Rights team returns to Bulukumba for probe
Rights team returns to Bulukumba for probe
Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Makassar, South Sulawesi
A National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) team arrived
back in Makassar, South Sulawesi, on Tuesday to further
investigate reports of human rights violations in Bulukumba
regency, where at least two protesters were shot to death in
July.
The team, which includes Hasballah M. Saad and M.M. Billah, is
scheduled to return to Bulukumba for three days of
investigations.
Their previous inquiry found strong indications of human
rights abuses when police fired shots at some 1,000 villagers who
were demonstrating on July 21 in a protest against decades of the
alleged occupation of their ancestral lands by rubber plantation
firm PT London Sumatra (Lonsum) in Bulukumba.
The police claimed two people were killed, but non-
governmental organizations put the death toll at five. Dozens of
others were injured.
Billah said they would be gathering additional data to prove
whether the alleged human rights violations blamed on the police
could be categorized as a serious crime or perhaps accidental.
The team is also seeking to mediate in finding a solution to
the land dispute between Lonsum and local villagers, he told
journalists after a meeting with South Sulawesi Governor Amin
Syam in Makassar.
Billah said the team would also meet with people to answer
questions about the principles of human rights so as to prevent
them from becoming victims in the future.
He and Hasballah said several witnesses and suspects had told
them that not only did the police fire shots at the protesters,
but also other villagers who were merely watching on the
sidelines of the demonstration.
After the incident, most of the male residents in at least two
villages near the PT Lonsum-controlled area fled to a nearby
forest to hide from security personnel.
Bulukumba police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Tigor Situmorang, his
deputy Comr. Gatot Budiwiono and nine other police officers had
been questioned in connection with the deadly shooting.
It was not clear whether the 11 officers had been named
suspects, although South Sulawesi Police chief Jusuf Manggabarani
said the examination found security procedure violations as Tigor
and Gatot did not brief their officers before deploying them to
quell the protesters.
"Apart from that, the weapons used by the police also had
certain weaknesses or are substandard," Jusuf claimed without
elaborating.
Even after the shooting, the Bulukumba Police arrested at
least 29 people as suspects in the violent protest at the Lonsum
plantation.
The suspects included several NGO activists and a member of
the Bulukumba Elections Commission (KPU), Iwan Salassa.
Tigor had said his office was searching for 26 more suspects
for their alleged role in the unrest.