Court asks for two German witnesses
Court asks for two German witnesses
JAKARTA (JP): The Central Jakarta District Court trying
politician Sri Bintang Pamungkas for allegedly insulting
President Soeharto has ordered the prosecutors to present two key
witnesses who are currently living as stateless residents in
Germany.
Presiding Judge Syoffinan Sumantri yesterday also ordered the
defendant's lawyers to help contact Sri Basuki and Sunarto, both
participants in a seminar at a German university last year during
which Bintang allegedly made the derogatory remarks.
Bintang is being accused by the government prosecutors of
calling both Indonesia's first president Sukarno and his
successor Soeharto dictators. He has also allegedly accused them
of deviating from the 1945 Constitution.
Yesterday's session was scheduled to hear the testimony of the
two persons, whom the prosecutors failed to bring before the
court. Sri Basuki and Sunarto reportedly posed questions which
invited Bintang to launch into one of his usually critical
speeches of the government.
Chief Prosecutor P. Sitinjak said he had, through the
Indonesian Consulate-General in Bonn, Germany, sent letters to
the two requesting that they testify in the trial. Both persons
have reportedly not received the letters.
Sunarto, who found out about the summons from the Jakarta
Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), 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," Sunarto said in the letter read out
yesterday by Adnan Buyung Nasution, one of Bintang's lawyers.
Sunarto and Sri Basuki were the most active participants of
the seminar at the Technische Universitaet in Berlin on Apr. 5,
1995, which featured Sri Bintang Pamungkas and Yeni Rosa
Damayanti, a student activist.
Both raised questions which contained terms such as
"dictator", "Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)" and "violations
against the 1945 Constitution".
Bintang said he used the same words to paraphrase the
questions before he answered them. It was those remarks which the
prosecutors say are slanderous.
Buyung yesterday asked the chief prosecutor to again summon
Sri Basuki and Sunarto, but this time leaving out the question of
their citizenship. The prosecutor had reportedly asked the two to
produce proof of their citizenship.
"Even foreign citizens can testify before an Indonesian court
so the prosecutor's request was groundless," Buyung said.
Presiding Judge Syoffinan Sumantri gave the prosecutors three
weeks to bring the two witnesses to court. The trial was
adjourned to March 6. (imn)