Plan to expand BIN may threaten democratization

Plan to expand BIN may threaten democratization

Ardimas Sasdi, Staff Writer, Berkeley, California

ajambak@uclink4.berkeley.edu

Like a body blow to many people who are longing for peace and
order after a great dearth of positive news, the government has
announced a controversial plan to expand the authority and reach
of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) within the country.

State Minister for Administrative Reforms Feisal Tamin said
recently that President Megawati Soekarnoputri had signed a
presidential decree on a plan to open BIN offices in all
provinces, regencies and municipalities throughout the country.

However, on the following day chief security minister Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono said the plan, expected to have far-reaching
implications on the life of many people, still needed approval
from the Cabinet. Rarely does a presidential decree require
approval from the Cabinet.

It was not clear who was right or wrong as each version has
its own explanation.

Feisal, logically, would not issue a sloppy statement taking
into account his meritorious experience as a former government
spokesman, while Susilo would not dare contradict his Cabinet
colleague if he did not have strong grounds to do so.

However, one thing is for sure: The government plans to build
an extensive network of BIN all over the country. BIN's
expansion, if the plan is carried out, could be very risky as
history has shown that the ruling government tends to exploit the
intelligence agency inside the country to achieve one goal or
another by harassing and detaining political opponents or those
perceived to be.

Many Indonesians still remember all too well the experiences
during the era of former president Soeharto, who often used the
intelligent apparatus as a tool to monitor, torture and arrest
government critics. This bitter experience is so oppressive in
the minds of the victims, their relatives and society that many,
many people are ultra-sensitive toward anything which smacks of
more power to the domestic intelligence community. For
Indonesians, BIN and its predecessor -- the National Coordinating
Intelligence Agency (BAKIN) -- are the same "ghost".

So bad was the reputation of BAKIN that the government of
former President Abdurrahman Wahid completely overhauled the
agency in 2000, and changed its name to BIN after curtailing much
of its authority.

But in October 2002, the same month as the Bali bombings,
which killed 202 people, Megawati's administration reinstated the
authority of BIN as a coordinator of intelligence agencies.
Besides BIN there are intelligence bodies under the Indonesian
Military, the police force and Attorney General's Office.

Politicians, experts and activists from non-governmental
organizations (NGO) agreed with the government on a need for an
effective and efficient intelligence agency to curb terror
attacks, but they criticized a plan to expand BIN, saying that
this policy would have wide-ranging ramifications on the nation's
economy, society and politics.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Akbar Tandjung said
the government's plan to strengthen BIN was understandable as an
intelligence agency should have a network at every level of the
government, but he still queried the plan as a means to
institutionalize the agency at the district level.

Political analyst Indria Samego of the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences (LIPI) said the plan to open intelligence offices in
regencies was excessive and prone to abuse, while his colleague
at LIPI Hermawan Sulistiyo said that BIN should instead improve
its coordination capabilities and quality of its agents.

The most serious threat behind the plan to expand BIN,
according to lawyer Munir from the NGO Imparsial, is that this
plan could turn Indonesia back into a police state, where almost
all activities and movements of people would be monitored by
intelligence agents. Also in southeast Asia, strict monitoring of
people's activities is known to happen in Myanmar, where
violations of people's basic civil rights are common.

In short, the questions being raised by opponents of the BIN
plan are:

First, is the planned expansion of BIN the best answer to curb
terrorism? This question arose amid the relative success of the
police in arresting many of the suspects in the Bali and Marriott
attacks. This achievement is spectacular by any standard in the
world.

Second, how long will the fight against terrorism last? If the
answer is uncertain or as long as there is terrorism threat, the
question is do people have to live with fear during the whole of
this period, and tolerate their civil rights being trampled on by
BIN agents? And who will bear the financial burden of the
operations of so many BIN offices?.

Third, is there a guarantee that BIN's expansion, which will
also entail employment of hundreds or even thousands of agents,
will not lead to abuse of civil liberties.

In a developing country like Indonesia, where checks and
balances are not yet in place, the potential for violations of
civil rights of the people by an agency such as BIN is great.
Indonesia must learn from the black history of Myanmar, where a
small number of military elite in conjunction with a strong spy
agency can maintain their power. In Myanmar, activities of the
people are strictly monitored, letters and Internet messages are
screened by military agents and a gathering of more than four
people is illegal.

So the danger behind this controversial plan lies in the
simplification of a fight against terrorism as if terror will be
solved once BIN is expanded, and that this logic also does not
take into account possible infringement of people's civil rights.
If this happens, the ongoing democratization process, including
some press freedoms, will suffer.

The writer is a scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism
at the University of California, Berkeley.