Police Say Communism Fears Led Them To Disband Yogyakarta Teachers Forum
Farouk Arnaz
The National Police apologized on Thursday for a July 17 incident in which Yogyakarta Police broke up a workshop attended by history teachers on suspicions that the session would be used to spread communism, a human rights activist said.
“We met with the director of the National Police’s Intelligence Directorate, Brig. Gen. Mudji Waluyo, today to clarify the issue and they admitted that the Yogyakarta Police had made a mistake and acted unprofessionally when they disbanded the workshop just because a group calling itself the Anti-Communist Forum (FAKI) demanded it of the police,” Usman Hamid, coordinator of the National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday.
The workshop was organized by the Solidarity Network for Victims of Past Human Rights Violations and their Families (JSKK) at Perwitasari Hotel in Yogyakarta and was attended by several history teachers from Central Java and Yogyakarta, Usman said.
Usman said the incident took place “due to poor understanding of the law among low-level police officers.”
“According to the law, [the officers] should have guarded the workshop so that it could go ahead and not disband it simply because a group of people protested against it.”
Usman speculated that FAKI may have thought that the forum was organized to discuss communism because one of the speakers, Asvi Warman Adam, a researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), has proposed that the national school curriculum be revised in regards to the 1965 coup. Asvi has argued that the New Order’s version of the coup was distorted as it laid sole responsibility on the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) .
“The purpose of the workshop was to discuss Indonesia’s history in general, it was not just about the September 1965 incident,” he said referring to the aborted take-over attempt which is believed to have been backed by PKI.
“The police should have known better, Asvi is a civil servant. When he speaks about the coup attempt, it is only based on his knowledge, nothing more,” Usman said.
The workshop was also to feature two other speakers, Ratna Hapsari, the head of Jakarta’s history teachers association, and Wahono from Gadjah Mada University.
Anticommunist tensions in Indonesia have been present in recent years. In 2006, a group in Surabaya protested the sale of books about communism.
In the same year a discussion about the international Marxist movement, featuring a guest speaker from Canada, at the Ultimus bookshop in Bandung, was broken up by hundreds of young men claiming to represent a separate group calling itself the Anti-Communist Community Forum.
Police Say Communism Fears Led Them To Disband Yogyakarta Teachers Forum
Farouk Arnaz
The National Police apologized on Thursday for a July 17 incident in which Yogyakarta Police broke up a workshop attended by history teachers on suspicions that the session would be used to spread communism, a human rights activist said.
“We met with the director of the National Police’s Intelligence Directorate, Brig. Gen. Mudji Waluyo, today to clarify the issue and they admitted that the Yogyakarta Police had made a mistake and acted unprofessionally when they disbanded the workshop just because a group calling itself the Anti-Communist Forum (FAKI) demanded it of the police,” Usman Hamid, coordinator of the National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday.
The workshop was organized by the Solidarity Network for Victims of Past Human Rights Violations and their Families (JSKK) at Perwitasari Hotel in Yogyakarta and was attended by several history teachers from Central Java and Yogyakarta, Usman said.
Usman said the incident took place “due to poor understanding of the law among low-level police officers.”
“According to the law, [the officers] should have guarded the workshop so that it could go ahead and not disband it simply because a group of people protested against it.”
Usman speculated that FAKI may have thought that the forum was organized to discuss communism because one of the speakers, Asvi Warman Adam, a researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), has proposed that the national school curriculum be revised in regards to the 1965 coup. Asvi has argued that the New Order’s version of the coup was distorted as it laid sole responsibility on the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) .
“The purpose of the workshop was to discuss Indonesia’s history in general, it was not just about the September 1965 incident,” he said referring to the aborted take-over attempt which is believed to have been backed by PKI.
“The police should have known better, Asvi is a civil servant. When he speaks about the coup attempt, it is only based on his knowledge, nothing more,” Usman said.
The workshop was also to feature two other speakers, Ratna Hapsari, the head of Jakarta’s history teachers association, and Wahono from Gadjah Mada University.
Anticommunist tensions in Indonesia have been present in recent years. In 2006, a group in Surabaya protested the sale of books about communism.
In the same year a discussion about the international Marxist movement, featuring a guest speaker from Canada, at the Ultimus bookshop in Bandung, was broken up by hundreds of young men claiming to represent a separate group calling itself the Anti-Communist Community Forum.