Inciting violence

Inciting violence

Why are activists of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) allowed
time after time to get away with violence and incitement to
violence? The banners that they reportedly displayed at the Hotel
Indonesia roundabout on Sunday, March 18, are plain,
straightforward incitements to murder. "We will behead
communists" is palpably criminal. Why were no arrests made.

What these people mean of course is that they will kill
anybody they believe to be a communist, irrespective of the
evidence. It is a well-known fact that many of those slaughtered
in the anti-communist (PKI) bloodbath in 1965-66 were simply
deemed to be communists or had only the most tenuous connection
with them. That period ought to have lessons for the present.

In any case this atavistic language of the FPI should be
roundly condemned for what it is, a return to the darkest period
of Indonesia's history when all political differences and scores
were settled by violence. Indonesia's situation cries out for a
moral voice that clearly and unequivocally opposes the use of
violence and any incitement to it.

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta