Govt pressed to complete Priok probe

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)