Wiranto meets in secret with rights body, dismisses summons

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.