Ary Hermawan, Jakarta – The government should end the bans on communism and Marxist-Leninism in the new Criminal Code because the restrictions are outdated and repressive, experts say.
While he acknowledged the good work done in revising the code first enacted by the Dutch in 1918, political analyst Daniel Dhakidae said there was no need to incorporate regulations that banned ideologies deemed subversive.
The bans are a throwback to the anti-communist Soeharto era, he told The Jakarta Post. The regulations are irrelevant in a democratic country like Indonesia, where people could study many ideologies through the Internet, he said.
"This part of the draft is ridiculous. Why do we have to be afraid of an ideology that has been abandoned by its main proponents," Daniel said. The government should keep in mind that the former Soviet Union has collapsed, while the People's Republic of China is gradually abandoning communism, he said. Fidel Castro's Cuba is one of the last communist states left in the world, he said.
The draft code punishes people found to have spread communist teachings with jail terms of up to seven years. Those learning Marxist teachings as part of a course of study, however, are exempt from punishment. Anyone attempting to establish a communist organization in the country or make contact with similar groups abroad still risks prosecution.
Communism and related teachings were banned after a coup attempt in 1965, in which five members of the armed forces and one civilian were murdered. The killings were widely blamed on the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the bloodletting that followed pitted the military and religious groups against the communists. Historians estimate that from 400,000 to a million people died in this violence, which saw the downfall of Sukarno's Old Order and the beginning of the Soeharto regime.
Memories of the coup and its aftermath still linger and materials deemed communist by the authorities continue to be banned today.
The Customs and Excise Office recently seized two scholarly treatises on Indonesian communism – Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics by Australian historian Rex Polimer and The Rise of Indonesian Communism by Indonesianist Ruth McVey.
New editions of the two works, originally published by Cornell University Press, were imported by Jakarta-based publisher Equinox. The publishers have protested the seizure. They say rather than promoting communist ideologies, these books are dispassionate political histories of the PKI.
Political commentator Fadjroel Rahman said the Criminal Code should only regulate people's deeds – not their thoughts. "People should not be made into criminals because of their ideas," he told the Post.
Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation chairman Patra M. Zen said the passages on communism were unnecessary because the draft already included articles that criminalized attempts to undermine the Pancasila state ideology.
"Anyone can try to replace the Pancasila, not only those believing in communism," Patra said. In their extreme forms, liberalism, conservatism, fascism and religious fundamentalism all threaten the existence of the Pancasila, he said.
Senior lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution said if the subversion law was incorporated into the revised code, it would undermine the country's emerging democracy. "It would be dangerous. You can't judge what is in people's minds. No matter how vicious a person's thoughts are, they should not be charged with a crime if they haven't done anything," he said.