It's difficult to implicate Wiranto, observers say

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Observers have noted that it would be tricky to name Gen. (ret) Wiranto a suspect in the East Timor case, saying that apart from the difficulty of gathering concrete evidence against him, the desire to incriminate him was more politically motivated than legally based.

Ichlasul Amal of Gadjah Mada University said on Tuesday that international pressure was the predominant factor in efforts to have Wiranto named a suspect rather than evidence which could implicate him.

"Why do people want Wiranto named a suspect in the East Timor case, while they do not ask for the same thing for the Aceh case, for example. Regardless of the fact that real murders occurred in Aceh," Amal said.

International pressure, according to Amal, was the reason for this.

He pointed out that Indonesia's weak international standing at the present time was the main factor for this.

As a country saddled with so much foreign debt and in turmoil, Indonesia has less bargaining power.

"The international community could not do much about the Tiananmen Square tragedy, regardless of the fact that rights violations were so obviously present," Amal remarked.

"What I'm trying to say is that it is political interests that have more of a say in this case and not that of judicial facts," he added.

The Attorney General's Office last week named 19 suspects of rights violations in East Timor. Several high-ranking officers and officials were included in the 19.

But conspicuously missing was Wiranto, who during an earlier inquiry conducted by a team from the National Commission on Human Rights was implicated as also being responsible for the violence that took place just before and after the ballot on independence in the former Indonesian province last year.

Amal noted that Indonesia in 1999 was in turmoil, and, according to earlier precedence, even former President B.J. Habibie could be held accountable.

"We could even name the president, as the highest commander of the military, a suspect if we wanted to go further," he said.

He referred to the Bosnia case in which Slobodan Milosevic was implicated. "He is only a political figure, but he was named a suspect because he was considered to have known about the killings".

Amal added that it was also easier to name Milosevic a suspect because the case there was much more clearer compared to that of East Timor.

"We were in such a chaotic situation at the time that the line of command became blurred. Therefore, we need to consider many things in deciding up to which level (of high-ranking military officers and officials) should be responsible for the violations in East Timor," he said.

Amal further added that in instances during the Vietnam War only field commanders were named suspects, not higher ranking officers.

Amal remarked that it was up to President Abdurrahman Wahid to make a political decision on the case.

"Gus Dur has to consider how far international pressure (on the case) will effect national interest. If he believes it will have an insignificant effect, then he may exclude Wiranto from the list of suspects," he said.

Amal, however, believes that if Wiranto is excluded it could have some effect on the flow of foreign loans, especially from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to Indonesia.

"That is the worst impact that we may experience due to the exclusion of Wiranto because the international community cannot just interfere in the handling of the case," he said.

Separately, political commentator Andi A. Malarangeng said the Attorney General's Office was most likely finding it difficult to obtain concrete evidence against Wiranto.

"How do you prove Wiranto instructed brutal acts be committed or that he knew about the acts but made no effort to stop them? It's difficult," Andi said here after lecturing at Gadjah Mada University on Tuesday.

He also remarked that it all depended on the political will of the government.

According to Andi, prosecutors should widen their investigation into the East Timor violence and include proindependence activists on the list of suspects because both camps were involved in the violence.

He said the excuse of proindependence groups that they engaged in violence in the name of an "independence war" could not be justified because basically any act of violence remained a human rights violation regardless of the reason.

"It doesn't mean that in an 'independence war' rights violations are justified, does it?"(44/swa)