Police, Immigration at Odds Over JIS Deportations as Assault Claim Made Against Teacher

Jakarta Globe, Benjamin Soloway & Arientha Primanita, Jun 06, 2014

Jakarta International School. (JG Photo/ Yudhi Sukma Wijaya)

Jakarta. A split emerged between the police and the border agency on Friday over the beleaguered Jakarta International School after police said that the immigration office’s attempt to deport 20 of the school’s teachers could stand in the way of an investigation.

Police efforts took on a new degree of urgency Friday after a student’s parents filed a sexual assault complaint against a teacher.

“There has been a new report filed by the parents of a JIS student; they reported a sexual assault suffered by their child, allegedly committed by a JIS teacher,” Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Cmr. Rikwanto said on Friday. “We will be disclosing [more] information if and when we have strong evidence.”

As police continued to investigate allegations of child abuse at Jakarta International School, immigration officials said they would deport 20 of the school’s foreign kindergarten teachers over visa technicalities.

The teachers would be sent from the country “probably after the school year is over in June,” Justice and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsuddin told Tempo on Thursday.

The bureaucratic crackdown came after two six-year-old students came forward in April alleging abuse the preceding month at the hands of employees of contracting service ISS, and at midnight on Wednesday a potential third victim filed a police report, accusing an unnamed teacher.

Rikwanto said that police had submitted a letter to the immigration office asking that the deportations be postponed because they could compromise the ongoing investigation. No JIS employees have been named suspects in any of the cases.

Police in April detained six suspects, all ISS employees, one of whom killed himself in custody under murky circumstances.

The Ministry of Education in April said it would close the entire early-childhood education program, which includes the kindergarten, over a permit issue.

JIS Principal Tim Carr said the institution was doing everything in its power to resolve immigration and licensing discrepancies and to cooperate with the police investigation.

The case caused a stir in the local and international media far beyond the usual attention school sexual assault scandals draw in Indonesia, driven in part by the perceived exclusivity of the institution involved and the fact that it educates many non-Indonesian children.

“Any Westerners and foreigners in general here, you shouldn’t feel attacked by this, that you are hated,” child psychologist Seto Mulyadi said. “Psychologically, it’s simply that a prestigious institution has experienced a negative incident.”

The immigration office said the teachers to be deported were licensed as elementary school teachers, not early childhood educators — the same explanation education regulators gave for their decision to close the kindergarden, which was licensed as an elementary school.

Indonesia Corruption Watch public services advocate Febri Hendri told the Jakarta Globe that such permit irregularities were commonplace.

“Many of them are [unlicensed], not only in kindergartens or primary schools,” he said. “Most of the cases are of institutions that only have licenses for some of their learning groups, like in JIS, where they do have a license for the primary through high schools, but not for the kindergarten.”

He said that licensing rules were a bureaucratic jumble that schools had difficulty navigating.

“The government, in this case the Ministry of Education, is actually responsible for this,” he said. “The ministry is supposed to supervise the legal affairs of these institutions. They should’ve opened an information system that enables people to check schools’ statuses and licenses.”

But education officials said the school was to blame for the discrepancies revealed by unusually high levels of scrutiny in wake of the scandal.

“In their permits, it was stated they were elementary school teachers while they are working for the kindergarten,” South Jakarta immigration office official Arya P. Anggakara told Tempo.

The immigration office did not respond to question from the Jakarta Globe over whether the school had been singled out.

Deputy Minister of Education and Culture Musliar Kasim said he supported the slated deportations.

“If they violated the regulations, the Education and Culture ministry supports the deportation,” he told the state-run Antara news agency.

Indonesia Child Protection Commission (KPAI) commissioner Susanto said that JIS head Tim Carr should be held responsible for the permit violations.

“The principal must know all about the recruitment process as well as the permits,” he said.

JIS has remained tight lipped, just as it did in the early days after the scandal.

“Please be informed that we have work and will continue to cooperate with the Immigration,” JIS spokeswoman Daniarti Wusono said in an email to the Jakarta Globe. “With regard to the permitting issue, we are committed to fully cooperate with the Ministry of Education and are currently conducting an intensive communication with the ministry to ensure that our school can be re-opened.”

She did not respond to repeated phone calls and requests for further comment.

She told Tempo that the permitting problems were “accidental errors.”

Bayu Marhaenjati contributed reporting

Related Article:

Police Request Travel Bans for 4 JIS Teachers After KPAI Assault Allegation