Mob power has taken over the role that the state once played in our recent past in curtailing our freedoms -- from freedom of speech and expression and freedom of thought to freedom of religion.

But what is so tragic is that now we are supposed to be living in a democracy, and the state is failing miserably in protecting these freedoms -- to the point of even being complicit to some of the mob actions.

Acclaimed film director Eros Djarot became the latest victim of this suppression of freedom. Work on his latest production, Lastri, has been halted because of threats and intimidations from groups who claimed the movie would spread communism.

Eros and his crew were in the Central Java city of Surakarta last week to shoot the movie. Although he had secured permission from the National Police headquarters in Jakarta, the Surakarta Police decided to withhold their permission, citing objections from local people.

As Eros explains, Lastri is the love story of a woman, who as a member of Gerwani (the Indonesian Women's Movement), was caught up in the political turmoil of the time. Gerwani is the women's wing of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) which was outlawed in 1966 after it was accused of an abortive coup in Sept. 1965.

Eros, a nationalist at heart, denies that the film would in anyway propagate communism, but insisted that he needed the historical background of the story and the Surakarta scene to produce the film.

Why this overt concern about a communist revival more than 40 years after the military crushed the PKI and all its affiliated organizations -- including Gerwani -- baffles the mind.

As a political ideology, communism is as good as dead in this country -- and around the world for that matter with China and Vietnam decidedly pro-market capitalist economies.

True, communism, and all its teachings, is still outlawed in this country based on a 1966 decree of the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly. However, students of history, politics and most other social science subjects at any respectable university in this country inevitably would have to read Karl Marx, and hence some exception to the decree has been tolerated for academic purposes.

But what is most irritating about this whole affair is that these groups, who claim to represent the interests of the people in Surakarta, could pass judgment on a film -- claiming it to be communist propaganda material -- not only before they saw the movie, but before it was even produced.

And why the Surakarta police are going along with them and withholding the permission makes this whole affair a comedy of one tragic error after another.

And why did Eros need permission to shoot the movie in the first place? The very notion that he sought police permission in itself is already a violation of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech.

But then we have seen this all before in a country that continually professes to be the world's third largest democracy simply because it holds free and fair elections.

Democracy is not only measured by how free your elections are -- although this certainly helps.

Democracy is also measured by how much freedom people actually enjoy, and what the state does to ensure that all the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution -- including freedom of speech, association, religion and others -- are fully respected.

In this regard, the state is failing, and has instead allowed on so many occasions for the power of the mob to prevail at the expense of our freedoms.

The police, whose job it is to ensure that these freedoms are respected and defended, in most cases either just stand by and watch, or even became complicit with the mob. When they do act, it is usually too late. No wonder -- reforms aside -- the police's image in the public eye remains low.

So what else is new? Eros is just the latest victim of such a display of mob power.

There was the peaceful demonstration for pluralism in Jakarta's Monas area that was violently attacked by a mob using Islamic banners. Fortunately, the perpetrators are now in jail, but one still feels that the police could have prevented the attack in the first place.

There were the recurring attacks against the followers of the Ahmadiyah sect and against their property. Again, the police evacuated the Ahmadiyah followers to safety in order to allow the attackers to vandalize and burn down their houses, school and mosque.

There were the attacks on churches and even Christian schools in Jakarta and other Javanese towns by mobs who resented their presence in their neighborhoods. The police, in the majority of the cases, were nowhere to be seen.

And recently, the House of Representatives endorsed an anti-pornography bill that essentially sanctions vigilante groups to enforce whatever they deem as pornography.

If we allow this to go one, pretty soon Indonesia will be a country ruled by mobs. Then we will have to rethink our claim to be one of the most democratic countries in the world.

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