Govt plans to fingerprint all citizens

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.