Ina Parlina, Jakarta – In its defense, the government says that the much-criticized national security bill is necessary to protect the country from various threats, an argument that security experts and activists say points to a major flaw in the bill: That it appears to have defined what constitutes a security threat too broadly.

Indonesia in the past decade has faced major security issues ranging from bloody sectarian conflicts, burgeoning radicalism and terrorism to separatism.

But only recently has the government been pushing for the enactment of legislation that aims to empower and enable state apparatus to better protect the people from such threats. Apart from the security bill, the government is also planning to pass an intelligence reform bill and revise the 2003 Terrorism Law.

The move, however, has been met with opposition from activists, who claimed the bill, while drafted with noble intent, might be used to bring the country back to the Soeharto years when freedom of expression was repressed in the name of maintaining national security.

Imparsial program director Al Araf criticized the bill for defining mass strikes as a threat. "This is dangerous," he told The Jakarta Post. "This will surely hamper the freedom of students, workers and farmers," he added.

The bill has been said to be too liberal in defining what constitutes a security threat. It categorizes mass strikes as an unarmed threat along with natural disasters (flood, tsunami, etc.) and non-natural disasters (technological failures, human-caused forest fires, etc.).

"It also puts the destruction of moral values and ethics of the nation, stupidity, injustice, disobedience of law and poverty, and the misconceptions in the formulation of legislation and regulation as means of threats," Al Araf said.

Jaleswari Pramodhawardani, a security expert from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said without a clear definition of threat, the bill may only lead to overlapping authority among existing institutions. This, she argued, would not only render the bill useless when enacted, but it would also hamper democracy.

Tubagus Hasanuddin, a deputy head at the House of Representatives Commission I on defense, concurred with the rights activists, saying that several provisions in the bill could bring back Soeharto's authoritarianism.

One of the most contentious articles in the bill, he said, was the clause that gave special power to non-law enforcement institutions, including the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) and the military, to arrest and wiretap people suspected of being a threat to national security.

The other is the clause that says the President as the head of the National Security Council (DKN) had the authority to determine what is considered a "potential threat", an authority that Tubagus said, "would be dangerous for democracy and very tyrannical."

Col. Hartind Asrin, a spokesman of the Defense Ministry, defended the bill, saying that it clearly defined what constituted a threat and outlined a clear mechanism on dealing with it to avoid overlapping authority.

The bill would not grant BIN and the military authority to wiretap and arrest people, he said. The President would also not act alone in determining the status of the security situation in the country as the DKN would consist of a panel of experts. "I'd say those who criticize the bill do not understand security," Asrin said.