Police break up art fair amid rights day

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Police broke up a fine arts fair in Surakarta, Central Java, on Friday, as students and activists staged protests around the country to mark International Human Rights Day.

Attendees of the arts fair were forcibly dispersed by police intelligence officers, who said they were preventing a possible social disturbance.

The week-long event was opened earlier in the day at the Soedjatmoko Gallery in Surakarta to commemorate the International Human Rights Day, which fell on Dec. 10.

The organizing committee said the police action was triggered by an installation titled Dead Body by artist Suryo.

Suryo presented 98 pictures of the hammer and sickle, arranged as a colossal work covering the walls of an entire room. The hammer and sickle is the symbol of the outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

Police confiscated the work in question.

Surakarta Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Lutfi Lubihanto acknowledged there were no legal grounds to break up the event and confiscate Suryo's work.

"We were acting on our intuition because it was feared the artwork could incite social violence," he said.

However, Lutfi denied the action had anything to do with anticommunist activists who put up banners denouncing the PKI ahead of the recent presidential election.

He denied the police were violating freedom of expression, saying if art had the potential to cause public unrest "we are forced to take action to protect the artist".

Suryo said he was extremely disappointed by the actions of the police.

He said he chose the pictures of hammers and sickles to commemorate the gross human rights abuses that followed the abortive coup blamed on the now-defunct PKI on Sept. 30, 1965.

"Such a work of arts should have been understood as a medium for contemplation and reflection, so a similar human tragedy would not occur. I am not in the position to support a certain ideology," Suryo told The Jakarta Post.

Meanwhile, hundreds of students and activists protested in Surabaya, East Java, to mark the international rights day, demanding that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's government resolve the outstanding human rights abuse cases in Indonesia.

Protesters said rights violations involving former dictator Soeharto and the Indonesian Military had to be dealt with.

They also raised the case of prominent rights campaigner Munir, who died recently after being poisoned.

Protesters also demanded affordable education for all, better pay and protection for workers, land reform and more freedoms for gays and lesbians.

Two similar protests took place separately in Yogyakarta, in which hundreds of students urged the government to resolve the death of Munir and rights abuses in Aceh and Papua.

The protesters demanded an immediate end to military operations in Aceh, which have left hundreds of people dead, mostly innocent civilians.

Dozens of students and activists also commemorated the human rights day in Pekanbaru, Riau, raising several local cases, including violence against civilians in a land dispute between residents of Tambusai, Rokan Hulu, and PT Surya Damai.

In Bandung, the Bandung Legal Aid Institute (LBHB) said on Friday it had recorded at least 141 cases of human rights abuses in West Java between January and November, with only 10 percent of these cases ending up in court.

LBHB director Wirawan said most of the cases were related to land disputes and involved more than 60,000 people in the province.

The Semarang Legal Aid Institute said it had recorded at least 150 rights cases in Central Java involving about 120,000 people.

In Semarang alone, there were at least 22 cases of industrial pollution that had harmed fishermen and residents living along rivers, institute director Asep Yunan Firdaus said.