The release last week of international visitor arrivals into Perth
looked a good news story: Up 9% for the year ended March 2017.
But take a closer look at the number of people coming to WA as
tourists (excluding family, student and business visits) and the numbers
from Indonesia really are awful. Just compare the number of
holidaymakers arriving into Perth in this 12 month period:
Malaysia: 71,488
Singapore: 62,700
Indonesia: 12,500
Our local hotel industry is desperate for more visitors and meanwhile
Indonesia has a growing middle-class, approaching 100 million people
and air travel for tourism is booming. So why such bad numbers?
1. Visas
Obtaining a visa to visit Australia is finally becoming easier thanks
to a lot of work by our embassy in Jakarta and the WA Trade Office. For
too long Indonesians have had to queue or complete up to 16 pages of
information in order to apply for a visa, whilst their 'mates' in
Malaysia and Singapore could apply online. Also, a family of four from
Bali (for example) still must pay a non-refundable application fee of
$520.00 just to try and get a visa for Australia. It's too expensive.
2. Airlines:
KL in Malaysia and Singapore have numerous flights into and from
Perth each day with various airlines, whilst only Garuda Indonesia
connects Perth and Jakarta; and that is not even a daily flight.
BatikAir commence flights between our two countries this month and they
will be a great addition to the travel industry in WA.
3. TourismWA
TourismWA have, I believe, not really developed a clear
strategy for Indonesia in the past, preferring to focus on other
countries. Like many business people here in Australia, they 'forgot'
about the sleeping giant just a few hours to our north.
With TourismWA coming
under the control of the Department of State development (DSD) in the near future - as part of the state government's re-structuring of its
departments - let's hope we see some positive leadership in getting more
Indonesians to visit us.
Perth and our state has much to offer international tourists,
including from Indonesia. We just need to articulate what a great
experience awaits our neighbors when they get here.
Ross B. Taylor AM is the president of the Indonesia Institute (Inc) that is based in Perth. Ross can be followed on Twitter:
On 30 April and May 21, police raided gay sex parties in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, and Jakarta. Arrests were made in both instances for alleged violations of Indonesia’s anti-pornography law.
Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia – although it is in the
autonomous province of Aceh. Police have said several of the men will be
charged under the anti-pornography law.
On May 13, in Aceh’s capital Banda Aceh, two young gay men were caned 83 times before more than 1,000 onlookers. They had been convicted of sodomy.
Distinct from Indonesia’s national criminal code, Aceh’s criminal code, which is known locally as the Qanun Jinayat,
prohibits sodomy. Vigilantism is also prohibited and has been denounced
by senior public officials. Despite this, the conduct of the vigilante
group that arrested the two young men after breaking into their rented
room and assaulting them both has not been scrutinised.
“Moral” crimes
The caning temporarily shifted international focus from Ahok’s
blasphemy conviction to issues of corporal punishment and the policing
of “moral” crimes in Indonesia’s sole autonomous province.
While some may find comfort in the fact that Indonesia’s national
criminal code is not as draconian and invasive as Aceh’s, the underlying
ideological issue remains the same nationwide: contemporary Indonesia
is heading down the path of conservative Sunni Islamism.
Indonesia’s Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi) has declared that Islamic law is only one source of law in Indonesia, alongside traditional customary law (adat)
and Western law, to name a few. But for many of the country’s
Muslim-majority population and judiciary, conservative Sunni Islamic
norms are becoming the preferred basis for law and jurisprudence.
Like Indonesia’s blasphemy laws, the Acehnese criminal code has received heavy criticism from human rights groups. The most notable of “moral” offences prohibited under the code include adultery (zina), being in close proximity to a member of the opposite sex out of wedlock (khalwat), lesbian relations (musahaqah) and sodomy (liwath).
Amnesty International, UN Human Rights – Asia, as well as countless local pro-diversity civil society organisations
condemned the decision to cane the two men, aged 20 and 23. They also
called on the Indonesian government to uphold its commitment to
universal human rights standards.
