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Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab has maintained his innocence over allegations that he had attempted to trigger public unrest with his claim that the new Indonesian rupiah banknotes were emblazoned with communist symbols.

Rizieq fulfilled the Jakarta Polices summons on Monday for questioning regarding his recent statement that the newly released banknotes featured a hammer and sickle, the logo of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), an ideology banned in the Muslim-majority country.

Speaking to journalists after the questioning, the firebrand Islamic teacher said he had brought several new rupiah banknotes, ranging from Rp 1,000 to Rp 100,000 bills, and showed investigators that all of the bills contained a hammer and sickle logo.

I was summoned for questioning on that matter. I told investigators that I did not accuse [the new rupiah banknotes of containing a hammer and sickle logo]. I proved it, giving them all the bills so they could see it for themselves.

Mass organization Jaringan Intelektual Muda Anti-Fitnah (Young Intellectuals Anti-Slander Network, or Jimaf) reported Rizieq to the police, saying that the FPI leaders claim constituted hate speech as it was baseless and could provoke public unrest.

Bank Indonesia Governor Agus Martowardojo earlier rebuffed Rizieqs claim, saying that the logo in question was actually the central banks logo, which was printed in such a way as an anti-counterfeit strategy.

Mondays questioning was overshadowed by a rally from FPI members and sympathizers in front of the police headquarters to protest Rizieqs questioning, which they claim is an attempt to criminalize ulema (Islamic scholars). (ebf)

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FPI leader denies allegations of provoking public unrest with communism symbol claim - Jakarta Post

PARIS: Geopolitics made a rare foray on the Paris catwalks on Sunday when the upstart Chinese brand Sankuanz said the world must wake up to the reversal of the old order.

Rising star Shangguan Zhes collection Destroy included clothes, often made from bio-chemical protection suits, emblazoned with charged slogans such as Immigrant, Natural Selection and most controversially of all, Communism Never Happened. The designer, whose rebel spirit has won him a growing following, said in a week when Donald Trump has become US president he was asking people to take their goggles off and look outside of political correctness and politics at the reversal of an established system. I am not a fighter... I am just telling the world as it is right now, he said.

On his slogan Communism Never Happened, which appeared on the back of two of his coats, he said: It is not really a slogan, it is just my observation. As a young Chinese person this is true for me. China is not communist now, it wasnt when I was growing up, and I dont think it ever was, Zhe added.

With tension high between Washington and Beijing over Trumps attitude to Taiwan and fears of a trade war, he said the only hope, the only opportunity to change this situation lies in rational creations by mankind like chemistry.

Raw-edged military uniforms, jumpsuits and outfits made from Dayglo and synthetic DuPont material dominated his show which he said hinted at a post-apocalyptic world.

Published in Dawn January 23rd, 2017

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'Communism never happened' - DAWN.com

This year is the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The man who orchestrated it died 93 years ago, on 21 January 1924. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ushered into the world one of the most brutal dictatorship it has ever seen in the Soviet Union, writes Joachim Starbatty.

German Liberal-Conservative Reformists MEP Joachim Starbatty is affiliated with the European Conservatives and Reformists group [ECR]. Starbatty is a professor emeritus of economics at Tbingen University.

This year is the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The man who orchestrated it died 93 years ago, on 21 January 1924. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, ushered into the world one of the most brutal dictatorships it has ever seen, in the Soviet Union. Aided by the Soviets numerous other Communists rose to power, with similarly dire effects for their people; in North Korea and Cuba some still reign. Not just because the ideology continues to claim lives, but because many millennials hold a sympathy for communism borne of ignorance, it is vital we remember its grim reality.

One of the fundamental problems of communism came from the core of its ideology; the belief that capitalists served no meaningful task. The reality is that the investments made by capitalists, chosen with care given they have their own money on the line, serve to drive competition, innovation and progress. Without investors innovative firms like Apple or Microsoft would never get off the ground, the variety of goods and services would remain minimal, and the economy would remain stagnant. In communist societies, this is exactly what happened.

