Today is Indonesia’s National Book Day! To celebrate, the KRL Commuterline is giving away free books. Meanwhile, the Director of the National Library is more than happy to support the censorship of books that make certain government officials uncomfortable, in light of the country’s latest “communist panic”.
In addition to cracking down on t-shirts that contain “communist symbolism”, there have also been numerous reports that the government has been confiscating books relating to communism and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) from various bookstores. However, Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said that the enforcement of the 1966 laws criminalizing the propagation of communism must respect press freedom and academic freedom and that the government would not overreact by doing raids or sweeps on books related to leftist ideology.
But apparently not everybody in the government got that memo. The director of National Library, Dedi Junaidi, told the press yesterday that he fully supported the censorship of leftist books.
“I agree. Because the presence of leftist books has become troubling. In the New Order era, these books were banned for distribution. To read them, you needed legal permission,” Dedi told Tempo after a press conference at the National Library Auditorium yesterday.
Now that we’re no longer in the good old days of the New Order, and just about anybody can read any book they want without the government’s explicit permission, Dedi said he supported the military and police doing raids to find books with any hints of leftist ideology.
“Especially for the good of our children. Such books are not in accordance with Pancasila,” Dedi said.
In many other countries such as the United States and Australia, librarians are champions of free speech who fight against government censorship. Apparently, in Indonesia, not so much.
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