But these calls will almost certainly go unheeded, because, from a
legal perspective, Aceh’s criminal code is not necessarily
unconstitutional. What’s more, international human rights guarantees
may, in theory, be legally persuasive but enjoy no concrete legal
standing in Indonesia.
Women in Aceh were publicly caned for spending time with men who were not their husbands.Reuters/Beawiharta
Constitutionality of Aceh’s criminal code
The authority for the statement that Aceh’s criminal code is not necessarily unconstitutional lies in a 2010 ruling of Indonesia’s Constitutional Court.
That court found that Indonesia’s blasphemy law, the same law under
which Ahok was sentenced to two years’ prison, is constitutionally
valid.
While the ruling received broad criticism from human rights groups, it remains the most definitive and recent authority on the status of individual human rights in Indonesia.
The court made several salient points,
all of which help explain the implementation of corporal punishment in
Aceh and the discriminatory treatment of homosexuals. These were
strongly informed by the concept of religion and its exalted status in
Indonesian society.
First, the court noted that Indonesia is neither an Islamic nor secular state. It is, rather, a religious state (negara beragama) based on the principle of One Almighty God (Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa).
The priority assigned to One Almighty God was born out of a
constitutional compromise between the drafters of the 1945 constitution,
some of whom hoped for a secular Indonesian state and others who
envisaged an Islamic state.
As Indonesia is a religious state, the court found that “religious
values” inform what makes a law good or bad. They also constitute a
legitimate reason, the court said, to diminish individual human rights.
But what are “religious values” and who has the authority to define them?
The court’s interpretation of these values, as guaranteed in the 1945
constitution, may seem dubious to some. Rather than interpreting
“religious values” as universal principles of brotherhood and humanity,
for example, it read the term to mean the fundamental tenets of a
state-recognised religion (pokok-pokok agama), as defined by Indonesia’s Ministry of Religion. Indonesia’s Constitutional Court argues the country is neither an Islamic nor secular state.Reuters/Darren Whiteside
Shari'a-based values
Aceh’s criminal code arguably reflects the broader view in Acehnese
society that corporal punishment is necessary to uphold local
shari‘a-based values. And to discourage contradictory “moral” offences,
of which homosexuality is one.
Caning also enjoys historical legitimacy. It has featured throughout the Islamic tradition as a form of punishment for both hudud (crimes against Islamic law contained in the Qur’an) and ta’zir (discretionary punishments for crimes against Islamic law administered by the state) offences.
The second crucial point of the ruling was that while religion may be
a private matter to some, the Constitutional Court endorsed a concept
of religion forming the identity of a community or society.
As critics have argued,
the court’s decision prioritised the rights of religious ideas over the
rights of individual adherents. It also legitimised the idea that a
person’s religious identity is akin to property and may not be infringed
upon.
There are few parts of Indonesia, if any, where Islam is considered more a part of one’s identity than in Aceh.
The Constitutional Court also found that upholding “religious values” was necessary to ensure public order. Again, critics
have argued that the court conflated the need to maintain public order
with the tendency to pander to general public discontent.
On this point, its stance partially explains why the criminal acts of
certain vigilante groups continue to go unpunished where religion is
concerned. Vigilantism in Aceh is commonly carried out in the name of
the shari‘a.
Finally, the court stated that the Indonesian state had no obligation
to ensure the domestic application of international human rights
conventions. Rather, it held that Indonesia’s respect for various
conventions and international law apparatuses, including human rights,
must always be based on the philosophy and constitution of the Republic
of Indonesia.
In other words, Indonesian “religious values” trump international human rights norms. There are few parts of Indonesia where Islam is considered more a part of one’s identity than in Aceh.Reuters/Damir Sagolj
The exception or the rule?
Following something as controversial and divisive as the public
caning of two citizens for having consensual sex in private, supporters
of the LGBT community and opponents of corporal punishment may find it
comforting to think of Aceh as the exception to the rule.
