Terrorism bill could 'spark' rights abuses

Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Legal experts and human rights activists have warned of extensive human rights abuses and political suppression should a new bill on terrorism being drafted by the government be passed into law as it will give security forces the authority to arrest suspected terrorists arbitrarily.

They argued that since the definition of terrorism remains unclear, the bill could result in various interpretations that would likely lead to the random arrests of people suspected of being terrorists.

"It will be an extraordinary setback to democracy and human rights if we are forced to have such a law," Muhammad M. Billah, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra said last week the government had completed the drafting of the terrorism bill and would submit it to the House of Representatives for deliberation in the near future.

The bill was proposed in response to relentless international pressure on Indonesia to seriously fight global terrorism as none of the suspects have been arrested due to what the government has called a lack of hard evidence or absence of legal grounds for arrest.

The foreign press has accused Indonesia of being a terrorist hotbed with links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Billah said the bill would be "more repressive" than the subversion law, which was used by former strongman Soeharto to retain his iron-fisted rule of 32 years by suppressing dissidents and political opponents.

The law was scrapped after he was ousted from power in 1998.

"A subversion charge was slapped on those accused of harming security against the state, while a terrorism charge could be imposed on individuals deemed to have been involved in terrorist activities against the state and the public in general," he added.

Billah, who admitted to having read a copy of the proposed bill, said the definition of terrorism stipulated in the bill was not clear, raising strong fears that it could be misused by those in power to crush their political opponents.

Separatists and violent demonstrators could also be classified as terrorists, he added.

"The recent statement by Coordinating Minister of Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that GAM (the Free Aceh Movement) is a terrorist movement is an obvious indication," Billah said.

Similarly, Munir, a staunch human rights campaigner who co- founded the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said the bill on terrorism should be rejected as the country did not need such a bill.

It would give intelligence agencies more power to arrest any suspected terrorist on the basis of preliminary evidence, which would normally be insufficient legal grounds for charges to be made against them, he said, adding that it would be dangerous.

"The existing Criminal Code deals with the issue of terrorists adequately. We don't need a new law to fight it," Munir told the Post.

He blamed the government's failure to cope with terrorists on the poor enforcement of the law on the part of security forces, whose members had often been accused of involvement in violence acts across the country.

"The problem also lays in the government's ineffective control of the military," he added.

He said that if the terrorism bill was approved, anti- government demonstrators carrying arms could be considered terrorists because they could be seen as a threat to others.

Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, a prominent legal expert from the University of Indonesia, shared a similar view, confirming that the existing bill gave an unclear definition of terrorism. And this could lead to multiple interpretations.

Under the bill, she added, terrorism was defined as all criminal acts that caused feelings of terror to the public.

"It should be reviewed so as to be acceptable among all elements of society. I believe we can reach a clearer definition if we cooperate to do so," Harkrisnowo added.

Chief security minister Susilo on Saturday defined terrorism as an act by an individual or a group of people with indiscriminate targets resulting in the killing of civilians and damage to public facilities.

However, he denied accusing GAM of being a terrorist group. "I never called GAM a terrorist group but its actions have caused the loss of life and damage to public facilities with civilians as victims, therefore their actions could be categorized as a form of terror."