Stunned and astonished, one of them ran away immediately, but the others kept bashing the windows, grabbing jewelry and expensive watches. One of them threatened Timson with a sledgehammer, but she kept hitting him, undaunted, until passers-by joined in. Eventually the police caught four of the suspects, and are still hunting the other two.

Hailed as a hero, Granny Timson said she didn’t feel she was a hero at all. She simply had to do something, she said, because no one else was.

It all sounds a bit like Indonesia to me, where no one does anything about violent crimes committed in public, in broad daylight by religious vigilantes. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if we should all club together and buy President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) a nice big handbag?

Who knows, maybe such an accoutrement could give him the courage boost he so desperately needs.

After all, Margaret Thatcher was also a handbag hero. She was poster girl of the handbag brigade in fact, and never left home without one. Prime minister of Britain for almost 12 years, she did controversial and unpopular but undeniably brave things for her country. A Conservative minister once remarked that she had  “the authority of her office always with her. It was in her handbag …”

If not a handbag, SBY certainly needs something to ward off the accusations that he — and the state — are behaving in a cowardly way by allowing increasingly violent attacks to continue against Ahmadis, Christians and other religious minorities.

Yes, Indonesia has always had religious conflict, and it has always tested the authority of the state.

Unfortunately, however, the Cikeusik tragedy, which claimed three lives, looks like a test this government probably won’t pass.  

The reason? Deep down, the government probably doesn’t think the attacks are wrong, even though the FPI (Islam Defenders Front) is threatening to topple SBY if he dares to disband any mass organization, including them. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that for our government the real criminals are not the attackers, but the Ahmadis, because they dare to be different.

Of course, in a democracy that respects human rights, being different is what it’s all about. It’s called pluralism, duh! It means the smallest, weirdest religious group has the right to exist, and that right should be defended. SBY should check out Articles 28E and 29 of our newly-amended Constitution, and get the backbone to do what it says there: Guarantee freedom of belief.

Remember the brouhaha about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York? President Barack Obama repeatedly spoke out in defense of Muslims’ right to build what was, in fact, a community center. It was a politically high-risk position to take, and Obama could have lost much credibility in the eyes of many Americans (and not just Pastor “Koran burning” Jones). And yet Obama took that risk.

Why? Because the notion of human rights runs in his blood.

Not so SBY. His mindset comes from the New Order militaristic mentality that prioritizes stability above everything else. You can take the general out of the New Order (and even make him President in the Reform Era), but you can’t take the New Order out of the general. Once a general, always a general — and that, sadly, is our Pak Beye.

In 2007 I wrote a column about Indonesia being a gangster state (“Den of Thieves, Republic of Gangsters”, www.juliasuryakusuma.com/column.php?menu_=2&year=2007&month=5&column_id=145).

State-sanctioned violence is a classic manifestation of this gangster state, and has its origins in the “Integralistic” 1945 Constitution. Before it was amended, that Constitution granted authoritarian and arbitrary rights to the state, allowing governments to rule unchecked. SBY must have forgotten we amended it to guarantee human rights — including freedom of belief.

While extreme or radical organizations like the FPI will always exist, even in democratic countries (like the far-right Ku Klux Klan in the US), the majority of Indonesian civil society believes in pluralism. It’s our state institutions that need to catch up. The problem is that there is still is no public culture of rights yet in Indonesia. The laws exist, but not the mentality.

So is there hope for us? Yes, possibly in 2014, if we all vote to kick out outdated has-beens from times gone by, and get a government led by people whose brains were not formed under the New Order.

Ann Timson, crime-buster and supergranny, says she and her handbag have been fighting crime for over 10 years. Maybe we should fly her over to Indonesia to teach SBY a trick or two? She was 61 when she started, and SBY is now 62, so he’s only a year behind Britain’s handbag-toting hero if he starts now!


The writer (www.juliasuryakusuma.com ) is the author of  Jihad Julia (Mizan).

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