The province is, after all, the only one in Indonesia to legislate
corporal punishment and to prohibit same-sex relations. But it is not
the only one that’s home to radical, often violent, Islamist groups and vigilantes who, at times, appear to enjoy impunity.
Aceh may also not be the only province that prohibits same-sex
relations and sex out of wedlock for much longer. In May 2016, a group
calling itself the Family Love Alliance (AILA) petitioned the
Constitutional Court to conduct a material review of the national criminal code.
If the court accedes to the petition, both sexual relations out of
wedlock and homosexual relations as such may be outlawed across the
archipelago. And this may provide sufficient justification for vigilante
groups to carry out similar acts of violence across Indonesia.
So while it may be comforting to dismiss the caning as peculiar to
Aceh, if Ahok’s blasphemy conviction tells us anything, it’s that it
would be foolhardy to assume that other parts of the archipelago aren’t
on a similar, albeit slower, trajectory.
Daniel Peterson is a PhD Candidate / Research Assistant, Institute for Religion, Politics and Society, Australian Catholic University
For the past two years, Australian exporters’ prospects have been
jollied along by forecasts of a looming free trade agreement with their
giant northern neighbor.
Once in place, grain carriers and beef boats would sail past
unconcerned customs officials and into the increasingly hungry ports of
the world’s fourth largest nation; Indonesian vegetable and mineral oils
will head Down Under to a similar welcome.
Prefacing this nirvana have been big show-and-sell missions to the
archipelago, ministerial handshake photo-ops and glowing statements
implying negotiations are running briskly and on the same page.
So all being well, the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic
Partnership Agreement (CEPA) should be signed before 2018 dawns.
However, all is not well and that sunrise now seems remote.
The possibilities have been eclipsed - not by nationalist Indonesians
fearing floods of foreign goods, but by parochial politics in
Australia.
In April, the federal government abruptly announced dumping duties on Indonesian copy paper imports.
“The
impact of the decision is potentially lethal,” Australia-Indonesia
Business Council President Debneth Guharoy told members.
“It
flies in the face of the visiting president’s pointed request in Sydney
for a fair go on paper and palm oil. [In February Indonesian President
Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo promoted the CEPA in Australia.]
“We
unilaterally decide to turn the [asylum seeker] boats around, stop the
exports of live cattle, raise hell over the death penalty and now
rollback their paper. Each and every time, we expect the Indonesians to
bow to our self-promoted higher standards, our much-touted lofty
principles.
“Those
of us who have lived in, worked in or frequently travel to Asia cringe
at the disdain with which these proclamations are treated by our
neighbors.”
Indonesia Institute President Ross Taylor, a former national
vice-president of the AIBC, warned that the problem should be “handled
with subtlety”.
“Otherwise we run the risk of this tariff issue becoming a
catalyst - for those who are anti-free trade - to have the CEPA stall or
collapse,” he told Strategic Review. “That would be a great disappointment.
“Getting an agreement was always going to be a tough task -
Indonesia is really focused on the need for big infrastructure projects
that can be funded by North Asian countries.
“However, it can be done with goodwill and considered
perseverance by both sides. The decision by Australian officials to
impose the tariff at this time was less than helpful; Guharoy is right
in that regard and we share his concern, as would Indonesia.”
The head of Indonesia's negotiation team was reported by Fairfax Media claiming the duties would affect discussions.
“We
explained to Australia that it [the dumping accusation] is not true,
but they insisted just to protect their industry,” Deddy Saleh was
quoted as saying.
“So
it means there is unfairness. How can we conduct negotiations when we
know that our counterpart is not fair? Negotiation takes mutual trust
from both sides.”
The duties will please supporters of trade
barriers; they argue free trade agreements are an easy way to avoid
developing complex policies to stimulate local yields and build food
self-sufficiency. Instead, FTAs favor efficient producers like
Australian wheat growers who can swamp local markets and put poor
farmers out of business
‘Dumping’ means an exporter is selling goods overseas below the homeland price.
