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ASIET NetNews Number 50 - December 28-January 3, 1999
Political/economic crisis| East Timor |
Madrid -- Portuguese lawyers on Saturday demanded the extradition of Indonesia's ex-president Suharto to bring him to court for genocide of the population of East Timor, Portugal's former colony.
The Portuguese Law and Justice Association, which is part of the International Jurists' Commission said in a statement that Suharto is to face trial in Portugal for his role in genocide of a third of East Timor's population. East Timor was seized by Indonesia in 1975 after Lisbon announced granting independence for its colony. Over 200,000 civilians were killed in East Timor since that time.
In formal terms, these people were Portuguese citizens since East Timor is still recognized as being Portuguese by the United Nations which granted Portugal the right to rule the territory until its status is finally determined, the document said.
The association expressed disagreement with the position of Portugal's Attorney-General who said that Suharto's case did not fall under the jurisdiction of Portuguese law.
The association, however, maintains that the country's law provides for punishment for those who violate the rights of Portuguese citizens.
| Political/economic crisis |
Jakarta -- Violence marred New Year celebrations in at least four towns in the Indonesian province of West Java which saw looting and vandalism while revellers threw fireworks at passing motorists, newspapers said Saturday. Unrest broke out in the towns of Sukabumi, Bandung, Cilegon and Garut, but no casualties were reported, the newspapers said.
On Thursday night hundreds of youths in Sukabumi, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of here, gathered in the town's Merdeka square and started to destroy ornamental flower beds and nearby shops.
Local police and troops managed to stop the mob from rampaging through a nearby night market. At least 15 youths were arrested for questioning. Sukabumi police were unavailable for comment on the unrest.
Hundreds of others in the steel-producing town of Cilegon, also around 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the west, taunted motorists on the main highway with lighted fire crackers. But police did little to stop the residents for fear of a confrontation. "Just let them celebrate the New Year that way, they might become more angry and brutal if bothered," the local Banten district police chief Eddy Karnadi was quoted as saying by Media Indonesia.
In the West Java provincial capital of Bandung hundreds destroyed numerous ornamental plants lining the streets and hurled rocks at shops and passing cars, the local Pikiran Rakyat daily reported. Local police rerouted traffic, but made no arrests, Pikiran said.
The daily also reported that some 500 police elite mobile brigade troops had been dispatched to monitor northern coastal traffic on the route running from West to East Java, usually packed with holiday travellers, amid escalating crime on the highway.
Reports on Friday said the looting of a local supermarket marred the New Year festivities in the West Java town of Garut, where several shops were vandalized. Several arrests were made.
Jakarta -- Reoccupation of land by grassroots people and labor disputes following massive dismissals at many companies due to the monetary crisis were just two of the highlights during the year in Greater Jakarta.
As a result, the two issues were among the major components of regular complaints received by the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute and the National Commission on Human Rights this year.
Called the year of reform for this vast country, 1998 gave many people the courage to reoccupy their land which they said was seized by force by men who had been untouchable during former president Soeharto's era.
Just a few days after Soeharto announced his resignation on May 21, thousands of people -- be they the real owners or not -- occupied vacant land plots, including those believed to be owned by Soeharto's relatives and cronies, with hoes, ropes and sticks on their hands.
With these tools they then staked out their lots by making rough fences and planting crops, such as bananas and cassava. Some of them spent their nights at the sites to safeguard their property.
In many cases in Greater Jakarta, the "new" inhabitants claimed to be the real land owners or at least farmers who had for years cultivated the land until they were evicted in previous years. They showed no fear when taking over the sites, leaving the stunned local security authorities nervous.
It seems that their dread disappeared with the resignation of Soeharto, who they thought directly or indirectly involved in the land appropriation. These people thought that once their "enemies" who used to threaten their lives and suppress their courage to defend their rights had lost their power, the police, soldiers and other government apparatus would no longer have the backbone to stop them as happened in the past. But their assumptions were often naive. Military and police officers were still dispatched to the disputed land.
Tapos
Soeharto's 751-hectare Tapos cattle ranch in the hills of Ciawi in Bogor regency, 70 kilometers south of here, is a excellent example. People from nearby villages who had attempted to reoccupy the land since early June frequently clashed with the ranch employees, who received strong backup from local soldiers and police.
According to the people, part of the vast ranch was theirs until it was expropriated in 1971 by the former president while he was in office. Soeharto then converted the site into a cattle breeding ranch and, sometimes, an open space for meeting his guests, who included visiting foreign leaders.
Officially, the ranch is managed by PT Rejo Sari Bumi with Soeharto's children listed as the shareholders. After several conflicts, the ranch management -- upon seeing the eagerness and boldness of the farmers -- finally in September allowed the people to cultivate one-tenth of the site. But this seemingly wise move did not last long.
Under a strong escort of police and soldiers, the ranch employees destroyed the crops and injured some of the people. Since then, clashes have become an endless spectacle at the site.
Not far from the Tapos ranch, hundreds of Cimacan farmers in the mountainous Cibodas area flocked in ecstasy to the Cibodas golf club on the night of July 20, digging up the land and planting crops on the site.
The startling invasion made the golf course's employees and security guards flee in panic. The farmers claimed the 33-hectare site, now home to a golf club belonging to private firm PT Bandung Asri Mulya, as their own.
The occupation by the farmers only lasted for a few days after which police officers managed to disperse them. At least five farmers were injured in the clash.
In Bogor, hundreds of farmers and land owners were also involved in a dispute over a 257-hectare plot in Rancamaya village which had already become home to a luxurious housing complex with a golf course.
In stressing their demands, the people -- who claimed that the site was theirs -- staged many protests at the Bogor council and mayoralty offices. They also threatened to forcibly enter the housing complex, which was developed by PT Suryamas Duta Makmur in 1992. The farmers claimed they had never received any compensation when their land was appropriated by the company.
Cengkareng
In Jakarta, hundreds of people from far away places in late May rushed in groups with hoes in their hands to a 120-hectare property in Cengkareng, West Jakarta. They mistakenly thought the site belonged to Soeharto.
In the following month, another group of unidentified people invaded a plot of land on Jl. M.T. Haryono, East Jakarta, which they believed belonged to Soeharto's youngest son, Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra. Similar to the Cengkareng case, the group left the land empty-handed.
In South Jakarta, land owners' heirs demanded "appropriate" compensation for some 12 hectares of land on the 67-hectare Matoa National Golf Course and Country Club. The club is managed by PT Sarana Graha Adhi Santosa, a company controlled by former Soeharto golfing buddy Mohamad "Bob" Hasan. The farmers also threatened to take over the site unless the company fulfilled their request.
The growing number of land disputes led the victims to set up a union for evicted people on July 21 at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute. The union members pledged to regain their thousands of hectares of land located in 46 spots in Jakarta and surrounding areas in a bid to face up to the bitter realities of life during this time of hardship.
The dreadful economic situation alone has already left tens of thousands of people jobless as companies, from big to small enterprises, could no longer deal with the bad climate. But it did not stop there. Disputes arose between the jobless and their former employers over severance payments.
The ex-workers desperately needed the money because the rank of unemployed was swelling and new jobs were hard to find, while the employers insisted that the current crisis had left them unable to meet such demands. The disputes often ended with workers rallies. Dissatisfied, some of them have sought legal advice.
The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute alone has been busy this year with complaints over such issues lodged by some 10,000 dismissed workers. Mass dismissals due to the severe impact of the economic crisis have not affected casual workers only.
In May, at least 1,800 employees of private airline Sempati Air, controlled by Tommy Soeharto, were also dismissed. The management gave them severance payments but employees argued that the amount was below the sum stipulated in the manpower regulations. They then joined hands staging rallies to protest their former employer. The airline then ceased its business operation.
Since then, hundreds of dismissed employees from the airline industry, including Mandala and Bouraq airlines, also staged rallies demanding severance payments.
In August, the dismissed airline employees, including pilots and flight attendants, set up a union, aiming to struggle for their demands and to help members find new jobs.
Massive dismissals also occurred in the country's banking industry after the government liquidated 16 banks in November last year and suspended 10 other banks in April and August this year.
The dismissed workers, including hundreds of employees of Bob Hasan's Bank Umum National, strongly insisted their ex-employers pay their severance money according to the regulations.
But serious clashes were often recorded between security officers and casual workers during massive protests at the compounds of factories. Some 2,000 protesting workers of steel processing firm PT Gunung in Bekasi, for instance, clashed with military officers at the firm's compound on June 30. At least 23 workers suffered rubber-bullet wounds.
Violent incidents often marked the struggles of the people -- both land owners and dismissed workers -- to win their rights. But some of them continue their struggle through the legal process.
Tapos farmers, for example, plan to sue former president Soeharto for illegal land appropriation. But it is still, perhaps, a long journey for them before their dreams come true because their legal rights have not yet been met.
The country's economic and political uncertainties further impede their attempts to struggle for their rights or to find new jobs or good business opportunities. So, 1999 might turn out to be another gloomy year.
Jakarta -- Indonesia's police declared "zero tolerance" on looters and would shoot at offenders, admitting Wednesday warnings against rampant plundering of food trucks and stores had been futile.
"To the looters, and not protesters, there will be no more tolerance and we are left with no other option but to shoot on sight," Lieutenant General Dibyo Widodo, national police chief, told a news conference here. But he said only rubber-coated bullets would be used against bandits targetting produce trucks along the northern coast of Java.
