Govt pressed to complete Priok probe
JAKARTA (JP): The government is under pressure from rights activists, victims and relatives of the victims to speed up the investigation into the military shooting towards demonstrating mass in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, on Sept. 12, 1984.
One of the victims, A.M. Fatwa, who was jailed by the past government for questioning the odd number of victims given officially by the military, said there was no reason for the investigators to again delay deadline which will due on Sept. 20.
"It's not clear how the Attorney General's Office takes its commitment to complete the investigation which is still at a standstill and takes needlessly long time," Fatwa, who is a member of the House of Representatives, told reporters on Wednesday.
"Current Attorney General M.A. Rachman is responsible if the case is abandoned. His performance will be evaluated by the House. We're arranging the schedule of a meeting with him," he said on the sideline of the bloodshed's observance.
Attorney General's Office spokesman Muljohardjo told The Jakarta Post that there were many witnesses left for questioning.
"Hopefully we can complete investigation before the deadline," he said Tuesday, adding that no suspects have yet been named.
The shooting took place following a demonstration demanding the release of four civilian residents detained at the military district command, which didn't have the right to arrest civilians but the police in accordance with the Criminal Code.
The mass were mobilized in an afternoon lecture at the Tanjung Priok Rawa Badak Mosque by preachers, who criticized the government's policies, believed to shut down the people's freedom of religion and speech.
Mochtar Beni Biki, another victim, said Tuesday that until now there was a stigma put in the head of the opponents that they wanted to change the country's ideology with Islam teachings.
"We've been called the right extreme because of the misreading of our stance that time. We've been rejected by the society. Some of us lost their job and cannot get new ones," he told the Post.
Beni Biki is the younger brother of Amir Biki, the preacher during the Sept. 12 lecture, whose dead body was the only one handed by the military to the family for proper burial, while most others had been declared missing until recently.
The military claimed that nine people died in the shooting, while eyewitnesses said they had seen a truck loaded with charred bodies. They were believed buried in unidentified graves spread in several burial sites in North Jakarta.
An inquiry formed by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) found that there were 33 known fatalities after exhuming the graves. Fourteen of them are still unidentified.
The government had ordered the establishment of rights ad hoc tribunal for Tanjung Priok case and the 1999 East Timor tragedy.
The Supreme Court is now in the process of screening the ad hoc judges for the two cases.
"The incident should be seen as a fundamental agenda to make a national concept in reorganize the judicial institutions and to review the military-civilian relation. The case is only taken as a crime and not the state's problem. That's a pity, Munir said. (bby)