The uproar surrounding a kindergarten parade in Probolinggo, East Java, in which children were filmed wearing face veils while holding prop guns, seem to have brought out unexpected reactions from authorities and government officials. The local police were quick to rule out any possibility that the kids were being indoctrinated with radical and terrorist ideologies, instead choosing to investigate the person who originally uploaded the video for possible hate speech, while Education Minister Muhajir Effendy immediately absolved the school of any deliberate wrongdoing and instead gave them IDR25 million (US$1,700) in assistance funds.
But it looks like at least one person involved will be held accountable for the controversial parade as the Probolinggo Education Board announced that they have dismissed the kindergarten’s principal, Hartatik, following an internal investigation.
“Hartatik was ruled to have been negligent in doing her job and she has apologized,” Probolinggo Education Board M. Maskur told Kumparan yesterday.
Despite her dismissal, Hartatik seems to have escaped any serious sanctions from the Education Board. In a circular that was issued on Tuesday, the Education Board announced that, effective today (Aug 23), Hartatik has been transferred to an unspecified “equal rank” position on the board itself, at least temporarily. The Education Board has not yet named her replacement at the school.
After the parade video went viral and caused huge uproar in the country and abroad, Hartatik told reporters that the school had no intention to teach their students violence, let alone terrorism, and apologized for the mistake if it was perceived as such. However, this is the explanation she gave for the outfits they gave the girls:
“The children were marching while wearing veiled uniforms and carrying weapons with the theme ‘Struggle for the Prophet to Increase Faith and Piety”. It was not meant to show terrorist things as many on the internet have said, I apologize if I am wrong,” Hartatik told reporters as quoted by Detik on Sunday.
In an eye-opening essay for Indonesia at Melbourne, women’s rights activist Lies Marcos writes “Is it really a surprise that radicals might have infiltrated Indonesian kindergartens?” In the piece, she explains there is little to no oversight of Indonesia’s early childhood education system, especially in terms of curriculum, and that a large percentage of kindergartens are run by private religious organizations.
There have been growing concerns about radical and terrorist ideologies being taught in Indonesian schools, with Indonesia’s National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) claiming they had data that showed that 39 percent of Indonesian university students have been exposed to radical Islamic ideology.