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.