Apart
from deliberate attempts to weaken rivals through trade wars, there are
two main reasons for dumping: a manufacturer has a surplus it can’t
shift at home, or its products are being subsidized by government for
local political reasons, such as keeping an unprofitable factory running
to save jobs.
The
upset started when a private company in Victoria complained to the
independent Australian Anti-Dumping Commission that paper manufacturers
in Indonesia (and some other countries) were undercutting local prices
and threatening profits and jobs. The commission agreed and told the
government.
Despite Australian Paper’s nationalistic name, the company is owned by Nippon Paper Industries of Japan.
Its
two mills are in Gippsland, a rural area 160 kilometers east of
Melbourne. AP is the biggest employer with around 1,300 on the payroll.
It makes about 600,000 tones of paper products a year and much is
exported.
The
unemployment rate in Gippsland is 9.42 per cent against the national
average of 5.7 per cent, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics
figures.
To
stop interest in trade with Indonesia flagging after the latest
setback, the AIBC has asked National Development Planning Minister Dr
Bambang Brodjonegoro to help buoy the disheartened.
“For
the first time ever, a ranking Indonesian minister will visit five of
our capital cities [in June] on a whistle-stop tour,” said Guharoy, who
claimsIndonesia could be the fifth largest economy by 2050, with Australia then ranking 32.
“The
mission is to talk about Indonesia's economic outlook, the
opportunities they present and against that backdrop, encourage
Australian enterprises to engage.”
The
AIBC has been pushing local businesses to recognize openings in the
Indonesian market, with 250 million consumers and a growth rate of more
than five per cent compared with Australia’s 2.4 per cent.
Indonesia
is Australia’s 12th largest trade partner, mainly importing wheat, beef
and sugar, and selling oil and some manufactured goods. Total two-way
business is worth about US $11.4 billion.
An
AIBC delegation will appear before a Parliamentary Inquiry on the
Trading Relationship with Indonesia in Canberra this month. [May] “We
have an unintelligent relationship with our large neighbor and it does
warrant examination,” said Gutharoy. “But I’m not so sure that the
politicians will welcome the candor.”
Australia’s
dumping duties are likely to be appealed to the Geneva-based World
Trade Organization, a body not known for swift decision-making. Unless
the Indonesians ignore Australian protectionism and abandon their own, a
free trade deal is unlikely anytime soon.
Duncan Graham is a East Java-based Journalist and writes extensively on issues within the region.
The
imprisonment on blasphemy charges of Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja
Purnama, better known as Ahok, has been a blow to hopes that his earlier
success in public office represented the emergence of a more pluralist
politics in Indonesia.
There is little question that the accusation that
Ahok had insulted the Koran, for which the evidence was always quite
thin, contributed to his defeat in polls last month. Sadly, his defeat
and imprisonment may discourage others of Ahok's ethnic and religious
background from seeking public office.
Yet some journalists havegonefurther,
arguing that Ahok's defeat and imprisonment are not just a solitary
victory for the Islamists who demanded his ouster, but an indication
that Indonesian Islam is increasingly intolerant, that its democracy is
moving in a fundamentally illiberal direction, and that a well-funded
coalition of Islamists and populists will ride the wave of these changes
to victory in the next presidential election in 2019.
But there are also reasons to believe that these analysts have
overstated the broader implications of the verdict, and that Indonesia
will revert to form.
First, Indonesia has never been as tolerant as the clichéd praise of journalists and visiting dignitaries
would suggest. Though the constitution allows for freedom of worship,
this is in practice a group right rather than an individual right. The
state authorises adherence to one of six religions, but citizens are not
free to deviate from these six, and can be prosecuted under blasphemy
laws for challenging religious authorities. Over 100 people have been charged with blasphemy since 2004. In the case of Ahok, the defendant was unusual, but the charges were not.
Indonesia's system of group rights affects how Muslim leaders and
many of their followers think about politics and the role of religious
minorities. Social cohesion is often placed ahead of freedom of
conscience. For example, surveys conducted
by Boston University's Jeremy Menchik in 2010 illustrated that even
among the most tolerant Muslim groups in Indonesia, most clerics were
opposed to the idea of a Christian serving as a leader of
Muslim-majority areas like Jakarta. In other words, Indonesia is tolerant but not liberal.
