Rights team begins probe into Manggarai shooting

Yemris Fointuna, The Jakarta Post, Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara

A National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) team arrived in Manggarai regency, East Nusa Tenggara, on Wednesday to begin an investigation into alleged human rights abuses during a recent melee wherein police officers reportedly shot and killed six local villagers.

The team led by M.M. Billah is scheduled to stay in Manggarai for two days. He and six of his associates will meet victims and witnesses of the incident to take their statements on the incident.

The team will also visit a former coffee plantation that was at the source of the dispute, which culminated with the police shooting into a crowd of some 400 angry protesters in Colol village in Pocoranaka subdistrict on March 11, 2004. The police officers also injured 28 others who suffered gunshot wounds.

The protesting villagers had stormed the Manggarai police station in Ruteng to demand the release of seven of their comrades arrested earlier by the police, apparently for planting coffee in a protected forest.

The police station was also badly damaged in the incident.

The police officers claimed they had opened fire into the crowd of machete-wielding, stone-hurling farmers after warning shots to disperse them went unheeded.

The Manggarai administration has banned all agriculture in protected forests, but many of the local people have ignored the ban as they consider the forest to be their ancestral land.

Billah told journalists in the East Nusa Tenggara capital of Kupang on Tuesday night that his team had received many reports from the Manggarai community leaders, non-governmental organization activists and local officials about the incident.

However, the team could not say if serious human rights violations took place during the shooting, he said.

Billah said the team's visit was aimed at verifying the reports.

"Many reports have been filed with Komnas HAM. To verify them, we are sending a monitoring team to Manggarai. If there are indications of gross human right violations, Komnas HAM will set up a full-fledged investigative team. Our conclusions will be handed over to the courts," he added.

When arriving in Kupang on Tuesday, the team met Deputy East Nusa Tenggara Governor Frans Lebu Raya. Apart from Billah, other team members are Hasballah M. Saad, criminologist Adrianus Maliala and three Komnas HAM staff officers.

Separately, NGOs and youth organizations grouped in the Solidarity Forum for Manggarai People urged Komnas HAM on Wednesday to investigate the shooting.

The rights team should investigate the correlations between the Manggarai administration's policy of closing the coffee plantation, the abduction of local residents and the deadly shooting, the forum said.

These three cases were inseparable, it added.

The NGOs also demanded that police stopped what they called intimidations of witnesses, which could affect their testimonies given to the rights team.

"We also want an independent team and ad hoc committee to investigate the incident, so the human rights violators could be brought to court," activist Cypri Jehan Paju Dale said.