TEMPO.CO, Jakarta-Amid protests regarding the content of the event and after facing problems with permit, the 2016 ASEAN Literary Festival (ALF) will still be held in Jakarta this week.
"Bottom line, we will still hold the event," said Ihsan, the 2016 ALF's external manager relationship, as reported by ANTARA, Thursday, May 5, 2016.
The festival faces accusations of promoting communism. Ihsan said that the rumor spread because one of the ALF's programs is to discuss the events of 1965.
"What we need to emphasize is that we are activists of literature, and we look at things with a balanced and perspective, in the sense that no one will be harmed," Ihsan said.
He said that regarding the discussion about what happened in 1965, Ihsan said that the ALF will hold dialogues with authors. "We do not wish to discredit any community," he said.
He realizes that this is a very sensitive issue in Indonesia. But he said that one of literature's functions is to seek for the truth, which is what the ALF aims to do by holding the discussion.
The ASEAN Literary Festival (ALF) 2016 will be held for four days from May 5-8 May at the Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) complex in Cikini, Central Jakarta. The opening ceremony will take place at the Jakarta Theater today.
The event was threatened with cancellation ALF due to misunderstandings between the event organizer, the building owner and the security in charge.
"In their proposal they did not say anything about inviting foreign guests. But in reality their key speaker is a foreigner. Because of that we had to delay the permit issuance—we did not revoke it," Central Jakarta's deputy police chief Adj. Comm. Roma Hutajulu said.
Hutajulu said that around 160 police officers will be securing the event, in anticipation of protests.
A group of people calling themselves the Alliance of Muslim Students and People (AM3) staged a protest in front of Taman Ismail Marzuki. They rejected the annual event from being held, out of suspicion that it promotes communism and supports the LGBT community.
The group's spokesman Sahril Hasibuan said that the AM3 suspects the event has a hidden agenda of spreading ideas that are against the national identity.
"We suspect there are intentions to spread communism, provoke separatism, as well as expressing support for the freedom to express lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) behaviors," he said.
Metro Jaya Police chief Insp. Gen. Pol. Moechgiyarto said that there was a misunderstanding about the event's permits, but "everything is settled. [They may] carry on."
ANTARA | RR