Second, some research suggests opposition to Ahok may have had more to do
with anti-Chinese sentiment than the influence of political Islam.
During the Suharto era, even as Islamist organisations were suppressed,
Indonesian leaders libelled the ethnic Chinese minority as a foreign
business elite of questionable loyalty, curtailed their participation in
public life, and stoked popular resentment to deflect criticism of
their own cronyism, especially when economic growth faltered.
Under democratic rule, conditions for Chinese Indonesians improved,
but indigenous elites have periodically returned to anti-Chinese
rhetoric. President Jokowi's opponent in the 2014 presidential election,
Prabowo Subianto, frequently used rhetoric that implied Chinese Indonesians were foreigners enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow Indonesians. And few Chinese Indonesians in the democratic era have succeeded in winning executive office. Again, Ahok was the exception, not the rule.
There is, however, a broader constituency for anti-Chinese populism
than there is for political Islam, so it would be a mistake to assume
that all those who marched or voted against Ahok also support the
Islamist agenda. Some Islamist leaders, emboldened by Ahok's fall, say
that they plan to tap into resentment against ethnic Chinese to push
their agenda further. But without a target as prominent and polarising
as Ahok, it will be more difficult to use anti-Chinese populism to
mobilise popular resentment to the same degree.
The protests against Ahok last year that appear to have pushed the
Attorney General to lodge the blasphemy case were very well-funded – and
not for religious reasons.
The largest protests since Indonesia's
return to democracy received unprecedented financial and logistical
support from an ad hoc coalition of political party bosses seeking to
defeat a close ally of the president ahead of general elections in 2019
(as Jokowi himself demonstrated in 2014, the Jakarta governorship is the
ideal launching pad from which to mount one's own presidential
campaign). Free transportation and food for the demonstrators, as well
as donations to organising groups, were instrumental in managing the
business of bringing hundreds of thousands into Jakarta to demonstrate
against Ahok's alleged blasphemy, in demonstrations led by radical
organisations that normally play a fringe role in Indonesian society.
Once Ahok was declared a suspect in the blasphemy case, however, the
contributions dried up, and radicals' subsequent efforts to convene
large demonstrations flopped. Even malcontent elites do not want their
hard-line hatchet men given a seat at the table.
Attendees at the rallies were hardly liberals, but nor were they
mostly Islamist radicals. Greg Fealy, a leading expert on Islamic
activism in Indonesia who attended the largest, ultimately
peaceful rally noted that
participants explained to him that they were motivated to attend by a
desire to take part in what promised to be a monumental gathering of
their coreligionists.
They agreed that Ahok should be removed from
public life, but they stopped short of arguing that religious laws
should be superior to the secular laws of the Republic.
The coalition of Islamists and populists that brought down Ahok have
now trained their sights on a bigger target: President Jokowi, who is up
for re-election in two years. But they will struggle to replicate their
success against Jokowi, who has all the financial and political
advantages of incumbency and, more importantly, is of Javanese rather
than Chinese heritage, and a Muslim rather than a Christian. Smear campaigns suggesting otherwise during
the 2014 presidential election were ineffective, and would be even less
compelling following five closely watched years as President.
That said, the Jokowi Administration has erred as it has sought to
push back against the forces of populism and intolerance by giving in to
their demands that Ahok be tried for his remarks, and by adopting some
of their illiberal tactics.
Jokowi realised too late that the blasphemy allegations might be
successfully used against his erstwhile deputy. He avoided early
opportunities to dispel the accusations as a smear campaign, for fear of
being seen as too liberal, and his vague pronouncements about allowing
the legal process to run its course provided too much room for manoeuvre
to those who would exploit that process. Although the President stepped
up his outreach to Islamic leaders and other major political figures
when the scope of the crisis became clear, it was too little and came
too late to turn back the momentum against Ahok.
