JAKARTA, KalderaNews.com – How can the WINNER conference support the issue of academic freedom in Indonesia? Panellist Herlambang Wiratraman hopes to get Dutch support for promoting and strengthening academic freedom in Indonesia. For instance: ‘Data protection doesn’t protect citizens or researchers. I hope that Dutch academics will speak out, share their experiences, and even the Dutch government need to reconsider their research cooperations that don’t live up to fundamental freedoms.’
When he witnessed Leiden law students challenge the dean and debate the faculty on sensitive topics like the extreme right politician Geert Wilders, Herlambang Wiratraman (Indonesian Caucus for Academic Freedom and assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, Universitas Gadjah Mada) was excited. ‘That’s why Leiden University is really ‘Praesidium Libertatis’, a ‘stronghold of freedom’. This would never happen in Indonesia, students challenging a dean. At least not without retaliation.’
Not many dare to speak out
‘Of course academic freedom is not absolute’, explains the legal scholar Wiratraman. ‘But rights must always be limited on the basis of legal arguments. Proportionality for instance. You cannot curb academic freedom because you don’t like the research results.’ The practice Wiratraman witnesses in Indonesia differs a lot from that theory. ‘When an academic has an opinion on the current government, he or she is targeted by government officials and even law enforcement. You can be interrogated, fined, or even put in jail for venting a dissenting opinion.’
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