Police beef up security around S'pore embassy
Police beef up security around S'pore embassy
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Already tight police security has been stepped up around the
Singaporean Embassy here, following angry protests by hard-line
groups in the past two days over Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew's
controversial remarks on terrorism in Indonesia.
"We have deployed police personnel around the area" who will
be "ready to take action against protesters should they become
violent," National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Saleh Sa'af told
The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
"Security personnel at the National Police Headquarters and
City Police Headquarters have also been ordered to remain on high
alert," he added.
Some 300 members of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and the
Islamic Youth Movement (GPI) urged Lee on Tuesday to retract his
statements and apologize to the Indonesian people.
Failure to do so would be met with a continuation of anti-
Singapore demonstrations in the capital, they said.
HTI spokesman Ismail Yusdanto said that Lee's assertions about
terror groups operating out of Indonesia, coupled with Singapore
authorities' allegation that Mujahidin Council Chief Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir was linked to international radical cells, were
unsubstantiated.
"Neither Singapore authorities nor Lee have come up with any
concrete evidence that Indonesia harbors terrorists, or that
Ustad Ba'asyir is linked to terrorists," Ismail told reporters
during the protest.
The city-state, he added, a "puppet" of the U.S.
"If Lee does not apologize, we will come back to the streets
in bigger numbers," he said.
GPI members burned an effigy of Lee Kuan Yew along with a
Singaporean flag outside the city-state's Embassy.
GPI Jakarta Chief Iqbal Siregar said that an official at the
Singaporean Embassy had received him, and promised to convey
protesters' wishes to the Singaporean government.
On Monday, some 100 members of the militant Islamic Defenders
Front (FPI) and Laskar Mujahidin marched outside the Singaporean
Embassy, angrily demanding that Indonesia sever ties.
In Bali, National Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said on
Tuesday that he would soon dispatch another team of detectives
and intelligence officers to Singapore in order to interview the
13 Jamaah Islamiah operatives now detained there.
The arrested men earlier claimed that Ba'asyir, Indonesian
preacher Hambali -- wanted by the National Police for his role in
the 2000 Christmas bombings -- and another Indonesian preacher,
Mohamad Iqbal A. Rahman, were currently detained in Malaysia,
were the men who issued directions to the operatives.
The suspects, none of whom are Indonesian, are currently being
detained there without trial for plotting to bomb U.S. targets in
Singapore.
In Surakarta, Ba'asyir's lawyers said on Tuesday that they
were preparing to file a defamation suit against the Singaporean
government for calling the cleric a terrorist without evidence.
Ba'asyir said that Lee's statements were aimed at degrading
Indonesians, since they were made without going through the
proper diplomatic channels.
"Something is very wrong there," Ba'asyir said in Surakarta on
Tuesday. He added that, in Indonesia, there were no terrorists,
only fighters defending Islam.
"The U.S. and its allies are not fighting terrorism," he said,
"they are trying to crush Islam and Muslims."