By contrast, the day before Ahok was sentenced, the Jokowi
Administration announced that it would go to court to seek the
dissolution of the Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir, which played a leading
role in the protests. Indonesian leaders have long considered banning
the organisation because it advocates the establishment of a caliphate
in Southeast Asia, but have held off because it rejects violence. The
decision seems motivated more by politics than law, and it will require
compliance from a court system that just demonstrated its fear of
confrontational Islamist groups. Banning the organisation could also
drive its followers underground, where security services will have
greater difficulty monitoring their activity, and may prompt its
followers to reconsider their non-violent approach.
The announcement – couched in the authoritarian language of the Suharto era – legitimises
the dissolution of non-violent civil society groups, a practice far
more likely to be used against minorities and those advocating for a
more pluralist Indonesia than against other, less tolerant groups. As
with the government's recent decision to bring treason charges against a
motley but largely harmless crew of activists, fringe political figures
and disaffected generals who were engaged in last year's protests, its
move against Hizbut Tahrir highlights the risk that the government's
heavy-handedness will backfire.
Jokowi thus bears some responsibility for the predicament in which he
and his compatriots now find themselves. But all is not lost. There has
been an outpouring of support
for Ahok from supporters of pluralism and moderate civil society since
the verdict was announced. Popular support for the forces of intolerance
very well may have peaked, and if starved of elite support they are
likely to continue foundering.
Jokowi has been damaged by the episode, but remains in a strong
position going into Indonesia's long presidential campaign.
He should
learn from his earlier missteps, and take a strong stand against those
actively politicising intolerance now rather than later, in the
political arena rather than the courts, from a position of relative
strength.
Following last month's decision by an Indonesian court to jail the
former governor of Jakarta—Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok)—for two years
for blasphemy, we need to ask ourselves whether Indonesia is heading
down the path of extreme Islam. There’s little doubt that mob pressure
over a supposed insult to Islam has succeeded. The question now is how
much further is Indonesia going to slide towards an authoritarian
Islamic state?
It’s important not to exaggerate this event, but neither should we
sweep it under the carpet as an isolated incident. The fact is that what
we understand to be Indonesia’s moderate brand of Islam is now under
attack. Dennis Richardson indicated in his farewell address to the
National Press Club last Friday that it was too early to say whether
extremism was entering into mainstream Indonesian politics. But
Richardson acknowledged the question was at ‘the sharp end of what we
should be watching.’
Since the overthrow of President Suharto’s authoritarian military
regime in 1998 Indonesia has made remarkable progress with its new
democracy and the growth of a civil society. We have counted ourselves
lucky to have such a moderate form of Islam on our very doorstep.
But the disturbing trends we’ve seen of late, of mob violence and
thuggery, threaten the institutions of Indonesian democracy. As Greg
Fealy has observed, Indonesia’s democracy is now badly tainted.
We have witnessed Indonesia lurch towards radical extremes before.
President Sukarno in the early 1960s ran a regime that was hostile to
the West, including Australia. At that time, Indonesia had the third
largest communist party in the world after China and the Soviet Union
and its policy of Confrontation (Konfrontasi) with Malaysia and Singapore involved armed conflict with those countries, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Sukarno’s Indonesia was being supplied by Moscow with advanced
military equipment that was much better than Australia’s. This included
25 Badger bombers, 68 MiG fighters, a Sverdlov cruiser, 15 destroyers
and 12 Whisky class submarines.
As a result, Australia made the decision to order the F-111
fighter-bombers that would be capable of bombing missions to Jakarta and
back without refuelling from airfields in northern Australia. We also
ordered the Oberon class submarines and the Charles F. Adams class
guided-missile destroyers.
All of that suddenly changed in 1965 when Sukarno was overthrown by
Suharto, who introduced a pro-Western military government. So, from 1965
to 1998 Australia experienced no military threats from Indonesia—an era
Paul Keating later claimed as the greatest single strategic benefit
ever conferred on Australia. Of course, we had our differences with
Jakarta over such issues as East Timor, Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea,
and freedom of navigation through Indonesian straits.
