JAKARTA - Indonesia's war on drugs has
been ramped up as the tourist and clubbing season
on the resort island of Bali reaches its
peak.
In a move that could deter tourists
from visiting Indonesia, Bali nightclubs will be
subject to random drug raids and customers forced
to provide urine samples, according to the head of
Bali drug squad, Colonel Bambang Sugiarto. In the
past, only those found with drugs were forced to
submit to urine tests.
On June 26 (the
International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit
Trafficking) every mobile phone subscriber in the
country received a personal SMS (short message
service) from retired army general President
Susilo Bambang Yudhyono, warning against drugs.
His next move, on July 8 was to promote
the former head of the National Narcotics Agency
(BKKN) General Sutanto to national police chief.
"Our younger generation are being threatened with
ruin," Sutanto said before
launching an unprecedented crackdown on drugs,
gambling and prostitution.
Police have
since raided nightspots, forcing partygoers to
take urine tests and rummaged in the handbags of
ravers. A series of highly publicized raids on
trendy nightspots and up-market rave dens in Bali
and Jakarta has netted more than 250 locals and
foreigners alike. Several well-known figures from
the entertainment world were caught up in a recent
raid at Jakarta's top notch Dragon Fly nightclub.
The threat of urine tests has,
unsurprisingly, scared away would-be customers,
according to Indonesia's Association of
Entertainment Center Owners, causing 40,000
workers to be laid off.
Party over for
Aussies? An Australian newspaper quoted a
partygoer, Shelly, 24, describing one such raid in
Bali. "It freaked people out, they were running to
the toilets to get rid of what they had," she
said. "We go out for a good time, not to have the
cops shutting the music off for an hour. They
should be locking up the people selling it to us,
rather than getting us in the clubs."
An
estimated 280,000 Australians visit Bali each
year, second only to the Japanese. The fact that
at least 11 Australians sit in Indonesian jail
cells awaiting drug charges or trial is nothing
more than coincidence, suggests Sugiarto.
Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was
much more blunt and to the point. Commenting on
the number of Australians still being caught on
drug charges throughout Asia he said, "Look, the
Schapelle Corby case, if you had missed it you'd
have to have been a hermit."
He has a
point. Signs scattered throughout Bali's
international airport warn: "Death penalty for
drug traffickers."
Beauty therapy student,
Schapelle Leigh Corby, dubbed by Indonesian media
as "the marijuana queen", is serving 20 years for
drugs smuggling after being caught at Bali airport
with 4.1 kilograms of marijuana in her boogie
board bag. A week before her arrest, a 32-year-old
Indonesian woman was executed by firing squad for
drug smuggling.
State prosecutors have
already stated they will seek the firing squad for
the "Bali Nine" who were caught with heroin taped
to their bodies, trying to smuggle it out of
Indonesia back to Australia, in true "Midnight
Express" style.
Australian ambassador
David Ritchie has been moved to send an e-mail
warning to 3,000 of his fellow citizens. "I am
writing to all Australians registered in Indonesia
to urge you not to take chances: purchasing,
carrying or taking any drugs into Indonesia is
simply not worth the risk. Australians do get
caught and the strict penalties in place, which
include the death penalty, do apply to
foreigners."
Yet still they come. The case
of 24-year-old Australian model Michelle Leslie,
arrested last week in Bali over possession of two
ecstasy pills, has now grabbed the headlines.
Leslie, dubbed "Miss Beautiful" by local media,
models underwear, swimwear and other clothes, and
last year appeared in little more than body paint
at a modeling assignment. In a bizarre twist she
appeared in a Bali court on Monday wearing a
burkah, a Muslim dress that covers the
whole face and body. Asked if his client was
officially a Muslim, her Australian lawyer Ross
Hill replied, "Yes, she's Muslim." She faces a
15-year jail term.
The majority of the 400
prisoners in Bali's disease-infested Kerobokan
prison, where the smiling bomber Amrozi and two of
his co-conspirators are on death row, and where
the Australians are held, are drug offenders.
There are 16 foreign inmates. One of them,
Frenchman Michael Blanc, who also denied
responsibility for drugs that were found in his
luggage in 2000, is serving a life sentence.
A deadly scourge About 3.2
million Indonesians are drug users and an
estimated 78% of those are in their 20s. More than
15,000 deaths every year are attributed to drug
abuse. Drugs are readily available in all major
urban areas, including schools, karaoke lounges,
bars, cafes, discotheques, nightclubs and even in
remote villages. Drug counselors cite peer
pressure, poor enforcement and lack of treatment
facilities as among the key factors contributing
to the rise of the drug menace.
