The International Crisis Group (ICG) has produced a series of recommendations for the National Anti-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) in facing the shift in violent extremism in Indonesia.
The ICG gave six points of recommendations for the BNPT. The first was to start working immediately on designing prevention programs.
This includes a recommendation to hire a small research team to comb through the trial dossiers of all extremists that have been arrested to date, making a database of mosques, schools and other institutions that have repeatedly hosted lectures, meetings and study groups involving individuals subsequently arrested for terrorism.
“From these, identify five or six communities for pilot prevention projects,” The Brussels-based group said, adding that the result of the research should be shared with large social organizations such as Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama.
The group also recommended that the BNPT make videos of repentant teenagers who have been arrested for terrorism and who can talk on camera about the shame they have caused their families and where they went wrong. The teenagers are to be interviewed with disguised identities.
“Interviews with family members, also with disguised identities, about problems caused by their children's arrests would also be useful. These videos should be tested on teenage audiences before being screened more widely among the target areas,” the ICG added.
