[This article was distributed on September 25 on an online discussion list of academics focusing on Indonesia and appears here via the Joyo Indonesia News Service.]

Jeffrey Winters – The New Order mentality is alive and well in Indonesia, and getting stronger by the day. Members of the DPR had few reservations about announcing their desire to limit foreign news broadcasts (but no limits on sports, showing careful attention to detail). Activists have been tried and convicted of insulting Megawati for stomping on her likeness at a protest rally. And now an academic and a nurse are being held as the Indonesian security apparatus gropes about for a suitable charge – visa violation, espionage, being a nuisance, tending to the sick, trying to illuminate the truth?

If Lesley McCulloch and Joy Sadler can be charged for visa violations, then nearly every one of us on this list should face the same charge and jail sentence. The first and last time I got a visa to conduct my scholarly research was in 1989 when I needed to stay in Indonesia for a full year to do my doctoral fieldwork. I have been back to Indonesia dozens of times since on a simple tourist visa and conducted non-tourist work every time I was there. Not only that, often I was doing this work in open and direct contact with government officials, military personnel, and police officers. Every one of them knew that I was there on short-term tourist visas and they always knew I was working.

The same is true for all other non-Indonesians on this list. And in some instances we have declared our conduct openly and without sanction – as Bill Liddle did in his recent article in the Jakarta Post when he mentioned he conducted interviews in July for the National Democratic Institute. My guess is Bill did not bother to get an official research visa to do this work but instead entered as a tourist, risking being charged with the same offense for which McCulloch and Sadler were detained.

Businesspeople (used to) enter Indonesia by the thousands every week to conduct their affairs, and overwhelmingly on tourist visas. Indeed, the GOI [Government of Indonesia] encouraged them to do so. Only if they decided to set up operations in Indonesia and live and work there more permanently did they have to apply for a more official visa status (KIM-S or whatever).

The charges these two individuals are being held on are arbitrary and outrageous. The clear intent is to intimidate everyone at home and abroad that might want to gather primary information in Indonesia or tend to those who are harmed at the hand of the police and soldiers.

I find the "espionage" allegation particularly repellant. No official war has been declared in Aceh and no rules restricting entry by foreigners are in place. Indeed, the government in Jakarta has even delayed raising the region to the status of a military security zone. Espionage, by definition, implies that these two individuals were spying on behalf of a formal enemy. This is almost too absurd to merit a response. McCulloch was gathering first-hand information about the way Indonesia was treating some its own citizens. She is an academic who has written extensively on the conflict in Aceh (both scholarly work and as a public intellectual) and she does not work on behalf of any foreign government, nor is she an agent of any domestic enemy seeking to overthrow the Indonesian government.

I'm not sure what Sadler was doing, but if her worst crime was nursing unarmed civilians whose health has been damaged by the conflict in Aceh, then she ought to be given an award as a humanitarian of the highest order. And if she was doing this on a tourist visa, at least she can say that her violation of immigration rules did a lot more concrete good than the visa violations routinely committed by the rest of us.

These two individuals deserve our most vocal support – voiced to the increasingly repressive regime based in Jakarta as well as to the Australian, British, and US embassies.