Priok witnesses tell of abuse during detention
Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Two witnesses in the Tanjung Priok trials told the ad hoc rights tribunal on Wednesday of mistreatment by military personnel during detention following the bloody incident in 1984, when dozens of protesters were killed by security forces.
"I was ordered to strip to my underwear, I was then told to roll around in a gravel pit, and was kicked repeatedly by soldiers surrounding me," Syaeful Hadi said on Wednesday.
Syaeful was one of the two witnesses testifying during the trial of defendant Maj. Gen. (ret) Rudolph Butar-Butar, who was then a lieutenant colonel in charge of the Tanjung Priok district military command in North Jakarta.
Another witness, Lili Adriansyah, told how he was beaten by soldiers of the same command, and how his hands were tied so tight that they suffered from a lack of blood circulation.
"They tied my thumbs and wrists together, with plastic rope," Lili said, gesturing to the panel of judges.
Lili's hands were finally untied when he was transferred to the National Military Police headquarters on Jl. Sultan Agung, Central Jakarta, for registration and interrogation, but it was too late.
His hands later developed gangrene and had to be amputated.
The bloody Tanjung Priok shooting incident began on the night of Sept. 12, 1984, after a series of events which culminated in a crowd of Muslim protesters outside the Tanjung Priok police station getting shot at random by a group of soldiers from Platoon III of the Army Air Defense Battalion deployed to guard a nearby district military command compound.
The crowd was demanding the release of four of their colleagues detained at the compound for having allegedly burned a soldier's motorcycle.
The soldier himself had previously angered the local residents for having allegedly desecrated a small mosque in the area which he suspected of displaying anti-Soeharto posters.
Butar-Butar is accused of having failed to prevent the killing spree, the mistreatment of civilians during and after the incident and failure to hand over those involved, when in fact he had full authority to do so.
He is the 13th -- out of a total of 14 military personnel -- to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity for the incident, facing a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum penalty of death if convicted according to Law No.26/2000 on human rights.
The series of Tanjung Priok trials is the second human rights tribunal in Indonesia after the trials on East Timor, where 18 military and police personnel as well as civilians leaders were brought to court for their roles in human rights abuses before, during, and after the 1999 United-Nations-sponsored referendum.
Lili, a traveling medicine vendor, was arrested simply because his car broke down near the scene of the incident and patrolling soldiers found what appeared to be a sharp object in his car, so they accused him of being involved with the crowd of protesters.
After a month at the National Military Police headquarters, Lili was then transferred to the military detention center in Cimanggis, Bogor regency, West Java for about two and a half months. He was never formally charged.
Lili was finally released but was ordered to sign an agreement not to press legal charges against the military regarding his detention.
Syaeful, on the other hand, was arrested for being among the crowd of protesters prior to the incident.
And like Lili, Syaeful was then transferred to the military police headquarters for five days, and then the military detention center in Cimanggis for more than two months -- without charges -- before finally being released.
Responding to the testimonies from the two witnesses, Butar- Butar questioned the relevance of Syaeful's testimony, because he was actually detained at a Central Jakarta district military compound, not the one he was in charge of. Butar-Butar, however, made no comment about Lili's testimony.
The trial was adjourned until Nov. 19 when the panel of judges will hear more testimony from other witnesses.