June 30, 2010
Indonesia army behind Islamist thugs, lawmaker says
By Presi Mandari (AFP)
A members of the Front Pembela Islam (FPI)
JAKARTA — An Indonesian lawmaker on Wednesday accused the security forces of
secretly supporting Islamist vigilantes as a kind of paramilitary force to
intimidate opponents and commercial rivals.
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle lawmaker Eva Kusuma Sundari said
extremist vigilantes known for violent attacks on bars, minorities and human
rights advocates had direct links to military and police generals.
"The organisation is now part of the conflict management strategy the
Indonesian military exercises to maintain its power," she told AFP, referring
to the stick-wielding fanatics known as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).
"There are several military personnel who still 'use' the services of the
FPI... I suspect they maintain and protect the FPI because they still have
interests with them."
The FPI, which has thousands of members, is known for threatening, intimidating
and physically attacking Indonesians with almost complete impunity despite
repeated calls for the government to ban the organisation.
On Sunday it threatened "war" against the Christian minority in the Jakarta
suburb of Bekasi and urged all mosques in the city to create armed militias.
Sundari is a member of a group of MPs who has demanded the government crack
down on the vigilantes after they burst into an official meeting on health care
in East Java last week and accused the organisers of being communists.
The meeting was sponsored by the House of Representatives and was attended by
health commission chairwoman Ribka Tjiptaning and fellow MP Rieke Dyah Ayu
Pitaloka.
Tjiptaning, a doctor who has written a book about her communist parents, has
filed a complaint alleging police negligence for failing to protect
participants in the meeting.
FPI chairman Habib Rizieq hit back at the group's critics, saying they were
part of a communist and liberal conspiracy against the imposition of Islamic
law in the secular but mainly Muslim country.
"Police should not discriminate -- whoever propagates communism should be
brought to justice as it is a criminal offence," he told a press conference at
FPI headquarters in Jakarta.
He did not renounce violence and when a journalist asked him to respond to
community concerns about violence he accused him of being a communist.
The military, known as the TNI, and the police have denied any links to
Islamist vigilante groups.
"The TNI does not have a pet," Defence Ministry spokesman Brigadier general I
Wayan Midhio was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Post.
National police spokesman Edward Aritonang said violence by FPI members was
under investigation.
Reflecting growing community concern about mob violence, The Jakarta Post said
in an editorial that Jakarta and other cities in the country of 240 million
people were "on the brink of anarchy".
But the English-language daily added that banning the FPI would achieve little
as long as the police -- "the real brutes" -- failed to do their duty.
"Actually, we cannot blame serial thugs for their behaviour. There is no point
expecting the higher rules of moral civility from groups of men (and some
women) who are cowards and hypocrites by preying on pacifist civilians in the
name of God," it said.
"What we should condemn even more is the police and authorities who have not,
and still are not, doing anything against these groups."
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.
Related articles:
   * Police: We cannot disband FPI
     Jakarta Post - June 29, 2010
   * Police Deny Neglect in Hard-Liner Raid
     Jakarta Globe - June 29, 2010
   * Rights Team to Probe Hard-Liners
     Jakarta Globe - June 29, 2010
