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Paras Indonesia, November, 26 2005 @ 12:38 am

Who's Afraid Of 'Dangerous' Sidney Jones?

By: Roy Tupai

Indonesia has barred American human rights advocate and terrorism expert Sidney Jones from entering the country for a year, claiming she is "dangerous" and could "disturb public order".

It is the second time in as many years that Jones, the Southeast Asia project director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), has been banished from Indonesia.

The latest ban will be a severe embarrassment to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and perhaps also to the US government. Washington had only days ago announced it was resuming military funding and sales of lethal weapons to Indonesia, citing the country's democratic advances and cooperation in the war on terror.

Jones was first expelled in June 2004 by the administration of ex-president Megawati Sukarnoputri after then State Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Hendropriyono accused her of subversion and selling information or slandering Indonesia to get money from abroad.

The feared Hendropriyono resigned after Yudhoyono soundly defeated Megawati in last year's historic direct presidential election, but he remains influential within the military and intelligence community.

After more than a year away, Jones was eventually allowed back into Indonesia on July 22, 2005, having been given a work visa and residency permit.

Jones had gone to Taiwan for a two-day visit earlier this week to pick up an award from Time magazine on behalf of ICG. When she returned to Jakarta's Sukarno-Hatta International Airport on Thursday (24/11/05), she was denied entry without any explanation. She said was told only that an October 7 letter banned her from entry. Her residency card was confiscated and she then had to take a flight to Singapore, where she remains.

"I don't understand. If there was a problem, you would have thought they would have called me in or raised the question while I was in Jakarta, giving me some ability to respond," she was quoted as saying Friday by the Associated Press.

"I have no clue. I am totally mystified. I thought all the problems [from last year] were solved. There haven't been any indications [from the government] that anything I'd done was out of line," she was quoted as saying by the Financial Times.

"It's just a complete mystery. There was no reason and no warning. If there had been a warning I would have taken more than two days of clothes," she was quoted as saying by Reuters.

"I was allowed back at the end of July and everything seemed fine. I was assured that we were in a new era," she said.

Jones said she had been unable to contact Yudhoyono's aides, as well as Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin. "From this vantage point it looks like a throw back," she said, referring to the country's authoritarian past, when foreign journalists and researchers could be blacklisted for being critical of the government.

Vague Explanation

Immigration spokesman Supriatna Anwar told detikcom online news portal that his office had on Wednesday received an order to bar Jones from Indonesia for a year. "Part of the reason is that anyone who enters Indonesia must not be dangerous and cause losses to the public," he was quoted as saying by detikcom.

"According to the law, anyone who enters Indonesia should be useful and not cause public disorder. Maybe the government feels that at the moment she is not fulfilling those conditions," he was quoted as saying by AP.

The Brussels-based ICG issued a statement saying it was "shocked and mystified" by the decision.

Jones (52), who speaks Indonesian fluently, first came to the country in 1977 as program officer with the Ford Foundation. She also studied Islam and politics in Indonesia, spending 10 months living at an Islamic boarding school in East Java.

The ICG office in Jakarta opened in 2000 and was initially led by Australian academic Harold Crouch. After Jones took over, the ICG produced more than a dozen in-depth reports on regional terrorism network Jemaah Islamiyah and on conflict areas such as Aceh, the Maluku islands, Sulawesi and Papua.

Some of the critical reports pointed out the shortcomings of Indonesia's military and intelligence agencies in dealing with terrorism and cited their involvement in rights abuses. One report in particular stands out: The Ngruki Network in Indonesia, which was published in August 2002 and is regarded as one of the most definitive pieces of research on Jemaah Islamiyah.

One section of the report mentions that Hendropriyono led the 1989 massacre of an estimated 100 civilians at a Muslim school in Lampung, southern Sumatra.

Elsewhere, Hendropriyono has been accused by some foreign journalists of playing a key role in funding pro-Indonesia militia groups that went on killing sprees in East Timor in 1999. Local human rights groups have also linked him to last year's murder of Indonesia's top human rights activist, Munir. Hendropriyono has vehemently denied any involvement in either case.

ICG's latest reports by Jones were on the peace process in Aceh and sectarian violence in the Maluku islands and Central Sulawesi. Regular readers of her reports said she had become less critical of Indonesian authorities.

Jones is often interviewed by the local and international media, but it's unclear whether she had said anything over recent weeks to upset the government. She had most recently praised Vice President Jusuf Kalla for enlisting the support of mainstream Islamic clerics to counter the country's radical Islamic fringe.

Australian academic Edward Aspinall, a lecturer at Sydney University and expert on Aceh, was barred from Indonesia earlier this year without explanation.

Copyright (c) 2005 - PT Laksamana Global International. All rights reserved
 


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