Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-INDONESIA: Poisoning Case Tests Civilian Rule

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 6 2005 (IPS) - The commitment by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to bring the military under the full control of the civilian authorities faces a key test on the one-year anniversary of the murder-by-poison of a leading human rights activist, according to a major U.S. rights group.

In a statement released Tuesday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) challenged Yudhoyono to set up a high-level committee to assess the police investigation into the murder of Munir Said Thalib and why it ignored key recommendations and findings of a Presidential Fact-Finding Team appointed by Yudhoyono after the killing.

The group, which wields considerable influence in the U.S. Congress, also called on the government to vigorously investigate threats and intimidation directed against members of the fact-finding team and Munir’s widow, Suciwati.

Suciwati has received death threats over her demands for justice in the case, according to HRW, which noted that in November last year, she was sent a box filled with a severed chicken head, legs and intestines with a typed message saying, “Do not connect the TNI (the Indonesian army, or Tentara Nasional Indonesia) to Munir’s death. Do you want to end up like this?”

“Munir’s murder represents a return to the bad old days in Indonesia when independent activists faced the risk of personal injury or even death,” said Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director. “Solving this case and bringing the killers and their sponsors to justice is a big test for Pres. Yudhoyono’s government and its commitment to the rule of law.”

Munir, 38, was best known as a founder and director of the Commission for “Disappeared” Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and served as director of the Jakarta-based human rights group, Imparsial.

He was murdered while en route from Jakarta to the Netherlands, where he had received a scholarship for advanced legal studies. According to the official indictment of one of his fellow-passengers on the first leg of the trip, he drank a lethal dose of arsenic mixed into his orange juice shortly after boarding the plane for Singapore and subsequently died aboard the flight to Amsterdam.

Before his death, Munir had strongly lobbied against a bill for an expanded intelligence agency that would have broadened the authority of the State Intelligence Body (BIN) by giving it greater powers to arrest anyone suspected of posing a threat to the state and permitting it to establish new branches throughout the archipelago.

In addition, Munir had filed a lawsuit in the state administrative court in Jakarta against the appointment of Hendropriyono as BIN’s chief, noting that the retired lieutenant general had allegedly played a key role in the bloody 1989 crackdown on a Muslim community in Talangsari in Lampung province.

“We strongly believe that his death was related to his work,” said Asmara Nababan, deputy chairman of the Fact-Finding Team last June after the Team submitted its final report to police investigators. He noted that Munir’s had been very vocal in his criticisms of BIN during the last three years of his life.

Despite instructions by Yudhoyono that all state agencies were to collaborate fully with the investigation by the Fact-Finding Team, Henropriyono refused to obey a summons by the Team to testify and, while insisting on his innocence, accused the investigators of “arrogance” and “character assassination.”

He also filed criminal defamation charges against two members of the team, Imparsial director Rachland Nashidik, and Usman Hamid, the head of Kontras, another rights group with which Munir was associated. The police have already issued a summons for questioning to Usman Hamid.

“Criminal law should never be used against peaceful expression,” Adams said. “The cases against these two men are thinly veiled attempts to shut down the investigation into Munir’s murder.”

He called for the defamation suits to be quashed and for the government to make public the final report and recommendations of the Fact-Finding Team.

Currently facing trial in the murder is Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, an off-duty Garuda pilot, who arranged for Munir to move from coach to the business-class compartment on the flight to Singapore.

After examining the mobile phone records of Pollycarpus, the Fact-Finding Team found that he had made as many as 26 calls to the office phone of Gen. Muchdi Purwoprajoyo, BIN’s deputy director at the time, before and after Munir’s death. In addition, numerous other calls were recorded between Polycarpus and Muchdi’s personal mobile phone.

Pollycarpus also contacted Munir’s wife two days before the flight before obtaining a seat on the same plane, according to the indictment.

Muchdi, a former head of TNI’s special forces (Kopassus), has insisted that he never communicated with Pollycarpus and suggested that his phone may have been used by someone else. He declined two requests by the Fact-Finding Team to appear before it, however, and recently resigned his BIN post.

Two other individuals, including another business-class passenger and a flight attendant, have been named as suspects in the case.

But HRW said the official indictment against Pollycarpus makes no mention of the Fact-Finding Team’s conclusions that strongly suggested the involvement of senior employees of Garuda and high-ranking intelligence officials in the plot to kill Munir.

Much speculation has centred on Hendropriyono himself, despite his strenuous denials. Hendropriyono was reported to be so angry with Munir’s criticism that, at one point, he approached Todung Mulya Lubis, another noted human rights activist, to persuade Munir to soften his stance against the intelligence agency.

In another instance, Muchdi reportedly asked another prominent lawyer, Adnan Buyung Nasution, to convince Munir to tone down his criticisms against BIN and the military.

“I never ordered the murder,” Hendropriyono told the Jakarta Post recently. “If it is the institution, I should know. (But) if it’s the work of individuals at BIN, then let the legal process proceed.”

The case has not aroused much interest in the United States, where the administration of Pres. George W. Bush has pressed hard to normalise ties with the TNI that were cut off in the wake of the TNI-backed mayhem that followed a plebiscite for independence in East Timor six years ago.

Despite Jakarta’s refusal to effectively prosecute any senior TNI officers for the East Timor rampage, as well as the murders of two U.S. teachers in West Papua in which the TNI was implicated, Congress has gradually, if grudgingly, lifted restrictions on military cooperation.

Munir’s rights career began in Surabaya in 1989 and included stints as director of the Semarang Legal Aid Office and as chief operations for the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) in Jakarta. During his career, he represented victims of human-rights crimes in Aceh, East Timor, and Papua, as well as members of Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority.

He also won numerous honours, including being named a “young leader for the Millennium” by Asiawekk in 2000 and winning “The Right Livelihood Award” – known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize” – for “his courage and dedication in fighting for human rights and the civilian control of the military in Indonesia.”