Disabled policeman wins aid promise with strike

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)