The Kompas daily quoted central Java police chief Major General Nurfaizi as saying looting had become more "brutal" and was disrupting the national economy. Crime has surged on the north Java coastal route since the economic crisis hit the country in July last year, driving millions into poverty.
Warehouses and provisions shops have been looted, often following false rumors of handouts of free or cut-price food. Widodo said 86 police stations were vandalized or burned by the public amid the continual riots and unrest in the country over the past year. Thirteen police were recorded killed in 1998, about a hundred seriously wounded and some 300 others injured.
He said police had so far been unable to find or catch any provocators that might have instigated the violence against minority Christians here on November 23, which left at least 13 people dead.
Jakarta -- Police and troops patrolled two Indonesian towns Tuesday after new riots left hundreds injured in Lampung, Central Sulawesi and North Sumatra provinces.
In Fajar Bulan in western Lampung, police opened fire Monday on rioters who torched a police post and a police station after the death of a suspected thief in police custody, residents said. Scores were injured in the riot and the shooting, but no deaths were reported.
"It's safe and under controlled now. Only the local police are patrolling the streets," a police officer in Liwa district told AFP. He said six police were injured after being hit by stones. The officer said police had used blank bullets, while the Suara Pembaruan evening daily said police opened fire with rubber bullets as a mob attacked the police station, ransacked four homes and set fire to three cars.
The violence erupted after one of three robbery suspects died in custody on Sunday. Police claimed the suspect committed suicide. Residents accused police of involvement because of wounds on his body. Before attacking the police post, hundreds of residents paraded the body through the town.
Mobs then attacked the homes of a coffee trader who was the victim of the alleged robbery and the homes of his lawyer and two police officers. They took furniture from the houses onto the streets and set it on fire.
The port of Poso, on the island of Sulawesi, was tense Tuesday following two days of rioting which left scores injured and dozens of houses and shops burned. The riots were triggered by clashes between Christian and Moslem youths from different neighbourhoods.
"Poso is still tense and activities have not returned to normal. Shops are still closed and streets are empty. But the situation is already under control, no more upheavals are reported," said Poso police lieutenant Iwan.
The Kompas newspaper reported that at least 500 troops, including two companies of infantry and two from the police mobile brigade, were sent to the town from the central Sulawesi capital of Palu.
At least 79 people were injured in Poso when hundreds rioted on Friday after a teenager was stabbed by a drunken man at a mosque in the town. "The stabbing was used by provocators who said a Christian man had attacked a Moslem," a resident said.
Police said at least 13 buildings were damaged, including hotels, homes and a liquor distiller. The incident led to further clashes Monday between Moslem and Christian youths. One group was seen parading through the town with sickles, swords, spears and bamboo poles. Seven shops and 12 houses were set on fire Monday in the neighbourhoods of Lombogia and Kasintuwu.
Central Sulawesi Governor H. Bandjela Paliudju said the riot was criminal, and not an ethnic or a religious conflict. "I hope all sides restrain themselves and think clearly. Don't be influenced by rumours and provocators," Paliudju told the state TVRI television.
Meanwhile in North Sumatra, at least six farmers were wounded when police fired rubber bullets to break up a clash at a state- run plantation near the provincial capital of Medan.
Fighting erupted when about 1,000 employees of the Nusantara II tobacco and palm oil plantation tried to force the farmers off the land on Monday, charging that they were disrupting routine planting, the Kompas daily said.
The farmers, calling themselves the People's Struggle Board, denied they were squatting on the plantation and said they were entitled to the land in the Deli Serdang district. North Sumatra governor Rizal Nurdin said after a meeting police, plantation union representatives and the farmers that a negotiated settlement would be found.
Jakarta -- Muslim scholars Abdurrahman Wahid and Emha Ainun Nadjib have issued dire warnings of chaos and even bloodshed in the run-up to the general election in June 1999 unless a national dialog for reconciliation was held to head off the danger.
Speaking separately on Sunday, the two men were discussing Abdurrahman's campaign for a dialog among people that he believed represented the major political forces in the country.
Abdurrahman, speaking on the eighth-day of his 15-day "open house" at his residence in Ciganjur, South Jakarta, was reiterating his earlier statement that if his plan for a national dialog should fail, massive unrest may occur.
Abdurrahman, who chairs the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and who established the National Awakening Party (PKB), called on members of both organizations not to be lured into the fray. He called on them to remain firm in their adherence to Islam and to leave the matter of possible chaos to the security authorities. "This stance of mine should be understood as a preventive action. Not that I am 'optimistic' there should be chaos, but we need to be vigilant," he said.
Emha, a poet and political commentator, was speaking at the Jenderal Soedirman University in Purwokerto, Central Java. He came out strongly in favor of Abdurrahman's national dialog plan.
Emha cited recent bloody incidents including the murder spree that started mid-1998 in East Java town of Banyuwangi and the clashes in Ketapang, West Jakarta and Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara. "The threat of bloodshed is very real, if the proposed national dialog should fail," he said. "Look at the incidents. Are they not bloody enough? Hasn't there been enough people's blood spilled?"
"I am not only supportive of Abdurrahman's plan for a national dialog, in fact I was the one who suggested that Gus Dur [Abdurrahman's nickname] meet figures such as [Armed Forces Commander Gen.] Wiranto, [President B.J.] Habibie, and [former president] Soeharto," he said.
"That national dialog is a must. However, those figures should 'take off' their positions, organizations and various other labels and just bring with them their statesmanship." he added. Emha criticized Habibie who has refused to participate in the planned national dialog. "I am really concerned. The refusal is a sign that Habibie only thinks of himself as president...that he's Habibie, rather than thinking of Indonesia."
Abdurrahman stirred controversy when he held meetings with Wiranto, Habibie and Soeharto, in his campaign to organize a dialog involving the three with himself as the mediator. He said Wiranto represented the military bureaucracy, Habibie the civilian bureaucracy, and Soeharto and himself have considerable numbers of followers.
When he came under fire for including Soeharto in the plan, he mentioned the bloody incidents in Banyuwangi, Ketapang and Kupang as proof of his theory that Soeharto's followers were responding adversely to the "ill treatment" afforded by the public to the former president.
On Saturday, Abdurrahman introduced a new format for the dialog. "If the meeting of four national figures is impossible, the dialog should be held at least between Habibie and Soeharto," he told reporters at the NU secretariat in Jakarta.
"Wiranto and I are not important in the dialog. the most important is that Pak Habibie and Pak Harto meet," he said. "The urgency for the meeting of both figures is that it can prevent a civil war," he added.
Muslim leader Amien Rais said on Saturday that any national dialog should be initiated and organized by the nation's top universities only. "I will on]y agree if the national dialog is initiated and organized by top universities," he told reporters at the Muhammadiyah Muslim organization secretariat in Jakarta. Amien is the former chairman of the organization, and now is chairman of the National Mandate Party (PAN).
Asked about the eligible participants for the dialog, he suggested that the four signatories of the Ciganjur declaration should be included in the event. The signatories were Amien, Abdurrahman, chairperson of the splintered Indonesian Democratic Party Megawati Soekarnoputri and the Yogyakarta monarch Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X.
Separately, political observer Ichlasul Amal said in Yogyakarta that Soeharto should not be included in the dialog because he represented the New Order regime that the reform movement had tried so hard to terminate.
Shoeb Kagda, Jakarta -- Indonesia will once again look to the international community for massive financial help in 1999 as the country continues to grapple with worsening political and social conditions which threaten to undermine its economic recovery and tear apart its social fabric.
President BJ Habibie will seek an additional US$10 billion in fresh loans next year to finance the government's 1999 fiscal year budget deficit -- expected to balloon to about 46 trillion rupiah -- and other development expenditure.
"The government will ask the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) and other donor countries for between US$9 billion and US$10 billion in fresh loans in 1999," said Frans Seda, economic adviser to Dr Habibie. "Next year's budget deficit will be larger than this year's because of lower revenue from oil exports and the government's privatisation programme."
The CGI, which groups Indonesia's biggest donor countries, this year loaned the country more than US$14 billion as part of the US$49 billion economic bailout put together by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Umar Juoro, a member of the vice-presidential economic and political advisory team, said the main emphasis of next year's budget will be to overcome the impact of the economic and social crisis. "The 1999 budget will still represent an emergency situation as the economy is continuing to contract."
Mr Seda added that next year's budget will assume that the economy contracts by a further 2-3 per cent after contracting by more than 15 per cent this year, and that the rupiah will remain stable at between 7,000 and 8,000 to the US dollar.
Although the budget will continue to pay attention to social safety net programmes, with provisions for food and fuel subsidies, it will need to address the deep structural problems in the financial sector, he noted.
"The government needs to come up with a clear policy for its banking restructuring and privatisation programmes before the next general elections if our economic recovery programme is to progress," said Mr Seda.
"In the privatisation programme, the authorities are too bogged down with political concerns and are not looking at the long-term picture." In fact, Indonesia will enter the second and more difficult phase of its economic recovery next year as the government seeks to put the economy back together. "In some sense, the hard part is just beginning as the second phase will be more difficult and time consuming," said a high-level source.
The first phase, which involved breaking the economic fall and stabilising the situation, has by and large been achieved as inflation has been stopped from rising further and the rupiah has achieved a fragile stability.
According to the source, some confidence has returned to the country as highlighted by rising bank deposits and the fact that foreign reserves have gone up by US$9 billion since June. "The exchange rate has strengthened because the government has been pursuing a disciplined fiscal policy and a tight monetary policy and it's nonsensical to say that it's only because the rupiah is thinly traded," said the source.
