Indictment weak: Experts
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The failure of the human rights tribunal to bring justice to the families of those killed in the 1984 Tanjung Priok incident and the 1999 mayhem in East Timor is likely to affect the credibility of the court, experts and activists say.
They also blamed on Sunday state prosecutors for failing to press appropriate indictments against military personnel accused of gross human rights violations in the two incidents.
"We can't deny the fact that the court is being used to serve the interest of the military. This will more or less discourage people to bring their cases to the court," Hikmahanto Juwana, dean of the School of Law at the University of Indonesia, told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Enny Soeprapto, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), agreed with Hikmahanto and urged the public to support the court, arguing the tribunal was the last resort for human rights victims to seek justice.
Hikmahanto said the court must be maintained because its failure to convict defendants in one or two cases wasn't enough to justify the argument the court was no longer needed.
"It is a process of learning. We will ultimately achieve a healthy process after several (more) cases are handled," Hikmahanto said.
While the Tanjung Priok rights tribunal sent to jail 12 low- ranking military personnel implicated in the incident, it acquitted two officers -- Maj. Gen. (ret) Pranowo and Maj. Gen. Sriyanto, the current commander of the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus).
In the East Timor trial, judges freed virtually all military and police personnel implicated in the bloody violence surrounding the independence referendum in August 1999 in East Timor, which drove hundreds of thousands of East Timorese to flee to West Timor.
The failures to punish officers implicated in the incidents have raised fears the trials were used to whitewash high-ranking military officers implicated in the incidents.
Hikmahanto and Enny blamed the prosecutors' unwillingness to press appropriate indictments as the main reason why high-ranking military officers walked free.
Hikmahanto said the prosecutors had wrongly applied the chain of command principle to indict generals implicated in gross human rights abuses.
"They used Article No. 42 of Law No. 26/2000 on responsibility of command. Usually this article is the last one used to indict human rights perpetrators because prosecutors have to prove the generals held effective control of their subordinates," Hikmahanto said.
He said in the absence of effective control, which is often the case in Indonesia, generals could only be linked administratively to their subordinates.
Enny said Komnas HAM had done all it could to assemble convincing evidence against the generals.
"We couldn't do anything after we submitted the case file to the prosecutors. If the generals are free then there is something wrong with the prosecutors' indictments," said Enny.
Attorney General's Office Human Rights Department director Ketut Murtika, however, denied accusations prosecutors had made mistakes indicting the generals.
Ketut said prosecutors had managed to punish one general, Maj. Gen. (ret) Rudolf Butar Butar, the former North Jakarta Military Commander, who received a 10-year jail sentence, along with many of his subordinates. Butar Butar was the only general indicted who was not physically present at the time of the incident. He remains free pending an appeal.
"We have proven that we can make the judges punish a general in Butar Butar's case. It's just a matter of different perceptions, between us and the judges, that allows other generals to walk free, as we have the same evidence and witnesses (in each case)," Ketut said.