By Elaine Pearson

Indonesian President Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi) addressed Australia’s Parliament yesterday.

Indonesia is often referred to as the democratic success story of Southeast Asia and a model of Muslim democracy, yet it has been responsible for significant backsliding on human rights in recent years.

This backsliding is serious enough that Australian leaders should ask Jokowi some hard questions during his Canberra visit.

READ MORE: Joko Widodo uses historic speech to call for greater action to tackle climate change

Here are five current human rights concerns:

1. Indonesia’s draconian new Criminal Code
Indonesia has been working on updating its colonial-era Criminal Code for decades. Now Indonesia’s Parliament is discussing a new draft code with a raft of problematic provisions that would be disastrous for women and minorities, and for many Indonesians in general.

The new code proposes to punish extramarital sex with up to one year in jail and unmarried couples who live together with six months. Consensual sex between adults should never be a crime, and this law would disproportionately affect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

While it does not mention same-sex conduct, same-sex relationships are not legally recognised in Indonesia, so it would effectively criminalise all same-sex conduct.

The code also would criminalise disseminating information about contraception as well as criminalising some abortions. It would expand the toxic blasphemy law, which has been used to target religious minorities.

While Jokowi delayed the vote following mass protests against the proposed code last year, he should show leadership in ensuring that abusive provisions are removed. These provisions not only violate Indonesia’s human rights obligations but will help foment hatred and discrimination against certain groups.

2. Rising discrimination and attacks against LGBT people
While some gay and lesbian Australians might not think twice about visiting Bali for a holiday, they should be concerned about the rise in hateful rhetoric, discrimination and violence against LGBT people in Indonesia.

Since early 2016, Indonesian politicians, government officials, and state offices have issued anti-LGBT statements – calling for everything from criminalisation to “cures” for homosexuality, to censorship of information about LGBT people and of positive reporting on their activities.

The government’s failure to halt arbitrary and unlawful raids by police and militant Islamists on private LGBT gatherings has effectively derailed public health outreach efforts to vulnerable populations. Last November, Indonesia’s ombudsman revealed that a number of ministries openly discriminate against LGBT people in job postings, saying that applicants “must not be mentally disabled and not show sexual orientation or behavioral deviations.”

3. No UN access for West Papua
The 2019 Pacific Island Forum Leaders’ statement, signed by all Pacific nations including Australia, expressed concern about “reported escalation in violence and continued allegations of human rights abuses in West Papua (Papua)” and urged the Indonesian government to honour Jokowi’s 2018 promise to allow the UN Human Rights Office to visit the two provinces and report on the situation before the next Pacific Island Forum’s leaders meeting this year.

But the UN Human Rights Office has still had no access to West Papua. And last year’s protests and violence, in which at least 53 people – both Papuans and migrants from other parts of Indonesia – were killed and hundreds more wounded, make the visit even more urgent. Precise estimates on deaths are difficult because access to Papua is limited.

Indonesian authorities have detained and charged at least 22 people for peaceful acts of free expression – mainly for raising the pro-Papuan independence Morning Star flag or speaking about “West Papua independence” in public. They are charged with  treason (makar) and face up to 20 years in prison.

4. Rising religious intolerance
Indonesia’s blasphemy law punishes deviations from the central tenets of Indonesia’s six officially recognised religions – Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism – with up to five years in prison. The blasphemy law is alarmingly used for political purposes and to target religious minorities.

The highest-profile victim of the law was the former Jakarta governor, Basuki Purnama (Ahok), sentenced in 2017 to two years in prison for allegedly defaming Islam in a speech to fishermen on Seribu Islands, near Jakarta. More recently, a woman was sentenced to 18 months in prison for complaining about the level of a mosque’s loudspeaker.

These are among a number of worrying signs of growing efforts by the government to impose religious conservatism.

Local and provincial-level governments in at least five provinces have introduced decrees mandating that women and girls must wear the hijab in civic buildings, universities and schools. Schools have enforced these regulations in more than a dozen provinces, even on non-Muslim students.

