Authority and law enforcement: local government reforms and security systems in Indonesia.

• Author: Kristiansen, Stein

Introduction

Since 2001, Indonesia has undergone wide-ranging decentralization. Political power and administrative responsibility have been transferred from the central government to the district level. District authorities now have the political mandate to issue decrees and regulations and full responsibility for the public management of sectors such as education, health care, public works, culture and the environment. The devolution process follows the economic crisis which began in 1997, the fall of the authoritarian regime of president Suharto in 1998, and the implementation of free and democratic elections in 1999.

There is a long tradition of people and groups taking the law into their own hands in Indonesia. However, there has been an increase in horizontal violence after the change of political leadership and structures in 1998/99. Theft and destruction of private property has become common and large numbers of ordinary people in many parts of the country have been threatened or suffered from physical violence or been tortured and even executed by their peers. Nationwide, several hundred people have been killed every year by angry mobs in incidents of street vigilantism (Kompos, 25 September 2001). Much of the horizontal violence observed over the last few years is related to the economic crisis and unemployment, combined with the weakening of central state institutions, including the police. Lasting problems of horizontal violence are also often associated with ethnicity, as in Solo, Mataram and Medan, and religion, as in the Moluccas and Central Sulawesi. The police force has not been decentralized. After being separated from the military in 1999, the national police has been administratively placed directly under the authority of the president, with some responsibilities still delegated to the provincial governors. The decentralization laws and regulations do not delineate specific roles for the police and security matters at the district level. This means that the delegation of huge responsibilities to the districts is not formally backed up by law enforcement power. Instead, we see an alarming development of local security forces and paramilitary groups controlled by district authorities. These security forces can hardly be interpreted as anything but an instrument to create legitimacy by force, instead of by popular support or democratic procedure, for local government policies.

The main objective of this article is to trace the impact of decentralization reforms on law enforcement and security systems at the district level. Four administrative regions which have different experiences in security problems and organizing paramilitary groups were selected for study. Two questions are raised: have decentralization reforms strengthened the tendencies to escalating disorder and crime rates in Indonesian society? What are the impacts of formally separating law-making and -enforcing systems in the decentralization reforms? The methodology used is mostly qualitative, based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. In addition, we raised questions regarding security problems and systems in a survey that included more than 500 households in the four districts.

This article is organized as follows: the introduction is followed by an overview of the history of criminality, law enforcement and security systems in Indonesia. The introduction of the new decentralization laws and their implementation since 2001 are then discussed. Methodology and research areas are presented in section four and our empirical findings are discussed in section five. A conclusion and policy recommendations are given at the end of the article.

Historical Overview

Informally organized security systems have long existed in Indonesia. It was not until 1900 that reasonably standardized police forces appeared within the Dutch colony. Till then, most of the non-European quarters of the colony's cities and towns were "policed" by volunteer neighbourhood watches, known as rondo, who routinely treated suspected thieves, burglars, and other undesirables with vigilante violence (Anderson 2001, p. 10). Other terms used for local security groups are hansip, linmas, and satgas, with some differences in their associations, mandates and functions. Some are related to the military, while others are controlled by the police or government bureaucracy. Hansip, previously under the Ministry of Home Affairs, have been dissolved in most regions, and former members now join district paramilitary troops, political parties' satgas, or private security groups.

The Indonesian police force developed rapidly after independence in 1949 and when it was reorganized as a national institution in the late 1950s, it was probably the world's largest police force. The emergence of authoritarian governments in the 1960s shifted the orientation of the police from maintaining law and order into internal security affairs and the protection of government interests, in close collaboration with the military. Formal authority over the police changed in 1967 from the president to the minister of defence when the national police (POLRI, Polisi Republik Indonesia) formally became a part of the armed forces and subject to military law. A paramilitary arm of the police (Brimob, Brigade Mobil Polri), which was especially equipped and trained for crowd and riot control, was strengthened and many national police leaders were recruited from that division. By 1998, the image of the police was probably at its lowest ebb in Indonesia's history (ICG 2001). The police were separated from the military again in 1999 and thereby lost much of its intelligence capability and restraining power.

Local security systems on the other hand have not lost their role and credibility. Rather, with a weakening police institution, their scale and scope of operations have increased. Siegel (1986) found that the neighbourhood sense of "community" is actually expressed through a shared concern with security more than through ties of kinship or shared economic interests. There are also traditions of self-justice (main hakim sendiri) or lynch law at the level of gangs or communities, as documented by Barker. In the absence of recognized legal and other classifications, the distinction between youth militias and roving gangs has been difficult to draw. This was also true historically, as has been pointed out by Stoler (1988) in her study of the lasykar militias in North Sumatra during the freedom struggle in 1945-49 and Cribb (1991) in similar studies in the Jakarta area. There are still many examples of rivalry between the police, the military, groups of criminals, and territorial security groups, and subsequently, parallel systems of jurisdiction and law enforcement.

Increasingly in the early 1980s. many security groups were also active in the "security business", such as bodyguard rentals and debt collection. One phenomenon of the 1980s also improved gang organization and their "supra-local realm" (Barker 2001, p. 24). The toughs, or preman, were integrated elements in the comprehensive systems of violence and corruption under the Suharto regime. Preman are dominated by young males, mostly organized in groups (preman pemuda), and engaged in activities with elements of criminality. There were often close connections to government institutions, such as the government party, Golkar, in the case of Pemuda Pancasila, and to the Minister of Youth Affairs in the case of KNPI, Komite Nasional Pemuda Indonesia. A wave of violent crime actually peaked in the early 1980s, following economic recession and liberalization policies from 1982/83. The economic downturn created problems of mass poverty and unemployment, and reduced government subsidies sparked social protest and violence. Ordinary people increasingly complained that criminality was out of control. The New Order regime was not oblivious to the growing social anxieties about crime at that time (Kusumah 1988). Thousands of preman were liquidated during the period of Petrus, an organized campaign for killing criminals that started in earnest in Yogyakarta in 1983. The objective was "cleansing the criminal cancer" (Bourchier 1990, p. 185). Petrus (pembunuhan misterius, "mysterious killings") was characterized by paramilitary operatives with close bonds to the military, the police, and even directly to the president (van der Kroef 1985; Pemberton 1999). Petrus indicated a watershed, according to Barker (2001, p. 51), as "it marked the point at which territorial power became deterritorialized from the figure of the jawara (criminal groups) and reterretorialized within the state and its fraternities".

Following Petrus, the government's policy was to limit the economic and territorial bases for the gangs and informal security groups. Street-level preman increasingly were controlled and protected by state officials through a system known as bekking ("backing"). Rival criminal gang structures linked political and business elites through the police and the military to the still existing preman. Sometimes these gangs mutated into private armies or militias linked to political and business leaders. The bekking system gave the preman state protection while also forcing them to pay their own dues. Having extracted their rents from business people and other citizens, they in turn paid rents to government representatives, usually members of the military or police, in return for the right to operate (Lindsey 2001). The national militant youth organization Pemuda Pancasila clearly played a central role in the bekking system, in close cooperation with the military (Ryter 2001). Also in the 1980s, the government reformed the traditional ronda system to become more efficient and falling under the supervision and control of the national police.

The new police-controlled ronda system, called siskamling (sistem keamananan linkungan, neighbourhood security...