TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
House members back communism ban in Criminal Code amendment
Change Size
Gen. (ret) Sayidiman Soerjohadiprojo (left), Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) leader Muhammad Rizieq Shihab (center) and moderator Tarman Azzam talk during a discussion in a symposium titled "Protecting Pancasila from the Threat of the Indonesian Communist Party [PKI] and Other Ideologies" in Jakarta on June 1. (JP/Viriya Paramita Singgih)
H
ouse of Representatives Commission III overseeing legal affairs has backed the government's draft revision of the Criminal Code that retains articles banning communism, saying the regulation is important to protect national ideology Pancasila.
Commission III member Teuku Taufiqulhadi said Article 219 of the Criminal Code, which stipulates that anyone who goes against the law by promoting communism can be sentenced to a maximum of seven years in prison, did not go too far in the effort to defend Pancasila from ideology that could threaten it.
"The Criminal Code should retain articles that protect our national ideology, thus the stipulations in articles 219, 220 and 221 are not wrong at all," Taufiqulhadi said on Wednesday.
Articles 220 and 221 of the Criminal Code further stipulate 10 years in prison for anyone who uses communism as an organizational ideology and anyone who tries to replace national ideology Pancasila. Such punishment was normal, Taufiqulhadi claimed, since it considered the balance between citizens' rights in other articles and citizens' responsibilities in these articles.
On the heels of rights activists' outcry against criminalizing the ideology, which is deemed a violation of threatens human rights, Commission III lawmaker Arsul Sani assured that the law would still protect academic studies and analysis of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. (dmr)
