TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The issuing of Government Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perpu) No. 2/2017 on Mass Organizations has dangerous implications. People's civil rights are under threat. This Perpu could trigger a wave of harassment and persecution of members of banned organizations. The indications of these are already apparent. The move by several ministers and regional heads to sanction lecturers and civil servants who have joined the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) is an example.
Last week, Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education Mohamad Nasir summoned deans for a meeting in which he asked them to compile lists of lecturers who had joined the HTI. He did this after the government banned the organization because of its support for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. The HTI is seen as being opposed to the state ideology of Pancasila, as laid down in the Perpu. He asked that the deans admonish, issue warnings or apply administrative punishments to these lecturers.
It is easy to imagine that this order from the higher education will lead to the 'harassment' of these 'banned' lecturers. Several universities in the regions have said they are ready to draw up lists of 'misled' lecturers. They are willing to re-educate them and, in the words of Minister Nasir, "return them to Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution." Some universities have even hastily claimed that their campuses are 'HTI lecturer-free'. More rational institutions have said that they are in no hurry to implement this policy.
Expressions such as 'banned', 'misled', 'educate' and 'HTI lecturer-free' are clearly causing concern. What is the basis for deciding that lecturer A is 'involved' in the HTI, while lecturer B is not? It is very difficult to declare that a person is at fault without complete and accurate data. And even if a lecturer has an HTI membership card, is it not he or she became a member before the HTI was banned?
In Bangka-Belitung Province, the Human Resources Agency has even transferred several civil servants who were discovered to be members of the HTI. In Jakarta, there is a petition calling for former youth and sports minister Adhyaksa Dault to resign as chairman of the National Scouting Movement because of a video recording in which he expressed support for the caliphate ideology. Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi has also threatened to suspend the payment of the Rp10 billion government grant to the Scouts until Adhyaksa clarifies his position.
Matters could get worse if President Jokowi Widodo does not intervene to reduce the threat of state persecution of citizens. The trauma of the 1970s when people with links to communist party cannot get 'personally clean' and 'environmentally clean' labels could reappear. The G30S incident of 1965, which was followed by mass murders of civilians, should serve as a valuable lesson. So should the civil rights restrictions imposed on the 'Petition of 50' group during the New Order regime. The president should clearly state that the government is banning organizations at odds with Pancasila, not people's civil rights.
This move by the higher education minister, which could give rise to a wave of persecution against academics, should be condemned. It also intrudes into the realm of the administrative and bureaucratic reform minister, who clearly should be the person deciding on matters related to civil servants.
The ban on the HTI, an organization which has been declared as being opposed to Pancasila and the Constitution, must not be followed by knee-jerk attacks on all its members. Especially when the Perpu itself is still being reviewed by the constitutional court.
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