T

he Jan. 14 terror attack in Jakarta has prompted the government and the House of Representatives to initiate the strengthening of security instruments against terrorism.

The most urgent measure, according to the government, is amending existing antiterrorism regulations (Government Regulation No. 15/2003) by extending the authority of law enforcement officials to carry out preemptive action.

Media reports say the initiative has public support, but in our opinion security measures go too far to defy terrorism for two reasons.

First, since the solution is based on a security-oriented analysis, it falsely sees terrorism as a product of the weak state in a democratic era, and thus a stronger capacity of the state is needed.

However, many terrorist actors in Indonesia are, in fact, the product of the previous authoritarian regime that represented a strong state.

During that period, many security measures were implemented, such as an anti-subversion law, but
the state faced the same problem of terrorism.

In addition, many recent terrorist actors have links to the old actors that emerged during the Soeharto era, such as Abu Bakar Ba'€™asyir.

That means terrorism has little to do with the capacity of the state. Both in a strong and a weak state, under authoritarian as under democratic rule, terrorism is still a problem.

Thus, instead of understanding terrorism as a security issue, any ideological movement that opposes state power is better understood as a reaction '€” rather than an autonomous action '€” to political-economic conditions. Hadiz and Teik (2011) found that in Muslim countries like Egypt and Algeria the rise of radical Islamic movements is a response aimed at seeking socio-political solutions amid failed economic development.
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The counterterrorism discourse in Singapore is used to justify regulations enforced to silence adversaries.

In Malaysia, such an underground movement was prevented from growing through the New Economic Policy that enabled the state to absorb rural Malay-Muslims in the urban industrial sector (see Lubeck 1998 in Hadiz and Teik 2011), rather than through strong security instruments.

Second, from a critical legal perspective, extending the state'€™s authority is problematic in terms of formal and material aspects of law. Regulations to arrest suspects of terrorism without trial could make the law an instrument of power instead of a tool to uphold justice. Actually, formal criminal law should limit the state'€™s authority to prevent violations of due legal process.

Meanwhile, from the aspect of material law, any threat that is perceived as jeopardizing state security can be defined so extensively that it can violate citizen rights.

We should learn from our own history that the anti-subversion laws enforced to uphold the political order and prevent security threats were politically misused to criminalize government critics.

Indonesia'€™s government has emphasized that the planned amendments would consider human rights principles and be more lenient than those in Malaysia and Singapore. However, the same argument was also stated by the Malaysian government when it proposed the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in April 2015.

The regulation was known to have similarities with the notorious Internal Security Act (ISA), which was repealed in 2012. Under the POTA, an accused person can be detained without trial for up to 60 days for investigation purposes.

Although the Indonesian government will propose a shorter period of detention, such authority can still be misused to silence the opposition. It can also be considered in line with the circular from the National Police on hate speech, which can justify with great efficacy suppression of criticism in the name of defamation.

It must be noted, however, that the political context behind the enactment of POTA in Malaysia was the Prime Minister'€™s power that came under the threat from opposition movements.

Not long after the controversial law was enacted, the parliament passed an amendment to the draconian colonial-era Sedition Act.

Similar to Malaysia, the counterterrorism discourse in Singapore is also used to justify regulations enforced to silence adversaries, while in recent years they were applied in defamation cases (see Seow 2004 in Rodan and Hewison 2006).

The US government post-9/11 has also employed the global war-on-terror discourse to extend its power and legitimize the state surveillance that has led former NSA agent Edward Snowden to take action against privacy violations.

To conclude, the experience of many countries has taught us that terrorism can exist in different political contexts with different security measures. That is because terrorism has much to do with socio-political discontent, which fuels mobilization of dissent through the articulation of an Islamic identity where other ways of articulation, such as a leftist ideology, are absent.

Thus, the existence of '€œhard'€ security instruments aimed at eradicating terrorism can potentially be misused for political purposes, such as extending state surveillance, that can violate privacy rights and suppress criticism.

Indonesian citizens should be aware of such possibilities and respond to the government'€™s plan critically. Since the main purpose of the proposed revision is the strengthening of security instruments and the extension of state authority, the human rights of Indonesian citizens are at risk.

Rather than taking excessive security measures to defy terrorism, the government should prioritize economic programs to alleviate poverty and counter socio-political discontent as the roots of terrorism.
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Rafiqa Qurrata A'€™yun is an assistant lecturer in criminal law at the University of Indonesia. Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir is a sociologist from the Jakarta State University, now pursuing a PhD degree at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.