Govt plans to fingerprint all citizens

Eva C. Komandjaja and Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta/Malang

In an effort to fight terrorism and other crimes, the government would fingerprint all citizens instead of only students of Islamic boarding schools, police here said on Friday.

National Police chief Gen. Sutanto said the fingerprinting would be conducted through a Single Identification Number (SIN) system, in which citizens would only be able to have one identification card and passport.

The move, he added, was necessary to prevent people from obtaining more than one identity card or passport, thus increasing the risks of illegal residents and making it easier for terrorists to launch attacks.

Sutanto hoped that the SIN system could soon be applied by the government in order to fight terrorism and prevent other crimes, such as document forgery and immigration violations.

"The system would be under the authority of the Ministry of Home Affairs. However, we hope the police will be able to get access to the data for our criminal investigations," he said.

He denied reports that it was the police that came up with the idea to fingerprint students of Islamic boarding schools (pesantren), a plan supported by Vice President Jusuf Kalla.

"The idea originally came from several clerics in Cimahi, West Java, and they talked to police about their suggestion," Sutanto said.

Kalla had said he agreed with the plan to fingerprint pesantren students as part of the government's efforts to prevent terrorists from recruiting new members from Islamic boarding schools.

However, the suggestion drew strong reaction from Muslim leaders and clerics who said it would place pesantren under suspicion of terrorism.

Hasyim Muzadi, leader of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) -- the country's largest Islamic organization that represents thousands of pesantren across Indonesia -- urged Muslim clerics on Friday to oppose any plan to fingerprint their students.

"The plan should be rejected. However, I have asked the National Police chief about this issue and he says he knew nothing about it," he said in Malang, East Java.

Hasyim said the idea was a "counterproductive" move by the government as the fingerprinting would only generalize or stigmatize pesantren as hotbeds of terrorism.

In waging war on terror, he said, government forces should involve pesantren instead of placing them under suspicion. To find terrorists anywhere the government should use intelligence approaches, he added.

Similarly, Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Habib Rizieq also responded negatively, saying the police should not only take fingerprints from Muslim students.

"There should be no discrimination in the plan. The police should fingerprint all Indonesian citizens, not just Muslim students," the hard-line group leader said, as quoted by Antara on Friday.

He demanded that the police take fingerprints only through normal procedures, such as a card identification system, and that the data should be computerized with all law enforcement agencies given access to it.

"If we had an advanced system, we should already have the fingerprints of all Indonesian citizens when they apply for identification documents," Habib said.

However, he said the government's current system was very badly managed and not computerized, and that the fingerprints in the database were improperly collected and stored.