Hired thugs suspected in attack

Hired thugs suspected in attack

JAKARTA (JP): Hired hoodlums are suspected in the Tuesday
afternoon attack at a vacant farm located in Cimanggis, south of
Jakarta, in which a man was killed and four others severely
wounded, a friend and a relative said.

David Guntur Siahaan said the murdered man, Dahlan Marpaung,
was trying to protect his brother Zainal Marpaung when the
attackers, armed with sickles and machetes, slashed him
repeatedly.

"Some 30 people, who have farmed the land for the last two
years, were unarmed and did not expect the attack. It was clearly
an unfair fight," Siahaan told reporters at the morgue of the
Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital.

He said the new owner of the land, a real estate developer,
previously tried to forcibly evict the farmers. "They even burned
the farmers' temporary shelters a few days ago," he said.

Siahaan said the farmers earlier agreed to meet with the
company's executives. "But only those brutal people awaited them
there."

A postmortem examination showed that Marpaung, 31, a father of
a seven-year-old son, suffered gash wounds to the nape of his
neck, face, legs and feet.

Zainal and the other injured sustained gash wounds to the head
and arms. They are being treated at the Islamic Hospital in
Pondok Gede, Bekasi, and the Indonesian Christian University
Hospital in Cawang, East Jakarta.

A relative of Dahlan said the latter began working on the land
two months ago.

"He just arrived here from Belawan, the port city in North
Sumatra, looking for a brighter future," she said. "It's such a
pity his life should end this way." (01)