Justpeace Blog

EDITORIAL
The Nation
Wednesday, April 18. 2007

Militia units are compromising government's stated mission to reconcile matters in the restive region

The last few weeks have seen some worrying developments that are a cause for concern as they could drag the deep South further into turmoil. These incidents threaten to do away with whatever gains the state has made as far as reconciliation with the Malay-speaking South is concerned. Last Friday, a unit of 12 soldiers investigating arson attacks in Pattani's Ban Bana village shot and killed three unarmed teenagers who were playing tag near the weekly outdoor market.

At first, the official explanation was that the soldiers were returning fire in self-defence. The official explanation that these boys, aged 13-15, were in the line of fire quickly lost its credibility the following morning after police said they were treating the matter as manslaughter.

Hundreds of angry local residents merged on the street the following morning, shortly after burying the victims.

Security bigwigs - Pattani Governor Panu Uthairath, Colonel Wirawan Pathompark, deputy commander of the Internal Security Operation Command, and Pol Maj-General Korkiert Wongworachart, commander of the Pattani Provincial Police - quickly came together. They promised to carry out a thorough investigation and take appropriate measures if the conduct of the soldiers is deemed to have been negligent.

While the deal bought them more time with local residents, the same could not be said about the April 9 shooting death of four Muslim youths in Yala's Tambon Kern Banglang in Bannang Sata district. There, a heated exchange of words between a group of village defence volunteers and about 20 Muslim youths returning from a funeral turned bloody when the government-backed outfit responded with gunfire. Four young Muslim men died, and six were injured.

And instead of looking for ways to buy more time, Army spokesman Colonel Akara Thiproj concluded the next morning that the shooting of these young men was justifiable, because they were armed with rocks and sticks.

Besides questions of accountability and conduct, the official rules of engagement for these poorly trained government-backed village militia units have been brought under an unwanted spotlight.

About a month prior to the Kern Banglang incident, a group of rangers opened fire on and threw M79 grenades at a private Islamic boarding school in Yala's Ban Taseh. One student was killed and another injured while they were sleeping. At first, authorities denied the school had been attacked, saying instead that students who were practising making explosives had accidentally detonated a bomb. That official line quickly lost ground once it became clear that the government-backed militia group really had carried out the attack. A National Legislative Assembly committee was set up to investigate the incident, thus buying some breathing space for the authorities.

A similar promise was made after a group of rangers was accused of attacking another religious school in Songkhla's Saba Yoi district on March 17. Three students were killed and seven were injured.

Needless to say, these disturbing back-to-back incidents have raised questions about the decision to put these ill-trained outfits on the front line of this complicated conflict.

Victory will require much more than mere fire-power. As these recent incidents demonstrated, knee-jerk reactions by officials on the ground do not reflect the government's stated desire to move towards reconciliation with the Malay-speaking community through peaceful means. In order to maintain whatever gains the state has made in this struggle, the authorities will have to come clean about these disturbing and questionable incidents. This means conducting thorough investigations before mouthing off about whom to blame.

The incidents in Ban Taseh, Kern Banglang and Saba Yoi all have one thing in common: they lack official clarity and consistency. The more ambiguous the authority becomes, the more we are drifting back to the heavy-handedness of the previous government.

Needless to say, efforts at reconciliation will be doomed if the government is unable to convince the public that justice can prevail in these difficult circumstances. The current government came to power promising to make truth and justice its hallmarks. They will have to live up to this promise if peace and victory is to be achieved in this restive region.

Sunday, April 1. 2007

We have already seen the adoption of Islamic or sharia-based law in various predominantly Muslim regions across Indonesia.Now the West Irian Jaya capital of Manokwari, a regency with a majority Christian population, is finalizing a draft regional ordinance based on the Bible. It forbids people to wear the Muslim head scarf (jilbab) in public spaces.If the draft is approved, we will see our unitary state torn by conflicting local laws. Some areas will require people to wear clothing deemed Islamic, while at least one will ban it.

This clash of trends leads us to the issue of constitutionality, particularly the proper role of the government and the legitimate scope of the state's coercive power and the people's constitutional rights.

What is a constitutional framework for the implementation of religious teachings? To what extent can the government interfere in people's spiritual lives? Can the government compel us to do our religious duties? Can it enact a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion?

The position and status of religion in the Indonesian Constitution has been debated since the early days of this country. When the nation's founding fathers formulated the Article on Religion, some said religion was an obligation. This concept was later known as the Jakarta Charter: a seven-word statement which stipulated "the obligation of Muslims to observe sharia".

Others argued that religion was a basic right. However, they agreed that the government may not compel its citizens to obey religious teachings.

One of the founding fathers involved in the making of the constitution, Prof. Dr. Pangeran Ario Husein Djajadiningrat, questioned the Charter. He was afraid it would fan fanaticism by compelling people to worship and coercing them to pray. Wachid Hasjim of the Muslim organization Nahdatul Ulama replied that if coercion occurred, it could be addressed through the parliament.

