Yeremia Sukoyo – Criticism continues to pour in against a controversial bill that would tighten the regulation of mass organizations, ahead of its expected passage this week by the House of Representatives.

Fransisca Fitri, the coordinator of the Coalition for Freedom of Association, said in Jakarta on Wednesday that certain provisions in the bill were so broad in scope that they threatened group activities that were in all respects harmless.

"This is especially true of Article 61 of the bill, which a House special committee has already pre-approved for passage," she said at the discussion "Mass Organizations Bill: Violating Human Rights and Shackling Fundamental Freedoms."

The article, Fransisca said, was laid out in such a way that it could be interpreted as restricting all kinds of group activities, including Islamic prayer recitals. She said this was because prayer recitals could be argued to fall under the category of "propagating religious beliefs" identified in the article.

Under the draft, associations are restricted to limited categories of activities and are subjected to vague prohibitions, including bans on conducting activities that "endanger the unity and safety of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia" and "embracing, instigating and propagating beliefs and religions conflicting with [state ideology] Pancasila."

It also significantly curtails the activities of foreign associations, requiring them to seek a permit from the Foreign Ministry to operate.

"There are many other articles in the bill that threaten people's right to associate and gather. The public needs to recognize that this is a problem that we all face if this bill is passed in its current form," Fransisca said.

Wahyu Wagiman, the deputy director of advocacy at the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), told the discussion that the restrictions proposed in the bill would be a major setback for democratic reforms undertaken since the end of Suharto's New Order regime in 1998.

He also argued that the increase in communal violence since then did not warrant a return to the heavy-handed security tactics that defined Suharto's 32-year rule.

"There was no need to revise the existing law on mass organizations in response to the unrelated increase in violence linked to mass organizations," Wahyu said.

Communal violence, he went on, was a symptom of declining public trust in the law enforcement and judicial systems, and called for problems on those front to be addressed first.

However, the Home Affairs Ministry, which drafted the bill, has played down the criticism as coming from those who don't fully comprehend the proposed articles.

Reydonnyzar Moenek, a ministry spokesman, said on Wednesday that accusations about the bill being repressive were wildly inaccurate. He added there was no way the government would propose legislation reminiscent of the repressive policies of the New Order.

The purpose behind revising the mass organizations law, he went on, was to control the proliferation of new mass organizations and ensure that existing ones had a defined organizational structure that would improve transparency and make it easy to hold them to account for their members' actions.

The House previously said it expected the bill to be passed by the end of March. Legislators on the special committee deliberating the bill said they agreed on all the key points and were now just ironing out the details.