On April 12, 2011 the Jayapura office of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS Papua) sent a letter to the provincial police chief, asking for documents relating to the security assistance the police were providing to Freeport, the copper and gold mining company recently plagued by worker unrest and fatal shootings of its employees.
KontraS Papua wanted to know the nature of the assistance and the amount
the company contributed monthly to the police for their security
operations in the Freeport mining area.
In a letter dated April
19, 2011, the Papua Police replied that 635 security personnel,
including 160 Army (TNI) troops, had been deployed in four-month shifts.
Assistance covered escort security, patrols and the safeguarding of
facilities.
The company contributed a monthly stipend of Rp 1.25
million (US$139)for each member of the security task force. The letter
attached a list of the assigned personnel.
The letter exchange
was an exercise KontraS undertook to test access to information in
public institutions under the 2008 Transparency of Public Information
Act, Indonesia’s Freedom of Information (FOI) Law, which only entered
into effect on May 1, 2010.
KontraS conducted this test in seven
provinces over a three-month period from March to May 2011. It issued
115 information requests, which were all addressed to the police.
A
major consideration in testing the police’s response was that they were
an early advocate of the FOI law. On June 18, 2010, the chief of the
National Police issued a 34-article set of regulations, called Perkap
No. 16/2010, on how the police should provide public information.
Despite
its stated support for information transparency, the police did not
meet the expectations of KontraS. Of the 115 information requests sent
out, 69 or 60 percent were not heeded. This mute refusal is a serious
violation of the basic right to public information, KontraS deputy
coordinator Indria Fernida told a discussion on public information
access hosted by the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) earlier
this month. Only 28 requests (24.3 percent) were responded to in full.
Meanwhile,
in the same forum, Tempo Magazine’s Semarang correspondent Muhammad
Rofiuddin described how he was “ping-ponged” from one desk to the next
in his search for information on the use of excise taxes collected from
cigarette sales in the Central Java regency of Kudus, the center of
small and large clove cigarette makers.
Rofiuddin said he
followed the procedures as stipulated in the 2008 law but was denied
access to the information he sought, even though the Kudus regent said
in an interview he would fulfill Rofiuddin’s request.
Having
failed to obtain the information “through the front door” as he put it,
Rofiuddin got the information from an official who was not on good terms
with the regent.
In Jakarta, parliamentary reporter Kusti’ah of
Jurnalparlemen.com sought the line item list of budget implementation
(DIPA) of the Regional Representatives Council (DPD). She got the cold
shoulder from low-level bureaucrats. But after writing to the
secretary-general of the DPD, she got her requested data in four days.
Rofiuddn
and Kusti’ah recount their trials in getting public documents in a
newly released AJI book on the experience of nine journalists who have
requested public information. Menggedor Pintu, Mendobrak Sekat Informasi
(Knocking on the Door, Breaking Down the Information Screen) brings to
light, through a number of actual cases, several reasons why the
Transparency of Public Information Act is not working.
The
bureaucracy in public offices is not fully prepared for transparency.
The culture of non-openness remains prevalent, AJI Indonesia
secretary-general Suwarjono writes in the book’s preface.
The
access to information law has not yet developed into full work mode.
However, the dedication of activists and hard-nosed journalists like
Rofiuddin and Kusti’ah to constantly test information access in public
offices should not falter.
The right to public information is a
constitutional right. Article 28F of Indonesia’s amended 1945
Constitution emphatically states every person has the right to seek,
obtain, own, store, process and deliver information using all manner of
channels available.
Warief Djajanto Basorie
The writer teaches journalism at Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (LPDS), Jakarta.