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Who speaks for the group?

October 25th, 2008 · No Comments

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Often times, people ask who speaks on behalf of group Y.  Now group Y can anything, such as representatives of a nation, religion, city, minority, etc.  It’s an on-going conflict between people who have different ideas and who has the to say “this is what group Y thinks.”  Why is this relevant?  I’ll get to that in a bit.

Three people convicted in connection with the infamous Bali Bombing of 2002 have been executed.  For reference, here’s an article on the matter:

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/fury-grips-bombers-villages/1355933.aspx


Fury grips bombers’ villages

10/11/2008 11:13:00 AM

Islamic leaders have condemned the Bali bombers in a bid to quell religious tensions after the three militants died together at the hands of elite Indonesian police snipers in Central Java yesterday.Indonesia was last night on high alert for terrorist attacks and mob violence as hundreds of hardline followers gathered in the bombers’ home villages in East and West Java to bury the men responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings.

Authorities fear reprisals as news of the executions reverberates around the archipelago and world, and Australia has warned travellers to reconsider their plans to visit the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

The head of Indonesia’s top Islamic body, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, denounced Amrozi, his brother Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, saying they had not died as martyrs as the three wished.

The head of the organisation, Umar Shihab, told website detik.com, ”To die as a martyr is impossible: people who kill cannot be said to be martyrs unless it is war.

”I think it’s not right. We are not at war.

”We are in peace and what they did, they killed Muslims.”

The three bombers died immediately and opted not to be blindfolded before their execution by firing squad, officials said.

Police were on high alert across Indonesia, particularly at shopping centres and embassies, which have recently been subject to bomb threats.

Hundreds of supporters chanted and tried to break through police lines in Tenggulun, East Java, to get close to the bodies of Amrozi and Mukhlas, which arrived by helicopter before being placed in two ambulances.

Hundreds of heavily armed police could not control the 500-strong crowd which surged around the ambulances.

Clashes broke out and the police were driven off the road amid shouts of ”Jihad!” and ”Get out!”

Similar scenes greeted the arrival, in the West Java town of Serang, of Imam Samudra’s body as it was paraded through the streets between his local mosque and graveyard, shrouded in a black cloth bearing a Koranic inscription in Arabic.

Members of a radical group headed by hardline cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiah, who was jailed on a conspiracy charge related to the bombings before being released, pushed people aside to make way for the body.

Westerners in both villages were abused as ”infidels” and told to leave.

Earlier, as the bombers were taken from their isolation cells where they had lived for the past three years and been held under special conditions for the past week, they shouted ”Allahu Akbar!” or ”God is Great!”

Heavy storms cleared as the men were handcuffed and placed in separate trucks for the 6km journey to their execution site, an orange plantation in a disused prison on Nusakambanan Island, known as Indonesia’s Alcatraz, off Central Java. It is not yet known what their last words were as they were chained to separate 2m-tall poles, several metres from each other, and a doctor placed a marker over the exact position of their hearts.

Then groups of 12 specially trained police snipers lined up facing each of them. After receiving the final order from their commander, they simultaneously peppered the bodies with 5.6mm bullets.

Only one sniper in each group had a live bullet, a spokesman for the Indonesian Attorney-General’s Office, Jasman Pandjaitan, said.

The three condemned men did not put up a fight before their executions, he said.

”They were very cooperative,” Jasmine said of the convicted terrorists.

”They died immediately, a few moments after they were shot.”

The men had asked not to be blindfolded but did not give a reason for the request, he said.

Prosecutors informed the men last Wednesday about their impending date with the death squad, and they were moved into complete isolation on Friday.

”The three of them were asked if they had anything to convey: they didn’t convey any message,” Mr Jasman said.

After the three were pronounced dead, their bodies were taken to a health clinic for autopsy, and their bodies prepared for burial, in line with Islamic custom.

A brother of Amrozi and Mukhlas, Ali Fauzi, brought two 20m-long pieces of fabric from his home village in which to wrap his brothers’ bodies. The execution was said to be the most elaborate yet in Indonesia, with up to 1000 mobile brigade police on the island for security purposes.

Reaction was swift across Indonesia, and the world, after the state-sanctioned deaths of the men who killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, when they organised twin bomb attacks at nightclubs in Bali on October 12, 2002.

In Bali and Australia, the news brought relief to some survivors and families of Bali bombing victims but others feared reprisal attacks.

Former Adelaide magistrate Brian Deegan, who lost his son Josh in the bombings, said, yesterday, ”I have [a sense of] trepidation as to what might happen as a result of this.”

AAP, AFP

Reading that article, one might walk away thinking that Indonesia as a whole supports the people who were executed, and the execution might have been done to appease the “West”.  Reading the article carefully, however, revels this little blurb:

The head of Indonesia’s top Islamic body, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, denounced Amrozi, his brother Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, saying they had not died as martyrs as the three wished.

The head of the organisation, Umar Shihab, told website detik.com, ”To die as a martyr is impossible: people who kill cannot be said to be martyrs unless it is war.

”I think it’s not right. We are not at war.

”We are in peace and what they did, they killed Muslims.”

The article also mentions 500 people were there to receive the body.  To put things in context, Indonesia has a population of ~237 million.  Of the ~237 million, 204 million are Muslim.  Also note that these ‘Ulama’ are the religious leaders of Indonesia, and it’s likely they represent the majority of the country.

Now, on to my point.

Here, you have a spokesperson who represents the majority of the population, and issuing a statement (which was stated before and was one of the reasons they were sentences to death), and it gets a little blurb in the article.  While the rest is the article is about how this small group of supporters ran amok with the funural (noting that the government gave strict conditions to allow the families to bury the bodies, and the government was willing to recind that privilage when threats were made).

I find it ironic that some groups are allowed to be branded, while others get a free pass.  No one can deny that Muslims were the responsible parties on 9/11, 3/11, London bombings, etc..  On the same token, other groups can’t deny what was attributed to the group that affected the public at large (Guatamal Contra, Operation Ajax in Iran, Colonial rule in N. Africa, etc.).  Being human means we have a human history, and human history is wrought with very tragic things.

Oh well.

Tags: Rants · Thoughts

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