Bambang Muryanto, Yogyakarta – The repressive methods applied in Indonesia' fight against terrorism, particularly those reportedly being applied by the police's anti-terror special detachment Detachment 88, are outdated and should be replaced with a more holistic approach, a scholar said.

Speaking at a discussion forum in Yogyakarta over the weekend, Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University terrorism researcher Nurhadi said that Indonesia had a good model for combating terrorism that combined both hard and soft approaches. "The international world has noticed Indonesia's success in this," he told the forum.

According to Nurhadi, as of the end of last year Detachment 88 was still proportional in curbing terrorism. This encouraging achievement, however, had been tarnished by repressive actions demonstrated more recently, as indicated by the numerous terrorist suspects that had been shot dead.

"It may be true that they [the suspects] were involved in terrorist networks. But without legal processes, their involvement could not be presented to the public," Nurhadi said. He added that violence was not the appropriate way to preemptively deal with terrorism.

Nurhadi said repressive measures that suggest that terrorist suspects enemies be killed were out of date. They only reinforced terrorist desires to rebel, making it only more difficult for Indonesia to ever free itself from terrorism, he added.

He said most acts of terrorism were the result of various structural factors, including economic, social and cultural issues.

That accounts for why holistic approaches, not violence, were needed to purge the threat of terrorism from Indonesia. "The problem is we have yet to develop comprehensive counterterrorism concepts," Nurhadi said.

The same comment regarding Detachment 88 was also expressed by former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) director A.M. Hendropriyono, who expressed disagreement over their methods and questioned whether preventive measures had to be conducted by using violence. "Such [violent] approaches can only be applied given an emergency situation," he said.