However, the volatile political and social conditions could derail the progress made on the economic front if further outbreaks of rioting and killings occur. "The political threat is serious and it is very difficult to predict what will happen as we get closer to the elections," said the high-level source. "In the worst case scenario, not only could the government fail to make further progress but gains to the stability of the economy could rapidly become undone."
If social conditions deteriorate, there are fears the government may be forced to suspend the IMF programme and thus send shock waves through the global community. Mr Seda is worried about the escalation of social violence due to a lack of effective leadership and the government's inability to satisfy public demands for justice.
"Since May, we have had a series of tragic events but there seems to be no clear co-ordinated action on the part of the government to bring those involved to justice. If this situation is allowed to continue, it will jeopardise not only the budget but also the general elections.
"If the social and political uncertainty continues, Indonesia cannot hope to recover from its worst economic crisis in three decades," noted Mr Seda. "Real economic growth is only possible if foreign direct investments resume and the government has a huge debt to repay to its own people in settling the internal problems," said Mr Seda.
This view was echoed by Mr Juoro who said that foreign investors are still keen to participate in Indonesia, especially in the infrastructure and telecoms sectors. But they are sitting on the sidelines in the hope the country does not implode.
Medan -- Indonesian police on Monday opened fire on hundreds of farmers who occupied a state plantation on the island of Sumatra and also clashed with villagers in a strife-hit region of Sulawesi to bring a mass brawl under control.
Witnesses said dozens were injured when police fired without warning while trying to evict farmers from a state-owned tobacco plantation near the North Sumatran capital of Medan, Indonesia's third-largest city. It was not clear whether live or rubber bullets were used.
The farmers said they had occupied the plantation bacause they had not received any compensation after the land had been taken from them by the state firm. "We still have not received any compensation. We will stay on this land because we still share the ownership," said Basiun Kain, one of the farmers.
In the town of Poso on the eastern island of Sulawesi, police clashed with a crowd of thousands who had ransacked and torched dozens of buildings during a brawl between rival villages.
"A mob of around 2,000 people gathered in the town's centre, then burned down people's houses located on the town's main road during a brawl," Poso's officer on duty, Seargant Yahya, told Reuters by telephone. "We tried to disperse them but some of them retaliated by hurling stones and attacking the police," Yahya said.
A hospital nurse said at least four people suffered gunshot wounds during the fray but Yahya said the police did not fire any shots in dispersing the crowd. He said it was not yet known how many people had been injured.
Thousands of people ran amok in the town last week after allegations a drunk Christian had stabbed a Moslem on Christmas Eve. But Yahya said Monday's violence was not sparked by religious conflict and no churches or mosques had been damaged.
Jakarta -- An angry mob set fire to a discotheque and damaged shops selling liquor in Christmas violence on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, government officials and residents said on Sunday.
And in a separate incident, dozens of people were injured in a religious dispute over a red-light district in the Sumatran city of Medan. About 5,000 people stormed the red-light district demanding the closure of the area during Ramadan, the Moslem fasting month, the official Antara news agency reported on Sunday.
Both incidents occurred on Christmas Day, although the violence in Sulawesi only ended on Saturday. Both areas have mixed populations of Christians and Moslems.
The violence in the town of Poso, in Central Sulawesi province, followed reports that a drunken Christian had stabbed a Moslem man, residents said. Poso, a town of 30,000 people located 1,565 km northeast of Jakarta, was calm on Sunday, government officials said. However, troops and police were stationed in the town. No church or mosque was damaged.
"Things are cooling down this morning and troops are deployed around the town. It was so tense last night," one government official told Reuters by telephone. There were no immediate reports of casualties apart from the initial incident, the official said.
One discotheque was set on fire and four others were damaged, the official said. The mob unloaded liquor from six shops selling such goods and burned them on the street. The shops were also damaged, he said.
The incident which sparked the violence happened on Christmas Eve, residents said. A drunken man, believed to be a Christian, stabbed a Moslem man with a knife following a quarrel. The wounded man sought refuge at a mosque.
"Reports that the man had been stabbed by a drunken man enraged local people. They started to damage shops on Christmas Day. The incident lasted through last night," one resident said. A number of hotels were also damaged and their furniture was burned by the mob, residents said.
On Friday in Medan, capital of North Sumatra province, scores of people, including protesters and guards employed by pimps, were injured after thousands of people stormed a red-light district, Antara said. The clashes lasted about an hour.
Medan, with two million people, is 1,350 km northwest of Jakarta. The city was the site of numerous riots earlier this year, which led in May to the resignation of former president Suharto.
Indonesia has been hit by a series of religious riots as the country grapples with its worst financial crisis in decades, which has driven up the prices of essentials and created mass unemployment.
In late November, Christian mobs torched and ransacked mosques in the eastern town of Kupang in West Timor during a protest against ethnic and religious riots.
Religious discord is a sensitive issue in Indonesia, where about 85 percent of the country's 200 million people are followers of Islam. But there are strong communities of Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics and Protestants, who are in the majority in some areas of the vast archipelago.
| Labour issues |
Jakarta -- Observers predicted on Monday that labor conditions would worsen next year due to the prolonged economic and political crises, warning that an unemployment rate of 38 million out of the total work force of 90 million represented a ticking time bomb.
Datuk Bagindo of the Federation of All Indonesian Workers Union and House of Representatives legislator Ismoe Handoko shared the dire outlook, with Ismoe raising alarms over possible "disintegration and social revolution".
But Minister of Manpower Fahmi Idris was optimistic that the high unemployment rate could be mitigated by increasing the export of labor. Speaking separately, Fahmi said the government would fight to reduce the unemployment rate to "between 10 and 15 million from the current 20 million."
Datuk insisted that around 38 million Indonesians will have lost their jobs by the end of the 1998/1999 fiscal year in March because of continued dismissals by troubled companies. Included in this figure were 5 million new graduates and school dropouts who could not find jobs.
"We are very pessimistic about labor conditions next year because of the poor economic condition this year and the political uncertainty in the coming months before the general election in June," he said.
He linked the economic growth of minus 15 percent and the inflation rate of 75 percent with the dismissal of 15 million workers over 1998. He did not believe there would be changes in the business climate and labor condition next year.
"If the government is honest, the economic growth this year is far below minus 15 percent and the inflation rate has reached 400 percent," he said adding that more than 50 percent, or 110 million, Indonesians are now living in poverty.
High unemployment rates combined with political uncertainty are a time bomb that could explode in the near future, he said. "Violence, looting, robberies and other crimes will be prevalent in all parts of the country, especially in densely-populated Java," he said.
Ismoe also expressed concern over the political situation. "More and more people can no longer eat three times a day because they lost their jobs, while those in the political elite are busy taking care of their own interests, and there are no signs the economic crisis will abate in the coming months," he said.
"Under these negative changes in society, crimes, looting, violence and rioting linked to religious and ethnic group affiliations will likely be rampant. It is probable that the reform movement will turn into a social revolution," he said.
Fahmi expressed his optimism that the labor situation would improve in the coming year because of some expected economic improvements. "Despite poor economic conditions, the government is optimistic that the economy will grow from the current minus 15 percent to minus 5 percent in the coming year and the inflation rate will be maintained at a rate of less than 20 percent," he said.
He said the govrnment is determined to reduce the unemployment rate to between 10 million and 15 million from the current 20 million. Besides "expanding job opportunities at home", the government would encourage the export of labor to ease the unemployment problem. "The labor export program will continue, although it is not now a strategic way to solve the unemployment problem," he said.
Ismoe concurred on this matter, and said Indonesia should accelerate its efforts to promote cooperation with other countries, especially those in the Middle East, so they would be willing to open their markets to Indonesian workers.
"Many countries have opened their labor markets to Indonesian workers but the government has been slow in its response, " he said. He said that he recently visited Kuwait, Qatar United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and found the countries eager to employ more semi-skilled and skilled workers from Indonesia. He added that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should also help by using its diplomatic relations to seek more job opportunities for dismissed Indonesian workers.
Both Ismoe and Datuk urged the government to carry out the social safety net program to employ as many dismissed workers as possible. "Workers need no rulings ILO (International Labor Organization) Conventions or advice from the government. They need jobs and money to survive the economic hardships," Ismoe said.
Datuk hailed the government's plan to provide Rp 17 trillion to finance labor-intensive projects to help jobless people in the coming year. "We want the social aid to trickle down to all those who are waiting for it," he said.
| Human rights/law |
Jakarta -- Indonesia will release and rehabilitate 62 political prisoners including 20 East Timorese in the coming week, but East Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmao will not be among those freed, Justice Minister Muladi said Thursday.
The release of 36 political prisoners and the rehabilitation of 26 former political detainees is part of a reform program by the government of President B.J. Habibie, pledged shortly after the fall of former president Suharto in May.
Muladi said among those freed from jails throughout the country by special presidential decree would be 20 East Timorese, 15 (Eds: correct) members of a Moslem fundamentalist movement in Lampung and one Free Aceh separatist. In addition, seven East Timorese, charged but not yet jailed, were given "abolition", meaning the charges against them would be dropped. The 26 to be "rehabilitated" -- have their records wiped clean -- are former political prisoners, many of them believed to be also from Lampung.
