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)