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ept. 14, online

A group of victims from the 1984 Tanjung Priok tragedy say they will meet members of the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) in efforts to help them restore their rights as victims.

M. Daud B. from Kontras human rights organization, the facilitator of the meeting, says the visit to the LPSK was conducted to mark and remember the 1984 tragedy.

“Today, we and the Tanjung Priok victims will hold a meeting with the LPSK so that the rights of victims are recovered and restored,” Daud says in a press release as quoted by kompas.com on Wednesday.

The Tanjung Priok tragedy occurred on Sept. 12, 1984. Dozens of civilians died when the army began shooting wildly at protesters who demanded that four fellow civilians detained by the subdistrict military command (Koramil) be released.

Community leader Amir Biki was also killed in the tragedy.

Your comments:

At that time it sent a message to all radical groups to adopt Pancasila. It was effective — no doubt about that.

It would be appropriate if the government these days set similar standards (minus the killing though!) to sustain Pancasila instead of appeasing the very same groups in a greedy drive for more power and influence — and, of course, votes.

David Irving
Jakarta

We all know that radicals are Indonesia’s worst enemy.

Djamal Sipahutar
Jakarta

This is how it was and will always be in Indonesia.

The acquittal comes 20 years after the Tanjung Priok killings, now known as “Black September”. The incident is considered a turning-point in Soeharto’s de-Islamization policy — a period marked by the killing and imprisonment of Muslim activists, rampant church construction, a violent drive towards Christian-pagan Pancasila ideology and the repression of alternative and independent Islamic movements in Indonesia.

I say alternative because Indonesia’s Islamic movements are divided between the mainstream, i.e., officially tolerated moderate Islam, and movements popular among the masses, such as movements led by teachers in Islamic boarding schools (pesantren).

In the early 1980s, the Soeharto military regime — backed by Christian advisors who occupied senior Cabinet and military posts — enforced new laws based on Pancasila that covered every aspect of Indonesian society.

It was during this period that Islam re-emerged to play a central role in opposition to that. All organizations in Indonesia were required to adopt Pancasila.

The Pancasila interpretation of “monotheism” meant putting Islam, in the world’s most populous Muslim country, on an equal footing with Christianity, Buddhism and Hindu-Balinese beliefs.

Among other things, the law restricted Islam to families, mosque and prayers. In 1985 Soeharto brought into effect a law requiring all organizations to adopt Pancasila as their sole ideology and providing for government supervision, or dissolution of organizations if they did not comply.

Many Muslim organizations were successfully infiltrated by Pancasila elements and began to subscribe to these laws, leaving Muslims to try to find alternative Islamic movements to fight for Islam.

Indonesia’s answer to Kemalism also resulted the expulsion of hijab-wearing schoolgirls and even plans for common “houses of worship” and graveyards.

Ismail Hamden
Jakarta