openness, but that openness didn't last because it wasn't followed up by the creation of legal and institutional protection," said the associate counsel on academic freedom for the organization.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the Third Workshop of the Asia-Pacific Regional Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, which will end on Friday.
Saunders recommended that laws to ensure freedom of expression should be drawn up soon. The 1945 Constitution has often been held up as guaranteeing political freedom in its clause 28, but its actual wording is that "freedom of association... and freedom of expression... will be established in laws". The laws have never been enacted.
Saunders compiled a new report released by Human Rights Watch titled Academic Freedom in Indonesia: Dismantling Soeharto-Era Barriers.
The report acknowledges efforts to end limitations on academic freedom, but noted that restrictive laws were still in place.
"Students and faculties, well placed to contribute to and enrich public debate on issues, were frequent targets (of control)," the report states.
"With the success of the student protest movement in 1998, these controls now have little practical effect, and Juwono Sudarsono, Indonesia's new minister of education, has indicated that they are under review. The report urges that they be abolished altogether."
The New Order outlawed student politics on campuses in 1978 by a ministerial decree; those caught violating the ban faced suspension or expulsion from their institutions.
Human Rights Watch also urged an end to other Soeharto-era gags on free expression, including the laws which it said were most widely deployed to silence dissent -- ones on subversion, another on "spreading hatred toward the government" and a third on "insulting the head of state".
Saunders singled out barriers of mandatory ideological background checks on teachers, dating back to their grandparents' political views in the 1960s, heavy book censorship and the blacklisting of government critics.
Other means of stifling students and teachers were permit procedures, which effectively give military and government authorities veto power over research projects, and other military interference in campus affairs.
Until Soeharto fell from power, the report said, subjects considered off-limits for open analysis were the growing wealth of the autocratic leader's family and close associates; discrimination against Chinese-Indonesians; military operations in separatist-plagued areas such as Aceh, East Timor and Irian Jaya and the prominent political role of the military.
"There was very little public discussion (of many pressing social issues). And when you drive it underground you lose... public understanding of the issue," Saunders said.
The organization's 11 recommendations included removal of the ideological background checks for teachers, an end to military interference in campus activities and a halt to book censorship.
It urged the government to account for the "disappeared" people who were still unaccounted for. At least 24 activists, including students, have disappeared this year. The nine who have returned gave harrowing accounts of abduction and torture.
The military last month discharged one lieutenant general for complicity in the abductions and revoked the military positions of two others and ended their active duty. Ten members of the Army's Special Force will also face court-martials. (aan)