Ati Nurbaiti and Hera Diani, Jakarta Post – The government's fight against terrorism is threatening human rights and due legal process in the country, activists in Jakarta said Monday.
Opening a two-day hearing of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights, lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said the government was taking too many cues from the regimes of US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the fight against terror.
"The global war on terrorism has inevitably weakened our human rights foundations," he said at the Hotel Santika in Central Jakarta.
Todung said the panel would listen to submissions made by groups affected by the country's new antiterror laws and policies.
"We hope that the panel will able to formulate recommendations to all nations to adhere to human rights and the due process of law in... in fighting terrorism," he said. Consisting of eight international members, the panel is part of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
The ICJ is a global network of judges, lawyers and human rights defenders united by international principles that advance human rights.
The panel is considering the nature of today's terrorist threats and the impact of counterterrorism measures on human rights in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
Among those who gave submissions to the panel Monday was Sidney Jones, the Southeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
Jones said the implementation of Indonesia's terrorism law had been problematic, although it was nowhere near as repressive as Singapore and Malaysia's internal security acts. For the most part, she said, terror suspects here were treated no differently than ordinary criminals.
They country's prisons have been criticized for being too lax rather than too harsh, she said. "Virtually all inmates have cell phones or access to them, some of them are even state-of-the-art communicators, and some have regular access to the Internet... Some of the most hardcore ideologues have produced audio cassettes, CDs and books (in jail), and have found ways of disseminating them outside."
Jones said it would be possible for Indonesia to meet all the United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners while exerting more control over what goes on in jails here.
One of worst applications of the terrorism law, she said, had been in Poso, Central Sulawesi, where conflicts continued between Muslim and Christians. "There, wrongful arrests, abuse and corruption have been rampant, as has intimidation of prosecutors and judges by local mujahidin," Jones said.
In the most notorious case, she said, a prosecutor handling terrorism cases was murdered. After two mistaken sets of arrests and trials of the alleged perpetrators, the real killers were identified only in the past few months.
Jones said law enforcement was not the only way to fight terrorism; stopping recruitment was also key. But the enlistment of terrorists could take place almost anywhere and there is no clear cause of radicalization, she said.
Poverty is not a significant factor, she said, because if it was, more of Jakarta's urban poor would be signing up. "Anything we can do to strengthen the legal system – to reduce corruption, particularly among prosecutors and judges, to improve the accountability of police and other security forces, improve witness protection, and to eliminate torture – is going to help in the fight against terrorism," Jones said.