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ew Order-style censorship was on stark display on March 16 when Jakarta Police officers telephoned organizers and paid a visit to the venue of a planned film screening. The officers came to cancel the premiere of Pulau Buru Tanah Air Beta at Menteng'€™s Goethe Institute.

Last month police instructed organizers to call off the leftwing Belok Kiri Festival at Taman Ismail Marzuki. In fact, the past year has seen numerous cases of police acting as censors of politics, culture, and even sexual identity, when they shut down events held by Jakarta'€™s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community.

Police aren'€™t merely shutting down events; they'€™re trying to shut down people too by criminalizing activists and the lawyers representing them. The offence of disobeying an official'€™s instruction has been used to charge 23 workers that participated in a demonstration last Oct. 30, along with a student supporter and two lawyers who attended to monitor the protest and liase with police.

The two Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) lawyers charged by police are getting a taste of the New Order strategy of intimidation experienced decades ago by LBH Jakarta'€™s famous alumni Adnan Buyung Nasution and Yap Thiam Hien, who were likewise criminalized for carrying out their job as public interest lawyers.

Within months of the New Order'€™s collapse in 1998, the law on freedom of expression was introduced to codify the right to public speech, which is expressly guaranteed by the Constitution. This includes the right to gather in public places and, of course, to protest. Yet the heady scent of post-Soeharto freedom is now long lost, carried away on the stale breeze of police obstruction and increasingly, of thinly-veiled thuggish threats.

Police now routinely disperse protests or small gatherings, citing a lack of police permission (ijin), even though the law recognizes no such permits and requires only that a notification be delivered.

More ominously, police often demand events such as the above film screening be cancelled because they claim a risk of disruption by thuggish social organizations or ormas. This excuse is rarely backed up by credible evidence that a group is planning to violently disperse a gathering it doesn'€™t approve of. In fact, if police became aware of someone making real threats of violence, they are obliged to arrest that person under the freedom of expression law'€™s criminal provisions. That law also requires that police deploy sufficient officers to ensure the safety of citizens planning to gather lawfully. Sadly this is rarely observed.

Nowhere is this '€œpolice permit'€ tactic used more unfairly and unlawfully than when it comes to Papuans attempting to express their opinions and concerns freely in public.

An example from Dec. 1 2015 highlights the discriminatory treatment that Papuans often face at the hands of police. On that morning during a protest on Jakarta'€™s Jl. Imam Bonjol, Papuan students were chased and beaten by police. Every one of the 306 students was arrested, and one protestor Nicko Suhuniap, wound up undergoing emergency surgery for a depressed fracture of his skull at the Pusat Otak Nasional hospital.

Police informed protesting Papuan students they had been arrested because they lacked a permit to demonstrate. This despite no law requiring a permit and despite the student'€™s lawyers delivering notice of their plans to no fewer than three levels of police in the days prior to the protest.

Papuan students in Greater Jakarta report continuous harassment by police and military, with permits again featuring as an excuse. Officers visit students'€™ boarding houses, asking them what they are up to, warning them they need a permit to hold discussions, whether amongst themselves or at external events. Intimidation also takes the form of deliberately conspicuous surveillance.

Students living at a Tangerang dorm for Papuans last week related intimidating surveillance by plain-clothed officers sitting in an Avanza parked right outside their home. I saw this treatment first-hand last December, when I visited a Papuan student dorm in Condet for a meeting. When I left, I found a dozen police waiting outside, who students say later entered, asking questions about the discussion.

The uphill battle to enjoy the basic right to public gathering is not confined to Papuans with the temerity to hold events outside Papua. Earlier this month, a solidarity gathering and fundraiser was held in Jayapura to support the people of Fiji, suffering the aftermath of Cyclone Winston, the worst to ever hit the Pacific nation. Police forcefully dispersed the gathering, once again claiming a permit was missing, despite prior notice having been delivered by organizers.

Last November, I witnessed hundreds of police officers assembled at Sentani, turning away mourners visiting Theys Eluay'€™s grave to commemorate the date of the activist'€™s state assassination. Later in the day, scores of mourners '€” and several motorbikes! '€” were arrested. When innocuous events such as humanitarian and mourning gatherings are dispersed, you can imagine how much more of a luxury it is to hold a political demonstration in Papua.

President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo is in a position to end police disregard for the freedom of expression. Yet Jokowi is not proving a staunch defender of this right himself, certainly when it comes to a Jakarta tradition '€” the Kamisan human rights observation held outside the president'€™s '€œoffice'€.

Every Thursday since January 2007, come rain or sunshine, protesters, including mothers of student activists who disappeared during the New Order era, stand silently at the north-west corner of Merdeka Square to demand an end to impunity for state violence. It is usually a somber, respectful affair. Yet after Jokowi became president, and Tito Karnavian made the city'€™s police chief, police have been attempting to either move the gathering elsewhere, or else enforce a command that no posters or banners be held by participants.

Last December, no fewer than 24 organizations wrote to the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) to complain about the Jakarta Police routinely violating the right to freedom of expression. Before his appointment in Jakarta, Tito was chief of police in Papua, where his disregard for freedom of expression was also criticized.

His recent appointment as Chief of the National Counterterrorism Agency, combined with revisions to the Terrorism Law due to come before the House of Representatives next month, means Papuans can hardly be blamed for fearing that talking in public about self-determination will risk them being branded terrorists.

Sadly, Komnas HAM has remained silent on December'€™s complaint about Jakarta Police and their active efforts to suppress freedom of expression. While the Commission deserves appreciation for lending sanctuary to the Pulau Buru film screening, it is not doing enough to challenge the pattern that led to the screening'€™s original cancellation. Komnas HAM should live up to its mandate and make recommendations to end police of the right to freedom of expression.

The public has the right to take part in discussions and protests and to watch films wherever and whenever they wish, without police permission. This right of course extends fully to Papuans, who should be treated equally.

Civil society will not watch mutely as the state turns the clock back to last century'€™s repression and censorship. The police should expect our continuous resistance.