STEPHEN F. POWER
The Muse (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
ST. JOHN’S (CUP) — Last December, Indonesian police officers in the province of Aceh clamped down on a benefit concert. Just before the bands went onstage, police shut down the event and arrested 65 people. Most of these were youths in their teens or early twenties.
Their crime? They were punks: adherents of a lifestyle that local governing authorities had deemed to be in contravention of Islamic Sharia law. Despite the fact that none of those arrested were ever charged with a crime, all 65 people were sentenced shortly after their detainment to 10 days of “re-education” in a police-run camp in the mountains.
The police chief of the region said shortly after the raid that the detained youth were to be subjected to moral, martial and religious training to divert them away from their current lifestyles and back onto the “moral path.”
Upon arrival at the camp, the camp employees either shaved or cropped — depending on the sex of the detainee — the youths’ hair, confiscated their belongings, and even tossed the kids into a pool of water for cleansing. Later, pictures of the 65 show them in military uniform, singing songs and performing military drills.
Although the Jakarta Globe has reported that few of the 65 have been successfully reformed, Aceh authorities remain steadfast in their support of the bizarre treatment. The police chief of Aceh has tried to downplay it, comparing it, oddly, to hazing rituals he went through as a police officer.
To top it all off, the chief went on to deny that the human rights of the punks were violated at all. “If we are considered as violating human rights because they are not as free as they are on the street, whose human rights formulation is that?” he said to the Globe.
Just to recount, no one arrested at the show was ever charged with a crime or saw a single day before a judge, denying the 65 their right to due process of law. All were arrested and sent to government-run re-education camps because they chose to identify as punks, denying them their right to freedom of expression.
I can’t get into the head of the police chief in Aceh — nor do I really want to — but it seems to me that these punks were stripped of their rights by people who had deemed them enthusiasts of a “social disease.”
Although the 65 were released upon completion of their re-education, this story continues: the police chief has said that local authorities still have orders to arrest any punks they see while on patrol. Meanwhile, local human rights organizations have picked up the case of the 65, and the incident has thrust the Indonesian punk community into the international spotlight, with much of that attention bearing down on the provincial government of Aceh.
Most importantly, the punks of Aceh remain defiant. Many who went through the re-education camp have said that they will continue to live as they had prior to their arrest, and have challenged the religious authorities to point out which parts of Sharia prohibits their chosen lifestyle.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Trying to impose a specific religious ethos on an entire society is not only morally repugnant, it is also a recipe for failure. We’re a very diverse species, and we’re always going to want to express this diversity — history has shown that attempting to extinguish diversity creates situations both inflammatory and terrifying.
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Photo: Marc Veraart/Flickr