Give Maluku team time to prove itself: VP
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Responding to public skepticism over the credibility of an investigation team for Maluku, Vice President Hamzah Haz said Sunday the team should be given time to prove itself.
Hamzah said the team would be evaluated in three months time and changes would be made if it was deemed to have failed to carry out objective investigations.
"The team has not commenced its work and people already doubt (its impartiality). How is that possible? Give it time (to prove itself)," Hamzah was quoted by Antara as saying on Sunday.
The government announced Thursday the establishment of a 14- member team to investigate the violence in Maluku, where religious conflict has claimed more than 6,000 innocent lives since it broke out in January 1999.
Setting up an investigation team to look into possible gross human rights violations in Maluku is one of the recommendations of the peace agreement signed by both Muslim and Christian leaders in Malino, South Sulawesi in February 2002.
President Megawati Soekarnoputri is expected to install the team as soon as she returns from a state visit to Europe.
According to Presidential Decree No. 38/2002, the probe team would be given six months to probe the religious violence, focusing on nine major cases including the first incident on Jan. 19, 1999 which triggered the protracted conflict between Muslim and Christian communities.
Other issues included the presence of the hard-line Laskar Jihad group and the Republic of South Maluku secessionist movements.
Deputy to the coordinating minister for political and security affairs I Wayan Karya and human rights activist Bambang W. Soeharto have been assigned as the team's chairman and deputy respectively.
Muslim and Christian leaders in Maluku have welcomed the team, expressing the hope that it would help clarify issues that have worsened the political-ridden conflict.
They also urged the team to be transparent and be free from any political interests to ensure that their work would help put an end to the violence there.
Herman Nikijuluw, chairman of a Christian grassroots movement who signed the Malino peace deal on Feb. 12 in Malino, South Sulawesi, said that such a probe, albeit late, was necessary to unravel the truth about the presence of the South Maluku Republic separatist movement.
"If the team finds evidence that there is no such secessionist movement, our name should be restored," he told The Jakarta Post by phone on Sunday.
However, Idrus Tatuhey, a Muslim scholar who also signed the Malino peace agreement, doubted the team would succeed in shedding any light on the what really happened during the first incident on Jan. 19, 1999 which sparked the prolonged sectarian conflict.
Secretary general of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) Maluku chapter Azis Fidmatan pledged Friday to assist the team in obtaining data and information about the violence.
Rights activists expressed concern that the team would meet a similar fate to that of the government-backed team probing the murder of Papuan pro-independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay in November 2001.
They also criticized the government for not consulting concerned groups before assigning the members on the team, suggesting that some team members might turn out to be totally unacceptable to both warring groups in Maluku.
Since the fall of former dictator Soeharto in 1998, the government has set up numerous 'independent' teams to investigate various past human rights abuses, but their work has failed to shed light on issues examined.
A team was established to probe the famous bloody shooting in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, in 1984 and numerous alleged human rights abuses in Irian Jaya (Papua) and Aceh, but no significant findings have been reported.
Early this year, the government also formed an investigation team to look into Theys' murder, in addition to teams formed by the Army and the Indonesian Military (TNI) headquarters, but Theys' tragic death remains unsolved.