Government Asked To Be Firm About The Persecution Of 'Dismissing The President' Discussion

Illustration of discussion activities. (Free-Photos / Pixabay)

JAKARTA - The public continues to denounce terror and death threats at the event organizers which resulted in the cancellation of a discussion entitled "The Issue of Dismissing the President in terms of the State Administration System". They criticized and asked the government to immediately step in and take firm steps related to this action.

Executive Director of SETARA Institute, Ismail Hasani, said that the failure of discussion due to threats is a form of persecution and deprivation of freedom that ends up destroying literacy and knowledge. This, he said, is not impossible to have an impact on the quality of democracy.

He assessed that discussion is a medium for exchanging ideas and a means to explore academic views in seeing an event. So, discussion should be a positive thing as a means of literacy.

"This method is a means of literacy for academics in particular and the public in general so as not to swallow a narrative of events completely," said Ismail in his written statement as quoted by VOI, Monday, June 2.

For this reason, SETARA condemns the threats, terror, and intimidation carried out by these irresponsible individuals. According to Ismail, this practice is against democracy amid the importance of managing deliberative democracy.

Moreover, the fear of treason is baseless and should not be used as an excuse to carry out this practice of silencing these academics. "Every voice has the opportunity to live in society without repression," he stressed.

Asked to immediately investigate the perpetrators

The act of persecution of freedom of expression in the era of President Joko Widodo, said Ismail, is not the first time this has happened. According to him, from the Human Rights (HAM) index released by the SETARA Institute in 2019, President Jokowi's administration in the 2014-2019 period only showed a value of 1.9 on a scale of 1 to 7 for freedom of expression. Meanwhile, the average value for the 11 evaluated human rights variables was 3.2.

He considered that the low value for freedom of expression and opinion was supported by data on serious violations such as 204 incidents of individual criminalization, blocking of 32 online media, 961,456 blocking of internet sites and social media accounts, 7 dissolving discussions, banning books, and the use of treason charges that were not illegal. accountable for ensnaring 7 citizens.

With the low value of freedom of expression and opinion, the government must investigate who is the mastermind behind the terror. This is because, although they admit to not being involved, there is the impression that the government has allowed the persecution to occur.

"If it does not take solutive steps and institutionalize the elimination of violations of freedom of expression and expression, the government can be considered to enjoy all acts of persecution and the coercive attitude of citizens in various incidents," said Ismail.

According to him, the government should no longer allow violations of freedom of association, assembly and expression. "The state's proactive attitude is needed to show that state elements or other state-sponsored organs are not behind the academic persecution at UGM," he said.

Terror against academics is making a fool of the nation's life

Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Din Syamsuddin, said that the terror that led to the silence was very contrary to the 1945 Constitution.

"When the vision of Pancasila, especially what is contained in the 1945 Constitution, if there is silencing of campuses, silencing of academic activities, suppression of the academic pulpit actually contradicts essentially the intellectual life of the nation," said Din in an online discussion. COVID-19 "on Mahutama's YouTube account, Monday, June 2.

"Because the opposite practice is fooling the life of the nation," added the Professor of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.

The former Chairman of Muhammadiyah quoted the thoughts of a modern Islamic figure Muhammad Abduh and said that freedom can be obtained after two phases have been passed, namely the era of ignorance and the era of human beings who are cultured and civilized.

He added that freedom of opinion, speech and religion actually has theological and philosophical foundation in Islamic thought. "And, the 1945 Constitution as mentioned earlier Article 28 standardizes it. Therefore, to be honest we are disturbed, yes, if there is a regime that tends to be authoritarian, repressive and anti-freedom of opinion," he said.

"Moreover (in doing so) of course there are conditions, namely not to depart from agreed norms, ethics and values. As long as you are in the corridors and circles, that is the right of citizens," said Din.

Previously, the discussion of the Constitutional Law Society (CLS) student organization was canceled. This happened because the posters of the discussion event were busy on social media and reaping responses from citizens. Some of them then considered this discussion virtually a treasonous movement.

Furthermore, on May 28, the student implementing the activity changed the title on the poster, as well as uploaded the poster with the title that had been changed to "Straightening the Issue of Dismissal of the President in terms of the State Administration System". They also accompany apologies and clarifications regarding the discussion.

That night, terror and threats began to arrive at the names listed on the activity posters, namely speakers, moderators, and discussion points.

These terror and threats continued until May 29, 2020. The target of the threats spread to the family members concerned, in the form of sending text messages to the parents of two implementing students.

Apart from terror by telephone numbers, CLS social media accounts were also hacked. The hackers used the account to declare a discussion canceled, as well as exclude all participants who had entered into the virtual discussion. For security reasons, on the afternoon of May 29, the organizer of the event decided to cancel the discussion.

Later, the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Mahfud MD admitted that there was no problem with the discussion. "For the website itself, in my opinion it is okay, it does not need to be prohibited," said Mahfud.

Regarding the content of the discussion, Mahfud admitted that he personally knew the source of the CLS discussion, Nikmatul Huda. Therefore, Mahfud considered the discussion in the discussion unlikely to lead to the impeachment of President Jokowi.

"I know the person is not subversive. So, it is impossible to lead to unconstitutional impeachment. He must speak based on the constitution," he said.

Therefore, Mahfud asked the organizers and sources who were terrorized to report to the local police. "Those who are terrorized need to report to the authorities and the apparatus is obliged to investigate who the perpetrators are," he concluded.