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Topic: Conscripted, registered, or merely obliged on paper

How does Indonesia mark Conscripted, registered, or merely obliged on paper?

Everyday topic

Article 30(1) of Indonesia's 1945 constitution is worded unusually: every citizen has the right and the duty to take part in the defence and security of the state. Putting a right and a duty in the same sentence is unique among these seven constitutions. Clause (2) then supplies the method — defence and security are carried out through the total people's defence and security system, with the Indonesian National Armed Forces and the National Police as the main force and the people as the supporting force; clause (3) adds that the armed forces consist of army, navy and air force. The design, in other words, is not to draft individuals into an army but to place the whole population in a supporting role. That sets it apart from the Taiwanese and Chinese arrangements, which turn on ages and terms of service: there is no conscription and no stretch of barracks time everyone must pass through, yet the constitution writes every person into the system. The forces themselves are filled by voluntary recruitment, and defence education runs on a separate track.

What is this topic?

Article 1 of Taiwan's Military Service Act is a single sentence — every male citizen has the duty to serve — and Article 16 sets active conscript service at one year. China's constitution calls military service an "honourable obligation". Brazil's constitution says obligatory, then lets conscientious objectors take alternative service and exempts women and clergy in peacetime. The United States is stranger: 50 U.S.C. §3802 requires men aged 18 to 26 to register, and almost nobody is ever called. Japan's constitution keeps no land, sea or air forces at all. Indonesia and India both write a duty to defend into their constitutions and have no conscription. The same phrase, and a gap that runs from a year in barracks to a single form.

Sources and dates

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