Disabled policeman wins aid promise with strike

JAKARTA (JP): City police chief Maj. Gen. Noegroho Djajoesman has promised to help a retired, disabled police office who went on a hunger strike to demand that the National Police pay him compensation for injuries sustained in the line of duty.

The paralyzed first Sgt. (ret) Mamat Soehermat, 49, started his hunger strike at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute in Central Jakarta on Friday.

Mamat, accompanied by his wife Mila Karmila and several lawyers from the Commission on Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), met Noegroho for less than 45 minutes on Wednesday.

"This man was once a policeman and he was even reportedly sent to East Timor, so it is my duty as a fellow policeman to help him," Noegroho told reporters after the brief meeting.

Besides acting for humanitarian reasons, Noegroho also said he did not want Mamat to be used by irresponsible parties who could take advantage of his situation.

"Anything can be made into a political issue now, I just don't what this disabled man used," he said without elaboration.

He said the case would be reported to National Police chief Gen. Roesmanhadi for further consideration in an effort to prevent other officers from the same ill-treatment.

Kopassus again

Mamat, a father of six children, was left paralyzed along his right side after he was stabbed by four members of the Army's Special Force (Kopassus) in Serang, Banten, West Java, in February 1996.

"Pak Noegroho is a good man, today he guaranteed all medical costs for my surgery and has also promised to help my family," Mamat said, adding that the two-star general also promised to help fix his house.

After the meeting, Mamat was put into a police ambulance and taken to Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital in Central Jakarta to undergo surgery. His entourage accompanied him.

Mamat's ordeal began two months ago when he and his colleagues apprehended four Kopassus officers who had allegedly assaulted a police officer in a prostitution complex in Serang in December 1995.

Mamat was assigned by the Banten Police chief of detectives to search for the Kopassus officers in the complex.

Along with his colleagues, he arrested four of the soldiers, one of whom was identified as Mustofa, and found an FN gun in one of the brothel's rooms.

The red-beret officers, released shortly after their arrest, stopped Mamat and his colleagues, who were riding motorcycles one afternoon in an area near the Merak bus terminal.

The officers allegedly attacked Mamat and stabbed him in the back of his neck and chest. There was no details about the fate of his colleagues.

The soldiers, Mamat said recently, left him to die of his injuries.

Mamat reportedly gave an account of the assault at the local police station, but says he never heard whether the case had been investigated.

He was later informed that the then Banten Police chief, Col. Banurusman, closed the case for unspecified reasons. (emf)