Political prisoners demand rehabilitation

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Some 400 former political prisoners began their first national gathering ever here on Friday with a united demand for the government to restore their civil rights.

Chairman of the organizing committee, Jopie Lasut, said their rehabilitation was a prerequisite for national reconciliation between the former political prisoners and state officials who implicated them during the New Order authoritarian regime.

"Should the rehabilitation take place, the former political prisoners will enjoy a normal life," said Jopie, chairs the Justice Fellowship Indonesia organization, the facilitator of the meeting.

Jopie was imprisoned for his alleged involvement in an anti- Japanese protest organized by students in Jakarta on 14 Jan. 1974, what later became known as the Malari incident. Among those jailed following the violent protest were Arif Budiman and Hariman Siregar.

According to Jopie, the meeting is expected to seek ways to reveal the truth from the past and to restore the civil rights of political prisoners.

A meeting of former political prisoners was held for the first time ever after president B.J. Habibie granted a massive amnesty to them in 1999, one year after the authoritarian regime under Soeharto tumbled.

Apart from a forum of reunion, the two-day gathering in the Cempaka Hotel was aimed at reviving their commitment to laying the foundation for national reconciliation.

Taufik Kiemas, husband of President Megawati Soekarnoputri and also an influential figure in the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), kicked off the gathering, which was attended by prominent former political prisoners, including Sri Bintang Pamungkas, Sri Mulyono Herlambang, Col. Abdul Latif, Mochtar Pakpahan.

Kiemas described the gathering as "an arena to unite all political prisoners with various political spectrums."

Taufik hoped that former political prisoners would contribute something to help bring the country out of the lingering crisis.

Shortly after taking power from first president Sukarno in 1966, Soeharto sent his political opponents, including student Taufik, to jail for several months for supporting the old regime under Sukarno.

Soeharto's regime then sent many more political opponents to prison for various reasons, ranging from their alleged involvement in the aborted 1965 coup by the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) to alleged subversion.

Together with long jail sentences, often without trials, torture was commonly used on political prisoners during the New Order era.

Some of the former political prisoners claimed they no longer experienced physical suffering, but the mental sorrow had yet to fade away from their lives.

Former government officials under the New Order government, mostly military generals, have been campaigning for reconciliation possibly so as to avoid prosecution for human rights violations they committed in the past.

Mochtar Pakpahan, a former political prisoner, told reporters on the sidelines of the gathering, that reconciliation with past regimes was possible but with one prerequisite: former president Soeharto, who was accused of running the country with an iron fist, must be willing to admit his past sins and to apologize to political prisoners.