Judge cautions military over communist hunt
JAKARTA (JP): Justice Bismar Siregar, a leading member of the Supreme Court, cautioned the Armed Forces (ABRI) yesterday about the naming of three men as being involved in communist-like activities.
Bismar said that if the authorities have sufficient data to support their allegations, they should take action.
"There are legal procedures (for that)," he added.
However, if the naming of the people was based only on suspicion, "my heart cries out", he said.
Saying that a person is involved in certain illegal activities or organizations on the basis of mere suspicion was a common practice in Indonesia in the early 1960s, he said.
"Husbands were suspicious of their wives, children suspected their parents," he said.
He recalled that his family also felt the pressure at the time. "I was one of the people most despised by the communists," he added.
"This must never happen again," said Bismar, who will retire from the bench on Dec. 1.
He was commenting on the announcement on Monday by ABRI chief of general affairs, Lt. Gen. Soeyono, that author Pramoedya Ananta Toer, scholar George Aditjondro and labor leader Muchtar Pakpahan were behind Indonesia's much-talked-about "formless organizations".
President Soeharto and other senior government and military officials earlier blamed some of the recent social unrest on "formless organizations" whose acts of provocation bore the hallmarks of the long-outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
In the 1960s Pramoedya was leader of Lekra, a cultural organization associated with the PKI. Last month, he received the Magsaysay award for literature.
George, an academic from Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java, is currently conducting research in Australia. Both he and Muchtar, a leader of the unrecognized Indonesian Prosperous Labor Union, have denied being communists.
Besides accusing Muchtar of communism, Soeyono said that Muchtar's father led a PKI-sponsored workers' strike in North Sumatra in the 1960s which turned into a riot.
Bismar cautioned against accusing people of being communists solely on the basis of family ties.
"Islam does not recognize hereditary sins," he said.
"The communist party is now a devil, and the only way to fight devils is to build one's faith in God," he said. "Mutual suspicion is not characteristic of faithful people."
Being alert is a different matter, he added.
Minister of Justice Oetojo Oesman said yesterday that he, personally, thought that publicly naming the three men had been unnecessary.
"We must be on the alert, but that does not mean there is a ghost behind every tree," he said.
Oetojo declined to comment on whether the statements represented a breach of the principle of the presumption of innocence.
"Their names should not have been mentioned...But that is not only a legal matter," he said. "It is also a matter of security."
"There may be parties working to confront the state...The public has a right to be protected," he said.
Oetojo stressed that the phrase "formless organizations" was not a recent invention.
The term came from PKI documents produced after the party went underground in 1966, he said.
The phrase meant that PKI members should continue to be active even though the organization had been banned, he added.
Former chief justice Purwoto Gandasubrata, asked to comment on Soeyono's statement, said it was more of a political than a legal issue.
"I do not know if he (Soeyono) intended to give a warning," he said. He added that, legally speaking, the people concerned could file a complaint if they felt that the accusations had damaged their reputations. (anr)