Muladi also said the government was also considering the release of another 80 prisoners, but their files were still being processed. The minister said the presidential decree on the release had already been signed by Habibie, and the prisoners would be released from jails throughout the country shortly.
Asked why Xanana, now serving a 20-year term in Jakarta's Cipinang jail, was not included in the list, Muladi repeated the government's stand his release was connected with a peace settlement with Portugal on the future of the former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975. "It will have to wait for the results of the tripartite meeting with Portugal," he said refering to an autonomy proposal for East Timor now under discussion between Lisbon and Jakarta under UN auspices in New York.
The chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights, Marzuki Darusman, hailed the government decision, but said it did not necessarily indicate the government was serious in improving its human rights record. "The question is whether the release is for administrative reasons or it is merely a political ploy. We still have to see government's further handling in the case of political prisoners" said Darusman.
"There is a contradiction in what the government is doing. On the one hand, it continues releasing prisoners but on the other, it has also arrested critical figures," Darusman said. He was apparently refering to the questioning of a group of prominent figures, including retired generals, who have been hauled in by the Habibie government on suspicion of subversion for signing a statement recommending the formation of a transitional government. The government has released 109 political prisoners since May.
Mark Dodd, Jakarta -- On the eve of today's resumption of the trial of 11 Indonesian special forces soldiers for abducting political activists, one of their alleged victims relived his ordeal at their hands.
Aan Rusdianto, 24, a member of the People's Democratic Party, said he was taken from his home in east Jakarta in March by a special forces snatch squad after distributing a number of leaflets denouncing then-president Suharto.
He said: "There was a knock on the door and seven soldiers came in. I was not asked anything. I was just carried away and put in a car with my friend. We were blindfolded and then a hood was pulled over my head and loud music from a radio or tape was played. We drove for about 30 minutes."
Mr Rusdianto believes he was taken to the Jakarta headquarters of the special forces, Kopassus. He said he was handcuffed and punched in the chest and face, then administered electric shocks to a leg. "I had a feeling I might die there," he said.
Mr Rusdianto said he was questioned repeatedly about his activities. "I've never seen their faces but among the 11 defendants, I recognise a few voices of the men who abducted me," he said.
The soldiers are suspected of 23 abductions but have only been charged with those of Mr Rusdianto and eight other activists who have reappeared. Another has been found dead and 13 remain missing.
After two days of interrogation, Mr Rusdianto was taken to central police headquarters and held for 83 days in solitary confinement. He said police told him he was being charged with insulting the president and trying to topple the government.
Indonesia had one of the most tumultuous years in its modern history: economic collapse spurred student-led demands for political reform, bringing President Soeharto's three-decade rule to an end in May. His successor and protegi, Vice-President B.J. Habibie, tried to distance himself from his patron by releasing political prisoners, lifting political controls, and setting a timetable for free elections, but these measures won him little legitimacy from a skeptical populace.
The army, traditionally the country's most powerful institution next to the president, appeared weaker than any time in recent memory as more and more evidence of past abuses came to light. Rising prices, food shortages, and massive unemployment led to outbreaks of violence throughout the year, much of it directed against the small ethnic Chinese minority, widely resented for their disproportionate control of the retail economy. Poor but resource-rich provinces used the newly open political atmosphere to demand more economic autonomy.
These demands, together with major progress in negotiations between Portugal and Indonesia over political autonomy for East Timor and renewed pro-independence activity in Irian Jaya, led to the renewal of a long dormant debate about federalism as well as widely expressed fears for the country's disintegration.
By year's end, there was no sign of economic recovery, and it was impossible to know whether Indonesia was on its way to pluralist democracy, prolonged upheaval, or both.
The year began with the free fall of the Indonesian currency, an outbreak of anti-Chinese riots, and the beginning of student protests with a view to influencing the outcome of the planned session in March of the unopposed "re-selection" of President Soeharto by Indonesia's version of an electoral college. The economic decline and political unrest were both exacerbated by Soeharto's announcement on January 21 that B.J. Habibie, an unpopular Cabinet minister with a penchant for expensive showcase projects such as a national airline industry, was his choice for vice-president. Soeharto's son-in-law, Gen. Prabowo Subiyanto, helped fuel anti-Chinese sentiment by making veiled references to "traitors" who took their money abroad.
As campus protests escalated and security tightened in February, well-known political activists began to "disappear," abducted from their homes or workplaces in what was clearly an organized operation. On March 10, Soeharto was duly reappointed to a seventh five-year term, and the consensus among political observers at home and abroad was that only violence in the streets followed by army intervention, or Soeharto's death, could prevent him serving out the full term. Discontent escalated with the announcement on March 14 of a new Cabinet that included Soeharto's daughter and several cronies; it was seen as a clear sign that Soeharto had no interest in reform of any kind.
Student protest became a lightning rod for demands for change, gaining widespread support from the middle class and among the political elite, including parts of the military. International outrage over the "disappearance" of activists and pressure for clarification of their whereabouts led to the led to the creation of a new organization, Kontras, to work on behalf of the families of the "disappeared," and to the eventual resurfacing of several young men in April and early May. Pius Lustrilanang, the first to give a public account of his abduction, torture, and detention, set an example for others; the evidence they produced pointed directly to the involvement of the army special forces, Kopassus, and to General Prabowo, former Kopassus commander.
On May 4, the government announced a gasoline price hike, fulfilling strictures set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Riots erupted immedately, with the worst violence in Medan, North Sumatra, much of it anti-Chinese. On May 9, Soeharto left the country for a meeting in Egypt. On May 12, four students were shot dead, apparently by army or police snipers, following a demonstration at Trisakti University in Jakarta. The next day, the worst violence Jakarta had seen in decades broke out and continued for three days, with security forces standing by as mobs torched Chinese shops and homes. Over 1,000 died, many of them non-Chinese shoppers or would-be looters trapped in burning shopping malls. Foreign embassies and companies evacuated staff and dependents, and thousands of Chinese-Indonesians fled the country.
President Soeharto cut short his visit to Cairo and returned home, but it was too late. Political support among those closest to him had evaporated, and by May 19, student protestors had occupied the national parliament building, with tacit military endorsement. Promising at first to step down after new laws were drafted and an election held at some indeterminate time in the future, Soeharto then bowed to public pressure (and the resignation of half his Cabinet); on May 21, he turned over power to Vice-President Habibie. In a development of almost equal import, General Wiranto, commander of the armed forces and defense minister, emerged the victor in a power struggle with General Prabowo, whose allies were suspected not only of the "disappearances" but also of shooting the Trisakti students and organizing the Jakarta riots. (In August, Prabowo admitted his role in the "disappearances" to a military investigating board and was dismissed from the army; in September, it was announced that he would be court-martialled, even though he was now a civilian.)
President Habibie formed a new Cabinet that dropped the most notorious cronies and political hardliners, but his efforts to include opposition figures failed; such was his association with Soeharto that none agreed to serve. Within days, he announced a series of steps designed to demonstrate his reformist credentials, including the release of two of the country's best- known political prisoners, labor leader Muchtar Pakpahan and former opposition parliamentarian Sri Bintang Pamungkas. By late August, more than one hundred other prisoners had been freed, with the notable exception of East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao; Budiman Soejatmiko, Dita Sari, and other political organizers associated with the leftist People's Democratic Party (Partai Rakyat Demokratik or PRD); and several men linked to a coup attempt in 1965.
In June, Habibie announced an "action plan" for human rights that included ratification of key human rights treaties. By the end of the year, the government had ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Labour Organization's Convention 87 Concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize.
Ordering the Justice Ministry to draft new laws on political parties and elections to be presented to the People's Consultative Assembly in late 1998, Habibie also lifted controls on political party formation, including a Soeharto-era ban on the PRD. By September, more than seventy parties had registered with the Home Ministry, most of which were likely to lack the mass base necessary under a new draft law to compete in parliamentary elections.
The print and broadcast media enjoyed virtually full freedom after Soeharto's fall for the first time in thirty years, and well over one hundred licenses for new publications were issued by the Ministry of Information between June and August. The news magazine Tempo, banned in 1994, reopened in October. A controversial draft law on demonstrations was tabled in July, designed to place curbs on any demonstrations of more than one hundred persons. The National Human Rights Commission and rights activists denounced the bill as a curb on internationally recognized rights, and by October, it had become the first piece of legislation in years defeated by popular protest. (A less restrictive version was passed in its place.)
July saw a number of issues come to the fore that remained unresolved by the end of the year. Violence against the ethnic Chinese, and ethnic Chinese women in particular, was one. Soon after the May riots in the cities of Jakarta, Solo, and Surabaya, reports began to emerge of mass rapes and other forms of sexual assault against ethnic Chinese women in a systematic, organized fashion. The reports were followed by graphic descriptions and photographs that appeared on the Internet and that became the basis for public protests from Beijing to Los Angeles. General Wiranto announced in June that an army investigation had uncovered no evidence of rape; rights organizations said victims were too frightened or traumatized to come forward or had fled the country. The government appointed a fact-finding team to look into the May violence, including rape, on July 24. (As of late October, the team had not issued its final report.) In August, the Internet photos were conclusively proven false, and questions had arisen about some of the rape data initially collected. Advocacy groups reporting the rapes meanwhile were subjected to harassment and theats from unidentified callers, while racist groups emerging in the new climate of free speech played on the fear of ethnic Chinese by warning of new assaults on the community. The murder in October of Ita Martadinata, a Jakarta woman whose mother was deeply involved in the rapes investigation, only increased that fear.
