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As election brings 1998 activists to the fore, a push for true justice
Jakarta Post - July 4, 2014
The girl, Diva Suukyi Larasati, was the daughter of murdered human rights activist Munir Said Thalib, and the male guitarist, Fajar Merah, was the son of dissident poet Wiji Thukul, who went missing in 1998.
"I don't remember anything about my father. But I want to know about him," said the girl, who will start junior high school this month.
The next night, a group of intellectuals and activists held a discussion on human rights issues in an effort to push the government to resolve past human rights cases, including Munir's death in 2004 and Wiji's disappearance amid the 1998 riots.
Philosopher and lecturer at the Driyakara School of Philosophy, Karlina Supelli, said the government should resolve the cases and bring the perpetrators to trial, instead of just using the cases as political fodder for this year's presidential election.
"The discussion related to past human rights violations will create suspicions of politicizing human rights. Politics often makes us miss the real goal of revealing the truth," she said.
Suciwati, Munir's wife, said that many people in the younger generation did not know about the nation's past human rights violations. "We see that many younger people do not know about the cases of human rights violations. For us as activists, this becomes a huge piece of homework," Suciwati said.
The fierce presidential race between on-leave Jakarta governor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and former general Prabowo Subianto, who has acknowledged his involvement in the kidnapping of several rights activists in 1998, has brought human rights violations that occurred amid the tumultuous fall of Soeharto into the spotlight.
The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has reported that 13 kidnapped activists were still missing until today. They are presumed dead. Several witnesses have stepped forward to make confessions regarding the cases.
Retired Army generals who witnessed the 1998 events have been divided in their opinions. Some have said Prabowo was part of the team responsible for kidnapping the activists but was not involved in their death. Others have said he was complicit in murder.
Despite the public bickering between the generals, few clues exist about the missing activists.
Komnas HAM commissioner Manager Nasution said on Thursday that the commission would send a request to the Central Jakarta District Court to summon Maj. Gen. (ret) Kivlan Zen, who has claimed to know where the bodies of the 13 activists were buried. "We believe that there is new information [from Kivlan] that we have to pursue," he told The Jakarta Post.
Kivlan is a politician with the United Development Party (PPP) and a member of Prabowo's national campaign team. After years of deadlock, discussions over the fate of the missing activists came to the fore again last month after Kivlan told an interviewer on news channel TVOne, "All of those people are dead. I know their whereabouts and I know who executed them and where their graves are."
Komnas HAM is also currently studying new information related to the case, such as the recent controversial statements of presidential special staff Andi Arief, who has claimed Wiji was not kidnapped during the fall of Soeharto in 1998, as presumed.
According to Andi, who was an activist with the People's Democratic Party (PRD) along with Wiji, the poet is still alive based on the fact that no one witnessed his abduction. "Of course we will consider whether this information is significant or not," Manager said. (put)
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