Ministry sets up task force on campus radicalisation

A new joint task force has been set by Indonesia’s Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education and the country’s National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) to develop guidelines to combat Islamic radicalism which appears to be gaining wider support on campuses.

The task force would also set up procedures to ‘monitor and counter’ emerging radical thinking and behaviour among university students and lecturers. Although the exact role of the BNPT was not made clear, officials said the agency and universities needed to exchange intelligence.

The announcement came after the ministry on 25 June summoned 122 heads of state universities and representatives of a government agency supervising private universities. Suhardi Alius, BNPT chief, and Haryomo Dwi Putranto, deputy of personnel management of the National Civil Service Agency, also joined the closed-door meeting.

Indonesia’s Higher Education Mnister Mohamad Nasir expressed optimism that Indonesian universities could become “a bulwark against the spread of radicalism”.

This is despite a view expressed by Nasir that the numbers exposed to radicalism on campuses is minor. “Currently we have more than seven million students, 200,000 lecturers and hundreds of thousands of higher educational staff throughout Indonesia. Radicalism is starting to infiltrate the campus, but the number is very small, a miniscule percentage of the total civitas academia,” the minister said in a statement on the meeting obtained by University World News.

The meeting itself was in response to public concerns after the BNPT in early May said its confidential research had shown seven universities, including Indonesia’s top university, Universitas Indonesia (UI), are exposed to radicalism.

They also include Bandung Institute of Technology, Airlangga University, Bogor Agricultural University, Diponegoro University, Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember and University of Brawijaya, according to the agency. It also said in its report that almost every state university in Java and Sulawesi has been exposed to radicalism, with science and medical sciences students the most likely to be exposed.

Definition of radical

However, the BNPT research has been called into question because of the secrecy surrounding how the information was gathered, sparking debate among academics and civil society groups.

UI international relations lecturer Ali Abdullah Wibisono, an expert on responses to terrorism, said much was unclear about the BNPT’s report. “The definition of radical itself raised questions. Does radical mean only [adherence to an] ideology or involvement in an act of terror?”

Other terrorism experts say exposure to extremist teachings did not necessarily lead to membership of a radical group or that students were likely to become involved in terrorist acts.

UI has already said it will take firm action if students or lecturers are found to be involved in radicalism or are members of banned Islamic organisations such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia.

Rifelly Dewi Astuti, UI’s head of public relations, told local media in early June that the university routinely monitors activities on campus and runs radicalism prevention schemes, beginning with the orientation of new students. But UI Rector Muhammad Anis has acknowledged that universities did not have the skills to identify radical movements or detect how they spread their ideology.

Suicide-bombing attacks

The government stepped up action to curb campus radicalisation in the wake of the suicide-bombing attacks targeting Christian Churches in the country’s second-largest city Surabaya, East Java, on 13 May, and in Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province in Sumatra, on 16 May. The attacks, which killed over 14, were the most deadly Islamic terrorist attacks in Indonesia since 2005 in Bali.

The issue of university recruitment by radical groups was heightened when three suspected terrorists were arrested on 2 June at the state University of Riau in Pekanbaru by the national police’s elite counter-terrorism unit known as Densus 88. All three suspects were alumni of the university.

Police also said they had discovered two pipe bombs on the campus, allegedly to be used to target the Regional People's Representative Assembly, the local parliament in Riau, and the national parliament in Jakarta.

However, even before the May attacks, an Indonesian State Intelligence Agency study this year reiterated that radical Islamic groups were targeting universities for new recruits to their cause. The intelligence agency’s head, Budi Gunawan, said in early May that it was closely monitoring three universities thought to be at risk of becoming a base for radical groups.

The intelligence agency, in a survey conducted in 2017 but released only in April this year, suggested an estimated 39% of university students have been exposed to radical groups, with 15 provinces classified as “high risk” for students being targeted by such groups.

Campus radicalism is not new, UI’s Ali told University World News. Hizbut Tahrir, the political movement originating from Palestine whose basic tenet is to set up an Islamic caliphate, began to be active in Indonesia in 1983 as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI). It organised seminars and training on campuses.

GP Ansor, the youth organisation of Nahdlatul Ulama – Indonesia’s biggest Islamic organisation – began to openly express concern last year, saying HTI was a threat to Indonesia’s state ideology of Pancasila. The Ministry of Law and Human Rights finally revoked HTI’s organisation licence on 19 July 2017.

Stepped up monitoring

In the wake of the arrest of suspects at Riau University, the university and other universities imposed strict measures on campus activities.

The University of North Sumatra in Riau’s neighbouring province imposed a ban on campus activities after 10pm “to anticipate anything related to radicalism”, Runtung Sitepu, the university’s rector, announced on 4 June. A similar curfew was announced at Hasanuddin University in Makassar, capital of South Sulawesi province.

Nasir told local media his ministry would monitor social media on campuses in collaboration with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

“We record data of lecturers and students as well. We keep a record of their cellular phones and track their social media presence,” he was quoted by Indonesia’s national news agency Antara as saying on 4 June. He insisted however that the ministry was not invading students’ privacy or restricting academic activities.

New students would be asked to register their social media accounts at their universities, the ministry has said. The ministry will also conduct thorough background checks in collaboration with anti-corruption agencies on university rector candidates to prevent the development of radical sympathies on campuses, Nasir said in early June.

This drew objections such as from Professor Firmanzah, rector of Paramadina University, who said “the minister should review the plan”, which would harm freedom of speech on campus and added that there were more effective ways to prevent radicalisation, such as community service for students.

Lecturers dismissed

Even before Nasir’s June remarks, social media monitoring was a key tool. In May this year, Dr Suteki, a law professor who headed the master of law programme at Diponegoro University, a public university in Semarang, Central Java, and who taught the principles of Pancasila for more than two decades, was dismissed from his position following an ethics code probe after it was alleged he expressed support for HTI on social media. He has denied any allegiance to HTI.

A dean and three lecturers at the Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember, a public university in Surabaya, were also dismissed, allegedly on the same grounds. If proven to have violated the code, disciplinary punishment – from promotion postponement, dismissal from office to dishonourable discharge – will be imposed.

Alamsyah Djafar, a researcher at the Wahid Foundation, which conducted a study on Islamic radicalisation published last year, told University World News it was more important to reduce the level of hatred. “No more hate speech. Discrimination on campus should immediately be handled by the university because almost all radical acts start from intolerance,” he said.

A 2016 Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace survey revealed that 35.7% of the students surveyed showed a tendency to intolerance, 2.4% were involved in acts of intolerance, and 0.3% had the potential to become terrorists. The survey was based on 760 respondents who enrolled in public high schools in Jakarta and Bandung, West Java.

University World News Asia Editor Yojana Sharma contributed to this article.