TEMPO.CO, Surabaya-Moch Fauzi Said, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Political Science of Wijaya Kusuma University (UWKS), said there has not been any raids on communism and socialism books in his university. Students can freely have those books.
“We don’t have to do raids on leftist books,” Fauzi told Tempo yesterday, May 18, 2016.
Fauzi said, students can freely read leftist books for academic purposes. Aside from students, faculty members can also read such books freely for teaching materials as well as research. “As long as it is used for academic activities, [anyone] can read the leftist books, it’s not forbidden,” he said.
The raids on lesftist books and prohibition from reading them may undermine the academic world. “It’s tantamount to undermining academic freedom,” Fauzi said.
A student of Wijaya Kusuma University, Ramadhan, has regretted the actions taken by police officers and the military members who raided and confiscated leftist books in several regions, particularly Central Java. Book confiscations have hampered the freedom to study and to learn, according to him. “It’s a setback,” Ramadhan said.
Ramadhan admitted that he has read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, the history of leftist movement. “I read the book for knowledge and academic purposes,” he said.
The President of Airlangga University (Unair) Mohammad Nasih allows his students to read books on socialist and communist ideology. He has no objection if Unair’s students are reading such books. “Academically, the books are useful for students in their study,” Nasih said on Monday at his office.
Nasih noted that students in the Faculty of Social and Political Science are even obliged to read leftist books to learn more about certain subjects. “We have subjects on social theories and comparative politics. The materials are such leftist books,” he noted.
Despite getting leftist theories, Nasih believed that his students will not get affected by extreme thinking on communism and socialism, for example, by waving hammer and sickle flags.
Earlier, Police Chief General Badrodin Haiti claimed that authorities have not confiscated books on communism from stores, campuses, and publishers. Police were taking books as samples to be handed over to the attorney general’s office for review, according to Badrodin.
EDWIN FAJERIAL