Also in July, a series of pro-independence demonstrations broke out in towns across Irian Jaya on the anniversary of a 1961 proclamation of independence by an armed nationalist group, the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka or OPM). In Jayapura and Biak, the army opened fire after attacks on local security personnel. One student and one policeman died in Jayapura; the death toll in Biak was at least one demonstrators and perhaps more, as the military tried to suppress information on casualties. Rights groups said the demonstrations had been inspired in part by a letter sent on May 22 by members of the US Congress, urging, among other things, a political dialogue on Irian Jaya. The deaths fueled separatist sentiment, coming as they did after revelations in May of grave human rights abuses in the area around Mapnduma, Jayawijaya district, during military operations there in 1996-97 following the army's rescue of hostages taken by the OPM.
These revelations, as well as new evidence on the widespread atrocities in Aceh, a region on the northern tip of Sumatra, during counterinsurgency operations there in 1990-91, generated pressure on the government to look more systematically into past abuses. (The deportation of hundreds of Acehnese "migrants" from Malaysia in late March caused an international outcry, as some of those sent back were clearly refugees who had fled Aceh in the early 1990s and had good reason to fear persecution in Indonesia.
In August, as the National Commission on Human Rights was looking into the possiblity of setting up a "truth commission" for Indonesia, a respected Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, announced the establishment of a non-governmental Commission on Truth and National Reconciliation to look into past abuses in Aceh, Irian Jaya, and East Timor. Not to be outdone, the government in early September announced the formation of a National Reconciliation Commission, a body whose mandate did not appear to include exposing the truth or seeking justice.
Attention to past military abuses also led to demands for troop withdrawals in special security zones called "military operation areas" (daerah operasi militer or DOM). Most of Aceh was considered such an area, as were parts of Jayawijaya district in Irian Jaya. In August, General Wiranto apologized to the people of Aceh for the abuses they had suffered and declared the "DOM" status revoked. But on September 2, as troops began to leave from the city of Lhokseumawe, popular anger boiled over. Violence directed against the departing soldiers soon turned into a more general riot, amid accusations that the rioting had been sparked by the military elements themselves to ensure their continued presence in Aceh (where some had lucrative commercial operations).
On East Timor, the UN brokered an agreement between the Habibie government and Portugal on August 5 in which both sides committed themselves work toward an agreement on "wide-ranging autonomy" for the former Portuguese colony considered by Indonesia to be its twenty-seventh province and by the UN to be under Portuguese administration. Indonesia agreed to drop its insistence that a precondition of negotiations must be acceptance of Indonesian sovereignty, although it continued to reject the idea, widely supported inside East Timor, of a referendum on independence. Pro-independence demonstrations took place before and after the agreement, without interference from the army. Shortly before the agreement was signed, Indonesia announced it was pulling combat troops out of the territory, but days after the first 398 were pulled out, another 263 "army health personnel and police" were sent in. By August, some 1,000 soldiers had been sent home, but East Timorese leaders did not consider the withdrawals significant, as thousands of troops, not considered "combat" forces, remained in place.
In September, fresh violence broke out across the country as the impact of the economic collapse became increasingly felt. Riots in Medan and Bagan Siapi-api in North Sumatra and in Kebumen and Cilacap, Central Java were particularly violent, with Chinese shops and homes again targeted. The government's response included allegations that the unrest was due to "communist" forces.
Beginning in July, murders began of suspected practitioners of black magic in East Java by mysterious groups of men called ninjas. By October, over 140 people had been killed, and over ninety of those belonged to one Muslim organization, the Nahdatul Ulama (NU). The NU had aligned itself with popular opposition leaders Megawati Soekarnoputri against President Habibie, and its leaders and the East Java police were among many suggesting the ninjas were linked to the army. By late October, revenge killings against suspected ninjas had begun.
The reform process continued to lurch forward, with a major debate shaping up on the role of the armed forces and the announcement in September of the repeal of the hated Anti- Subversion Law that had been used repeatedly by Soeharto to detain political opponents.
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When Indonesia's Attorney General, Andi Mohamad Ghalib, formally named former president Suharto on December 23 last year as a suspect in a corruption case over a tax-exempt national car project, most politically aware Indonesians knew not to expect too much.
In fact, only a month before that, on November 24, Indonesia's activist students, in their frustration, delivered a symbolic insult to the Attorney General Mr Andi Mohamad Ghalib.
They presented him with a live chicken and, as if to make sure the insult was clearly understood, they also carried a banner depicting a pretty hen with Ghalib's face, all made up, wearing bright red lipstick, and on its head, a headdress consisting of a bra and a pair of white knickers.
Frightfully politically incorrect in the feminist sense, yet no feminists or women's groups protested, because everyone understood the power of the insult, and the reason for it.
In investigating Suharto's wealth, believed to have been obtained through corruption, collusion and nepotism during his 32 years in power, the Attorney General has been generous with promises but delivering very little.
Amien Rais, chairman of the newly founded National Mandate Party, once commented, "If Habibie and Ghalib were serious about investigating the wealth of the Suharto family, they would have started and gone far. There is ample evidence." Started Ghalib has, but progressed he has not. He has been carefully confining his investigations into the Suharto family's wealth to land and cash holdings in local banks.
When the Minister for Home Affairs, Akbar Tanjung announced on November 15 that the investigations had revealed that the family controlled nine million hectares of forest concessions while Suharto himself held around $ US13 million ($ A21.5 million) in local bank accounts, many in the know broke into sardonic laughter, while the students promptly protested in street demonstrations.
Forbes magazine has estimated Suharto's personal wealth at $ US4 billion ($ A6.5 billion), and Geoff Hiscock in his book Asia's Wealth Club, places the family's wealth in the $ US6.3 billion ($ A10.3 billion) bracket.
If it is common knowledge inside and outside the country, why are Dr Habibie, the president and the Attorney General dragging their feet in bringing Suharto to trial? The short answer is, those in power have too much to lose if Suharto is proven guilty of massive corruption and misuse of power.
The Special Session of the People's Consultative Assembly early in November passed several regulations to get the much needed political reform off the ground. Regulation No 11, supposedly drafted to provide a legal framework for investigating corrupt practices in the government, simply provides for the running of a government free from corruption, collusion and nepotism, and includes investigating the wealth of former president Suharto, his family and his cronies.
Unfortunately this regulation is little more than a statement, and has no legal power to carry out the thorough investigations necessary. Mere rhetorics and lip said Kastorius Sinaga, a senior lecturer at the University of Indonesia and a frequent political commentator.
What is needed is an act of parliament giving specific powers to an investigation team to carry out the task. Here lies one of the problems. Habibie's government will legally end in June 1999, when the elections will be held, clearly not long enough for a new act of parliament to be passed. The alternative is a law in lieu of an act of parliament, which is usually passed when there is a pressing case. The first barrier to this step came from Suharto's legal adviser Yohanes Yacob. In his written statement to the Jakarta Post, Yacob warned that if the trial went ahead, many government officials and former officials, and their respective cronies who were suspected of involvement in corruption, would be dragged into a very complex and messy trial.
Behind Yacob's statement many can see the barely veiled threat from Suharto to Habibie himself. The latter's Batam Authority project, one of his family's many enterprises, has been jointly- managed with the Suharto family.
A probe into the Suharto's wealth would sooner or later hit the Habibie's family business. Habibie was in a dilemma. Being an aspiring presidential candidate for the June 1999 elections, he was under considerable pressure to be seen to get reform well on track, and bringing Suharto to trial was a pre-requisite. Unfortunately, while he had good advisers around him, he was also surrounded by power players who would fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo.
Todung Mulya Lubis, well-known human rights lawyer, told an interesting story. In late November Habibie had agreed to endorse a law in lieu of an act of parliament drafted by another human rights lawyer, Adnan Buyung Nasution, specifically to investigate Suharto's wealth. The law would give the investigating team judicial powers comparable to those of a royal commission, such as powers to subpoena witnesses normally protected by various privileges.
Seven members of the team, including Lubis himself, had been appointed. Before the day ended, Habibie contacted the team and told them that he had changed his mind, that the Attorney General's office would be able to carry out the investigation itself. A very reliable source related to Lubis that shortly before that, when Attorney General Ghalib had heard of Habibie's decision he had threatened to resign. So Habibie had capitulated.
Lubis's story is consistent with that of former Attorney General Soedjono Atmonegoro. Atmonegoro initiated a probe into four of the foundations managed by Suharto. His investigations revealed that they were not charitable foundations as stipulated by their constitutions.
Atmonegoro then presented his findings to Habibie at 10am, on June 15, 1998. At 3pm on the same day I received a presidential letter, saying that I had been replaced.' Another barrier to the investigations comes from the Armed Forces, known as ABRI. It has been ABRI's culture to protect their own members from outside attacks. We have seen how they closed ranks when General Prabowo, Suharto's son-in-law was implicated in the kidnappings and shootings of pro-democracy activists; how they formed their own Honour Council to deal with those involved in the Dili massacre in 1991.
Suharto is after all one of their elders, a five-star general, and what is more, was their Supreme commander for 32 years. It is therefore highly unlikely that General Wiranto, the commander-in-chief and minister for security and defence, would let any investigation team, civilian at that, come any where near Suharto.
In fact, on May 21, 1998, when Suharto resigned, Wiranto, until then Suharto's faithful aide-de-camp, delivered a solemn promise that ABRI would continue to protect Suharto and his family.
