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Police hunt UIN student for screening 'Senyap'
The Sleman Police are hunting a student in Yogyakarta alleged to be behind the Wednesdayâs screening of Joshua Oppenheimerâs Senyap (The Look of Silence) documentary at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University (UIN)
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he Sleman Police are hunting a student in Yogyakarta alleged to be behind the Wednesday's screening of Joshua Oppenheimer's Senyap (The Look of Silence) documentary at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University (UIN).
The student, Ahmad Haedar, who is also chairman of the school's Rhetor student press institute, was reportedly told by the university and the police not to screen the film and he also received a threat from the so-called Yogyakarta Muslim Forum.
'We will reveal the reason later, after we finish our work,' head of Sleman police's detective and crime unit Adj. Comr. Danang Bagus Anggoro told The Jakarta Post while leading his men to arrest Haedar at the UIN campus on Wednesday.
Yet, after the screening, the police failed to arrest Haedar, as his friends rescued him. The students rejected the police's request to question the screening's organizing committee at the Sleman Police's headquarters.
'The police wanted me to give a statement so as to prevent the Yogyakarta Muslim Forum from committing violence,' Haedar said before disappearing from the screening venue.
A day before, a broadcast text from a group claiming to be Yogyakarta Muslim Forum was spread in social media, calling Muslim organizations to protest the planned screening of the documentary they deemed as communist propaganda and aimed at misconstruing Indonesian history.
On Wednesday, the group also met UIN Sunan Kalijaga rector Akhmad Minhaji, demanding that he ban the screening using the same reasons as issued by the Film Censorship Institute (LSF).
The same morning, dean of UIN's school of preaching and communication, Sriharini, issued a statement banning the screening of the film at the university's Student Center building.
Haedar, however, insisted on continuing with the planned screening of the documentary that showed how survivors of the 1965 communist purge learned about the killings and the perpetrators, arguing that it was part of citizens' constitutional rights and academic freedom.
He reportedly also tore up the dean's letter that said the screening was banned.
Unable to ban the screening, rector Akhmad Minhaji came to the venue and told hundreds of students that the university would allow them to have a discussion on the film but not a screening of it.
'I am not banning the film. There is a government regulation, the LSF's ban. I don't want to be a rector that breaks the government's regulation,' Minhaji said.
Separately, Muhammad Fuad of the Yogyakarta Muslim Forum said that he and hundreds of others did come to UIN to block the screening but they left after being assured by the rector and the police the film would not be screened.
The Yogyakarta Muslim Forum has also dispersed screenings of Senyap in Yogyakarta since December 2014, including ones at Gadjah Mada University, the Indonesian Fine Arts Institute (ISI) Yogyakarta and other community centers.
