No more ET code: Soesilo
JAKARTA (JP): The government announced yesterday that it will start phasing out the use of the special ET code, which stands for Eks Tahanan-politik (former political detainees), on the identity cards of former communists, beginning on August 18 when it launches a new ID card system.
"There will be no more ET code," Coordinating Minister for Political Affairs and Security Soesilo Soedarman told reporters after heading a special meeting with ministers under his charge, Antara reported.
The encoding has been widely criticized by human rights groups because it is highly discriminative not only to the individual person, but also to their immediate relatives. The discriminative practice is mostly felt when they apply for jobs.
The policy was introduced in the 1970s to allow the government to monitor the whereabouts and activities of former detainees linked with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
The party, which in the early 1960s was one of the largest in Indonesia, was outlawed in 1966 after it was accused of engineering the abortive coup a year earlier. Many PKI members and supporters were rounded up subsequently and sentenced to hard labor on Buru Island in Maluku. They were released under a general amnesty in the late 1970s.
Minister of Home Affairs Moch. Yogie S.M., who accompanied Soesilo at the press conference yesterday, said that at the last survey just before the 1992 general election, there were 1,352,896 people whose ID cards were stamped with the ET code.
He said however that of these, 1,316,551 were allowed to take part in the general election, while the other 36,345 were barred.
The government's announcement comes amid growing demand from human rights campaigners, some statesmen and politicians to remove any remaining discriminatory signs of a person's previous communist links as part of the national reconciliation spirit as the nation marks its 50th independence anniversary this year.
The government has already announced that it will be releasing three political prisoners who were convicted for the botched coup in 1965 and officials have said that a few others are being considered for possible release.
Soesilo said that the ET code would not appear on new ID cards that will be issued after Aug. 18.
He said, however, that the government is not letting down its guard, and monitoring of the activities of these former detainees will continue in other forms.
"Everybody will be monitoring them, the government and the people. The scrapping of the ET code is not a step backward, because we will always be watching out against the latent danger of communism."
Yogie explained that the decision was also based on reports that the former detainees have been behaving themselves, some becoming very religious.
Yogie explained that on Aug. 18, the government will formally launch the new ID card system, with the presentation of the first two cards to President Soeharto and First Lady Tien Soeharto.
The new card system is more sophisticated in that it would not enable a person to have more than one ID card, which has been one of the chief weaknesses of the current system, Yogie said.
From now on, each citizen will be given a citizenship number which he or she will carry all the time, he said.
The new ID card will be valid for three years, but for those who are over 50 years old, it is valid for the rest of their lives. The cost of an ID is set at Rp 3,000.
Yogie said that the new ID system will be introduced in phases, starting first with Jakarta, West Java, East Java, Bali, East Kalimantan and Maluku. (emb)