AGO slammed for its view on May 1998 riots

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam) slammed the Attorney General's Office on Friday for declaring that there were no serious human rights violations in the 1998 May riots.

"The AGO actually does not have the authority to conclude whether a case is a common crime or crime against humanity. Only the ad hoc human rights tribunal can make such a decision. The state prosecutors' duty is to investigate and prosecute the suspects," Ifdhal Kasim of Elsam said.

During a hearing with the House of Representatives' Commission II on legal and domestic affairs on Thursday, the AGO's human rights task force head B.R. Pangaribuan said there was no evidence of human rights violations in the May 1998 bloodbath.

He also claimed that the case could not be put before an ad hoc human rights tribunal because several low-ranking military officers had already been tried in a military tribunal over the case.

However, Ifhal insisted that the prosecutors should present their findings to the human rights tribunal and let the latter decide whether to proceed with the prosecution.

"The office has once again disappointed the families of the victims and indeed the whole nation. If they do not have enough evidence, then they must officially halt the investigation," he said.

The Attorney General's Office has sent back the case reports to the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), which has already concluded that there was ample evidence of major state-sponsored human rights violations on May 13 and May 14, 1998.

Solahuddin Wahid, the rights body's deputy chief who led the inquiry into the carnage, which mostly victimized pro-democracy activists and Chinese-Indonesian women, questioned on Friday the AGO's conclusion, saying the prosecutors had only asked for more evidence.

"They have returned our documents, not because they dropped the case, but because they want more evidence. And, we have been officially given one more month to complete the documents," he explained.

Solahuddin also made it clear that the AGO had no authority to determine whether the case was a rights violation or not.

"It is the House who is supposed to decide. We will fulfill their demand to gather more evidence because it is our obligation," he said.

Komnas HAM has concluded that the riots met the major criteria for a crime against humanity, because they were widespread and systematic, with at least 20 high-ranking military officers implicated.

The AGO is supposed to set up a team to build the prosecution's case, based on the Komnas HAM report, according to the country's human rights law.

Instead of following the proper legal procedures, the state's rosecutors have merely been satisfied to go along with the recommendation issued by a House committee, which concluded in 2000 that no human rights violations occurred.

However, legislator Panda Nababan of the Indonesia Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) said on Friday that that 2000 recommendation was only based on informal sources as legislators had never properly investigated the case.

"We shouldn't read too much into that recommendation," he said.

Hundreds of shops, shopping centers and homes were looted and set ablaze during the riots that followed the fatal shooting of four Trisakti University students who took part in a rally demanding the resignation of Soeharto in Jakarta.

State security officers did nothing to prevent the riots that swept through Jakarta and other cities. The upheaval and chaos soon turned into a Chinese-Indonesian pogrom that included mass rape, and when it was all over 1,217 people were dead, according to several non-governmental organizations.

No serious action has ever been taken against the perpetrators, despite the fact that the country has since seen three different administrations since Soeharto.