Attorney General to summon 'problematic' NGO activists
Attorney General to summon 'problematic' NGO activists
JAKARTA (JP): The Attorney General's Office will begin
summoning 32 "problematic" non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
for questioning next week.
Chief of the Attorney General's Intelligence Department Gatot
Hendrasto announced yesterday that each of the NGOs must be
represented by its three top brass: director, deputy director and
secretary-general.
Gatot called the planned questioning "dialogs".
"The meetings will serve as dialogs between us, no more than
that," Gatot said. The NGOs will be questioned separately.
Gatot refused to disclose the names of the targeted NGOs but
indicated the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi), known to
be critical of many government policies including the planned
construction of nuclear power plants, would be one of them.
Sutoyo N.K., Director General of Social and Political Affairs
of the Ministry of Home Affairs, whose office oversees the
registration of mass organizations, said last month the
Foundation of the Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI), the National
Brotherhood Foundation (YKPK), the Indonesian Prosperous Labor
Union (SBSI), the New Masyumi Moslem Organization, the New
Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI) and the Pemuda Marhaen youth
organization, are some of the NGOs to be questioned.
Coordinating Minister for Political Affairs and Security
Soesilo Soedarman announced last month that the government would
take action against certain NGOs for failing to specify the
Pancasila as their ideology and for engaging in illegal
activities.
The 32 represent a minority of the about 8,000 Indonesian
NGOs, Soesilo said.
Some NGOs have rejected claims that they must stipulate state-
ideology Pancasila as their ideology, saying they are not mass
organizations and therefore not subject to the same law.
The debates ended with Minister of Home Affairs Moch. Yogie
S.M. recently insisting that the 1985 law on mass organizations
applied to all NGOs.
The law stipulates that the guiding principle of NGOs, and
mass organizations, must be the state ideology Pancasila.
When asked about possible penalties to be imposed on the NGOs,
Gatot said the issue has not been discussed yet.
"It is too early to talk about punitive measures before
knowing what kind of violations they have committed," he said.
Gatot, who was attending a seminar jointly held by the
National Commission on Human Rights and the Raoul Wellenberg
Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from Sweden, said
it would take some time to determine whether an NGO had broken
its statutes or not.
"Talking to 96 people must take a long time," he said. (amd)