REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, By: Arif Rahman *)

The terrorism threat has been existing since decades ago, yet the form of the threat keeps transforming. In the past, terrorism action was between country versus country, but now it becomes country vis a vis individual or often dubbed as “lone wolf”, meaning the action is conducted alone or by a small group of people. Terrorism has now become very private and relies on private narratives.

Previously, the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks were those from poor family with low level of education, but now they come from wealthy and educated family. Anger towards hypocrisy, violence, and outrage by government or individual officer or certain group in any country might have taken root in the terrorists.

Role of Mass Media

The terrorist groups in their “struggle” have extensively used mass media as their propaganda channel due to its cheap cost and accuracy. Mass media is also easy to consume privately and user friendly. By only a short video, the message can be spread to all over the world reaching any extremist group in any country. Terrorism is any action that creates fear. The more their message being upload and shared, the happier the terrorist groups are. Thus, media, too, that must be used to fight against them, to spread the anti-terror messages to anyone.

In their struggle, the terrorist groups use both mainstream and alternative or social media. In this new era of media, social media has appeared to be the main media replacing mainstream media. Media portal is now rarely used and some printing media has been bankrupt. The possibility that the terrorists use mainstream media remains in place, though. But, it must be their last option because they might realize that mainstream media is regulated and there are some ethics while social media is free without any filter.

Because the terrorist groups mainly use social media, anyone has an account in social media can be the target of their propaganda. Thus, this must become our concern.

The government must be firm in controlling social media to minimize the abuse. Our people is not that critical in receiving information that comes to them. Most will take for granted any news they hear. They are easily provoked by rumors involving tribal affiliations, religion, race and societal groups (SARA) issues that might be dangerous and misleading.

The threat of terrorism is very real and has the potential to destroy NKRI. One thing to be highlighted is that the media owner must realize their potential to be used by terrorist groups to spread their messages. Hence, in broadcasting any terrorist related issue, the media owner must be wise and not only targeting the rating.

China has set a good example of government’s firmness in combating terrorist propaganda by demanding social media provider like Facebook and Twitter to monitor and censor any negative content and if they refuse to do so, the government will ban them in China, like what other countries have done. This measure can be copied by Indonesia because the number of users of social media in Indonesia is very big even become one of the big 5 in the world. Media is now the battlefield of the terrorists and us, the anti-terrorist.

Preventing Terrorism and Radicalism

We all must agree that terrorism and radicalism have threatened Indonesia all this time. Regarding these threats, Jokowi-JK administration has managed to fight against terrorism with a hope that there will not be any attack in the future. The big question is, is it possible?

Eradicating terrorism can only be successful if it is fully supported by all people of Indonesia. There are some measures that can be approached: first, the government should not focus on prosecution of terrorist attack because the society wish the government to be fair and not to be repressive because it will only grow people’s sympathy to the terrorist groups.

Second, the preventive measures towards radicalism and terrorism must become priority. The government must fix any flaw in the detention center because many facts suggest that the detention center has become the place to create criminals. Besides, the effort to prevent terrorist attacks must involve as many actors as possible, from the apparatus in neighborhood unit (RT and community unit (RW), ojeg driver, security guards (satpam) and others because if we only rely on BIN, Police, and TNI, it will be a difficult tasks due to many obstacles they might face.

Third, the spirit to uphold human rights must always be kept. The effort to eradicate terrorism should not create a new terrorist. Introducing the history of our nation is one good way to ward terrorism.

Fourth, people need to be reminded that religion should create peace not violence. We must also remind people the importance of respect especially to the older ones. The good values in our culture must be upheld, the culture help each other, and to care.

Fifth, the regulation must be strengthened. In neighborhood unit scope, the rule that any stranger must report themselves in 24 hours must be enforced. Every people must play their role in the battle against terrorism. Hence reward and punishment mechanism might be needed. In the momentum of Terrorism Act revision, the role of BIN must be improved in the sense that BIN should be allowed to apprehend terrorist suspects to uncover their network not in the framework of criminal justice system.

Terrorism is our mutual enemy thus we have to fight together against it.

*) Socio-cultural issues observer. Resided in Lampung

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