The Human Rights Watch

The Jakarta police chief says the guards are needed because there are too few police officers for the job. But mobilizing 125,000 largely untrained civilians against thousands of student protesters just doubles the problem. Who is going to guard the guards?

Sydney Jones

Human Rights Watch today expressed deep concern over the Indonesian army's use of 125,000 civilian guards to help with security during a meeting of the country's highest legislative body.

The People's Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat or MPR) opens in special session today to schedule national parliamentary elections and begin a restructuring of the Soeharto-era political system. Fearing that the MPR will dilute proposed reforms, student groups have been mounting large-scale but peaceful protests across the country, calling for "total reform" and for President Habibie to step down. Creation of the civilian guards appears to be a response to military fears that those protests will turn violent.

"Every time in the recent past that the Indonesian military has used civilian guards to counter civilian protests, it has made the situation worse," said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "Instead of preventing confrontation, this kind of militia virtually ensures it."

Part of the problem is that the kind of young people who accepted the military's invitation to help with security are precisely those who disagree with the student protests. They include groups such as Pemuda Panca Marga and Pemuda Pancasila, two youth groups associated with the ruling party, Golkar, that have been involved in numerous incidents of pro-government violence in the past. Fifty members of Pemuda Panca Marga who gathered around the MPR building this weekend wore military fatigues and carried rattan sticks, according to Monday's Jakarta Post. Conservative Muslim groups are also fielding thousands of volunteers.

A second problem was with the sheer number of the guards. "The Jakarta police chief says the guards are needed because there are too few police officers for the job," said Jones. "But mobilizing 125,000 largely untrained civilians against thousands of student protesters just doubles the problem. Who is going to guard the guards?"

The experience of civilian guards in Indonesia under the Soeharto government was not good. In East Timor, a youth organization called Gardapaksi was used to mobilize counterdemonstrations to pro-independence rallies and only served to provoke more clashes. In Aceh in the early 1990s, the army organized villagers into a group called Bela Negara ("Defend the State") to help hunt down suspected rebels. In East Timor, Aceh, and Irian Jaya, the army's use of civilian guards as an intelligence auxiliary and sometimes as participants in combat missions served to deepen fear and distrust in the population at large. The army used civilian thugs to oust supporters of opposition leader Megawati Soekarnoputri from her party headquarters in July 1996 in a move that led to a devastating riot. And civilian organizations, unnamed but believed to include Pemuda Pancasila, were cited in the Joint Fact-Finding Team's report last week as being possibly responsible, with elements of the military, for the violent riots in Jakarta of May 1997.