ABRI to support torture convention

JAKARTA (JP): The Armed Forces has vowed to support the international convention against torture should the government and the House of Representatives decide to adopt it into law.

Armed Forces (ABRI) Commander Gen. Feisal Tanjung yesterday expressed ABRI's readiness to stand behind the government and the House in their stance on the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

"No problem for us. We will support it if the government ratifies it," he said according to Antara reports from Jambi. Asked whether the forces, in particular the National Police force, will be ready to implement the convention, Feisal said yes.

"If the UN convention is ratified, our investigators will work in accordance with the rules," he said.

Feisal was the second to come out in support of recent calls for Indonesia to ratify the convention. The first to come out in support were members of the Golkar dominant faction at the House of Representatives.

The calls, from observers and scholars, to ratify the convention have emerged following the widely reported violent death of Tjetje Tadjudin, a robbery suspect, allegedly at the hands of police investigators in Bogor, West Java.

The government has promised Indonesia would soon ratify the convention to put and end to the practice of using violence during criminal investigations.

Minister of Justice Oetojo Oesman said the government was willing to ratify the document but needed to address "some technicalities" first. One of the "technicalities" impeding the government was that many agencies and personnel are not yet ready to implement the convention.

Oetojo had argued that although Indonesia has yet to ratify the convention, the Criminal Code already contains provisions for the protection of suspects' rights.

The National Commission on Human Rights have sent an investigation team to probe allegations of Tjetje's torture following growing criticism that many incidents of security forces torturing suspects have gone unheeded because the government has yet to ratify the UN Convention.

Yesterday, Feisal said ABRI respected the rights commission for also sending a team to investigate the death of Yogyakarta- based journalist Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin and the allegedly arbitrary arrest of his suspected killer.

"The commission can join (in the investigation). But, we are still the institution authorized to solve the case," he said when asked whether the commission was intruding in police affairs.

Feisal said he hoped the commission would be as objective as possible, and that it consider the case in its general context. He did not elaborate. (swe)