Team to push UN on May shootings

JAKARTA: A rights group has urged the United Nations to pressure the Indonesian government to start the trial of military and police officers allegedly involved in the May 1998 shooting of students in Jakarta.

The May 12 1998 case completion team said it had sent delegates to the UN Commission on Human Rights annual meeting in Geneva, which is currently in process and will end on April 23.

The team said international pressure was crucial because the government had no political will to pursue the case as a human rights violation, in which four Trisakti University students were shot dead by police officers during a rally in their campus against then president Soeharto.

The group also plans to work with and solicit support from European countries to push for a human rights tribunal for the perpetrators of the incident.

The Attorney General's Office has returned case files of the incident to the National Commission on Human Rights, saying it did not find any elements of gross human rights abuses in the incident. --JP