Heru Andriyanto, Jakarta – The thorny question of censorship has kept the Attorney General's Office busy in the past year.
In a report released on Wednesday to coincide with the first anniversary of the president's second term, the office said it had monitored the contents of 7,652 books – 7,522 imported and 130 local titles – and was continually monitoring 96 imported magazines and 68 foreign newspapers.
The revelation comes just a week after a Constitutional Court ruling stripped the AGO of its power to ban books. The court, however, said it rejected a judicial review of the 2004 AGO Law that gives the office the authority to monitor printed material.
The intelligence unit of the AGO "is investigating, examining and controlling those printed materials," AGO spokesman Babul Khoir Harahap said. In addition, the AGO also made a decision on 990 videos and audio discs.
In the past six years, the repealed law has been used by the AGO to ban 22 books, most of them dealing with the murky coup attempt in 1965. The law was used under the regime of former dictator Suharto to clamp down on dissent.
Separately, the report said 15 prosecutors were facing dismissal for various offenses. It said that in the past year Indonesia had dealt with more than 1,700 corruption cases, with just over 1,000 of them ending up in a trial.
The report boasted that the AGO's antigraft measures had recovered Rp133.64 billion ($15 million) in stolen assets. The AGO's civil and state administrative affairs unit, which mainly deals with state debt collection, had recovered state assets worth Rp 1.29 trillion, Babul said.
"Of the prosecutors and civil servants working for the AGO, 248 of them have received sanctions following complaints filed by members of the public," he said. "This is out of over 500 complaints that we received since last October."
Babul said 101 convicts were on death row in Indonesia, with most of them convicted over drug trafficking. He said they still could avoid the firing squad if they were granted a presidential pardon, which they could request.