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RIGHTS-INDONESIA: Curbs for WB-IMF Meet – Reality Check for NGOs

Marwaan Macan-Markar

JAKARTA, Sep 13 2006 (IPS) - The uncertainty that has dogged a meeting for civil society groups in Batam, an Indonesian island close to Singapore, has come as a reality check – apparently, all is not well for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) here, eight years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship.

For now, the NGOs are breathing easy following a last minute nod of approval from local police authorities in Batam to let the International People’s Forum (IPF) get underway on Friday. The three-day event, from Sep. 15-17, is being held ahead of the annual meeting of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Sep.19-20 in Singapore.

The International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID), an umbrella organization that counts 60 NGOs among its members, was prompted to host the gathering to critic WB-IMF policies after the Singapore government threatened to crack down on activists at this annual meeting of the Washington-based, financial and development policy heavyweights.

‘’As the world’s third largest democracy after the United States and India, this is an excellent opportunity to reiterate the country’s commitment to freedom of speech,” the English daily ‘The Jakarta Post,’ commented in an editorial on Tuesday, hailing the change in fortunes for the NGOs. ‘’Singapore may be economically stronger than Indonesia but, in terms of freedom of speech, Indonesia is in a much more respectable position.”

But it is a victory – Batam police officials agreed this week to abide by the request of the national police chief to let the IPF proceed as scheduled – that has given INFID members like Nadia Hadad a reason to pause. ‘’The ban in Batam came as a surprise, because if we want we can have demonstrations in Jakarta daily and there is no problem,” says Hadad, INFID’s media campaign coordinator. ‘’After all, Batam is part of Indonesia and the rules should be the same.”

Consequently, plans are afoot to add a new dimension to the scheduled discussions due to take place among the representatives of some 700 NGOs from 40 countries, Hadad added in an interview. ‘’We will have a special session about the restrictions to meet in Batam and the space available for NGOs to function freely in South-east Asia.”

The battle over Batam, which was declared as a free-trade zone in 1989 to attract investments from Singapore, the region’s richest nation, comes at a time when Indonesian NGOs had begun to feel secure that there was more political space for them to function after Suharto was driven out of power in May, 1998 – ending three decades of oppressive rule.

And INFID was one of the local NGOs that enjoyed this change in the archipelago’s political currents. Formed in 1985, it was denied freedom to have public fora, let alone small discussion groups, during the Suharto years. Conferences that included its members had to be held in other South-east Asian countries or even in Europe.

Other NGOs set up during the Suharto years faced similar pressure, like the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) in Indonesia. ‘’We had to lead an underground existence. There was always danger in being identified as an NGO or an activist,” Donny Iswandono, a ranking member of AJI, told IPS.

But after the fall of Suharto, there has been ”great progress among NGOs. There has been more space created for our work,” he conceded. ”Activists are now sought after by some ministries before policy decisions are made. They can also openly criticise those in power, even the military, and even file cases in court.”

This emerging climate for Indonesian NGOs to stand in the way of questionable policies and politics has not been lost on their peers in South-east Asia, such as in Thailand and the Philippines, where civil society groups have been in the vanguard of political and development issues.

‘’They have very strong groups working on environmental issues. They try to stop the destruction of forests to create plantations,” Permrudee Daoroung, co-director of Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA), a Bangkok-based environmental watchdog for the Mekong river region, told IPS. ‘’They have made it more difficult for the violators.”

Even officers of the powerful Indonesian army, linked to the illegal logging trade in East Kalimantan, have become targets of activist ire, unlike in the Suharto years. Court battles have also been won, such as the ruling by the country’s constitutional court to strike down a new law introduced in 2004 as part of the government’s electricity policy, following a case filed by NGOs who were members of the working group on power restructuring.

Other inroads that activists have made into South-east Asia’s largest country of over 230 million people is the creation of public awareness over debt issues that stem from WB-IMF programmes, say political analysts. As a result, NGOs are being given credit for getting the government to talk about debt reduction and debt cancellation.

‘’They took on the ideology of being the opposition in the country to expand the political space in Indonesia,” Arbi Sanit, a political scientist at the Jakarta-based University of Indonesia, told IPS. ‘’This vision has helped to push forward Indonesia as a progressive democracy.”

Yet, the struggle for NGOs to secure space in Batam has shown that appearances of progress can be deceptive. ”This will lead to a renewal among activists to fight for the rights of activists to pursue their mission openly,” says Hadad of INFID. ”We will use this issue to ask the government for its stand towards NGOs.”