New Order rights abuses probed

New Order rights abuses probed

JAKARTA: The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM)
has agreed in a plenary meeting to start a thorough inquiry into
alleged human rights violations by former president Soeharto
during his 32 years of iron-fisted leadership.

M.M. Billah, who is leading a Komnas HAM team investigating
Soeharto, said on Thursday that government rights watchdog had
decided to establish several teams for the inquiry.

"At present, we are only able to interview victims and
witnesses. We are now trying to get confirmation from the
authorities who were in charge then," he said without mentioning
any of them by name.

Last month, the commission said it had found preliminary
evidence of human rights violations perpetrated by officials and
leaders of the New Order regime over a period of 32 years.

The investigations will focus on five major cases recognized
as the most egregious of the rights violations that occurred
during that time.

The five chosen consist of the detention without trial of
suspected members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) on Buru
island following the 1965 coup d'etat that brought Soeharto to
power but was officially blamed on the PKI, the extrajudicial
murders of suspected criminals known as the Petrus operation in
the early 1980s, the Tanjung Priok massacre in early 1984, the
military crackdown in Aceh from 1989 through 1998 and the July 27
attack on the Indonesia Democratic Party (PDI) headquarters in
1996. -- JP