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Indonesia Crime and Political Offenses
Like many countries, Indonesia experienced rising crime
as a
by-product of increased urbanization and the social and
economic
dislocations associated with national development. The
scope of
the crime problem was difficult to gauge, but conditions
such as
large numbers of unemployed or underemployed in the
nation's
cities, lack of sufficient jobs for high school and
university
graduates, and a breakdown in traditional systems of
social
control were often cited as responsible for the increase
in
crime. During the 1980s, the government sometimes resorted
to
extrajudicial means to control a perceived increase in
crime,
especially in urban areas. The government's clandestine
"Petrus"
operation in Java in the early 1980s is the best known.
Specifically approved by Suharto and directed by the
army's
special forces, the Petrus campaign was directed at known
criminals involved in robbery, rape, murder, and other
violence.
Public opinion approved of the operation, which was
characterized
by collection of detailed intelligence on targeted
criminals and
condoning of nighttime shootings. Public reports lacked
details,
but few if any innocent bystanders were killed by Petrus.
It was
thought that a similar operation was conducted against
suspected
criminals and radical separatists in Aceh in early 1991,
but the
government refused comment on the operation. By the early
1990s,
the actual number of crimes increased only moderately from
year
to year. Both the authorities and the public, however,
were
concerned about their increasingly violent nature.
Under Indonesian law, certain categories of crime were
handled under special statutes outside the penal code.
Offenses
such as bribery, the assessment of illegal "levies," and
the
diversion of public funds for private use by business
figures or
officials formed a special class of crime usually handled
under a
1955 statute on economic crimes and a 1971 statute on
corruption.
Political offenses and acts that Indonesian authorities
regarded
as threats to national security were usually prosecuted
under
Presidential Decree Number 11 of 1963 concerning the
eradication
of subversive activities. Promulgated as a statute in
1969, it
granted far-reaching authority in dealing with almost any
act
that did not conform to government policy and carried a
maximum
penalty of death.
The special statutes also contained special procedures
that
differed in important respects from those in the Criminal
Procedures Code. Thus, for example, while the code stated
that a
suspect could only be held a maximum of 120 days before
being
brought to trial, the subversion law allowed suspects to
be held
up to one year.
The most prominent use of the special procedures
regarding
political offenses involved Kopkamtib's mass arrests and
detention of some 200,000 persons in connection with the
1965
coup attempt, most of whom were never charged or tried.
These
prisoners were classified as group A, B, or C, according
to the
government's perception of how deeply they had been
involved in
the events of 1965 or in any of the banned organizations,
including the PKI. The last 30,000 of those persons still
not
brought to trial were released between December 1977 and
December
1979. Some PKI members were sentenced to death in the
mid-1960s
and remained in prison for years while their cases went
through
the appeals process. Several of these prisoners were
executed as
late as 1990. Only a handful of those convicted in
connection
with the coup were still in custody in 1992, although some
36,000
were still barred from voting, and 1.4 million former PKI
members
were closely monitored by Kopkamtib's successor
organization,
Bakorstanas.
Data as of November 1992
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