5. Defence Minister implicated in abuses
Imagine what would happen if an Australian soldier discharged from the military for human rights abuses and disobeying orders became our Defence Minister. That is exactly what has happened in Indonesia, when last year Jokowi appointed his presidential opponent, Prabowo Subianto, to the post.

The Indonesian army dismissed Prabowo in 1998 over allegations of kidnapping of more than two dozen activists in 1997-98 during the fall of Suharto. He has also been accused of abuses in East Timor during his time there as a Kopassus commander.

Indonesia’s military has a long  record of impunity for killings and enforced disappearances. That is sadly unlikely to improve under Prabowo’s leadership of one of Indonesia’s most powerful institutions.

President Jokowi has another four years to take concrete steps to protect the human rights and freedoms for  all Indonesians. But unless he takes steps to stop the backsliding, Indonesia may face much bigger social and political crises.

Elaine Pearson is Australia director of Human Rights Watch. This article has been republished from HRW.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Christie Stefanie in Jakarta

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo says he respects the verdict handed down by an Indonesian local court against an ethnic Chinese woman, Meiliana, who was sentenced to 18 months in jail after being found guilty of blasphemy.

According to Widodo, if there are those who disagree with the verdict then Meiliana can lodge an appeal against the ruling by the Medan District Court

“Yes, an appeal process is available,” Widodo said after meeting with the Bishops Council of Indonesia (KWI) in Jakarta on Friday.

READ MORE: Woman jailed in Indonesia for complaining call to prayer is to loud

Speaking on behalf of the 44-year-old Meiliana, who wept in court after the sentencing, her legal attorney Ranto Sibarani said she would soon launch an appeal against the verdict.

Widodo said even as the head of the nation he was not above the law and was unable to intervene in the case.

-Partners-

This is because even he had recently been found guilty of negligence in a lawsuit over the burning of forests and land by the Palangkaraya High Court.

“I am unable to intervene in legal affairs that are related to the authority of the courts. I myself have only just been found guilty by a court in Palangkaraya over a [forest] fire,” said Widodo laughing.

President Widodo … found guilty by a court in Palangkaraya over a Kalimantan forest fire. Image: Jakarta Post

Forest fire case
The Palangkaraya High Court recently found Widodo guilty of violating the law in a West Kalimantan forest and land fire case.

The other defendants in the case included Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya, Agricultural Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman, Agriculture and Land Spatial Planning Minister Sofyan Djalil, Health Minister Nila F. Moeloek, Central Kalimantan Governor Sugianto Sabran and the Central Kalimantan Regional House of Representatives (DPRD).

The defendants are currently preparing to submit an appeal with the Supreme Court.

The Pacific Media Centre reports that the last few days have seen a massive outpouring of support for Meiliana, a Chinese-Indonesian woman of the Buddhist faith who was sentenced to 18 months for complaining about the volume of the adzan (Islamic call to prayer) from a speaker at a mosque near her house in Tanjungbalai, North Sumatra.

An online petition addressed to Widodo, which was launched on August 22 calling for Meiliana to be freed, has already been signed by more than 100,000 people.

The petition also requests that the panel of judges that sentenced Meiliana be reviewed and that the Ministry of Religious Affairs issue a regulation on the use of loudspeakers by mosques, which it has since done.

Translated by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service. The original title of the article was “Tak Bisa Intervensi Hukum, Jokowi Sarankan Meiliana Banding”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story this week features the “blasphemy” trial against Indonesia’s Christian Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and asks if the 1969 law is being misused against the Jakarta governor.

Rights groups in Indonesia have long accused the government of using the country’s 1969 blasphemy law to persecute religious minorities, but for the first time the law is being used against a high-ranking politician.

A senior Indonesian cabinet minister said the government is not losing the fight against “radicalism” despite the success of Islamic groups in attracting hundreds of thousands of people to protests against the capital’s Christian governor.

Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who is close to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, said on Thursday that the government needs to reinforce Indonesia’s founding ideology “Pancasila” – whose five principles include national unity and social justice. He said it has been neglected since the fall of dictator Suharto in 1998 ushered in democratic rule.

Pandjaitan told a Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club event: “We are not losing control.”

The Jakarta governor, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, is on trial for alleged blasphemy and faces up to five years in prison.

A sprawling Southeast Asian nation of 250 million people, Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Massive protests demanding Ahok’s arrest have challenged the image of Indonesia as practising a moderate form of Islam and shaken the secular government.
Muslims in Indonesia protest over Christian governor

The blasphemy furore has also given a national stage to the Islamic Defenders Front, previously better known as a morals vigilante group with members involved in protection rackets.

Its leader, Rizieq Shihab, told a December 2 protest in Jakarta that Indonesia would be peaceful if there was no blasphemy and other problems such as gays.

Pandjaitan suggested that the government has Shihab in its sights.

“We have quite detailed data about him. We’ll see what happens. We know what we are going to do,” he said. “The president is very brave, to do whatever is necessary for the benefit of this country. No hesitation at all.”

A November 2 protest against Ahok in Jakarta turned violent, with one death and dozens of police and protesters injured.

Critics say Widodo’s government has not done enough to contain the religious and ethnic tension that is mounting in the run-up to a city governor election in February.

Purnama – a Christian and the first ethnic Chinese in the post – will compete for re-election against two Muslims – Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, a son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and a former education minister, Anies Baswedan.

Ethnic Chinese make up just over 1 percent of Indonesia’s 250 million people, and they typically do not enter politics.

By Abdul Qowi Bastian

Sri Bintang Pamungkas was arrested in his home in Cibubur, in the outskirts of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, on early Friday morning, December 2.

The civil society leader of People Power Indonesia 2016 – a group that aims to repeal the constitution before it is amended – was supposed to join the rally against Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama later that day.

Ahok, an ethnic Chinese-Christian politician, a double minority in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, is accused by conservative Muslim groups of committing blasphemy.

Pamungkas and 9 others were accused of attempting to impeach the current government led by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

Among them are high profile individuals including rock musician Ahmad Dhani; human rights activist Ratna Sarumpaet; retired two-star Army general Kivlan Zein; and Rachmawati Soekarnoputri, sister of former president Megawati. They were arrested on treason charges under Article 107 of the penal code (KUHP).

The mobile phone video of the arrest Sri Bintang Pamungkas, filmed by his wife.

In a short video circulating on social media, Pamungkas was enjoying his cup of morning coffee on his porch when police officers handed him the warrant.

“Honey, I’m being arrested,” Pamungkas said to his wife who recorded the video on her mobile phone.

“Why?” his wife, Ernalia, was heard saying from behind the camera.

“They have the power to. Of course they can,” Pamungkas replied.

Pamungkas and People Power originally planned to occupy the parliament building, asking the council to revoke Jokowi’s presidency for, according to him, the former Jakarta governor’s inadequacy to follow the “people’s mandate”.

Seven people were released later that day because the police did not have sufficient evidence. Pamungkas in still in detention, along with two others who are still behind bars for allegedly insulting the President on social media, and violating the Internet Transaction Law.

Racial undertones
The December 2 rally was the third in a series of protests demanding Ahok to step down from his post as governor, for his remarks that allegedly insulted Islam.

The controversy started in September 2016 when he accused his opponents of fooling the electorate by misusing a Quranic verse, to sway voters to not vote for him in the upcoming gubernatorial election.

He has apologised for the remarks but is still being prosecuted for blasphemy.

Ahok is now a suspect and faces his first trial hearing next Tuesday. If proven guilty he could be jailed for up to 5 years.

But the issue has since spiraled to include other aspects. Critics have since accused the President —who was inaugurated two years ago—  of being inadequate to manage the country. Ahok became governor after Jokowi won the presidential election in 2014. As Jokowi’s deputy governor at the time, Ahok assumed the position.

