Six missing in July 27 riots have been found

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)