Rights team begins probe into Manggarai shooting

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.