Ahok himself is an outlier in the Indonesian political landscape. He was the former regent of Belitung Timur, a small region in Sumatera island, and was also a member of parliament before running as Jokowi’s deputy – but has always been considered as the “outsider” who came to the capital.

‘Crush the Chinese’
During the 200,000-people-strong rally on 2 December, some posters read, “Jail Ahok” and “Crush the Chinese”.

The race card used against Ahok is not new within Indonesia’s politics. It is deeply rooted in the New Order regime under former general Soeharto’s authoritarian regime. President Soeharto —who ruled Indonesia for more than 3 decades— banned expressions of Chinese culture and politically segregated the Chinese, because of suspected ties to communism.

Rally organisers and protestors used the Islam card which is an appealing pull for Indonesian Muslim voters.

One of Ahok’s opponents in next year’s elections, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, is the son of former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who led the country from 2004-2014.

Conservative Islamist groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) —one of the main rally organizers— have on social media openly supported Yudhoyono’s gubernatorial candidacy.

Shrinking civic spaces
Social media users in Indonesia are divided on the arrests. Some applaud the police force for attempting to prevent an impeachment attempt, while others see it as a violation of human rights.

“There seems to be no clear grounds for the arrest of these people,” said Benny Agus Prima, Human Rights Defender Programme Associate at the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA).

Prima stressed that the government must protect its people’s rights to express their freedom of expression.

“The rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are constitutional rights and guaranteed by international human rights law,” he said. “Exercising those rights is a foundation of democratic society.”

The freedom to associate and to assemble, to express written and and oral opinions in Indonesia, are regulated under Article 28 of the 1945 constitution.

If proven guilty, those arrested could be jailed for 15 years up to a life sentence.

Prima regretted the detention of the individuals, which he said was a sign of the shrinking civic space, not only in the country but also in the region as well.

Case4Space
Civic space is where people can freely exercise their basic civil rights, such as freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. This kind of problem is not unique to Indonesia.

During the 3-day conference entitled “Youth at the heart of the 2030 Agenda: The Case4Space” held in Bangkok, Thailand, panelists shared how there are 3.2 billion people living in countries where civic space is under threat.

“We’re seeing a trend of shrinking civic space in Asia Pacific with recent examples of the criminalization of activists,” Prima said, citing an example of Maria Chin Abdullah of Malaysia.

Abdullah is the leader of the Malaysian pro-democracy alliance Bersih, who was detained in November 2016 for organizing a mass rally calling on Prime Minister Najib Razak to resign over a corruption scandal.

But in the end, according to Prima, what Pamungkas and his peers did was still in accordance to the law. “They demanded the parliament to review Widodo’s presidency, not bearing arms asking [him] to step down,” Prima said.

The arrests, he said, should not have taken place in the first place as it would take Indonesia —a country who adopted democracy 16 years ago— back to autocratic state.

Rozinul Aqli, an Indonesian student at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, also voiced his disapproval in Twitter, saying, “[Widodo] is increasingly becoming more comfortable in borrowing a page from Soeharto’s playbook”.

“Ideally, there should be clear violent acts for something to deserve the label of treason,” Rozinul said in an email to Rappler.

“In practice, however, this article [Article 107 of the penal code] has been used to criminalize many activists that were not, strictly speaking, threatening national security,” he said.

Freedom of expression at risk
Prima further said this case would set a bad precedent for human rights defenders.

“What I fear the most is, this criminalisation will restrict human rights defenders’ freedom of expression,” he said.

Although he also noted that the people who were arrested should respect Ahok’s freedom expression as well.

“When we’re talking about freedom of expression, we should respect others’ freedom to express their thoughts as well,” Prima said. “We can’t force those who, let’s say, commit human rights violations by also violating others’ human rights.”

Rozinul added that rubber articles, such as Article 107 of the penal code, are problematic as they deprive citizens the right to legal certainty.

“If some of us are alarmed by this development, it is because we know that using rubber articles to silence dissents was one of the cornerstones of the New Order regime,” he said.

Abdul Qowi Bastian is a staff editor for Rappler based in Bangkok.