A Portrait of Brutality of Police, The People’s Defender

On its 65th birthday, the Indonesian police are still not able to show that they work for the people, in particularly not for the powerless ones. Police is not efficiently implementing their role to protect the people. Ideally police should be the force for law and order, justice but this is still far from materialized.

Police brutality is showing clearly since the police was separated from TNI. Several recent cases involve police as perpetrators of crimes that can be categorized as Human Rights violations. Cases include the shooting farmer in Bulukumba, south Sulawesi and Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara, the shooting of gold miners in Halmahera, North Maluku, and cases like the beating up of demonstrator in front of the Supreme Court or the cases at the UMI campus in Makasar. These are just a small sample of the cases of police brutality that we know of.

Many of the police undertakings, both poor administration and practice in the field, are harming the people. In the field, police justifies repressive acts and faces criminals that they have already arrested with violence. On example is torture during interrogation. This take place in spite that the government has signed and ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, In Human or Degrading treatment or punishment that prohibits all from of torture under all circumstances.

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Global Society

Feature of global society is the existence of interdependence between nations and not infrequently develops in a tight competition. Simultaneously, the political maps of the world tend to grow toward the struggle for influence as part of the struggle for influence among nations, both global and regional in scope.

Limited capacity, particularly in capital, the quality of human resources and technology and free market rules are extremely strict, has spawned concern for developing countries. The inability of developing countries in the competition will only make the developing countries as markets for products of developed countries.

Inequality of economic rivalry developed countries against developing countries will create an opportunity for the emergence of dissatisfaction and protection measures, so that eventually lead to conflicts and crises that can disrupt security and stability.

Developed countries committed to developing countries is intended as an effort to replace the foreign policy of a State to favor the West Block and forced to change policy development in order to adhere to Developmentalism. Policy Developed countries are also aimed at the security system of international capitalism that in his embrace.

So in a contemporary context, if globalization is blocked and hegemonic practices can not be done or maintained the practice of domination will be done through military operations. We can see from the problems of Afghanistan and Iraq, which is played by the developed countries like the United States (USA) by using the pattern pre-emptive attack.

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The Law Behind the May Tragedy

Gross human rights violations in Indonesia starting 1965 and continuing till now, has caused a lot of victims. The Trisakti tragedy on 12 May 1998 and the bloody riots all across Indonesia on 13 and 14 May 1998 are two of the cases of gross human rights violations that took place during the Soeharto era. The incidents took more than 1000 human lives and caused billiard rupiah damage on property, after plenty of shops, office buildings and housings were burnt to the ground.

However the law suit of the May 1998 cases are left unattended at the Attorney General’s Office and there is still no clear decision on how the legal proceeding will continue. This uncertainty on the legal aspect of the May 1998 incident causes concern with the victims and family members.

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Entrance Into The Modern Culture

For me it is clear that the Indonesian people not to circumvent, the Indonesian people should master modern culture dominated by science, economics and technology. The transformation of society is carried out into the environment of modern culture.

To overcome this difficulty, our nation must now be realized in earnest that modern culture is a culture that has a composition different values with the culture in Indonesia today. So ethics and discipline that determines human behavior is a mentality and way of life. The failure of Indonesia until now is a lot to know about science, technology and economics, both about theory and practice but do not have the mentality, attitudes and ways of thinking that determine behavior within modern culture. Of this shows that science, technology and modern economy is not yet a part of the nature of the behavior of the Indonesian nation. although it is still shallow and has not determined how the mind and the Indonesian nation to do.

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Expressive Culture

In essence the expressive culture that is controlled by the value of holiness and beauty are cultural values that look back. In religion, the most noble and sacred are the sacred books incarnate, when the gods and the gods communicate to people and its legal order, which in general can not be altered humans. Likewise in the art that once created all things not changing again, considered to be perfect. The artists are generally no longer fix the results of the finished creations.

Each era has its own art that must be weighed according to their size alone. This is another one with a progressive culture dominated by science and economics which together gave birth to the technology. The most important characteristic in science, economics, technology is the continuous progress that want to accomplish. When all know that science is something that is constantly changing, advanced.

