Indonesia's decision to expel a foreign analyst who has published sometimes-critical reports on terrorism and separatism harks back to the era of dictator Suharto, local and foreign rights groups said.
Sidney Jones, the Southeast Asia director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), said she and an Australian colleague were served on Tuesday evening with an immediate expulsion order.
She said the immigration department was acting on orders from the state intelligence agency, whose director Abdullah Hendropriyono has criticised her work as subversive and a threat to national security.
"Targeting independent monitors is not about protecting national security, its about protecting officials whose records are embarrassing when exposed by insightful experts," said Sam Zarifi, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.
"These tactics signal a return to the bad old ways of the Suharto era." Hendropriyono has accused 20 local and international non-government groups including ICG of endangering national security before the July 5 presidential election.
Human rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, who is a member of ICG's board, said the move was "precisely the policy of the Suharto years" and indicated the government was becoming "more and more repressive." He said the decision was a shock for all civil society and non-government organisations. "We are entering a dark and gloomy situation in Indonesia." Human rights groups and press freedoms were suppressed under Suharto, who stepped down in May 1998.
Former security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the front-runner in the presidential race, urged the government clearly to explain the reasons for the deportation. "If it does not, it will become a problem for democracy," he told reporters while campaigning in the eastern city of Makassar.
Jones, 52, is an expert on the Indonesian-based and Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which has staged a series of bloody attacks in recent years. But she told a press conference she believes her reports on separatist conflicts in Aceh and Papua provinces sparked the expulsion.
The US citizen said the intelligence agency reportedly had complained that the ICG was "misusing its status" to criticise the government. She said she and colleague Francesca Lawe-Davies expected to fly out this weekend.
Former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, who is president of the Brussels-based ICG, described the expulsion order as "outrageous and indefensible, utterly at odds with Indonesia's claim to be an open and democratic society..." In a statement he said no government member took responsibility for the decision and no one had made any direct complaints to ICG. "To shoot the messenger doesn't say much for the state of political liberty in Indonesia under the Megawati government," Evans said.
Jones, 52, said her reports "must have touched a couple of raw nerves – I just don't know what those nerves are." She said she had been summoned by the security ministry in January 2003 after an ICG report suggested links between military intelligence figures and JI, but they appeared satisfied with her explanation.
While she had no reason to believe her JI reports triggered the expulsion, "I am sure Abu Bakar Bashir and others are quite happy at my departure." Police are detaining Bashir as the former suspected leader of JI.
Jones, a fluent Indonesian speaker, said the ICG would continue reporting on Indonesia from overseas and she hoped the political climate would change so she could return. "I can't imagine not living in Indonesia. My life is here," she said.