It is true that communist nations generally industrialised, but many had begun their industrialisation before communist parties took power; Russia was the 4th greatest industrial power in 1914. Moreover, communist nations were copying an achievement already made; where the West had to invent the tools of industry, the communists merely had to plagiarise them. The greatest caveat is in how industrialisation was achieved. Where the Soviet system paid for its centrally planned industrialisation with blood, famine and poverty that consumed millions of lives, the western liberal model based in property rights, free enterprise and the rule of law had seen industrialisation paired immense reductions in poverty and child mortality with previously unimaginable prosperity.

So, then, communism brought with it oppression, suffering and poverty, without exception. That some celebrate it despite the impoverishment it has brought entire peoples, the ruin it has wrought on nations, and the millions slaughtered, is a testament to a stunning lack of knowledge. If the West is to remain prosperous, free and democratic, the horrors of communism must be remembered.

This year, the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe will focus on the dark legacy of the communist system, and the divergent developments of post-communist states.

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Lenin: Father of the Bolshevik Revolution - EurActiv

JAKARTA Indonesian police on Monday questioned a hardline Muslim cleric over a hate speech complaint by a civil group following a lecture in which he said new banknotes carried the communist hammer-and-sickle symbol.

Communism remains a highly sensitive issue in Indonesia after bloody anti-communist purges in the country in 1965 and symbols and some literature remain outlawed.

Habib Rizieq, head of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), is being investigated over two separate complaints, as authorities take a tougher stance against fundamentalist groups in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.

Rizieq made the comments about the banknotes in a videotaped lecture last month.

"This is already a formal investigation," said Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono. "We are looking looking further into his comments on whether the money has the hammer-and-sickle symbol."

The central bank has denied the new banknotes carry any communist symbols.

"What's being seen by some people as a hammer and sickle symbol is actually the Bank Indonesia logo...and it is part of the security elements in the notes to prevent counterfeiting," Bank Indonesia said in a statement this month.

Last week, Rizieq was questioned by police over claims that he made defamatory comments in 2014 about one of Indonesia's founding fathers, Sukarno, and had questioned the legitimacy of the state ideology, Pancasila.

If found guilty, he could face up to four years in prison.

The cleric has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

Rizieq's supporters condemned the investigation of the complaints as indicating the "criminalization" of their leader.

"This is systematic tyranny against Habib Rizieq, which destroys the pillars of justice," said the FPI's Jakarta chief, Novel Bamukmin. "It's a form of criminalizing the clerics."

Rizieq and the FPI were key drivers behind recent rallies against the Christian governor of Jakarta, whom they accused of insulting the Muslim holy book, the Koran. The rallies were the biggest Indonesia has seen in nearly 20 years.

Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama is in on trial for blasphemy, but remains one of the frontrunners in next month's governor election.

Purnama has denied blasphemy. There are concerns he has been unfairly targeted and that the government has not done enough to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

(Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Ed Davies and Clarence Fernandez)

LONDON British Prime Minister Theresa May will learn on Tuesday whether parliament must agree to the triggering of Britain's exit from the European Union, potentially giving lawmakers who oppose her plans a chance to amend or hinder her Brexit vision.

BEIRUT Syrian refugee children in Lebanon are struggling to get an education and many are being pushed into work or early marriage instead, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said on Monday.

PARIS Benoit Hamon, a former Socialist government rebel, won the first round of a primary on Sunday and will meet ex-prime minister Manuel Valls in a runoff to decide who will be the candidate of the beleaguered left in a presidential election in spring.

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Indonesia police question cleric over lecture on communist symbols - Reuters

Cathy Young Published 8:41 a.m. ET Jan. 21, 2017 | Updated 20 hours ago

People arrive on the mall for the Women's March in Washington, Jan. 21, 2017.(Photo: John Taggart, epa)

If you're going to protest a new president famously accused of being a tool ofRussian strongman Vladimir Putin, common sense would suggest avoiding high-profile speakers who were proudtools of Putin's former employer, the Soviet Union. But common sense is often in short supply in our public life.

The Womens March on Washington, the massive protest against Donald TrumpSaturday, has been dogged by accusations of not being inclusive enough toward men, pro-life womenand even white feminists who feel they are being treated as oppressors by minority activists. The newly released list of speakers raises even more questions about whom and what the march represents. The entire roster skews far left, from feminist doyenne Gloria Steinem to filmmaker Michael Moore with no room for anti-Trump Republicans such as GOP activists Ana Navarro and Amanda Carpenter. And then theres Angela Davis, a star speaker and honorary co-chair of the event. An activist and scholar, Davis is also a Communist Party veteranwith a long record of support for political violence in the United States and the worst of human rights abusers abroad.

