The Education and Culture Ministry has actually been roundly criticized by academics and teachers for releasing a letter on Friday contacting university students not to take part in protests against the freshly passed Task Creation Law.
The Association for Education and Educators (P2G) told the ministry that it need to not be “allergic” to criticism versus the controversial law.
” The ministry created the Merdeka Belajar [Freedom to Learn] and Kampus Merdeka [Independent Campus] programs and promoted them across the nation. The letter is a form of intervention that robs [university] schools of their self-reliance,” P2G coordinator Satriwan Salim stated in a composed declaration on Sunday.
” Universities must be a place that prepares the younger generations to become intellectuals who can stand along with society and relate to employees, native individuals, environmental activists and other individuals severely impacted by the law […] The classroom for college student is society itself.”
He added that trainee demonstrations embodied the public’s goals and its perception of the government, and the ministry should reveal its appreciation to those who criticized the federal government, as that was “the responsibility of intellectuals”.
The Alliance of Academics Turning Down the Omnibus Law, a group including 400 speakers nationwide, implicated the ministry of attempting to silence scholars slamming the contentious law and required that it retract the letter.
” The extremely proposition that scholars and academics should not participate in demonstrations against the Task Development Law is a method of limiting our freedom of speech and academic rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” alliance representative Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir, who is also a lecturer at the State University of Jakarta, stated in a declaration on Friday.
The alliance argued that college organizations only had an obligation to the fact, not to the authorities, and hence need to be free from political intervention.
” Informing speakers not to encourage their trainees to join rallies is a kind of political intervention against the speakers’ independence. Telling trainees not to join rallies also disregards trainees’ independence in responding versus injustices and abuse of power,” Abdil added.
In the letter, Education and Culture Ministry college director general Nizam appealed to university students not to participate in any protest that could threaten the students’ health and wellness during the continuous COVID-19 outbreak.
He likewise recommended that they “conduct scholastic research study rather than rally” as it was considered a better and more “classy” method of protesting the law.
