Govt asked to put a stop to killing spree in E. Java
Govt asked to put a stop to killing spree in E. Java
JAKARTA (JP): Rights activists demanded on Friday that the
government put a stop to the mysterious killing spree in East
Java which has claimed more than 150 lives, mostly of Islamic
teachers and suspected black magic practitioners.
Baharuddin Lopa and fellow members of the National Commission
on Human Rights told a news conference that the murders
constituted gross violations of human rights. Some victims have
been hacked to pieces, trussed up or hanged from trees.
"The security apparatus and law enforcers ... (must)
immediately stop these violations in order to return peace and
security to the public," Lopa said. He was accompanied by rights
body members B.N. Marbun and Clementino dos Reis Amaral.
The commission sent a two-member team on Oct. 5 to the
province to obtain preliminary data.
Police have arrested 334 people suspected of involvement in
the murders, Antara reported on Friday.
The news agency quoted East Java Police chief Maj. Gen. M.
Dayat as saying that 157 of those detained were in Banyuwangi,
the district hardest-hit by the bloodshed.
"For the time being, the cases (of the suspects) are purely
criminal," Dayat said in the provincial capital of Surabaya.
He did not rule out the possibility that political motives
behind the killings could emerge during trials.
Religious and military leaders, including Abdurrahman Wahid,
leader of the 30-million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Moslem
organization, have expressed suspicions that conflicts within the
country's political elites lay behind the violence.
Beginning in September, the killers initially targeted people
suspected of practicing black magic, but Moslem preachers and
teachers have been subsequent victims.
There have been reprisals against individuals suspected of
being members of the "ninjas", so called because the killers are
usually masked and attired in black. Mobs in several East Java
districts have set upon at least 24 people, killing 10 of them.
The severed heads of two suspected killers were paraded
through the streets in the town of Malang.
M.M. Billah of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims
of Violence (Kontras) warned Friday that there are "free riders"
exploiting the climate of fear in East Java.
"They are trying to create mass insecurity," Billah said,
referring to threats against Moslem preachers and journalists
reporting the mysterious killings.
Billah did not identify the parties involved.
In Surabaya, activists from the Movement of Indonesian Moslem
Students staged a protest on Friday at the regional police
headquarters. They demanded an immediate end to the murders.
In Yogyakarta, about 4,000 members of NU task force and 2,000
others from the National Mandate Party (PAN) were put on alert
Friday following death threats against local religious leaders.
Several Moslem preachers in the Central Java towns of Cilacap
and Purbalingga were also terrorized on Thursday by unidentified
people.
At least one Islamic boarding school in the Kesugihan district
in Cilacap, Al Ihya Ulumuddin, and houses of its leaders
Mustholih Badawi and Chasbullah Badawi were stoned by
unidentified people.
Meanwhile, Minister of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises Adi
Sasono categorically denied on Friday an allegation that he or
some other Cabinet members were involved in the killings.
The minister argued he had long been the target of such rumors
which were always proved false.
"Do you believe that a Cabinet member still has time to carry
out the killings of alleged santet sorcerers? It is illogical,
and absurd," Adi said after attending the Economic and Financial
Resilience Council meeting at the State Guest House.
Abdurrahman Wahid, better known as Gus Dur, has claimed that
some members of the Cabinet masterminded the murder spree.
(byg/nur/23/44/45/prb)