Police deny stopping seminar in Jakarta

JAKARTA (JP): City police denied allegations yesterday that they had broken up a seminar and detained a number of people, including an American anthropologist who was a speaker at the meeting.

"We didn't break up the meeting or arrest anyone," City Police Chief Maj. Gen. Dibyo Widodo told reporters here yesterday.

Central Jakarta Police Chief Lt. Col. Murawi Effendi said the organizers themselves broke up the discussion, on Monday evening on Jl. Paseban, Central Jakarta, upon the arrival of police.

It is believed the meeting did not have a police permit.

"When we arrived at the scene to ask the organizers about the permit, at around 9:30 p.m., we found that the meeting had been broken up," said Murawi, who accompanied Dibyo, after a routine all-officers meeting at city police headquarters.

Murawi said police then took five of the meeting's organizers, from the newly-established New Indonesia Foundation, as well as American anthropologist Robert Heffner of Boston University, for further questioning.

"The American, who was here on a tourist visa, even told us that he very much regretted the event," the officer said.

"Heffner admitted that -- in the beginning -- he was only invited to be a member of the audience at the seminar but was later asked by the organizers to come up to the platform as a speaker," Murawi added.

"Heffner and all of the five members of the seminar organizers were then allowed to leave the police station after a few hours of questioning," Murawi said. "Thus, we arrested and detained nobody and didn't even break up the seminar," he added.

Foreign news agencies reported yesterday that local police had broken up a seminar on democracy and detained seven people, including Heffner.

Quoting Umam Wirano of the New Indonesia Foundation, Reuter said 40 activists and journalists had attended the discussion on Islam and democracy.

Officer Murawi said yesterday that he could not remember any of the names of the five organizers questioned by police.

Neither Heffner nor executives of the New Indonesia Foundation could be reached for comment last night.

According to Murawi, the speech delivered by Heffner during the meeting contained nothing harmful to the country.

"Everything he said was quite okay," he said.

"But many questions coming from the floor were quite oblique," Murawi said, without elaborating.

Heffner, vice-director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Boston University, was in Indonesia at the invitation of the government-funded Indonesian Institute of Sciences to address a seminar on Islam.

Murawi said that Heffner had once spent many years in Indonesia, partly in order to complete research. "He has no problem with us," the police chief said. (bsr)