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THE TERMINOLOGY OF ILLEGAL LOGGING

The definition and the scope of illegal in the phrase of illegal logging cover the meaning of all unlawful acts or any acts which violate or against the law. While logging in a narrow definition means “deforestation” and in broader definition covers “any forestry acts starting for licensing step, operational preparation, production activities, distribution, wood business, processing and marketing” (Prasetyo, 2003).

Thus this writing will understand the definition of illegal logging as a logging act which against the law and any acts related to licensing, operational preparation, production activities, wood distribution, wood business, processing and marketing. Therefore, the meaning of illegal is not only under the jurisdiction of criminal law, but also state administration law, law of state matter or even international law.

From the perspective of process and implication, illegal logging can be categorized as an extra ordinary crime. This categorization is important in the context of putting illegal logging as one of the main priority crime to eradicate because the impact of illegal logging is hazardous for the forest sustainability, environmental balance, harm the country and the world’s society. In addition illegal logging often committed as part of series of corruption, money laundering and other crimes.

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ILLEGAL LOGGING AS AN EXTRA ORDINARY CRIME

Illegal logging can be categorized as an extra ordinary crime, involves multi actors and it is committed as trans national crime. Aside from seeing it as national problem and ecological crisis only, illegal logging also supposes to be seen as international problem. The destruction faced by Indonesian forests mean the destruction of most of the world’s lung. In general, it means that the continuity of human being’s life is facing hazards.

Remarks of WALHI emphasizes the importance of the position of the Indonesian forest. According to WALHI, Indonesia has 10% from the remained tropical forest in the world, containing 12% of world’s mammal species, 16% reptile and amphibians, 1519 bird species, 25% world fish species and some of the are endemic animals which can only be found in specific area.

Although the government has declared war against illegal logging but in the reality the forest coverage in Indonesia keeps decreasing from year to year. According to the food and Agriculture organization (FAO), the size of Indonesian forest during the five years from 2000-2005 decreased for 9.4 million hectares. Some factors influence the decrease of the size of the Indonesian forest such as the changing of the function of the forest which is influenced by corruption, illegal logging and the high demand of wood for industrial purposes.

For the last point, according to the data from Future Forest Working Group (FFWG, 2004) 70% consumption of the log wood for industrial purposes in Indonesia comes from illegal wood. In other words, the main supplier to fulfill the need of wood in Indonesia is illegal logging. As a matter of fact, the standard capacity of Indonesian forest to produce legal wood is only 17 million m3 but the demands reach 53 million m3. Therefore 36 million m3 of woods is needed every year and it was fulfilled by illegal logging activities.

The message from the various versions of data describing the destruction of Indonesian forest is actually easy to understand by the government, law enforcer and the society. Basically the data and the result of some researches describing the critical picture of forestry sector. Majority of Indonesian forests are deforested, destroyed, and the ecological condition is changed. It means disaster for environment, plasma nutfah, and for the life of the human being future generation.

The United Nations is concerned for the serious destruction of Indonesian forest and the illegal logging rate in Indonesia. According to their report in 2002, the UN predicts that the forest at the low land in Sumatra and Kalimantan will be extinct on 2032. As a matter of fact, the deforestation rate is very fast therefore according to the UN report published in February 2007, they predict that the forest in Sumatra and Kalimantan will be diminished on 2022 or ten years faster than the previous prediction.

UN also said that the illegal logging practices are also happened at 37 out of 41 national parks which suppose to be protected by the government. According to the official data of the Forest Planology Institution of Indonesia Forestry Department the deforestation in 7 big islands in Indonesia during 2000-2005 is 5.45 hectares or in average is 1.09 hectares per year.

Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI) and some other NGPs work in environment even release higher deforestation rate. According to the data from Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 2007 in FWI report, in five years the Indonesian forest coverage decrease more than twice of the calculation from the Forestry Department. Indonesian forest coverage is decreased for 9.4 million hectare in 2000-2005.

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