Sriyanto not guilty in Priok massacre
Sari P. Setiogi and Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The chief of the Army's special forces was freed of charges of gross human rights violations on Thursday over his role in the massacre of protesters in Jakarta in 1984.
Maj. Gen. Sriyanto Muntrasan, the former operations chief of the North Jakarta military command, is the highest ranking officer tried in the case of the shootings in the Tanjung Priok area, which according to official figures killed 24 people and injured 54 others.
While judges said they acquitted Sriyanto because the shootings by the military were "unavoidable," his superior Maj. Gen. (ret) Rudolf Butar Butar, the former North Jakarta military commander, has been sentenced to 10 years for gross human rights abuses in the same affair.
The verdict was greeted with cries of "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great) in a courtroom packed with Sriyanto's men, survivors of the incident, human rights activists and members of the Communication Forum of Children of Indonesian Veterans.
The presiding justice of the ad hoc human rights court, Judge Herman Heller Hutapea, ruled the shootings of the protesters "were unavoidable and were not a planned and systematic action" and thus could not be categorized as gross human rights abuses.
The ad hoc court, set up in 2001, is mandated to try cases of gross human rights violations, and was formed after reformists' demands that those accused of violations be brought to an international tribunal.
Judge Hutapea said the "spontaneous clash" on late Sept. 12 1984, began when "protesters started throwing stones and then attacked the troops with sharp weapons." Prosecutors had demanded a 10-year jail sentence for Sriyanto.
The Military fired on the protesters with live ammunition to protect vital facilities in the port area near the location of the demonstrations, the judge said, including state oil company Pertamina's depot and the local military operational command station.
Hutapea said Sriyanto had previously tried to avoid bloodshed by initiating a dialog with the protesters, who ignored him.
"Therefore, the military action was justified legally as to control the situation and it could not be classified as an attack on civilians," he said.
"He (Sriyanto) had also tried to stop the assault by saying 'Stop... stop... stop firing!'" judge Hutapea said.
On the same day, the Attorney General's Office said it would submit an appeal to the Supreme Court regarding all the ad hoc court's decisions, which have let most suspected human rights violators walk free.
AGO spokesman Kemas Yahya Rahman said he was referring to both the Tanjung Priok and the East Timor atrocities in 1999.
Among the 18 defendants tried in the East Timor case, only civilians have been found guilty -- the former governor Abilio Soares and militia leader Eurico Gutterres -- while police and military officers have walked free.
Kemas said the civilians had lost their cases only because of different interpretations on what constituted evidence.