If Indonesia continues along its recent economic growth path, it
promises to be somewhere between the fourth or seventh largest economy
in the world by mid-century with a population approaching 370 million
people. It will become a major regional power.
It’s therefore vital that Indonesia doesn’t slide towards some sort
of aggressive Islamic state. Should that occur we could be faced with a
strategic challenge of the first order. This is because an Indonesia
that became hostile could pose a serious threat to Australia’s
fundamental security.
Such a strategic challenge on our doorstep would have grave
implications for our defence preparedness and the ADF’s expansion base,
as well as the Defence budget. Moreover, as we discovered in
Confrontation, it doesn’t follow that America would necessarily come to
our defence if it faced a major military threat elsewhere in the region.
None of this is to extrapolate from current worrying trends with
regard to violent religious outbursts in Indonesia to that country
inevitably becoming our enemy. But what’s known as the butterfly effect
in chaos theory is the phenomenon whereby a relatively minor change in
circumstances (for example, the violent Islamist demonstrations over
Ahok) can cause unpredictably large changes in outcome with disastrous
results.
We shouldn’t therefore dismiss the possibility of our Indonesian
neighbour lurching into the sort of extreme religious nationalism that
we’re seeing elsewhere in the world. Because of its proximity to
northern Australia and our vital lines of communication, as well as its
size and different cultural make-up, Indonesia will always have the
potential attributes of both a good friend and—in the worst of
circumstances—a serious adversary.
Historically, neighbouring countries that have markedly different
cultures, ethnic compositions and religions have most often gone to war
(witness the history of Europe and parts of Asia). Over the last
half-century Australia and Indonesia have averted that fate—including
over the independence of East Timor—through a combination of good management and some luck.
The decades ahead will probably not see much diminution in the scope
for periodic disagreements between our two countries. But prudent
Australian defence planning will need to keep an extremely close eye on
the direction of Indonesian politics and the implications for our own
security of the role of Islamic extremists.
Paul Dibb is emeritus professor of strategic studies at the ANU.
Former Jakarta Governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama was sentenced to two years in prison for blasphemy on 9 May. Photo by Reno Esnir for Antara.
The conviction for blasphemy last Tuesday of the outgoing governor of
Jakarta, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was not a surprise. It followed a
common pattern for blasphemy cases in Indonesia.
When the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI), the conservative peak
body for Islamic scholars in Indonesia, issues a fatwa stating that an
accused has committed blasphemy, Indonesian courts almost always agree.
In this case, MUI condemned Ahok using a lesser form of opinion, not a
fatwa, but that made no difference. It was just as decisive.
The two-year prison sentence Ahok received was also not surprising,
if previous blasphemy decisions are taken as a guide. With maximum of
five years imprisonment available for the blasphemy, sentences over the
last decade have ranged from six months to four years. Two years is
mid-range and not an unusual outcome for a conviction under Article 156a
of the Criminal Code (the so called Blasphemy Law provision, really a
very broad prohibition of religious defamation).
Nor is it unusual that the judges completely ignored the
recommendations of prosecutors that Ahok receive a suspended sentence,
rather than prison time. In fact, the prosecutors even proposed that
Ahok be sentenced under another provision of the Criminal Code
that carries a lighter maximum term. Judges in Indonesia are, however,
not bound by prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations. They are free to
ignore their requests and often do. That’s what happened in this case.
What was surprising was that the judges decided to follow the usual
pattern in blasphemy cases when the case before them was so very
unusual.
Most blasphemy cases in Indonesia involve small, unorthodox “deviant”
religious sects, often Muslim in derivation. Some of those jailed in
the past include, for example: a mystic who claimed that whistling was a
valid form of Muslim prayer: a cult leader who said he was a new
prophet of Islam; a woman who claimed to be reincarnation of the Virgin
Mary, in direct communication with the angel Gabriel; and an ex-boxer
convert to Islam who earned the ire of MUI by proposing that prayers
could be said in Indonesian, not just Arabic.
