'New stance needed to counter terrorism'

Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Experts called on the nation to renew its commitment to humanity and counter terrorism with the hope that the Bali blast would be the last violent incident to plague Indonesia.

Speaking at a panel discussion, they urged the people to stop blaming one another for the Oct. 12 tragedy and instead to learn from the incident by responding quickly to any sort of violence.

Security authorities should not therefore be reluctant any longer to enforce the law against individuals or extremist groups using violence that could become an embryo for terrorism, they said.

Former defense minister Juwono Sudarsono said the nation should be united and avoid being fragmented in dealing with terrorism that has hit the crisis-battered country.

"We cannot blame the government in this case. No president in the world is perfect. The United States has even been the victim of terrorism despite the sophisticated CIA," he said.

He said that to help the authorities fight terrorism, the people should intensify neighborhood community patrols in order to step up surveillance of those trying to commit violence.

"Our sense of humanity has been awaken by the Bali incident. Up until now our sensitivity to violence was dead," said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a senior expert from the Habibie Center.

"We hear media reports of deaths every day across the country. But we seem to have become insensitive to move to stop it. Now our sense of humanity is challenged," she added.

Dewi said the Bali tragedy that killed nearly 200 people, mostly foreigners, would be "a real threat to our humanity" if the country failed to combat terror attacks and other rampant cases of violence.

"We hope the Bali incident will motivate us to identify our common enemy, which is terrorism. We have to reaffirm our national unity and all Indonesians must cooperate to eradicate terrorism and say no to violence," she said.

Economist Syahrir, who chairs the New Indonesia Party (PIB), said he hoped the Bali incident would change "our corrupt mentality" in running the country and motivate people to work for a better future.

"None of us know who were behind the terror attack. But we should remain optimistic that we will be able to work together in unity to handle this problem," he told the forum.

Lily Zakiah Munir of the 40-million strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) concurred, saying: "We should not seek what and who are to blame. What we have to do is to identify what we can learn from the incident".

In the future, religious moderation should be further promoted among Muslims to prevent radicalism leading them to employ violence to achieve their goals, she said.

"Islam teaches humanity but in reality Muslims do not practice it to humanize the human," Lily said.

Describing the characteristics of radicals, she said they embrace "theocentrism" in which religion is separated from social reality, demonstrated by their refusal to promote interfaith dialogs, for example.

Radicals are also against gender equality and human rights. They emphasize physical symbols in practicing religion, she added.

However, sociologist Franz Magnis Suseno said fundamentalists and militant radicals had nothing to do with terrorists.

"The distinction between the three groups is important in dealing with terrorism," he told the same discussion. "Terrorist groups are extremely closed organizations with a network of cells, while extremist groups are open organizations that anyone can have access to," he added.

Suseno said cracking down on such militant groups would be pointless, but stressed that security authorities must take firm action against members of these groups.