Jakarta – A plan to revive a community-based intelligence system run by the Indonesian army as an anti-terrorism measure threatens to harm democracy and lead to human rights abuses, analysts warn.
Known by its local acronym Koter, the system was scrapped after the fall of dictator Suharto but has gained new currency following the Bali bombings and other recent bloody attacks against Indonesian targets.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a retired general, is among the backers of the system, in which thousands of non-commissioned officers act as the government's eyes and ears at village level, looking for suspicious activity.
But human rights activists and others worry about the once-dreaded Koter system, under which soldiers of the military's territorial command hold equal authority with village administrative and police officials in local security affairs.
"This will violate all principles of a democratic country, which forbids the military's involvement in monitoring social activities of the public," said Munarman, who heads Indonesia's Legal Aid and Human Rights Foundation. Reintroducing the system would violate human rights principles, he said.
Koter was introduced during the iron-fisted three-decade rule of Suharto, who used it to detect and quash all forms of dissent. It was abandoned in the reformist euphoria that followed his fall in 1998.
"I see this concept as totally irrelevant in the war against terror," said Asmara Nababan, a political and human rights analyst at the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights Studies.
"This is a ploy of the military to re-engage in non-defence and socio-political aspects in Indonesia." He said a return of the Koter system would make the government no different from that of Suharto's and be "an impetus to a repeat of unchecked human rights abuse by the military".
The government argues that reintroducing the Koter system would strengthen the information gathering work of police and the national intelligence agency.
Moves to reinstate the system followed the latest attack to claim lives in Indonesia – the October 1 triple suicide bombings in the resort island of Bali that left 20 people dead. The proposal received strong backing from both the president and his defence minister, retired admiral Widodo Adisucipto.
Yudhoyono "will make sure that the territorial command is functioning fully and strictly to monitor suspicious security behaviours," presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal recently said. Koter is the "only security mechanism that we have in the country to enable us to detect security threats in far-away places, in villages, in places where the government has no access," he said.
The military says about 37,000 non-commissioned military officers are ready to take part in the Koter system across Indonesia, including about 1,000 in the capital Jakarta alone.
Activists say the system has in the past led to numerous unrecorded cases of human rights violations, including unlawful detentions and murders.
Reintroducing it would contravene a 2004 law that requires the elected government to approve military activities, both in war and peace, said Nababan.
Edy Prasetyono, a political analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, also argued that the government plan to involve soldiers in counter-terrorism would be unlawful.
In the post-Suharto era, he said, Indonesian law clearly states that anti-terrorism is in the hands of the police and intelligence services, while the military's role is limited to assisting them on request.
Hidayat Nur Wahid, chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly, also opposed the plan, saying recently that Indonesia should instead focus on "maximising the role of the police and intelligence" and warning that "repressive means will create new terror in the field".