REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, By: Otjih. S *)
A total of 217 Indonesians have been detained or deported, mostly in or from Turkey, as they were linked to terrorist groups by their host countries, Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry says. "They are accused of being involved in activities as foreign terrorist fighters," Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said on Tuesday as quoted by tempo.co. Earlier, Singapore police reported the information to the Indonesian National Police. Densus 88 is currently still investigating their links with IS but has not found any proof as yet.
The ministry says 200 Indonesians were found in Turkey, five in South Korea (with three people later released), three in Malaysia, two in Saudi Arabia, two in Japan (both were released) and one in Sudan, who was later released.
Four other Indonesian citizens were recently deported from Singapore. Nasir said the four were suspected to be affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group. The Indonesian authorities are currently handling the suspects who have returned now to Jakarta, he added.
The four suspects have been identified as Muhammad Mufid Murtadho, Untung Sugema Mardjuki, Mukhlis Koifur Rofiq and Risno. National Police chief Badrodin Haiti said they were affiliated with radical ideologist Aman Abdurrahman.
Aman is allegedly believed to have orchestrated the terrorist attack that took place in central Jakarta on Jan. 14 from his prison cell on Nusakambangan Island. However, there has not been any confirmation whether the four suspects were involved in the Jakarta attack.
The National Police's Densus 88 counterterrorism squad said they have investigated the four suspects who were found to have been en route to Syria. National Police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Agus Rianto confirmed that the police were still investigating in an attempt to uncover their links to the IS militant group. According to Agus, the suspects flew from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport to Singapore. Once they arrived in Singapore, they were investigated by local authorities. The suspects admitted to be in transit to Syria and were on their way to join the IS militia.
Meanwhile, the government has long been aware that certain mosques have been used to convey radical teachings, but it can do nothing to stop it because of the absence of laws prohibiting such activities, says Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung.
"What they have been preaching includes [radical] elements, but our law does not explicitly provide a space for us to take actions against them," Pramono said as quoted by kompas.com. Pramono was responding to questions about what the government would do about preachers in certain mosques in Jakarta who allegedly advised Muslims to go to Syria to join the Islamic State (IS) movement, as reported by Australia-based media ABC and released on YouTube.
Certain preachers have clearly disseminated radicalism and terrorist propaganda deliberately. Unfortunately, Indonesia still has no legal framework to prevent their activities, said Pramono. Therefore, he demanded the House of Representative immediately complete the revision of the 2003 Terrorism Law, so that the government would have a legal basis to stop the radicalization movement.
Separately, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan said the recruitment in mosques was still relatively small and citizens should not worry since the security personnel had moved to investigate the report. "I think [the issue] is still under control and [the officials] have been able to address it," Luhut said.
Indonesia will fight terrorist
However, the activity of foreign media to coverage a sensitive issues such as terrorism and radicalism is a bad precedent for the security forces communities, especially intelligence communities. Wide publicity to the international public with the video content that made it look as propaganda independent Islamic State in Indonesia on the other hand clearly discredit the government and intelligence agency. On the other side, it will create in the eyes of international opinion that Indonesia did not seriously combat terrorism that is currently oriented Islamic State. In the current international world abuzz combat Islamic State, Indonesia would "keep" to allow the spread of radical propaganda through preacher teachings as seen in the video which had been reported by Australia Broadcasting Company (ABC).
If we referred to SMRC research, actually the Islamic State (IS) movement has no place in Indonesia and most of Indonesia’s citizens do not want the group's presence in the country, according to a survey conducted by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC). The survey revealed that over 62 percent of 1,220 respondents were aware IS. Of that figure, over 95 percent rejected the presence of IS in Indonesia. Up to 90 percent of the respondents aware of the group saw IS as the threat to the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia and the same amount disagreed with the terror group's ideology. The survey, conducted between December 10 and December 20 in all provinces.
A sermon which used by radical preachers to spread their ideology was a fact. But, we must alert on the possibility of this fact is a part of proxy war to blame Indonesia in generally and Moslem specially.
Earlier, Papua issue’s were published to at Sydney Morning Herald, a famous newspaper in Australia so that we could be interpreted that Australia have tested Indonesia integrity and solidarity. We must make a clear standing position on these cases. We must declare that Indonesia will against terrorist.
Terrorist isn’t having a chance to grow up in Indonesia, because terrorist and radicalism were different with our society value specially our national ideology, Pancasila. Therefore, the spirit of combating terrorism and radicalism have supported by all of Indonesia’s people, because terrorist and radicalism had been become as the enemy of Indonesia’s people.
*) The writer is a researcher and columnist at LSISI and Galesong Institute. Residing in Bali.
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