By contrast, the defendant in this case was prominent politician with
a national profile, an established reputation as a committed reformer
and effective administrator and a close relationship with President Joko
Widodo (“Jokowi”). This is the first time that Indonesia’s Blasphemy
Law has been used to pull down a politician, let alone one of Ahok’s
stature. And it may well knock him out of politics for good –
Indonesians are prohibited from standing for public office once they
have been convicted of an offence with a maximum penalty of at least
five years.
The reason all this was even possible was, in part, because Ahok was a
Christian leading a city that, like Indonesia as a whole, is more than
85 per cent Muslim. But that was not the only problem. After all,
Jakarta has had a Christian governor before. It was just as important
that Ahok was the first ethnic Chinese in the role. Yes, he was targeted
as a Christian for “defaming” Islam but the viciousness of the long
campaign against him was fueled by his membership of a tiny ethnic group
that have been the target of racial vilification in Indonesia for
centuries. Polling before the gubernatorial election
that Ahok lost on 19 April showed that opposition to him was motivated
as much, if not more, by his ethnicity. The gun was thus loaded and
foolish comments he made about interpretation of a particular verse of
the Qur’an while campaigning simply pulled the trigger.
This new use of the blasphemy law as a weapon of high politics has
polarised opinion in Indonesia. Ahok’s descent from governor’s office to
prison cell may be a huge victory for his enemies but it should be
remembered that more than 40 per cent of Jakartans voted for him – and
they must include many more Muslim “indigenous” Indonesians (or pribumi)
than ethnic Chinese or non-Muslims. Religious and ethnic minorities are
shocked – and some intimidated – by what happened to him, but many of
his other supporters are simply outraged. Losing an election is one
thing – it is quite another to be treated with such contempt by a court.
For this reason, many Indonesian and foreign observers predicted the
judges would follow the middle path the prosecutors suggested, to soothe
his supporters. That they did not says a lot about the extent to which
the judges may have felt personally threatened by the Islamist
hard-liner protesters who brought well over half a million on to the
streets last year to call for Ahok’s imprisonment (and even death).
There is also now speculation about whether Facebook posts suggest that
one of the judges may have been biased against Ahok from the start.
In any case, it may have seemed easier to the judges to leave the
risks to the appeal court that Ahok has already asked to review his
conviction. After all, their court had been ringed with police at almost
every hearing to fend off the hardliners and others howling outside.
There has thus been no sop offered to Ahok and his supporters by the
court. Instead, the judges treated a governor who established a strong
reputation for clean and efficient (if tough and blunt) leadership, and
one stage enjoyed 70 per cent approval ratings, as if he was the
eccentric head of a minor “deviant” cult.
This suggests a fraying of the fabric of Indonesian pluralism. The
political openness and tolerance delivered by the post-Soeharto reform
era (reformasi) created space for political Islam in Indonesia,
just as it did for the ethnic Chinese. It did so by allowing political
Islam a place in a broader pluralist system accommodating other social,
cultural and political groups, including minorities. It was not intended
that these groups would be displaced by political Islam.
This pluralist system has been a fundamental part of the idea of
Indonesia constructed by its founders well before independence and
taught to every school child since then – even if it is often just lip
service and often honoured more in the breach. In any case, one of the
clearly articulated aims of reformasi was to give the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Eka (Unity in Diversity) real meaning, for both Muslims and minorities.
Many Indonesians now see Ahok’s fate as a warning to minorities –
particularly the ethnic Chinese – that they have no place in mainstream
politics, and that Islamist groups cannot be safely challenged. They
feel deeply concerned by Jokowi’s apparent willingness to remain a
largely silent bystander as his friend and one-time deputy was thrown to
the wolves.
They will see what the appeal court judges do next to Ahok as test of
the state of Indonesian pluralism. His Islamist opponents will see it
as a test of the judges’ piety.
No pressure.
Tim Lindsey is Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law
and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the
University of Melbourne.
