Church leaders and advocacy groups have rejected a proposal by the Indonesian government to allow soldiers to do business by revising a military law.

The proposal "is not in accordance with the functions of the military," said Father Alexandro Rangga, director of the Franciscans Secretariat for Justice and Peace in strife-torn Papua province.

The priest added that even though it was banned, many military and police officers "are doing business" in Papua, where implications of the 2019 uprising, the largest pro-independence mobilization in decades, are still lingering and at least 10 teenagers were killed by the military last September.

This has become public knowledge. "Military businesses, both private and done by institutions, are massive" because they are supported by influential people, he told UCA News on July 22.

Father Rangga quoted a 2021 report by civil society groups that found direct and indirect links between the deployment of soldiers and security businesses for mining firms in Papua.

Indonesian military personnel are prohibited from participating in political and commercial activities. The Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs last week held public discussions on the plan by the House of Representatives to revise the prevailing 2004 Indonesian Military Law and the 2002 Police Law.

The move is to change the law just months before the end of the tenure of the lower house.

Subsequently, the head of the military's Legal Development Agency, Rear Admiral Kresno Buntoro asked the House of Representatives to remove the existing ban.

"We recommend this ban be thrown out," and soldiers and policemen allowed to engage in businesses, he said.

Rangga said if the revision was approved, new challenges would emerge such as conflict between officers, insecurity, manipulation, intimidation, and repression.

The revision will help illegal logging and mining, gambling and the narcotics trade which will function "beyond the government's control," he added.

According to the Civil Society Coalition for Security Sector Reform, the military was kept away from business due to experiences under authoritarian president Suharto's rule from 1967 until his resignation in 1998.

The coalition comprises 20 organizations, including the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence and Amnesty International.

"The revision will have an impact on democracy and civil liberties, it warned in a statement.

Amending the law will legalize alleged business practices connected with natural resources, it added.

Father Yohanes Kristoforus Tara, an activist priest of the advocacy division of the Indonesian Franciscans' Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission, said the plan was "a betrayal of reforms that have been fought bloodily with some even sacrificing their lives."

He said if the problem was the welfare of ordinary soldiers, then it needed to be addressed through budgetary allocations.

The priest, who for the past decade served in a parish in Atambua diocese on the border with Timor-Leste, said the way to look after the welfare of soldiers is not to "let them do business because the price to be paid for that will be expensive. Vertical conflict may increase."

Source: https://www.ucanews.com/news/church-leaders-oppose-allowing-indonesian-military-to-do-business/10579