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)