Even without self-interest at stake, it would take gigantic determination on Habibie's part to give the green light for any independent team to investigate and try Suharto. However, as most Indonesian political observers would agree, anything is possible in Indonesia, however unlikely it appears initially.
Jakarta -- The Indonesian military on Thursday sent hundreds of troops into troubled Aceh province to search for the bodies of seven soldiers killed in an ambush and find three others held hostage.
Police said some 400 army personnel were rushed from neigboring North Sumatra province to help local security forces locate the bodies and hostages, and hunt the killers. "The national police headquarters has sent 128 personnel of the mobile brigade from the capital Jakarta," East Aceh deputy police chief Major Muhammad Akmil told AFP.
Akmil said seven soldiers were killed when hundreds of villagers ambushed buses passing through Lhok Nibong village in the Simpang Ulim district on Tuesday. Police and residents said groups of "intimidators" stopped buses to check the identities of passengers, and harrassed those found to be members of the armed forces.
Eighteen off-duty soldiers were dragged out of the buses and seven were tortured and killed during the ambush, which the government blamed on separatist militants. He said five bodies were thrown into the Arakundu River and another two dumped in another river.
The military was also searching for three hostages held by a group identified by the army as "Free Aceh" separatists in North Aceh. "We haven't yet located the three. But we believe they are alive because two of their colleagues who escaped the attack were unharmed," said North Aceh deputy police chief Major Amrin Remico.
The three were among five soldiers taken hostage by a crowd on Wednesday in Blang Panjang village in the Muara Dua district of North Aceh less than 24 hours after the ambush. Two escaped. In a separate incident, North Aceh police on Wednesday fired warning shots when 800 people attacked a police station in Banda Sakti sub-district, setting fire to two cars and five motorbikes. Banda Sakti is some 50 kilometers from the scene of the bus ambush.
The ambushes and attacks reignited fears of separatist tensions in the province on the western tip of Indonesia, which has a long history of determined opposition to Dutch colonialists, the Japanese army in World War II and now the Jakarta government.
Regional military commander Major General Ismed Yuzairi said Thursday the military is hunting the leader of the Free Aceh movement Ahmad Kandang. "The military is running after Ahmad Kandang, one of the leaders who provoked people to do brutal activities in Aceh," Yuzairi was quoted as saying by the state Antara news agency. The private TPI television meanwhile quoted Yuzairi as denying the army would reimpose a special military status in the province.
Armed forces chief General Wiranto has blamed the "Free Aceh" Islamic separatist movement for the first attack. The group has been waging a low- level war a separate Islamic state for decades. "The same old groups who want Aceh's independence" were behind the killings, Wiranto said. He warned the violence could jeopardize a military withdrawal from the province. He said 25 people had been detained.
"This was not the work of citizens, nor the work of Aceh people who hope to see an end to the military operation zone," Wiranto added. A resurgence of Free Aceh Movement activity in the late 1980s prompted the military to declare Aceh a special zone in which troops from outside the province were deployed to quash the rebel movement.
After the special military status was lifted this year fact- finding teams visited the province and exhumed mass graves containing hundreds of corpses of people allegedly slaughtered by the military.
Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta -- Pressure is mounting on the Government of Dr B.J. Habibie to force the return to Indonesia of Lieutenant-General Prabowo Subianto, the son-in-law of former president Soeharto, to face allegations that he ordered the kidnapping and torture of pro-democracy activists.
Mr Marzuki Darusman, the chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights, said yesterday that the trial of 11 special force troops under General Prabowo's command was a miscarriage of justice because it would not bring General Prabowo to court.
General Prabowo, honourably discharged from the armed forces earlier this month, has been living in the Jordanian capital, Amman, for several months and has indicated he has no plans to return to Jakarta.
Mr Darusman described the trial, due to resume on Thursday, as a damage-control exercise for the armed forces rather than an attempt to establish the truth about the kidnappings and alleged torture of 27 anti-Soeharto activists in 1997 and 1998.
Witnesses who survived the kidnappings have told how they were beaten, burned with cigarette butts, forced to lie down on blocks of ice and had their heads held under water. But on the first day of the trial last week prosecutors made no mention of the torture allegations. At least 14 of the kidnap victims are believed to have been killed.
Mr Darusman said because the military prosecutor had claimed the 11 charged soldiers acted on their own initiative, their superiors, including General Prabowo, would escape conviction. "The whole trial is staged and is designed to minimise the damage done to ABRI [the armed forces] and it seems it will lead to a miscarriage of justice," he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Amien Rais, the leader of the National Mandate Party, one of Indonesia's four biggest political groups, has warned that Mr Soeharto is still a powerful force in the country's politics. "He will fight back," Dr Rais told the Merdeka newspaper.
Richard Borsuk -- They were almost as close to former Indonesian President Suharto as his own family, and their business successes showed it: Beneficiaries of monopolies, state licenses and the strongman's generosity with national assets, Mohamad "Bob" Hasan and Liem Sioe Liong were billionaires during the 32-year Suharto regime.
Now, as Indonesia's crony capitalism comes under attack, the futures of Mr. Suharto's closest cronies look far more challenging than their pasts.
The 67-year-old Mr. Hasan, a gregarious ethnic-Chinese Indonesian who converted to Islam and who is Mr. Suharto's golfing partner, has been barred from leaving Indonesia. Meanwhile, assets of Nusamba Group, which he and Mr. Suharto's family used to take stakes or cuts of business projects, are being disassembled or given to the state.
The 82-year-old Mr. Liem, a low-key, China-born immigrant to Indonesia, probably won't return from overseas, where he was when rioters destroyed his Jakarta home on May 14. But his youngest son, Anthony Salim, respected for his business acumen, wants parts of the family's Salim Group -- once one of Asia's biggest corporate empires, with interests from noodles to cement -- to survive.
The past year's upheaval has nearly decimated Salim Group. In 1995, a group executive said annual revenue was headed to $10 billion. Business consultants now estimate -- and a Salim executive doesn't dispute -- that 1998 revenue might be less than $3 billion. The market capitalization of its PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, the world's largest instant-noodle maker, is about $900 million, compared with more than $4 billion in mid-1997. The group's bank, PT Bank Central Asia -- 30% owned by Mr. Suharto's eldest son, Sigit Harjojudanto, and eldest daughter, Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana -- was drained by a bank run of almost half of its deposits after Mr. Suharto resigned in May. Salim pledged shares in more than 100 group units as part of an agreement with the government on repaying loans made to shore up BCA.
But Salim Group remains a going concern, while Mr. Hasan's businesses are largely wrecked. The reason for the difference is that Mr. Liem's family ran the businesses that Mr. Suharto helped them start; Mr. Hasan mainly took shares of deals he brokered.
The common denominator for Messrs. Hasan and Liem was that they befriended Mr. Suharto in the 1950s. Although Mr. Hasan wasn't a soldier, then-Col. Suharto began his patronage of Mr. Hasan by making him assistant for his division's finance and economic affairs in 1958. "I learned business from Col. Suharto," Mr. Hasan said in 1994.
He put his learning to use in 1972, when Georgia-Pacific Corp. asked the Indonesian army to recommend a local partner for a timber concession on the island of Borneo. The US company, Mr. Hasan later recounted, "gave me a 10% share in its [operations]. I didn't have money to pay for it, so I paid out of future dividends." It was a practice that marked his specialty, deal making -- and it made him rich.
As chairman of an Indonesian cartel in charge of wood, he oversaw collection of millions of dollars annually from timber concessionaires for every cubic meter they cut from Indonesia's vast rain forests. The money was meant for reforestation, but sometimes went elsewhere. In 1993, at Mr. Suharto's order, the fund lent $185 million to an aircraft factory run by B.J. Habibie -- now Indonesia's president. And in 1996, President Suharto decreed that the fund lend about $120 million to Mr. Hasan's company, PT Kiani Kertas, to aid construction of a $1.3 billion pulp mill. Mr. Hasan contends Kiani Kertas didn't draw the funds, and in any case, Mr. Hasan has now ceded Kiani Kertas and many of his timber interests to the government as part of a deal to repay more than $500 million that Indonesian authorities injected into an ailing bank he partly owned, PT Bank Umum Nasional.
Rather than broker deals, Salim Group's strength was making the business opportunities it got both profitable and dominant in specific fields. The links between Messrs. Suharto and Liem were commercial, not emotional. Mr. Liem began by selling coffee, rice and other essentials to Mr. Suharto when the future president was quartermaster for an army unit.
Until the 1970s, only Mr. Liem and Mr. Suharto's half-brother, Probosutedjo, were allowed to import cloves, critical for Indonesia's distinctive clove cigarettes. A Salim company, PT Bogasari Flour Mills, was licensed to mill all the wheat imported by the country's sole importer. Mr. Liem made Mr. Suharto's cousin and foster brother, Sudwikatmono, a business partner -- and Mr. Sudwikatmono still owns a $33.5 million stake in Salim's Hong Kong affiliate, First Pacific Co.
When Salim got into trouble, the state bailed it out. In 1985, Jakarta pumped $330 million into its cement unit, PT Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa, for a 35% stake. In 1994, Anthony Salim described help the group got in early years as a "first drink of water" that helped it get started. With Mr. Suharto gone, Salim Group may find itself feeling thirsty.
Jakarta - Seven off-duty soldiers in western Indonesia's troubled Aceh province were tortured and killed in an ambush which the military said Wednesday was orchestrated by separatists.
