TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The banning of Lentera, a student magazine, by the Salatiga Satya Wancana Christian University authorities was an overreaction. This type of ban should not happen at a university, which should uphold academic liberty and freedom of expression.
The university leaders said that they had banned the edition of Lentera published at the beginning of October because the editorial team had not consulted them beforehand on the contents of the magazine with the cover story titled 'the Red City of Salatiga'. In addition to sounding contrived, this reminds us of the 'censorship tradition' common during the New Order regime. Furthermore, the university authorities only asked for the magazine to be withdrawn after meeting with the mayor, the police and military officials in Salatiga, Central Java.
The Lentera ban has exposed the phobia of the university leaders toward efforts to uncover the truth behind the September 30, 1965 Movement (G30S), despite the fact that the magazine's editorial team was not spreading rumors. They wrote a report based on a study of history books, interviews with reliable sources and observations at a location believed to be the site of a massacre of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members in Salatiga. In the interest of progress on campus, the university leaders should have supported students trying to think openly.
What is regrettable is the Salatiga police's interrogation of the editorial team after it seized 14 copies of Lentera. For five hours, police officers repeatedly asked the students their motive for publishing the report about the G30S. For some unknown reason, the police claimed that the report could cause a disruption among the public. Although there was no physical pressure, the police interrogation was clearly a form of psychological intimidation, an attack on freedom of expression.
The university authorities and the police seem to have simply ignored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1945 constitution and human rights law, all of which guarantee citizens including students the right to seek and distribute information without coercion from anyone.
According to several international conventions, freedom of expression cannot be completely unlimited and any restrictions must be laid down in law. This must be done carefully to protect the public from incitement to hatred or violence. But a glance at the report shows that the Lentera magazine report contained nothing that could cause instability.
Even if there were people who objected to the content of the Lentera report, as the security authorities claim, there was no need to use force to detain the student activists. After all, before publishing their report, the Lentera editorial team did their best to meet all journalistic standards that they knew. Therefore, it would have been more educational if the people offended by the article had used their right of reply or correction as regulated by the Press Law.
So far the efforts to retrieve all copies of Lentera have been fruitless. Even if the print version is banned, the digital version is already all over the Internet. After all, censorship has occurred. To protect freedom of expression, the National Human Rights Commission needs to find out what was really behind the actions of the university leadership and the Salatiga police. (*)