The
designer drug ecstasy is generally thought to be
the "gateway" to the harder drugs. Addicts abuse
ganja and heroine, shabu-shabu (crystal
methylamphetamine), putau (low grade
heroin) and cocaine.
Ecstasy and
shabu-shabu are favorites among the middle-
and upper-class users. Marijuana is the drug of
choice among university students and
intellectuals. For an increasing number of young
people, the drug of choice is putau, which
is cheap, plentiful, but potentially deadly.
Local ecstasy production is expanding
rapidly to meet demand. One factory just outside
metropolitan Jakarta, disguised as an Islamic
school, was churning out more than 250,000 ecstasy
pills a day.
The BKKN is loosely modeled
on the US Drug Enforcement Agency, and has a
specific responsibility for intelligence
networking and the investigation of international
drug syndicates that impact on Indonesia's
counter-narcotics efforts.
The agency was
set up by former president Megawati Sukarnoputri
in 2002 and is part of the national police
establishment. The BKKN says the government's
policy against the drug problem is comprehensive
and multidimensional, covering the aspects of
prevention, eradication of drug abuse and drug
crimes. Schools are among the top targets for
anti-narcotic campaigns.
Head of BKKN
Makbul Padmanagara, a former Jakarta police chief,
complains that his budget of Rp165 billion
(US$16.5 million) for this year is insufficient.
"This is not enough when compared to Malaysia, for
example, which provides an annual budget of Rp300
billion for rehabilitation and therapy," he said.
Waiting for death Law No
22/1997 on narcotics and Law No 5/1997 on
psychotropic substances prescribe a maximum
punishment of death. Former justice minister
Muladi reportedly has called the Indonesian court
system a "judicial killing machine" ready to bring
down the hammer on hard-drug mules. Amnesty
International says it is concerned by Indonesia's
"increasing willingness" to execute criminals,
particularly drug traffickers.
Three
foreigners were executed by firing squad for
smuggling 12.29 kilograms of heroin into the
country in 1994. Indian national Ayodhya Prasad
Chaubey was executed at a golf course on the
outskirts of Medan, North Sumatra, on August 5.
His two accomplices, Thai nationals Saelow
Praseart and Namsong Sirilak, were executed on
October 1.
There are now about 54 people
on death row in Indonesia, including three
militants convicted over the October 12, 2002,
Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people.
Thirty-one of them have been convicted on drug
charges. Twenty foreigners are awaiting execution,
including several Africans. Yudhyono has publicly
stated that no Indonesian president has ever
pardoned a drug criminal.
However, the
death penalty and life imprisonment are not
mandatory. Judges have the discretion to consider
mitigating circumstances and impose a lighter
sentence.
The amount and type of drugs
involved, the age of the defendant and whether the
defendants were tricked or forced into trafficking
(as some of the "Bali Nine' have claimed) may be
taken into account. A convict is allowed to appeal
twice and seek clemency and a case review, a
process that often takes several years.
The real victims The drug
partying may be over for clubbers, for a while at
least, but the war and zero-tolerance policy on
crime seems likely to continue for the foreseeable
future given the president's tough stance on
corruption and his pledges to clean up the police
force and the judiciary.
Indonesia
understandably wants to publicize its hard line on
drug smugglers, but the Australian and Indonesian
media have a somewhat different handle on the
issue. Spotlighting Australian victims in the
local media reinforces a message to Indonesians
that it's the foreigners who are the problem.
Critics complain, however, that the
country's notoriously corrupt courts have failed
to mete out similar harsh justice to members of
the security forces allegedly involved in
narcotics trafficking. There are also complaints
that children of powerful military officers and
politicians are rarely punished, let alone put to
death, for drug offenses.
Police and
military personnel have long been accused of
involvement in the illegal drugs (and gambling and
prostitution) businesses. They are thought to be
in fierce competition with each other. In one
incident in November 2002 eight people were killed
in a drug-related gun-battle between the police
and the military at a barracks in North Sumatra.
The Australian media, on the other hand,
have had a field day with saturation coverage of
young Australians being handcuffed and dragged to
court screaming their innocence. This is all
understandable, perhaps, but the real victims are
the Balinese.
With the Indonesian tourism
industry just beginning to recover from the Bali
bombings, warnings about terrorism continue to
cause a decline in the number of tourists. There
are obvious concerns that random drug testing
could scare tourists away yet again.
Bill Guerin has worked for 19
years in Indonesia as a journalist and editor. He
specializes in business/economic issues and
political analysis related to Indonesia. He has
been a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online
since 2000 and has also been published by the BBC
on East Timor. He can be reached at
softsell@prima.net.id.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing
.)
