Farouk Arnaz, Jakarta – Indonesia's fight against terrorism has left dead a total of 97 suspects and 34 police officers since 2000, the National Police chief said on Sunday.
At least 1,000 terrorists were arrested from the year 2000 until last October, Gen. Sutarman said, with the peak of anti-terror activities coming after the 2002 Bali Bombings, which killed more than 200 people.
The police chief said that besides the officers who were killed in the line of duty, another 65 were left injured.
"However, law enforcement alone will not solve the problem, because ideology cannot be defeated by law enforcement – there has to be an ideological component [in combating terrorism]," Sutarman said.
The four-star general argued that the police therefore needed to continue to collaborate with other stakeholders to as part of deradicalization efforts.
Police targeted
Sutarman also said there was a clear shift in the targets picked by terrorists. Tourist hangouts in Bali, hotels frequented by Westerners in Jakarta, and the Australian embassy in the capital have previously been bombed, but now terrorists seem to be mainly targeting the police, Sutarman said.
"That's because the National Police have arrested would-be terrorists before they were able to hit their targets, so now the police as an institution as well as individual officers have become targets, because they are seen as hampering the efforts [of terrorists]."
The number of 97 killed terror suspects refers to people being killed in operations to apprehend them. Another 12 were killed in suicide bombings while three perpetrators of the 2002 Bali Bombings were sentenced to death and executed.