Six missing in July 27 riots have been found

JAKARTA (JP): Six of the people who were reported missing by the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute following the July 27 riots have been found, leaving eight people still on the institute's missing persons list.

The number of people listed missing by the institute reached 24 in the days following the riots. By Aug. 15 the figure had fallen to 18. It then fell to 14.

"Now there are a total of eight missing people," the institutes' public relations officer, Dewi Novrianti, said yesterday.

The institute is one of several offices which announced it would receive reports on people that went missing after the riots. These offices' reports were compiled by the National Commission on Human Rights, which in August announced that 74 people had gone missing. The commission said it would update this figure.

Dewi said that several days ago a person, who had reported two people as missing, said that they had returned, but would not say where they had been. Other people that turned up after being reported missing say that they had been in hiding in fear, she said.

Nearly all of the eight people still listed as missing are supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).

Dewi requested that the names of the people listed remain anonymous. She said the institute had no contact with families of those still missing.

The families are either too afraid to report to the office or they had lost contact with their missing relations long ago, she said.

Earlier at the City Police detention center, the relatives of those detained after the riots said they only found out that their sons or brothers were PDI supporters when the police notified them that their relations were in custody.

"For the moment, we have lost contact with most of the people who first reported them (missing)," Dewi said. "Almost all of those who reported people missing were their friends or fellow PDI members."

The addresses given by the people who contacted us were not easy to trace, she added.

Jakarta Police Chief Maj. Gen. Hamami Nata said earlier that no families had reported their relations missing, and that he was waiting for reports from the human rights commission.

Meanwhile the Secretary-General of the rights commission, Baharuddin Lopa, said the number of 74 persons reported missing since July 27 has gradually decreased.

Speaking in Surabaya after addressing a seminar on corruption, Lopa, however, said he did not remember the remaining number of reportedly missing people, Antara reported yesterday. (anr)