Armed Forces chief Wiranto called Tuesday's ambush "public brutality" and said "the same old groups who want Aceh's independence" were behind the killings. "The leaders were the ones mobilizing the masses who did not have any clue whatsoever," Wiranto said.
The military information office said about 200 people in the Lhok Nibong village in Simpang Lim district intercepted a vehicle carrying the soldiers early Tuesday. Several of the troops, who were heading towards the North Sumatra provincial capital of Medan, managed to escape and reported the attack. They said the mob, armed with sickles and knives, tortured and killed seven of their colleagues.
About 200 troops were sent in to hunt down the killers. "The perpetrators have been arrested. Twenty five of them were captured and are now under investigation," Wiranto said.
"This is public brutality that has violated the human rights of ABRI (armed forces) members," he said, adding that the National Commission on Human Rights must look into the case. The bodies of the seven killed soldiers have not been recovered.
The separatist rebel Free Aceh movement has been fighting for an independent Islamic state in Aceh since the mid-1970s. A resurgence of rebel activity in Aceh in the late 1980s prompted the military to declare the region a military operational area in which troops from outside the province were deployed to quash the rebel movement.
After the military operational status was lifted earlier this year several fact-finding teams visited the province, exhumed remains of alleged victims of the military from mass graves and alleged serious human rights violations and abuse by the military there over the past ten years.
Jakarta -- A crowd of people were holding three military men hostage in Indonesia's troubled Aceh province Thursday, two days after an ambush there left at least five off-duty soliders dead, reports and sources said Thursday.
Armed forces spokesman Major General Syamsul Ma'arif said five soldiers were initially held hostage by a crowd Wednesday in Blang Panjang village in Muara Dua district of North Aceh. Two had managed to escape, but the whereabouts of the three was still unknown, Ma'arif was quoted as telling the Kompas daily.
The hostage incident came a day after hundreds of villagers ambushed a bus in Lhok Nibong village in Simpang Ulim district of East Aceh and dragged out 18 off-duty soldiers -- violence the government blamed on separatist militants.
The military information office on Wednesday put the death toll in the ambush at seven, citing reports from soldiers who had escaped their attackers, but Ma'arif Thursday put the number of victims at five. The five had all been identified, but their bodies were still missing, Ma'arif said.
However, the deputy police chief of East Aceh told AFP early Thursday that the body of Private Robinson Sialagan was found Wednesday afternoon in the Arakundu River near the site of the first ambush. "But witnesses said five others are still missing. The police and military are still looking for them," said Major Muhammad Akmil, indicating that the toll in that ambush may have been six, and not five.
Andreas Harsono, Salatiga -- Two boys were taking a nap as three men waited for the heavy tropical rain to stop under a red-and- black shelter in this city last week. Quietly, one man said, "We're lucky to have this bamboo shelter."
But this was no ordinary shelter. Its walls displayed two huge posters of Indonesian opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri and her late father, the nation's founder, President Sukarno. Other long banners read, "Megawati Will Win" and "PDI Protects All of the People." The messages made it clear the shelter belongs to Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party. How lucky its inhabitants are remains to be seen.
Across this small town of 100,000 people, dozens of shelters like this one were established over the last two months. Lawyer Indra Budiman of the Salatiga-based Percik legal aid organization said they are so numerous that "every kampong [neighborhood] has at least one ..."
A retired high-ranking official estimated that more than 27,000 PDI shelters have already been set up in 9,426 villages in the province of Central Java where Salatiga is located. "It's self- financed and it's quite an effective way to attract 20 million voters in this province," he said.
Nobody could mistake these shelters, with all of their dazzling red-and-black posters along most of the major streets in Central Java are the PDI's preparation to get as many votes as possible in the coming presidential elections scheduled for June 1999.
The PDI initially founded the shelters -- where party workers usually gather and chat every night -- to prevent the growing number of riots and violent clashes in their respective areas. Others soon joined them and soon enlarged the Megawati camp.
Indonesia-watcher William Liddle of the Ohio State University predicted that in addition to the PDI, two other political parties will also get a large bite in the election: the Nation Awakening Party (PKB) of Muslim leader Abdurrahman Wahid and the ruling party Golkar party of President B.J. Habibie.
Strangely, Wahid and Megawati are close allies. The Jakarta-based Merdeka newspaper reported that the two leaders had vowed to support each other. If the wheel-chair bound and nearly-blind Wahid cannot run for the presidency, he will support Megawati and vice-versa.
Liddle said two other political parties -- the National Mandate Party of reform leader Amien Rais and the Muslim-based Moon Star Party -- might also get a goodly chunk of the election ballots, noting that the two are likely to get less votes than the PDI, the PKB and the Golkar, which still has the political machinery and funding to maintain its influence.
But both Habibie and Golkar will face tremendous challenges to repair their destroyed images. Habibie is widely known as a crony and indeed protege of former president Suharto. The former president is now facing public pressure and daily student protests to hand over his fortune accumuulated during his 32 year in power.
Like most of the PDI activists who guard the shelters, many Indonesians hope that the June election will be a turning point in this crisis-torn country where unprecedented economic collapse, massive unemployment, political upheaval, social mayhem and waves of savage killings have taken place on a daily basis since January 1998.
Analysts and foreign diplomats, however, doubt whether Indonesia can reach that goal in the near future. One election, they say, will not be enough to turn a country which experienced the Suharto dictatorship into a truly democratic one.
Worse than that, the world's forth most populous country is also having the worst and the most complicated economic crisis in Asia. The Indonesian rupiah declined from 2,300 to the dollar in July 1997 to between 7,000 and 16,000 throughout 1998. It closed at 7,945 to the U.S. dollar on Monday.
"The key to the economic recovery is the election. Ironically it is difficult to hold a fair election if people have just lost their job," said businessman Sutanto Pranoto of the Spectra ad agency in Semarang, the provincial capital of Central Java.
Pranoto predicted that another massive dismissal will be produced at the end of the Ramadan fasting month in Febuary. "Rather than to pay a Ramadan bonus and severance pay, it's better to pay only the bonus and let the workers walk away," businessmen will decide, he says.
The result is likely to be more riots. "People become more emotional. Village heads cannot manage their people anymore," said Daniel Budi Setiawan, whose trucking firm PT Siba Surya has dismissed nearly 60 percent of its drivers. "I don't know what will happen if the villagers come to the cities," he added. "Some drivers came to me and begged to let them return to work. I cannot stand it and let them work. But economically it doesn't work," said Setiawan, referring to increased prices of spare parts as well as soaring bank interest rates.
Researcher Muhadjir Darwin of the Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta estimated that the number of poor people in Indonesia will reach 130 million in 1999 as a result of the massive unemployment and a soaring inflation rate.
Throughout much of the nation, conditions are no better. In some places, they are worse. Riots ripple daily through the increasingly lawless countryside, where tens of millions have sunk into desperate poverty. Food shortages are common, and in several provinces, secessionist movements are gaining.
In May, rampaging mobs looted and burned more than 5,000 buildings in Jakarta, leaving 1,200 people dead. That proved to be the opening act of a violent drama in which a bewildering array of forces, seen and unseen, compete to shape the nation's future within an atmosphere of intrigue, treachery and ethnic tension.
A few kilometers away from the PDI shelter, more than a dozen coachmen of the traditional dokar horse-drawn carts began their dinner in silence. Some coachmen lit their clove cigarettes and murmured that they doubted whether the Habibie government and the powerful military are sincere about reforming Indonesia's political system.
"I don't know who I will vote for in June. But if I have to cast my ballot today, probably, I will vote for Megawati," said coachman Ali Achmadi, adding that he considers Megawati to be the most moderate among other figures.
Jakarta -- Indonesian authorities have estimated that more than 500 million dollars had been lost by the state to graft, most of it to members and cronies of the family of fallen president Suharto.
Sastrosunarto Hartarto, coordinating minister for development supervision and state administrative reforms, said total losses to the state from corruption, collusion and nepotism stood at 2,850 billion rupiah (360 million dollars) and 205.5 million dollars.
"The greater portion involved the Cendana (Suharto) family," Hartarto said, referring to the family by its Jakarta street address. Hartaro was speaking after he and nine other minister reported to President B.J. Habibe.
He said that, of the total, 668.98 billion rupiah (84.7 million dollars) and 205.5 million dollars was identified by the finance and development supervision board as having been lost between the 1993-94 and 1998-99 budget years. No timeframe was given for the remainder.
Hartato said 619.12 billion rupiah (78.4 million dollars) and 1.07 billion dollars was "saved" after hundreds of contracts deemed to have been granted unfairly or involving "mark-up" practices were cancelled by the departments of public works, mining and energy, and the state entreprises management agency.
In a list of cancelled projects, the State Enterprises Ministry said three national cellular DCS-1800 joint ventures involving PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia and JVC were cancelled because they were concluded without going through the tender process.
In addition, a proposed joint venture between PT Krakatau Steel, the Salim Group, the Port Authority of Singapore and Sembawang Marine Logistics to build and operate a container terminal in Cigading, West Java was cancelled because it was not awarded through an open tender process and would have over-lapped with existing facilities. The Salim Group, controlled by tycoon Liem Sioe Liong, was considered one of the closest cronies of the Suharto family.
