D

efense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu found himself under pressure at an international gathering as ministers, senior officials, scholars and journalists bombarded him with questions on terrorism and communism.

“I was one of the ministers who faced the most questions,” he told The Jakarta Post and other Indonesian media in Singapore on Saturday.

Ryamizard was attending the three-day 15th Asian Security Summit or Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), which was organized by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). There were more than 560 participants this year — mostly defense ministers, military chiefs and security analysts, mainly from Asia-Pacific and Europe

Speaking at the third session of the forum, with the theme “Making Defense Policy in Uncertain Times”, Ryamizard said the Asia-Pacific region had faced three major challenges — terrorism, maritime security and natural disasters — in recent years.

After his speech, eight out of the 13 questions posed by participants were directed at him, journalists also did not spare him after the session.

He said the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS) movement had become the single biggest threat to the world after al-Qaeda.

“ISIS is very dangerous. Though it began as a militant group in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, now it has transformed into a global terror group. It has launched attacks in Paris, Brussels, Pakistan and Indonesia,” Ryamizard said.

He also cited a December 2015 survey about IS in Indonesia.

“Indonesia has more than 200 million Muslims, the biggest [Muslim population] in the world. According to this survey, 96 percent of Indonesians reject ISIS and its ideology outright. However, 4 percent did not respond [in this way] to the question. So there is a big danger from some of this 4 percent,” he said.

“ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It has an ideology that deviates from the main message of Islam. Killing innocent people through suicide bombings is haram [forbidden] in Islam”.

Meanwhile, responding to a question from the Post, IISS executive director in Asia Tim Huxley said that Indonesia had been successful in tackling terrorism.

“Indonesia has been successful in defeating terrorism through raising awareness about the dangers of terrorism,” Huxley said during the launch of the “Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment 2016” report in Singapore on Friday.

There is a special chapter on “The Islamic State and Southeast Asia” focusing mainly on Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines in the report.

Indonesia, according to Ryamizard, must make all efforts, including the soft approach, hard approach and international cooperation in exchanging intelligence information, to raise awareness among the public.

“We have been teaching students from elementary school to university about the dangers of terrorism. We’ve also used the services of religious scholars, the police and military,” he said.

Questions were also raised about communism at the meeting.

“It is not that we don’t like communism as an ideology. But the communists in Indonesia launched two major revolts in 1948 and 1965 against the government. We won’t allow that anymore. We cannot relax,” Ryamizard said.

“Our main weapon to defeat communism is our state ideology Pancasila”.

Meanwhile, Ryamizard met with defense ministers from Canada, France, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, the UK and US to discuss various issues ranging from the South China Sea and regional security to military training and weapons acquisition.

“I met with US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Friday. We discussed several things such as military exchanges, natural disasters, regional security and drug trafficking. We are ready to forge good relations with the US,” Ryamizard told a press conference on the sidelines of the SLD on Saturday, in response to suggestions that growing strategic ties between China and Indonesia might worry the US.

“Our policy is very clear. We want to develop close ties with the US, China, Russia and all other countries. We don’t have any problem with that,” Ryamizard said.