(HRW/IFEX) – The following is the full text of a statement made available by HRW on 1 June 1998: (New York, May 28) — In an open letter today to new Indonesian Education Minister Juwono Sudarsono, the Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee urges the government to dismantle immediately the mechanisms of control over academic […]
(HRW/IFEX) – The following is the full text of a statement made available by
HRW on 1 June 1998:
(New York, May 28) — In an open letter today to new Indonesian Education
Minister Juwono Sudarsono, the Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom
Committee urges the government to dismantle immediately the mechanisms of
control over academic life
implemented during President Soeharto’s thirty-two year New Order rule.
Students and faculty emerged at the forefront of the reform movement despite
a suffocating array of repressive laws, regulations, decrees, and abusive
practices. Political
background checks, compulsory indoctrination in the state ideology,
blacklists banning critical academics, writers, and dissidents from seminars
and public fora, state permit
requirements for research, and censorship of publications have been the norm
for over thirty years.
“The students and teachers who spearheaded the mobilization for political
reform”, said HRW academic freedom specialist Joseph Saunders, “made history
by daring to act as if
all the far-reaching controls on expression, association, and assembly did
not exist.” Although the momentum of the reform movement has rendered these
controls largely unenforceable for the time being, they continue to threaten
free inquiry and expression in Indonesia. Saunders added, “With the word
`reform’ now on everyone’s lips, this is the time to eliminate the controls
once and for all. The government’s willingness to do so
will be an important indicator of its commitment to respecting the full
range of rights for all Indonesians.”
A copy of the letter follows:
May 28, 1998
Dr. Juwono Sudarsono
Minister of Education and Culture
Republic of Indonesia
Dear Minister Sudarsono:
On behalf of the Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee, we are
writing this open letter to urge you to make protection of academic freedom
your highest priority in your new position as Minister of Education. The
success of the campus-based protest
movement in forcing the resignation of President Soeharto and in opening the
door to more comprehensive political reform provides an historic opportunity
for Indonesia to build a more open and democratic society. We are encouraged
by the government’s recent
embrace of reform initiatives. We believe, however, that on campus as well
as elsewhere in society, the push for greater openness can achieve lasting
results only if the rights to free expression, association and assembly, so
forcefully claimed by students, faculty and alumni in recent months, are
given full legal and institutional protection.
Students and faculty emerged at the forefront of the reform movement in
large measure because they publicly spoke their minds, courageously and
consistently ignoring a variety of repressive laws, regulations, decrees,
and abusive practices that have long limited political and intellectual
freedom on Indonesia’s campuses. Although the momentum of the reform
movement has rendered such constraints largely unenforceable for the time
being, they continue to exist on paper and in principle, and thus continue
to threaten the future autonomy of Indonesia’s academic community.
We call on the government of Indonesia to dismantle immediately the
mechanisms of centralized government and military control over academic life
implemented during President Soeharto’s thirty-two year New Order rule. The
government should immediately take the following steps:
1. Repeal the set of ministerial decrees known collectively as
“Normalization of Campus Life — Coordinating Body for Student Affairs”
(Normalisasi Kehidupan Kampus — Badan Koordinasi Kemahasiswaan or NKK/BKK),
decrees which formally prohibit students from engaging in political activity
on campus and make university administrators answerable to military
authorities and to the central government in Jakarta for violations of the
restrictions. The government should also make a public commitment to
respecting students’ basic rights, including their right to hold peaceful
public protest marches. A uniform prohibition on citizens’ exercise of basic
rights is impermissible no matter where the prohibition is applied. The
government in the past justified the ban on student political activity by
stating that campuses should be the site of study and research, not
political activity, and by asserting that students may engage in political
activity through established political parties based off-campus. The
government’s academic justification is pernicious. Experience has
repeatedly demonstrated that academic freedom — and the spirit of critical
inquiry it embodies — cannot flourish where members of the academic
community must fear censorship and politically motivated reprisals for
expression of their views. The public demand for political reform unleashed
by the campus-based protest movement, moreover, demonstrates that the root
of the political crisis in Indonesia was not independent political activity
on campus, but the lack of space for such activity off-campus.
2. End all military intervention in campus affairs. This is a prerequisite
to academic freedom which is fundamentally compromised when military
officials are involved in supervising or consulting with university
administrators on the activities of students and faculty.
A. Legal and extra-legal military and intelligence agencies, including
branches of the military’s National Stability Coordinating Agency (Badan
Koordinasi Bantuan Pemantapan Stabilitas Nasional or Bakorstanas), should be
prohibited from engaging in on-campus intelligence gathering and harassment
of students and faculty who make critical comments at seminars or in
interviews with the press.
B. Campus-based “student regiments” (resimen mahasiswa) should be used
solely as a vehicle for recruitment and training of future military
personnel, and no longer as an on-campus intelligence network by which
military authorities monitor the activities of students.
C. Regulations providing for coordination of efforts between university
administrators in charge of student affairs (Pembantu Rektor III and
Pembantu Dekan III) and military and
intelligence officers, also set forth in the NKK/BKK decrees described
above, should be immediately repealed. The duties and powers of the
university administrators should be reformulated so as to give maximum scope
to student autonomy in accordance with
academic standards.
3. Repeal the so-called “special investigation” (Penelitian Khusus or
Litsus) procedures which require that new teachers and entrants to a range
of other “strategic professions” undergo mandatory ideological and political
background checks. Individuals should no longer be banned from teaching or
be subject to removal on account of their past or present political
affiliations or those of their colleagues or family members. Academic merit
henceforth should be the sole criterion for hiring and promotion decisions.
4. Abolish mandatory on-campus ideological indoctrination sessions known as
“Guide to the Living and Experiencing of Pancasila” (Pedoman Penghayatan dan
Pengamalan Pancasila or P4). If civic education is retained, academic
values must at all times
govern the selection of materials to be covered in the curriculum.
5. Abolish the practice by which government agencies such as the Ministry
of Information and the Social and Political Affairs Directorate of the
Ministry of Home Affairs maintain blacklists to prevent critical academics,
writers and other disfavored
individuals from attending campus seminars or stating their views in public
media. Regulations requiring that seminar organizers give prior notice to
the Ministry of Home Affairs and national police headquarters in Jakarta
when foreign speakers are invited
to campus should also be repealed.
6. Abolish research permit procedures which give government and military
officials effective veto power over proposed academic field research and
invite corruption. Academic merit should be the sole criteria by which
proposed research is evaluated.
7. The government should cease all media and book censorship. The
government censorship “clearinghouse” created in 1989 should be dismantled
and the attorney general should be stripped of power to censor books and
other printed materials. Although
Indonesian law allows members of the academic community to apply for
exemptions to use censored materials, in practice the government’s
censorship of memoirs, literary works and a wide range of foreign and
domestic historical and social science texts
has had a chilling effect on scholarly inquiry.
Thank you for your consideration of these important matters.
Sincerely yours,
Jonathan F. Fanton
Co-Chair, Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee
President, New School for Social Research
Joseph H. Saunders
Human Rights Watch academic freedom program
