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Old military, police rivalry in spotlight
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New weapon: Information circulating on YouTube shows the physical appearance of MAG 4 weapons reportedly ordered by the National Police. (Courtesy of YouTube/File)
T
he arrival of 280 stand-alone grenade launchers (SAGL) and thousands of munitions at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Friday night could not have come at a worse time.
It was supposed to be a regular shipment of weapons ordered by the National Police’s Mobile Brigade (Brimob). However, a number of leaked photos of the weapons that circulated on Whatsapp and other social media platforms the following morning, have pushed the country into a state of paranoia.
The shipment came days after Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo suggested there was an institution outside the military, the police had sought to import 5,000 illegal weapons and that the police might have planned to purchase antitank weapons.
The fact that the weapons arrived a day before the nation commemorated the 1965 bloody coup attempt, which has triggered anticommunist hysteria, made it even more ominous.
The coup attempt in 1965 was preceded by rumors of an illegal shipment of around 25,000 weapons from China to arm the socalled fifth force, which referred to farmers and laborers, which the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) said should be armed to fight the colonizers.
The public was left in the dark for hours on Saturday over whether the weapons were legal and whether their arrival could vindicate the TNI commander, whose explosive claims have been strongly repudiated by his seniors in the Cabinet.
Not until the police held a press conference later that night did the public become aware the weapons had been ordered by the police and that the shipment was in line with regulations.
