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Indonesia Would Reject Foreign Intervention

Indonesia has experienced a number of terrorist attacks in the past few years. To deal with this, successive Indonesian governments have applied a policy of deterrence aimed at totally eliminating terrorism through harsh punishment for perpetrators, such as long prison sentences and the death penalty. Indonesia has also introduced strict security measures that will make it difficult for militants to accomplish their missions.

With regards to the October 1 Bali Bombings, the police have already questioned close to 200 people who might lead them to the masterminds and give light to the motives behind the terrorist attacks. One of them, a certain Abu Zahro, a former accomplice of Imam Samudra who was sentenced to death for his role in the 2002 bombing, confessed that he had been involved in acts of violence across the country, but denied any role in the October 1 bombings. After studying the pictures of the three suspected October 1 suicide-bombers, he insisted that he did not know them but thought that they might be new recruits.

In 1999, Abu Zahro joined the Pam Swakarsa, a military –backed group formed to help security forces guard a special session of the Consultative Assembly convened that year. When the special session assignment was finished, he and eight other Pam Swakarsa members were snuggled by Imam Samudra’s militia group to the Philippines to follow one-month paramilitary training in Mindanao. After this, he had been sent to various places in Indonesia.

Abu Zahro admitted that economic hardship was the motive behind his decision to join the militia. He believed that he was the victim of a brand Muslim hardliners as perpetrators of bomb attacks in Indonesia.

In the meantime, the Australian mass media reported last month that Australia wanted Indonesia to ban the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and to exclude its alleged leader, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, now in jail, from a remission program for prisoners.

Obviously, the Indonesian government would explicitly reject any intervention from foreign governments regarding its law on dealing with terrorism. In this regard, Vice-president Jusuf Kalla has said that foreign countries often blame Ba’asyir for bombings in the country, including the October 1 Bali bombings. He was in jail when they happened and the government has been watching him very closely. The vice-president felt that it was better to leave the case to the Indonesian court to decide. Furthermore, the government could not ban the JI, because it was not a legal entity in the country.

When in Jakarta last month, Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer did not have much to say about reports in the Australian Media that Canberra wanted to have Indonesia ban the Jamaah Islamiyah and objected to any sentence remission for Abu Bakar Ba’asyir. Instead, he diplomatically stated that Indonesia was making headway in its investigation into the October 1 Bali bombings, and expressed Australia’s pleasure that the Indonesian government was looking very closely at the remission issue.

Australia’s insistence that Indonesia ban the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and refrain from giving further cuts to Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s jail term could affect the existing warm ties between the two neighbors. The bilateral relationship has been declining since 1999 when Australia led an UN-mandated military force into East Timor to quell violence after the East Timorese had voted for independence from Indonesia under a one-side all-Australian ballot counting.

At present, the Australian government will be providing Indonesia with technical aid by sending experts to help the country reform its counter-terrorism measures. The experts will share with their Indonesian counterparts their experience in this area in Australia, but will not intervene in Indonesia’s judicial system.

Indeed, the Indonesian government is open to studying and comparing experiences with other countries and welcomes initiatives from other countries to share their experiences with Indonesia. However, it does not feel obliged to approve them or incorporate them into the Indonesian system. As a matter of fact, a few months earlier the Indonesian government had already decided to improve Indonesia’s counter-terrorism capabilities by enforcing a tough anti-terrorism law, in which terrorist suspects could be detained without charge for up to fourteen days, while criminal charges would be applied to people who helped facilitate terrorism and incite hatred.

The Indonesian government, meanwhile, was also reviewing the 1999 presidential decree on prisoner remission, particularly with respect to serious crimes including terrorism. The review was clearly not in response to Australia’s alleged objection to a sentence cut for Ba’asyir.

The government has decided not to grant Abu Bakar Ba’asyir the sentence remission given to inmates in observance of the Idul Fitri holiday. Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin explained that people convicted of acts of terrorism or jailed for money laundering, illegal logging, and drug trafficking, would be exempted from the remission.

Like Australia, Singapore stands by Indonesia in the fight against terrorism, but Indonesia needs to eradicate not only terrorism but also corruption committed by Indonesian businessmen and corrupt officials, who have stolen billions of dollars from the country. A number of these recalcitrant have found Singapore to be a safe haven to hide in their ill-gained wealth. So far, Indonesia has not been able to get the Singapore government to extradite these criminals to Indonesia since there is no extradition treaty between the two countries, as argued by the Singapore government.

Singapore needs to understand that Jakarta wants the city-state to assist Indonesia in fighting corruption as well, by expediting the signing of the extradition treaty now under negotiation. Indonesia considers an extradition treaty crucial in its fight against corruption, for it would allow Indonesian authorities to go after alleged corrupt officials and business people hiding in Singapore and stashing their money there. Protecting the corrupters in tantamount to sanctioning money-laundering. Singapore’s foreign minister recently dodged the question of money-laundering, claiming that the city-state had enough safeguards to prevent the country from becoming a magnet for dirty funds.

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