Wiranto meets in secret with rights body, dismisses summons
Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Two members of the National Commission on Human Rights held an unannounced meeting with former Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Gen. (ret) Wiranto on Friday.
During the meeting at an undisclosed coffee shop, Wiranto outlined the institutional obstacles that would prevent the rights body from questioning him and other active and retired military officers over a series of abductions of prodemocracy activists between 1997 and 1998.
"Wiranto said he and other officers could not answer our summons because that was the military's policy," said Sjamsoeddin, one of the rights body members who met with Wiranto.
The meeting took place after Wiranto called the head of the team investigating the abductions cases, Ruswiati Suryasaputra, who agreed to Wiranto's request for a meeting outside of the commission's office.
Another rights body member, Koesparmono Irsan, was supposed to join Ruswiati and Sjamsoeddin at the meeting, but he had urgent business in Surabaya.
Sjamsoeddin, a retired Army major general, said that during the three-hour meeting Wiranto refused to talk about the abductions, and asserted that his inability to reply to the summons from the rights body was the result of the "position of the current military leadership".
The meeting disappointed dozens of family members of the abduction victims, who went to the commission's office to demand that Wiranto reveal the fate of their loved ones.
The rights commission has set up a team to investigate what is believed to have been a military operation to kidnap dozens of government critics in the final years of the Soeharto regime. Some of the abductees were eventually released, while others are still missing.
The team sent a first summons to Wiranto, former Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad) chief Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto and the current secretary-general of the Ministry of Defense, Lt. Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, for questioning on June 3. None of the three appeared.
A second summons was sent and the team hoped to question the three on Friday.
TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto has said active and retired officers would not comply with the summons unless the House of Representatives issued a political recommendation that the abductions constituted a gross human rights violation.
Ruswiati said the rights body had asked for a hearing with lawmakers, while also sending a third summons to the generals.
"We are referring to Law No. 39/1999 on human rights, which authorizes the commission to summon alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity without a political recommendation from lawmakers," Ruswiati said.
The team plans to summon nine other active and retired military officers, including Lt. Col. Chairawan, who currently heads the Lilawangsa Military Command overseeing northern and eastern Aceh.
The team is one of seven teams set up by the rights body to investigate forced disappearances, including two cases in the troubled provinces of Papua and Aceh.