http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/why-do-the-police-take-orders-from-islamic-vigilante-groups/516238 Why Do the Police Take Orders From Islamic Vigilante Groups? Bramantyo Prijosusilo | May 07, 2012
'Last February, when I was attacked by the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) in Yogyakarta, the police also stood by and gave the thugs an opportunity to rob me of my property and beat me. Then they whisked me away in a truck “for my own safety.”' Recently we have witnessed more violence and intimidation under the guise of Islam. While attacks against Shia Muslims in East Java and Ahmadi Muslims in West Java continue, in the past few days, religious thugs attacked a neighborhood in Solo. In Jakarta, they ordered the police to break the law and force a small discussion group to disperse. The discussion in Jakarta was to present Canadian writer Irshad Manji, who was here to launch her new book. Inevitably, the drama in Jakarta was beamed around the world as events were unfolding. One question that many people asked through various statements and comments in social media was, “Why do the Indonesian police take orders from thugs in religious robes?” That the police do take orders from religious thug groups — be they from the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) or any other name — is beyond any doubt. Anyone with an Internet connection can within seconds find video and text documentation of how the police just stand aside and allow leaders of violent organizations to whip up hatred, destroy property, wound and even kill people. The Cikeusik lynching of Ahmadi Muslims last year was but one highlight of police complicity in religious violence, but the reality is that even before those horrific murders, thug groups all over the country enjoyed police blessing and protection in their violent rampages against what they judge to be religious deviances or vice. The new development is that the police don’t merely stand by and let the thugs get on with their violent business, but they actually do the dirty work for them. A day before the attack on Manji in Jakarta, the residents of Solo were terrified by the clashes between a group of religious and local thugs, which then developed into a mass action by those claiming to be fighting for Islam. Last Friday after prayers, reporters in Solo said, around 1,000 men, armed with clubs and swords and catapults, marched to attack the Gandekan kampung in search of a rival thug who they claimed was responsible for the clash the day before. Failing to find their man, they attacked a local elderly garage worker, chopping several of his fingers off. The police once again did nothing to stop the armed men’s march, even though it is a crime to carry sharp weapons in public. When the police did make arrests, according to press reports, the suspects were not from the religious thugs’ group but from the group that the zealots were targeting. Last February, when I was attacked by the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) in Yogyakarta, the police also stood by and gave the thugs an opportunity to rob me of my property and beat me. Then they whisked me away in a truck “for my own safety.” In the police office, they tried to mediate a discussion between myself and my attackers, and not once did they act on the blatant facts that they had witnessed themselves: that I was attacked on a public road for no other reason than the fact that I was questioning their right to organize a jihad in a country where there was an Islamic king (the Sultan of Yogyakarta) and a national head of state (the president). Instead of admitting that they were — according to Islamic tradition — usurpers who should be put to the sword for robbing the Sultan (or the president) of the sole right to organize a jihad — the MMI thugs chose to attack me. Probably they imagined themselves heroic and Islamic in attacking a lone poet who had visited them to share poetry and a performance intended to be an expression of the Koranic appeal for Muslims to remind each other of the virtue of patience and truth, but unwittingly they proved my point — that they are violent thugs who use Islam as a mask to intimidate others and legitimize their political ambitions. This intimate experience with the way police handle thugs that hide under religious robes obliged me to watch them more closely. The most obvious and most disturbing facts relating to the connection between the religious thugs and the powers that be in this country were played out in the open for everyone to see during the big demonstration against the fuel price hike at the end of March. Not long before the biggest day of demonstration, the FPI and similar groups also held a demonstration in which they urged people to hunt down liberals, bang on the doors of their homes and evict them. Rizieq Shihab, the rotund leader of the FPI, can be seen on YouTube urging his audience to kill liberals but not to let police know about it. Another firebrand speaker ranted on how democracy is the enemy of Islam. Speakers mocked the president directly and indirectly and even had the bravado to insinuate that his true sexuality was in question. On the surface it appeared that these thugs hated the president’s guts, and one would assume that the feeling was mutual. However, the unfolding of events several days later proved that exactly the opposite was true. When demonstrating students were locked out of the parliament building and beaten by the police, representatives from the Islamist hard-liners were invited in to the presidential palace to talk to the government. The press caught the coordinating minister for politics, law and security affairs, Djoko Suyanto, hurrying into the palace to meet them. In this small and apparently unimportant gesture, this regime admitted to more than what analysts and observers had been saying all along — the Islamists are on the police payroll. Obviously recent happenings oblige a review of this analysis because the palace factor cannot be ignored. Until we change the top man in the presidential palace, our police will consistently work for the destruction of our country, under the orders of the religious thugs. Bramantyo Prijosusilo is a writer, organic farmer and former broadcast journalist. 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