TheJakartaPost
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At first glance, the National Police (Polri) proposal – which the Indonesian Military (TNI) also gave the nod to – to give security authorities more legal clout when dealing with terrorists and their supporters is a positive sign, and deserves the full support of all parts of the nation
A
t first glance, the National Police (Polri) proposal – which the Indonesian Military (TNI) also gave the nod to – to give security authorities more legal clout when dealing with terrorists and their supporters is a positive sign, and deserves the full support of all parts of the nation. The proposal came in alongside a TNI plan – channeled through the Army headquarters – to reactivate intelligence units at military command posts (Korem) nationwide.
It is true that an all-out battle against terrorism is a necessity. However, this proposal and plan need to be carefully examined so as to avoid repeating past mistakes, such as violating the human rights of people allegedly implicated in terrorist activities, or suspected of supporting terrorists. Do we really want to go back to the days when our guaranteed freedoms and rights were sidelined for the sake of security and economic development? Where have all those noble principles of presumption of innocence and equality before the law disappeared to?
The arguments provided by Polri are reasonable and coincide with the public’s wish to live in a country free from all forms of terrorism.
However, Polri said the authority to detain terror suspects for seven days without an arrest warrant was not enough to completely deter terrorism, as the 2003 law on terrorism did not allow them to detain people who colluded with terrorist groups.
The individual citizen’s liberty and granted rights have come under further threat after the police indicated a plan to adopt the ISA (Internal Security Act), a piece of legislation very similar to that passed in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, and said to have been successful in uprooting terrorism there.
Should the plan become concrete, all our achievements as a democratic country could be erased, as we will have to say goodbye to all of our freedoms and basic rights as individuals. We have endured enough under Soeharto’s repressive New Order government and we do not want the re-emergence of another “Soeharto” in the future.
Perhaps the most worrying fact is that the proposal came in the wake of the police’s – and the intelligence community’s – failure to detect the whereabouts and capture the most wanted terror fugitive Noordin M. Top.
Instead of improving their counter-terrorism skills and capability, the police have opted to seek stronger legal support to perform their counter-terrorism activities, which might overlap with the existing 2002 law on the National Police. The 2002 law on the National Police is substantially more than enough to provide the police with the legal umbrella they are looking for. Article 41 of the law, for example, allows the police to seek help from the TNI when establishing security and order.
With regard to improving our intelligence community’s capability to detect and prevent potential acts of terrorism, it is perhaps necessary to restore the State Intelligence Agency’s (BIN) coordinating role regarding data and information gathering, a role that the then much-feared National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (BAKIN) once held in the past. Any plan to reinstate the intelligence agency’s coordinating role must also come with stipulations preventing the agency from carrying out abusive practices.
As former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli says: “We are not creatures of circumstance, we are creators of circumstance.”