The Washington Postarticle on the Womens March speakers identified Davis as a civil rights era icon. In fact, while Davis participated in civil rights activism as a teenager in her native Birmingham, Alabama, she spent the peak years of the movement studying philosophy in Europe; she did not become an icon until 1970, as a famous fugitive accused of aiding a courthouse escape attempt in which a judge was shot dead and a juror and a prosecutor were wounded. Davis, by then a University of California professor, a Black Panther militant, and a hardcore Marxist-Leninist, was eventually acquitted by a handpicked politically sympathetic jury despite evidence that the weapons used in the incident were registered in her name. In subsequent years, she was an active supporter of the radical Jonestown commune in Guyana, which ended in murder and mass suicide.

But whatever one thinks of Daviss domestic militancy, her true claim to infamy is her career as an apologist for repressive communist regimes. During her 18 months in jail, Davis became a heroine across the Soviet bloc; for communist states frequently criticized for imprisoning dissidents, a perceived political prisoner in the United States was a godsend. After her release, Davis was feted in East Germany (a 1972 photo shows her shaking hands with then-General Secretary Erich Honecker, whose orders to shoot people trying to escape the socialist paradise by crossing the border into West Germany resulted in over 1,000 deaths), in Cuba, and in the Soviet Union, where she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prizein 1979, just months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

It takes some cheek to mount a protest against Trump with a speaker who was twice honored by Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

In July 1972, Czech journalist and activist Jiri Pelikan, a prominent figure in the reformist Prague Spring who was forced to emigrate after the 1968 Soviet invasion, wrote the recently freed Davis an open letter expressing sympathy with her experience and urging her to speak out against human rights violations in Communist countries. Most of his appeal focused on the brutal treatment of Czech dissidentsmany of them, like Pelikan himself, idealistic Communists who thought Communism could be humanized into democratic socialism. Davis did not respond; however, her friend Charlene Mitchell told The Guardian that Davis did not think people should leave socialist countries to return to the capitalist system and that even if such people said they were communists they were still acting in opposition to the socialist system, objectively speaking. Mitchell also said, professing to speak on Daviss behalf, that people in Eastern Europe were only jailed if they were undermining the government.

Later, Davis remained a leader in the slavishly pro-Soviet Communist Party USA; in the 1980 and 1984 elections, she was the Partys vice-presidential candidate. She did not leave the organization until 1991, when the Soviet Union was relegated as those elections winner, Ronald Reagan, had predicted to the ash heap of history.

Daviss Communist past only undermines the message of the women's march.

The opposition to Trump accuses him of being a would-be dictator who seeks to impose an authoritarian order and trample human rights. While these claims may be exaggerated, there is a good case to be made that the incoming President has a strong authoritarian streak.Vigilant opposition is certainly needed. Yet Davis has amply and repeatedly demonstrated her hypocrisy on the subject of dictatorship and human rights.

What's more, the rhetoric of the anti-Trump resistance often portrays him as being in cahoots with Vladimir Putin, or even as a Kremlin puppet. Yet the same resistance is honoring a woman who ran for political office in the United Stateson the ticket of a party that was quite literally a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kremlin. Such hypocrisy lends credence to gibes by Trump supporters, such as Ann Coulter, that liberals and progressives had no problem with Russia when it was the Soviet Union but are now being hawkish against post-Communist Russia.

Trump has often been assailed for drawing support from extremists including white nationalists and neo-Nazis and not doing enough to repudiate them. Yet the opposition clearly has its own extremism problem, openly welcoming a person with an unmistakable history of reprehensible views. When an anti-abortion feminist group is beyond the pale but a longtime apologist for the crimes of Communism is not, the resistance can hardly lay a claim to the moral high ground or appeal to the bulk of Americans who consider themselves moderates.

Cathy Young is a columnist atNewsdayandRealClearPolitics.comand aContributing Editor atReason. Follow her on Twitter@CathyYoung63.

You can readdiverse opinions from ourBoard of Contributorsand other writers ontheOpinion front page,on Twitter@USATOpinionand in our dailyOpinion newsletter.

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Women's March on Washington honors Soviet tool: Column - USA TODAY