Govt to scrap draconian subversion law

JAKARTA (JP): The government moved on Wednesday to discard the infamous 1963 Subversion Law, but proposed its replacement with inclusion of six new articles on "crimes against the state" in the Criminal Code.

Minister of Justice Muladi told a House of Representatives plenary session the additional articles would accommodate elements of the law "which are still relevant".

"(It is needed) so that the condition of a legal vacuum does not occur," Muladi told the session presided over by deputy speaker Ismail Hasan Metareum.

He also said a bill on the state's safety and security would soon be submitted by the defense and security minister.

The latter bill, as stipulated in decree No. 10/1998 of the People's Consultative Assembly, is meant as the "replacement" of the subversion law.

Muladi said the proposed bill would not be a blanket substitute because "it deals more with such things as a state of emergency and martial law".

He described it as allowing the Armed Forces to take effective measures to cope with unrest.

Articles proposed for inclusion in the Criminal Code, coded article 107a through 107f, would regulate crimes that endanger the state's Pancasila ideology, ones pertaining to the spread of Marxism-Leninism and acts of sabotage of state or military installations or distribution of basic essentials.

Unlike the subversion law that threatens violators with the death penalty, the proposal would carry a maximum 20-year prison term.

"By integrating (the still relevant) elements of the 1963 law into the Criminal Code, it should altogether mean that the effective procedural code is the Criminal Code Procedures," Muladi told the House.

Under the subversion law, law enforcers are authorized to detain alleged violators for a maximum of one year for questioning. Under the Criminal Code Procedures, the maximum permitted is 60 days.

"A perennial criticism of the subversion law regards its procedures (of investigating alleged violators), that it breaches the Criminal Code Procedures," Muladi told journalists after the session.

Criminal Code

Asked why there was no complete overhaul of the Criminal Code, Muladi said a decision could only be made after legislators were elected in the June elections.

Legal experts -- including Muladi before he became a minister -- have long called a more contemporary replacement for the 1946 Criminal Code.

Many argued its earlier submission would have stopped the toll from the subversion law, frequently described as draconian and inhumane.

The Criminal Code does not have provisions on subversion, which justified the government's use of the subversion law.

The bill is said to consist of more than 600 articles with the bill drafters including Muladi. For more than 12 years a panel of experts at the Agency for the Development of National Laws has deliberated the new Criminal Code bill. In 1993, it was reportedly concluded.

In 1997, the National Commission on Human Rights also called on the government to repeal the subversion law.

The law prohibits activities that could be labeled subversive, such as attempts to topple the government, undermine the Pancasila state ideology and express sympathy with the country's foes. It extends to the damaging of a public facility.

Legal experts decry it as easy to manipulate and for providing the government with the sole authority to define what constitutes a subversive act.

The law was applied in the late 1960s against the Indonesian Communist Party, since banned, for its staging of a bloody coup attempt. It was also used to deal with anti-New Order demonstrations during the late 1970s.

In recent years, it was the legal basis to arrest Democratic People's Party (PRD) activists and labor leader Muchtar Pakpahan. (aan)