Further tests for Australia-Indonesia ties

Further tests for Australia-Indonesia ties

Michael Danby, Melbourne

In June I wrote in The Jakarta Post about the Schapelle Corby
case and the risk that it would damage relations between
Australia and Indonesia. I expressed the view that the Corby case
would not permanently damage the Australia-Indonesia
relationship, and that has turned out to be the case. Now,
however, that relationship, which is so important to both
countries, is under strain again, as a result of three new
events.

The first is the bombing atrocity in Bali on Oct. 1, which
killed 15 Indonesians and four Australians, including a 16-year-
old boy. Although the death toll was not as high as that in the
first Bali bombing in 2002, it has revived all the grief and
anger that Australians felt at the time of the first bombing.

Australians do not, of course, blame the government of
Indonesia or the Indonesian people for these crimes. Reactions
over the past two weeks to this latest terrorist attack have been
dominated by expressions of sympathy for the people of Indonesia,
particularly the people of Bali, from the Australian government,
media and people.

Australians are well aware that the people who organize and
carry out these crimes are a tiny minority of fanatics, inspired
and funded from outside Indonesia. Australians understand that
the hateful ideology of these people is a distortion and betrayal
of the principles of Islam, particularly as it has always been
practiced in Indonesia.

But Australians also expect that Indonesia will do everything
in its power to catch and punish those responsible for this
attack. Although the three suicide bombers are dead, it is
important that those who recruited, trained and directed these
people be caught, and that the political leadership of the groups
responsible be found and punished.

Having heard General Made Mangku Pastika speak when I was in
Indonesia in 2003, I have every confidence in the ability of
Indonesia's law enforcement agencies to do the job. But punishing
those responsible and preventing further such attacks requires
more than police work. It requires judicial firmness and
political will. Here there is more cause for concern, and this
leads me to the second recent event I want to mention.

Abu Bakar Ba'asyir was one of the founders of Jamaah
Islamiyah, and very few Australians doubt that he was the
mastermind behind the first Bali bombing. Australians were
therefore disappointed that he was not charged with direct
responsibility. He was charged instead with conspiracy, and
sentenced to two and a half years. Most Australians think this
was a very inadequate sentence for a man charged with involvement
in an atrocity which killed over 200 people -- 38 of them
Indonesian citizens.

Since his conviction, moreover, Ba'asyir has had his sentence
remitted by four months. I understand, of course, that he was
entitled to this remission under Indonesian law, like most other
prisoners, on Indonesian Independence Day. But this news was very
badly received in Australia, and I would think also by the
relatives of those Indonesians killed in the two Bali bombings,
the Marriott Hotel bombing and the Australian Embassy bombing.

Many people in Australia have called on Indonesia to ban
Jamaah Islamiyah. That is of course a matter for the Indonesian
government, and I understand that there is some difficulty in
banning an organization whose name means "Islamic Community" in a
Muslim country. But there would be less concern in Australia over
the question of banning the organization if Australians were
convinced that Indonesia was serious about prosecuting those
responsible for planning the Bali and other bombings.

The third event is the trial of the so-called "Bali Nine." Few
Australians have much sympathy with those who are stupid enough
to engage in drug trafficking. Nevertheless, the situation of the
nine young Australians currently facing death sentences in Bali
after being charged with trying to carry heroin out of Indonesia
is obviously getting a lot of media attention in Australia, which
abolished the death penalty more than 20 years ago. Even those
who think that drug traffickers deserve the most severe
punishment will oppose the death penalty in these cases.

The real problem for Indonesia-Australia relations with the
Bali Nine case, however, is the stark contrast between the
penalty which hangs over these Australians and the sentence
received by Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. Many Australians are asking: If
drug trafficking is an offense punishable by death, what is an
appropriate penalty for conspiring to plant bombs in crowded bars
and restaurants and killing hundreds of innocent people? Surely,
they are saying, it should be more than two and a half years in
prison, minus remissions.

Last May former presidential adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar
chaired an intense weekend meeting between five Australian MPs
and 25 of their newly elected Indonesian colleagues. This kind of
contact between Jakarta and Canberra must not and will not be
derailed by Jamaah Islamiyah. Democrats in Indonesia and
Australia must work to defeat the terrorists by redoubling our
contacts and co-operation.

Indonesians will be favorably impressed by the pro-Indonesia
sentiments that the terrorist attacks in Bali engendered in the
Australian Parliament. During debate on the motion condemning the
attacks, moved by Prime Minister Howard and seconded by
Opposition Leader Beazley, I said: "Australia must continue to
work closely with Indonesia, both at the government level and at
the level of civil society, to make that relationship closer and
stronger. The people who carried out the Bali atrocity hoped to
wreck that relationship. We must make sure they do not succeed."

Michael Danby is a Labor Party member of the Australian House
of Representatives and Secretary of the Opposition National
Security Committee.