The government also cancelled a memorandum of understanding with the Poleko and Ciputra groups to develop a resort in Manado, North Sulawesi, because the contract was not awarded via a tender process. In addition, the government cancelled a contract between PT Garuda Indonesia and Kibeka, controlled by Suharto son Bambang Trihatmodjo, to provide a general sales agency for Garuda tickets in Japan.
It also renegotiated a contract between Singapore Airlines Engineering Company to maintain B 747-200 aircraft to eliminate a local middleman, PT Tri Catra Dirgantara. It did not give details on the controlling shareholders of the local party.
The statement also said presidential decree No 32/1991 between the government and Singapore is also under review because it gives rights of monopoly to the Salim Group to provide water from Riau province to neighbouring Singapore. Of some 159 contracts reviewed by the Mines and Energy Ministry, many were held by the Suharto family.
Jakarta -- Former Indonesian president Suharto, his relatives and associates own almost nine million hectares (22.2 million acres) of forest land, and the family owns 204,983 hectares of prime real estate across the country, press reports said Tuesday.
But only 18 hectares was registered under the names of individual family members, Minister of Land Affairs Hasan Basri Durin was quoted by the Indonesian Observer as saying Monday.
Durin told a press conference that another 204,901 hectares of real estate was registered under the names of companies in which relatives held an 80 percent stake or acted as commissioners or directors. Land under the family name was located in seven provinces, while those under companies's names were spread throughout 14 provinces.
Durin said the data could change because the search for land titles was continuing, and the family could give up the ownership. However, all the land owned by the Suharto clan was acquired legally according to Durin. "From the legal point of view, the land was purchased through correct procedure, but the problem is, it violates people's sense of justice," he said.
Durin's office began compiling the data on Suharto landholdings shortly after he fell from power in May of this year amid an outburst of criticism that the Suharto clan and their big business associates had frequently used the military to expel farmers from the land they wanted. But Durin declined comment on the charges.
The minister said the data will be sent to the attorney general's office, which is conducting an investigation into the wealth of the former president.
Criticism by students and reformists of the slow pace of the attorney general's probe was seen as instrumental earlier this month in President B.J. Habibie ordering "legal steps" against his predecessor and former mentor.
The order came after former ambassador to the United States, retired general Hasnan Habib accused attorney general Andi Ghalib, a general, of "being afraid" to push the probe. Suharto presented himself at the attorney general's office on December 9, and emerged saying only that he was ready to cooperate if called again.
Jakarta -- Indonesian Justice Minister Muladi said Monday the country's new government may be open to the return of hundreds who fled the country in the 1960s after being charged with being communists.
"We may discuss the possibility, at an inter-departmental level between the foreign ministry, justice ministry, home ministry and also defense ministry as it is also related to security affairs," he said.
Maladi said there were about 500 Indonesians living in Europe who had fled after being branded followers of the outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). "There is as yet no request [for the return]. If it is requested, the problem will be discussed. But I cannot promise anything," Muladi told a news conference.
Former president Suharto imprisoned millions of members and followers of the PKI and banned the second largest communist party after China, after it was blamed for an attempted coup.
At least 500,000 people died in a bloody crackdown on the party in the aftermath of the coup attemnpt, which saw Suharto, then an army general, taking power from the country's first president Sukarno. As well as those who managed to flee to Europe, hundreds are known to have escaped to China and the Portuguese territory of Macao.
Communism is still outlawed under the government of Suharto's hand-picked successor, B.J. Habibie, but books by the country's most famous leftist author, Pramoedya Ananda Toer, are now allowed to be sold.
Jakarta -- All but 15 out of the 120 or so political parties that have mushroomed since the fall of Indonesian president Suharto are likely to be disqualified from the June elections if parliament endorses government proposals, a senior minister said Monday.
"I cannot predict, but from the 120 parties listed ... the ones who qualify would probably be no more than 15," Home Affairs Minister Syarwan Hamid told reporters. Hamid was speaking after a surprise meeting with President B.J. Habibie attended by three other senior ministers.
He said only a few would meet all the qualifications set by the government in its proposed revised laws on elections and political parties. Under the proposals, a qualifying political party must have "executive boards in at least one third of all the provinces and branches in at least half of the administrative districts in each of those provinces," he added.
This means that each party, to contest the June 7 polls, would have to have an executive board in at least nine out of the 27 provinces and branches in at least half of the administrative districts of a qualifying province.
"The president wishes that after the passing of election laws there will be a good election. A transparent, honest and fair election," Hamid quoted Habibie as saying.
Parliament is still deliberating party rules but many of the smaller parties have already cried foul over the proposals, charging that they have not had time in the eight months since Suharto's fall to build up provincial chapters.
Some of the smaller parties have proposed that the new rules could apply in five years' time, when the next elections are scheduled and after the weaker parties are weeded out on June 7. Parliamentary deliberations on the three legal packages are continuing with a deadline of January 28.
Armed forces chief General Wiranto said the military, known as ABRI, would enforce security during the voting with the help of a controversial civilian militia but would stay impartial.
"In ABRI's position as security enforcer, it is preparing for both physical and non-physical disturbances. It will receive assistance from the civilian militia component that would help the election procedures, even though their primary task is to handle public security," the general said.
He added that the military would not favour any one party. "Will it defend only one of the contestants such as in the past? I don't think so," he said, in a clear reference to its past support for Golkar.
Jakarta -- Indonesian police on Monday summoned a leading student activist for questioning in a controversial subversion case involving 11 prominent public figures accused of instigating unrest.
"I was asked to come to the police headquarters as a witness to the subversion case," the student Sardini told a press conference. Sardini said police told him that Johnny Hidayat, Hariadi Dharmawan and Sri Edi Swasono, three of 11 signatories to a joint communique deemed subversive by the state, had mentioned his name during police investigations last month.
"I told them that all of this time I have never been in contact with those three figures either directly or via telephone. So I know nothing about the writing of the communique," said Sardini, 24.
Sardini was one of the reformist student leaders who initiated the "Ciganjur Declaration", a statement by four prominent public figures in November. However he said all he knew of the joint communique, whose writers are unconnected to the "Ciganjur Four," was what he had heard on television news reports.
"I was asked my whereabouts on the 11, 12,13 (of November when the communique was drafted and signed). I told them that during the three days I was constantly on the move ... to University Indonesia of Salemba, then to the Mustopo University campus and later to Center of Indonesian Social Sciences," he said.
The communique called for the installation of a provisional government until elections could be held. When its signatories were summoned last month on suspicion of subversion, legal experts said the government was skating on thin ice.
The experts argued that the 11, who included several retired generals, had been expressing a political opinion and had not committed any act that could be construed as trying to overthrow the state.
The summoning of Sardini was widely seen here as an attempt by the attorney general's office to link almost-daily student street protests, many of which have also demanded a provisional government, to the communique. Students and reformists say the government of B.J. Habibie, president Suharto's hand-picked successor, is illegal. They say it is continuing most of the policies of Suharto, who bowed out in May.
The 11 signatories were grilled in marathon sessions late November and early December, with police saying they considered the communique subversive. But there has been no announcement so far of further action.
Jakarta -- A leading Indonesian human rights watchdog Saturday lashed out at the court martial of 11 soldiers on charges of abducting activists as "simplistic," and demanded that their commanding officers also be dragged to court.
The Jakarta Military High Court on Wednesday opened the court martial of the soldiers with the prosecutor saying the defendants had acted on their own initiative in the abduction and torture of activists in the last months of the Suharto era.
"That the abductions were conducted by the defendants because of their 'calls of conscience' to safeguard the national interest, is not only illogical ... but also directly closes the road for the legal process against their superiors," the Indonesian Association for Legal Aid and Human Rights said in a statement.
The association said the soldiers would not have dared to act on their own in holding activists for lengthy periods at their units' facilities. "The 'call of conscience' argument appears not only simplistic but also foolish and far-fetched," it added.
The prosecutor has said that the defendants, eight of them junior officers, were all members of the Kopassus elite corps and had formed a "Rose Team" that abducted at least nine activists in February and March. Kopassus was under the command of a son-in- law of former president Suharto, now-retired general Prabowo Subianto, at the time of the kidnappings.
The elite troops were believed to be involved in the kidnapping and torture of at least 23 activists in the months preceding the resignation of Suharto in May. But the charges only relate to the nine activists who have since surfaced with tales of torture and incarceration. One other activist has been found dead and 13 are still missing.
Military prosecutor Colonel Harom Wijaya said the Rose Team was set up by one of the defendants to arrest individuals deemed "radical" because "his conscience called for safeguarding the national interest." If found guilty the 11 defendants, who have been in detention since July 14, face up to seven years' imprisonment.
The association said that the charges were meant to block further legal moves against the defendants' superiors, adding that a "just" trial should also investigate the commanding officers.
"This means the legal process should be extended to cover not only retired lieutenant general Prabowo Subianto but also the heads of the Jakarta police and military, the chief of the national police and the army, the armed forces commander," it said. Suharto, as the then commander in chief of the armed forces, should also be investigated over the case, it added.
Munir, the head of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), had earlier described the court martial as a "comedy." He said after the trial opened that it was designed "to minimalize the faults of ABRI (the Indonesian armed forces) as an institution and turn it into a procedural mistake by a number of Kopassus members." Munir also questioned why the charges did not mention the torture that the victims have said they were subjected to.
Three senior Kopassus officers, including Prabowo, have been disciplined by the armed forces. Prabowo was honorably discharged from the armed forces and is now in Jordan. The two others were barred from holding an operational command posting within the armed forces. The court martial is to resume on December 31.