Bintang complains of obstruction

Bintang complains of obstruction

JAKARTA (JP): Politician Sri Bintang Pamungkas says the
government is making a feeble attempt to bring in two key
witnesses expected to testify on his behalf.

In a press statement made available to The Jakarta Post
yesterday, Bintang said the government might instead be devising
ways to prevent Sri Basuki and Soenarto from entering Indonesia.
The two, currently living as stateless residents in Germany, said
that as of yesterday they had not received a summons to testify
from the prosecutors.

Bintang has been accused by government prosecutors of calling
Indonesia's first president Sukarno and his successor Soeharto
dictators during a seminar held last April in Berlin. He has also
allegedly accused them of deviating from the 1945 Constitution.

Presiding Judge Syoffinan Sumantri has twice ordered the
prosecutors to present the two, both of whom attended the seminar
in which Bintang allegedly made the remarks.

Chief Prosecutor P. Sitinjak claims that he has sent letters
through the Indonesian Consulate General in Bonn, Germany,
requesting that the two testify in the trial.

According to Bintang, the staff at the consulate general claim
to know nothing about the letters.

"The government should be ashamed," stated Bintang, who was
dismissed from the Moslem-based United Development Party for his
outspokenness last year.

He charged that the government might devise ways to actually
prevent Sri Basuki and Soenarto from testifying for him. "Their
testimony would certainly benefit me," he said.

Soenarto, who found out about the summons from the Jakarta
Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), has said in a letter that he could
not afford the risk of entering Indonesia in his stateless
condition.

He and Sri Basuki were former students during Sukarno's era in
the 1960s who had been sent to then communist East Germany to
study. "I'm an asylum seeker," Soenarto has written.

Yesterday, however, Sri Bintang declared that Soenarto was
actually making preparations to fly to Indonesia.

Soenarto has reportedly contacted the consulate general
inquiring about the requirements he must meet in order to
testify, and written Sitinjak asking for a guarantee that he
could return to Germany afterward.

However, said Bintang, "if the two witnesses have to sacrifice
their freedom and safety in order to appear in court, then I'd
rather not have they come."

The next session is March 6.

Soenarto and Sri Basuki were the most active participants at
the Technische Universitaet seminar in Berlin on Apr. 5, 1995,
which featured as speakers Sri Bintang Pamungkas and Yeni Rosa
Damayanti, a student activist.

Both Soenarti and Sri Basuki raised questions which contained
the terms "dictator", "Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)" and
"violations against the 1945 Constitution".

Bintang said he used the same words to paraphrase the
questions before answering them. Those remarks, however used,
have been called slanderous by prosecutors. (swe)