Prisoner of conscience

Prisoner of conscience

It has been quite some time that any Indonesian has been put
in jail for subversion against the state: The antisubversion law
which president Sukarno decreed in the 1960s and which his
successor, president Soeharto, was glad enough to maintain, was
one of the first vestiges of autocratic rule the country
abandoned at the beginning of the current reform movement.

The reason that the antisubversion law should have been among
the first of the mementos of close to four decades of
authoritarian rule that Indonesians wanted removed is obvious
enough. The people wanted an end to the arbitrary arrests, the
kidnappings, the detention of people for indefinite periods and
without warrants, and the many other forms of injustices they had
been subjected to under the previous all-powerful rulers.

Considering this background, the verdict which the Banda Aceh
District Court pronounced on Wednesday, sentencing the leader of
the Aceh Referendum Information Center (SIRA), Muhammad Nazar, to
10 months in prison for displaying "hostile intentions against
the state", may be regarded as a setback and a retrograde step by
the judicial authorities of the so-called New Indonesia.

According to court president Farida Hanoum, who presided over
the proceedings on Wednesday, the defendant, based upon the
testimony given by the witnesses, had "legitimately and
convincingly" been proven guilty of disseminating information and
displaying banners that "tilted toward sowing enmity and hatred
against, and insulting the government of Indonesia."

On Aug. 14 of last year, the judge said, the defendant had,
together with the other members of the SIRA presidium, conspired
to campaign for the holding of a referendum by disseminating
2,000 leaflets and brochures calling on the "Acehnese people" to
"work together toward peace and a resolution of the Acehnese
conflict".

Furthermore, by designating the Indonesian government as "neo-
colonialist" and calling on all the members of the "Acehnese
people" to boycott all public activities and stay at home on Aug.
17, Indonesia's national day, Nazar and his organization were
guilty of publicly sowing enmity and hatred and had openly
insulted the government of Indonesia. The phrase "Acehnese
people", according to the court, could be interpreted as a
reference to the populace of Aceh as being a nation independent
from the rest of Indonesia.

Nazar's defense lawyers had earlier argued that the charges
against their client had not been satisfactorily proved. The
prosecution in the case had also relied heavily on testimony
provided by the police. The defendant, the defense argued,
harbored no feelings of hatred or enmity toward the government of
Indonesia, but detested the oppression and the violations of
human rights which had been perpetrated by officers of the
government.

Under the current conditions of violence and armed conflict in
Aceh, the government's desire to put a speedy end to the decades
of strife in that ill-fated province is, of course, fully
understandable. The authorities would in that case obviously have
the full right to prosecute and to punish those who are guilty
after the due process of law has been gone through. To put
someone in jail merely for disseminating leaflets and displaying
posters and banners, however, seems excessively harsh and could
add to the already long list of human rights violations. In fact,
it will make Muhammad Nazar the first prisoner of conscience to
be incarcerated under the presumably reformist government of
President Abdurrahman Wahid.