Even though the Jakarta Charter was not adopted, what the founding fathers were concerned about is now coming true. The numerous regional ordinances forcing Muslim women to wear Islamic clothes and head scarves contradict the Constitution, which stipulates that embracing a religion is a right and not an obligation. Article 28E (1) of the Second Amendment states: "Every person shall be free to adhere to his/her respective religion and to worship according to his/her religion".

If the government obliges a woman to wear the jilbab, she is not free anymore. This goes against the very nature of human rights as well.

The position of religion as a right is restated in Article 28E subsection (2): "Every person shall have the right to freedom of belief, to express his/her thoughts and attitudes, in accordance with his/her conscience".

On the other extreme, the government once adopted a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. This was under the New Order, when the government banned Muslim girls from wearing the jilbab in public schools.

A law prohibiting the free exercise of religion also violates religious rights. Every citizen is guaranteed the right to exercise his or her religion. The exercise of religion often involves not only belief and profession but the performance of or abstention from physical acts. If a person chooses to wear a jilbab because she believes that it is her religious obligation, that is her right, and the government must guarantee that she can do so freely.

We need a neutral state where the government takes a balanced position by allowing people to exercise or not to exercise their religion freely. Free exercise means no obligation and no prohibition.


The writer is a lecturer at State Islamic Institute Antasari in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan and a PhD Student at Universiti Utara Malaysia.

By Seth Mydans
Published: April 1, 2007
INternational Herald Tribune


MAE AI, Thailand: Hidden in the back corners of the world is a scattered population of millions of nobodies, citizens of nowhere, forgotten or neglected by governments, ignored by census takers.

Many of these stateless people are among the world's poorest; all are the most disenfranchised. Without citizenship, they often have no right to schooling, health care or property ownership. Nor may they vote, or travel outside their countries - even, in some cases, the towns - where they live.

They are stateless for many reasons - migration, refugee flight, racial or ethnic exclusion, the quirks of history - but taken together, these noncitizens, according to one report, "are among the most vulnerable segments of humanity."

Without the rights conferred by citizenship, they have few avenues for redressing abuses, and little access to resources that could help them build better lives. They have few advocates, because human rights groups tend to focus on the types of abuses they suffer - trafficking, exploitation, discrimination - rather than the root of their problems, their statelessness.

In their variety, they share the lack of a basic human need: a place to call home.

About two million of them are in Thailand, mostly members of ethnic minority groups and hill tribes, perhaps the largest stateless population in the world.

Many were born in remote areas along the border with Myanmar, out of touch with the government, and lack documents that could prove that they, or one of their parents, were born in Thailand.

"Everything is affected, all my rights," said Saidaeng Kaewtham, 38, who works as a gardener. "I can't travel, go to the hospital, do business or get an education. You can't choose your job, only labor."

"Why can others do these basic things and I can't?" he asked. "If I had been a citizen I might have finished my education. I might have earned a master's degree already. Some of my friends have master's degrees."

The number of people like Saidaeng is rising today with the shifting populations of a globalized world, experts say. The emergence of new democracies is also a factor, particularly in Africa, where the granting or removal of citizenship is used as a political weapon.

"The very fact that democracy makes people count makes citizenship a more important social and political fact, and that has given an incentive to some political leaders to use citizenship as a tool to disenfranchise opponents," said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.

By the most common count, there are 15 million stateless people in the world, but by its nature, this is a number nobody can know for certain.

"Statelessness is a global phenomenon, but each of the stories is different," said Philippe LeClerc, an expert on the issue with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.

The stateless include some 200,000 Urdu-speaking Bihari in scores of refugee settlements in Bangladesh, where they are barred from many government services and subject to harassment and discrimination.

Formerly a prosperous, land-owning community, they were stranded in Bangladesh when it separated from Urdu-speaking Pakistan in 1971. Although Pakistan at first offered refuge to fleeing Bihari, neither nation offers citizenship today to those who stayed behind.

The stateless also include members of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority from western Myanmar, where they have been stripped of citizenship and denied civil rights and face exploitation, forced labor and religious persecution. More than 100,000 Rohingya have fled in recent decades to Bangladesh, where they live in camps or on the streets.

They also include tens of thousands of Filipino and Indonesian children in the Malaysian state of Sabah, victims of discriminatory laws that, in effect, deny them birth certificates and often separate them from their families.

Repression at home and the demand for cheap labor drew hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and Indonesians to Sabah over the past three decades. There are now 750,000 of them, nearly one-third of the local population, and the authorities are forcing many to leave.

Because their children often lack documentation, an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 have been left behind to fend for themselves.

In Thailand, the government has embarked on an unusual and ambitious program to determine its stateless people's rights to citizenship, checking documents and interviewing witnesses and local elders.

"You have hundreds of nationality decisions taking place every month in these provinces," said LeClerc. "It's going in slow motion, but it demonstrates a consciousness on the part of Thailand that they have to address the issue."

The only documentation Boon Phonma, 43, could offer was a birth date scribbled on a palm leaf by her mother. She said she was turned away by officials who said, "No, you're not Thai."

Like some others without papers, she then presented officials with the results of a DNA test that she said was accepted as proof of her right to Thai citizenship.

"I found out I have a whole big family here, 335 people," said Boon, who now works to help other stateless people. "I am a Thai confirmed, a Thai since birth."