Terror and intimidation go on despite changes

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Official terror has been replaced by "freelance" terror.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.