Last bastion of free speech under threat

Last bastion of free speech under threat

By James Balowski

Anyone who has taken a taxi in Indonesia will tell you that taxi drivers are an endless source of information and the latest political gossip, and are a general "barometer" of public sentiment.

This last "bastion of free expression" in Indonesia is now under threat. On April 17, the independent news service SiaR reported that the Jakarta Blue Bird taxi service is now employing a large number of army intelligence agents as drivers.

One Blue Bird driver told SiaR, "be careful if you speak in a taxi". He explained that the special drivers' job is to draw passengers into conversation and, if they express any anti-government views, take them to the police.

SiaR reported that one NGO activist who used a taxi was constantly pestered by the driver asking what they thought about the issue of East Timor. Another passenger who talked "too passionately" against Suharto was driven straight to the central Jakarta police headquarters, where they were interrogated and detained overnight.

From GLW issue 315