Terror and intimidation go on despite changes

By Ridarson Galingging

JAKARTA (JP): People hoped things would change after a new and legitimate government was elected last year. The leadership was supposed to restart the economy, investigate and punish corruptors, correct past injustices of human rights violations and strengthen the rule of law.

Unfortunately, most of these hopes have not been realized.

Terror and intimidation were also supposed to disappear as the dictatorship died and democracy was reborn. Yet the evidence is that terror and intimidation have not ended, but instead have changed and in some ways become even worse.

The recent case of Yogyakarta lawyer Kamal Firdaus demonstrates that psychological intimidation is alive and well in Indonesia. After Firdaus made public allegations of corruption in the Supreme Court, someone phoned his wife several times making death threats.

This is an example of old-style intimidation using standard New Order techniques and methods. During the Soeharto years and the transition under B.J. Habibie, the dominant form of intimidation was official terror because it was from the regime.

Victims usually had a fairly good idea of who was doing the intimidation, what line had been crossed and what the options were for getting the threats to end.

With the new government, the amount of official terror has dropped significantly, especially when compared to how much more critical public expression is today.

Official terror has been replaced by "freelance" terror. The difference is in who is behind the intimidation, how people are threatened and for what reasons. In many ways, freelance terror is even more frightening because it is less predictable.

Many opposition figures experienced severe harassment prior to October 1999. The techniques were sometimes violent, as when student activists were kidnapped and even tortured. Most of the threats, however, were made by telephone.

One person who is now a high government official endured many months of telephone terror.

"First they said they were going to kill me," explained the official, who requested anonymity. "Then a woman started calling my wife claiming to be my mistress. After that they started focusing on my children, describing my daughter's clothing and saying they were going to rape her."

An activist working on women's issues received many threats by e-mail in 1998 and 1999.

"The e-mails were anonymous and horribly graphic," she said. "I felt hounded and I never knew when the next one would come or if it would stop. I began losing sleep and my whole life was disturbed."

The new style of intimidation mixes old techniques, like harassing phone calls and e-mails, with new tactics such as demonstrations against offices and individuals, including against people in their homes.

These demonstrations are intimidating not only because they have sometimes become violent and caused property damage -- as happened against the internationally recognized activist and playwright Ratna Sarumpaet at her home -- but also because it is not clear who sent or hired the mobs, whether anyone is in control or whether the mobs can be dispersed.

In a country that had no assassination of a government official for over 30 years, Indonesia is adjusting to threats and attacks against leaders at the highest levels.

One legislator was killed in Aceh, and Deputy Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Matori Abdul Djalil was nearly hacked to death by attackers whose identities and motives remain murky.

Guns and explosives are now more widely available for such freelance intimidation than ever before.

Even the man responsible for administering the rule of law, Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, has reportedly been the target of harassment and intimidation. He is trying to prosecute a broad range of powerful individuals for crimes ranging from killings and human rights violations to corruption.

Foreigners have also been targets of extreme intimidation. Jeffrey Winters, a professor at Northwestern University in the United States, was threatened after he spoke out about corruption and abuses during the Soeharto and Habibie regimes.

As freelance terror is increasingly being used by powerful individuals who want to settle a score or intimidate a critic, there is a disturbing parallel in the rising use of vigilante justice on the part of average citizens.

In both cases, the key problem is a lack of respect for the power of the government to maintain order, a lack of confidence in the entire system to produce justice, or both.

The writer teaches law at the private Yarsi University, Jakarta.