The military is dispatching its soldiers to guard all prosecutors’ offices nationwide in order to ensure smoothness and security for prosecutors in their work following a telegram message signed by TNI chief Gen. Agus Subiyanto on May 5. The telegram message instructed the deployment of 30 military personnel for every provincial prosecutor’s office and 10 for every district level office.

Attorney General’s Office (AGO) spokesperson Harli Siregar said on Monday that the security protection shows the TNI’s support for the prosecutors and is based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) dated April 6, 2023, that aims to bolster cooperation between the two institutions.

The military dispatch has alerted human rights activists who see it as a hint toward the military’s growing presence in the civil sector during the administration of President Prabowo Subianto, particularly after the recent controversial amendment to the TNI Law.

“This kind of deployment further strengthens the military’s intervention in the civilian sphere, especially in the ​​law enforcement area,” a coalition of 20 rights groups, including the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) and the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said in a statement on Sunday.

The coalition called on the military to revoke the letter of deployment, as it warned that the military’s defense duties could degrade the independence of Indonesia’s law.

Dwifungsi fears

Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia, said the order violates the Constitution and a number of laws, including the law governing the AGO and the TNI Law itself, which was revised in March despite public protest against provisions many believe pave the way for TNI’s expansion into civilian roles.

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Army spokesperson Wahyu rebuked the claim, saying that the TNI law stipulates that the AGO is among the state institutions that active military personnel can be assigned to.

But Institute for Security and Strategic Studies (ISESS) cofounder Khairul Fahmi said that the provision applies only to those who work at the office of the assistant attorney general for intelligence (Jampidmil).

“The law simply cannot be used as a basis for troop deployment,” Khairul said.

Usman of Amnesty noted that this deployment order “further strengthens public suspicion that the TNI will return to its dwifungsi [dual function] following the amendment to the TNI law”, referring to the military rule of the New Order authoritarian regime under late president Soeharto which led to dozens of human rights violations.

No urgency

The last time the military deployed its personnel to guard the AGO headquarters in Jakarta was in May of last year following an alleged attempt by members of the National Police’s anti-terror unit Densus 88 to spy on the agency’s top prosecutors.

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The latest dispatch, however, was not based on any “special needs”, Army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Wahyu Yudhayana said.

“This is only part of a routine and preventive security cooperation, as has been done previously,” Wahyu said on Monday, adding that the military will continue to be professional in carrying out their tasks.

Harli of the AGO stopped short of revealing whether the AGO requested the military dispatch or not but said his office had “no certain urgency to do so”,

Rizal Darma Putra, executive director of the Indonesia Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies (Lesperssi), warned that the military could set a bad precedent if it put its troops at the AGO under no special circumstances.

“If the AGO is not facing a combatant threat, maintaining its security is certainly not the military’s task. If the TNI cannot explain the urgency of ordering the dispatch, this could pave the way for more troop deployment in civilian affairs in the future,” Rizal said.

Harli of the AGO dismissed the concerns about intervention, describing the security protection offered by the TNI as “a collaborative effort” between the two institutions.