Lawyers comission seeks to help victims

Lawyers comission seeks to help victims

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Muhajir, 55, was busily sewing a green flag
with a star in the middle for the local United Development Party
(PPP) branch last week when dozens of young, yellow-clad Golkar
supporters entered his yard.

Without warning, they began beating and kicking Muhajir and
his son, David, before disappearing just as quickly as they had
come.

Muhajir and David are the first clients of the Commission for
Legal and Human Rights for Victims of the Election 97, which was
set up by local lawyers two days before campaigning began on
April 27. After just five days of campaigning, seven people had
lodged complaints with the commission.

"We are actively seeking victims of campaign violence," said
commission member Budi Hartono. "We're not sitting down and
waiting for reports to come in. We go out there and seek those
whose rights have been violated in this year's campaign and
election."

The commission, funded by Yogyakarta Legal Aid, is open 24
hours a day. It has about 100 lawyers, volunteers and assistants
in 18 regencies and municipalities in Yogyakarta and southern
Central Java,

"The volunteers and paralegals have been trained to identify
various forms of rights violations in the election. They have
been briefed on issues of politics, law and human rights," Budi
Hartono said. "They will feed the commission with information on
the election."

Yogyakarta Legal Aid director Budi Santoso said the commission
would use the Criminal Code to protect people against violations
of their freedom in the election.

It will also fight cases using electoral law, including the
law prohibiting threats, violence and bribes to stop people
voting freely.

Besides fighting civil and criminal cases, the commission will
publicize violations of people's political rights in the
election.

"We are taking a legal course to seek a fair general
election," he said.

The commission will also provide legal assistance to those
accused of obstructing the campaign and election. "We also want
them to have access to justice," Budi Santoso said.

The commission has four sections, dealing with complaints,
investigations, litigation, and social, political and legal case
studies. The sections are led by senior lawyers.

The commission is manned by top academics, including
sociologist Loekman Soetrisno and political scientist Amien Rais.

"No matter who is hurt by the campaign, we'll give them legal
assistance," Budi Santoso recently said.

Another group of senior lawyers in Yogyakarta have also
started working for the campaign victims in the Advocacy Team for
Victims of the Election (TAKEP).

Darwis Purba, who founded the organization, and his colleagues
have promised that legal action will be taken against security
personnel who treat supporters with undue violence.

The legal aid office has helped several snake-fruit farmers in
Turi and Salam subdistricts collect on promises made by Golkar
campaigners in the 1992 general election.

"Golkar promised to give them seedlings if they voted for
Golkar. They did, and Golkar won in their areas, but the
seedlings never appeared," Budi said.

The farmers lodged a complaint with the legal aid office.
After six months, the office managed to get the farmers their
seedlings.

But is the commission an ideal body to handle the adverse
effects of campaigning and the election?

The commission was established partly because the
controversial Independent Election Monitoring Committee has been
ineffective. Its recent work includes an announcement of minor
violations in the first weeks of campaigning.

The monitoring committee has not been able to help people
whose political rights have been violated. Its Yogyakarta branch
is manned by students who have been ineffective because of a lack
of funding.

The branch held a training session for its volunteers
recently, but only with the help of the PPP's and the Indonesian
Democratic Party's (PDI) local branches.

"The training was held too late," said Suwandi Danusubroto,
the secretary of local branch of PPP. Besides, several of the
KIPP training sessions were forcibly dispersed by the security
personnel.

It seems that without government support the monitoring
committee won't be able to help supervise the election,
especially because its activists lack experience.

Among the monitoring committee's patrons are senior journalist
Goenawan Mohamad, Moslem scholar Nurcholish Madjid, political
scientists Arbi Sanit and Arief Budiman. But only its secretary-
general, Mulyana W. Kusumah, has vast legal experience after
working for years at the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation.

Unfortunately, Mulyana has been accused of having past
communist links. This adds to the problems plaguing the committee
as it struggles to find a role in election supervision.

But the monitoring committee has made great strides in
educating the public about politics. And as Nurcholish Madjid
once said, the monitoring committee and the commission are "an
experiment in democracy". (38)