ASIA TIMES, January 3, 2003
Indonesia's message: Researchers risk jail
By Damien Kingsbury
The sentencing of Australian-based academic researcher and sometime Asia Times
Online contributor Dr Lesley McCulloch to five months' imprisonment in Indonesia has
sent a clear signal that the Indonesian military's tolerance for what it regards as
foreign interference in domestic issues has come to an end.
McCulloch was sentenced to five months on Monday for allegedly violating a tourist
visa while in Indonesia's troubled province of Aceh in September. It is the first such
sentence to be handed down for a foreigner in Indonesian legal history.
McCulloch's American associate, Joy Lee Sadler, a nurse, was given a four-month
sentence for the same offense. The pair have been under arrest since September 11.
In one sense, the five-month sentence given to McCulloch and the lesser sentence for
Sadler appear to be a compromise. The Indonesian military, the TNI, had pushed for
McCulloch to be charged with the far more serious offense of possession of military
secrets. In the end, both McCulloch and Sadler were charged with violating a tourist
visa, which can bring up to a five-year sentence. And the prosecution, in the end, only
asked for nine months in each case.
However, of the dozens, probably hundreds, of people who have been arrested for
allegedly violating a tourist visa in Indonesia, usually for associating with separatists
or other political outcasts, all but one have simply been deported without sentence.
This includes from such troubled places as Aceh, West Papua, and East Timor. The
one exception was of a journalist who was once held in West Papua for several days
before being deported.
After the Bali bombing, dozens of foreign journalists also worked in Indonesia on no
more than the three-month "short stay" visa granted upon arrival. But not one was
questioned over the conflict between their visa and their work, or the formal
requirement to have a journalist's visa.
The question is, then, why have McCulloch and Sadler been jailed? Aceh is a
particularly sensitive issue for the TNI, as it has been unable to defeat the region's
26-year-old separatist movement. And in the United States, a ban on the sale or
supply of military equipment, imposed after TNI-inspired carnage in East Timor in
1999, has continued to be enforced because of human-rights atrocities in Aceh. Even
during Aceh's current ceasefire, some 15 civilians have been murdered by the TNI.
McCulloch had earlier published reports of such abuses, as well as on the TNI's legal
and illegal business interests in Aceh.
There is therefore little doubt the TNI was angry with McCulloch and wanted to punish
her personally, and it repeatedly intervened with the prosecution in the McCulloch
case. But more important, the TNI also wanted to send a clear message to other
foreign researchers and journalists who continue to expose the TNI's uglier side.
In Sadler's case, she was said to have distributed medicine to villagers. Her sentence
therefore reflects a general opposition to foreigners being present in problematic
places. Related to this crackdown, senior TNI officers have recently said they will
investigate the reasons for all visitors to such places as Aceh, West Papua and
Maluku, despite there being no travel bans to such places. Needless to say, almost
all visitors to these places, apart from aid workers (which Sadler was, unofficially) and
journalists, are academic researchers. Yet the conditions for obtaining a formal
research visa are exceptionally difficult; one needs a sponsor within Indonesia and
exceptionally few are prepared to support politically sensitive research.
Further, the conditions of the standard "short term visit" visa that McCulloch and
Sadler were traveling under remain unclear. The official Indonesian Embassy website
in Canberra makes absolutely no mention of what is or is not allowed under such a
visa. Indeed, the website notes tourist destinations and facilities in Aceh and
Ambon/Maluku (the West Papua tourism page is missing).
As such, the vast majority of academic researchers and short-term journalists use a
short-visit visa, almost always without problem. Official policy on travel in Indonesia,
then, seems to be divided between what is publicly acceptable and what is privately
unacceptable. Or put another way, travel in Indonesia is divided between what is and
what is not politically sensitive.
Now the precedent for not knowing the difference, or for exploring the margins, is jail.
It is fair to say that McCulloch was not in Aceh as a conventional tourist. Her detailed
knowledge of the conflict there precluded that. But it is also fair to say that the formal
conditions of her visa and the status of Aceh mean that her jail sentence, and
Sadler's, is clearly predicated on political reasons.
That they risk the possibility of becoming political prisoners is the clear message
being sent by Indonesia to foreigners. It is one that will continue to worry foreign
academic researchers until it is formally altered.
* Dr Damien Kingsbury is head of philosophical, political and international studies at
Deakin University, Victoria, Australia, and is the author of the forthcoming book
Political Power and the Indonesian Military (Routledge, April 2003). Kingsbury and Dr
Lesley McCulloch recently received an Australia Research Council grant to conduct a
three-year survey of the TNI's business interests.
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