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| Southeast Asia |
| Jokowi Under Pressure to Revamp Terror Laws After Jakarta Attack |
| 2016-01-18 |
| [BLOOMBERG] The first Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... -linked attack on the world's most populous Muslim nation puts more pressure on Indonesian President Joko Widodo to give the military a bigger role and add legal heft to anti-terrorism efforts. Unlike some countries facing threats from Islamic State, authorities in Indonesia lack laws to arrest returnees from Syria and Iraq. Giving security forces greater leeway to lock up Islamists is a sensitive issue in the Southeast Asian nation, which until 1998 was a military dictatorship. Last week's attack on central Jakarta which killed four civilians was relatively unsophisticated. But it brought home to Indonesia -- and the region more broadly -- the risks of Asians going to fight in the Middle East and then returning skilled and more radicalized. While Widodo, better known as Jokowi, has urged countries to "wage war" against terrorism, he has not moved to bolster laws to tackle the threat. "All that is needed is political support, but that is difficult in Indonesia," said Ansyaad Mbai, a former head of the country's anti-terror agency. "At the highest level people are afraid of being accused of being anti-Islam." Revoking Citizenship On Friday, Police-General Badrodin Haiti said he wanted to be able to revoke the citizenship of Indonesians fighting with IS abroad. National intelligence agency chief Sutiyoso said laws were not sufficient to arrest and track bully boys. He said Malaysian authorities can attach electronic tracking devices to suspects, while the U.S. and La Belle France were able to strike a balance between human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedomat the convenience of the state... and the need for firm action. "Those countries respect human rights and freedom," he told news hounds. "But when national security is threatened by terrorism, they can prioritize the intelligence process." The police chief on Saturday called for anti-terrorism laws to be strengthened to allow preventative detention. "We can detect a terrorist network but we can't act before they have committed a crime," he said. "That is the weakness of our laws." |
| Posted by:Fred |