Megawati advised to 'avoid' rights trials

JAKARTA (JP): Observers have suggested that President Megawati Soekarnoputri had better avoid efforts to bring to court past human rights violation cases if she wants to stay in power until 2004.

Munir, from the National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said on Wednesday that efforts to reopen such rights cases would only result in a confrontation with the military, which had made a comeback into the political arena.

"Analyzing what's happened in the past two years, it will not be profitable for Megawati to bring up rights cases, especially when there is fierce competition among politicians to gain the military's support in maintaining their power.

"Any conflicts with the military will be a stumbling block for a political party," he told a discussion of a book titled The Military and the New Order Violence Politics, written by a team of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), coordinated by Ikrar Nusa Bakti.

Rights cases that should be left untouched or dropped altogether include the attack against the headquarters of then Megawati-led PDI (the Indonesian Democratic Party) in Central Jakarta on July 27, 1996, and the Sept. 12, 1984 shooting incident in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta.

Both incidents were blamed on the military that was believed to have taken its orders from the past regime to intimidate political opponents.

Megawati's think-tank expert Cornelis Lay, also a panelist in the discussion, revealed that there was an impression that Megawati's PDI Perjuangan (the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) would not place a high priority on resolving the July 27 incident.

"The party has tended to partly come to terms with the past cases," he said.

Munir added that should Megawati bring up the case while in power, other political parties would accuse her of seizing the opportunity to exact revenge.

Megawati has held power since being elected as Vice President in 1999, as her party held the largest number of seats in the legislature after the general election.

The police launched an investigation against the forced takeover of the PDI headquarters that claimed at least five lives, but it seems that the investigation got nowhere.

Meanwhile, the Attorney General's Office has also launched an investigation into the 1984 clash at the Tanjung Priok Rawa Badak Mosque, based on the inquiry by the National Commission on Human Rights. No suspects have yet been named in the case. (bby)