Green Left
Weekly
September 10, 2003.
Visiting Kopassus chief to face trial for rights abuses
By Pip Hinman & Vannessa Hearman
The Kopassus
chief, Commander Major General Sriyanto, invited to Australia to
cement a military deal with Canberra, will shortly be tried for human
rights
abuses in Indonesia.
Sriyanto,
who graduated from the Indonesian Military Academy in 1974, and was
given the job of head of the TNI's elite special (Kopassus) forces in
July
2002, has been accused of abuses dating back 20 years.
Rachland
Nashidik, a representative of Indonesian Human Rights Monitor
(Imparsial), who visited Australia last week, said that Sriyanto has been
indicted to face charges relating to the killing of Muslim protesters
at
Tanjung Priok in northern Jakarta in 1984. It is still not known how many
people died when the TNI opened fire on the protesters. Bodies were exhumed
as late as 2000 as part of the Indonesian Human Rights Commissionâ?Ts
investigation into the killings.
On August
27, five judges were appointed to preside over an ad hoc tribunal
(similar to that dealing with the 1999 carnage in East Timor) to begin
hearings into the Tanjung Priok case. Fourteen people will be tried, many
of whom were
serving officers in the TNI's Greater Jakarta regional command.
The case
has suffered lengthy delays since the beginning of this year. This
is indicative of the reluctance in the attorney-general's department to
punish
TNI members. The Indonesian daily Kompas reported on September 4 that
Beni Biki,
coordinator of the Tanjung Priok Victims' Group, criticised the TNI for
its
stand that the past â?oneed not be uncoveredâ?.
The Timor
tribunal, which delivered its final judgment on August 5, has been
condemned worldwide for its lenient sentences, and Timorese solidarity
organisations are now campaigning for an international tribunal. Despite
this, the fact that the government has been forced to hold these ad hoc
tribunals
indicates the pressure it is under to be seen to be bringing the perpetrators
of human rights abuses - the military - to justice.
The 1984 shootings had long been a symbol of Muslim resentment against
the
former Suharto dictatorship. In April 1985, sentences of one to three
years'
jail were handed down to 28 people accused of â?owaging resistance
in
violenceâ? against the armed forces. Calls for a public inquiry
were ignored.
Under President
Abdurrahman Wahid, the families of the victims had hoped
justice would be done. But a June 2000 Komnas HAM inquiry found that
while â?ohuman rights violations did occurâ?, it was
not a â?omassacreâ?.
The report said that 33 people died, including nine killed by the protesters,
and that
36 others were tortured by soldiers. A report by the Al Araf mosque stated
that
63 people died and more than 100 people were seriously wounded in the
attack.
The Komnas
HAM inquiry, which lasted three months, concluded that it had no
legal power to conduct a further investigation and recommended that the
government apologise and compensate the families of the victims.
Along with
Sriyanto, then a captain in the north Jakarta military, former
generals â?oBennyâ? Murdani and former vice-president
General Try Sutrisno
were implicated in the Tanjug Priok massacre. In March 2001, Sriyanto
and other
high- ranking officers signed an agreement with relatives of the massacre
victims,
in the hope the TNI would not have to face legal action over the incident.
Sriyanto
has also been accused of playing a role in the riots in Solo in May
1998 when he was chief of the local military command. A report by
Laksamana.Net in 2000 stated that Sriyanto was in charge when officers
brutally attacked
student protesters there, just before Suharto was forced to step down.
Sriyanto
then blamed the violence on the left-wing People's Democratic Party.
Kopassus
is notorious for its human rights violations throughout Indonesia
and East Timor. In the final months of the Suharto regime, a Kopassus
team
abducted and tortured several pro-democracy activists. Some of the activists
have
never been found, believed to have been killed by the feared unit.
Kopassus
officers are also believed to be responsible for the November 2001
murder of West Papua's pro-independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay.
Among Sriyanto's
fellow graduates were Lieutenant General Prabowo, a former
chief of Kopassus and Kostrad. He was dismissed from the military in 1998
for
his role in abducting pro-democracy activists. Major General Sjafrie
Sjamsuddin, another fellow graduate, has been accused of playing a key
role
in the formation of East Timor's murderous pro-Indonesia militia groups
in 1999.
Human rights
and solidarity organisations are urging the Coalition government
not to renew ties with the TNI and Kopassus. A sign-on statement, initiated
by Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific (ASAP), calls on the
Coalition
government not â?oto drag Indonesia back to the pastâ?.
It accuses
Canberra of â?ointerfering in Indonesian politics on the side of
the most militaristic and anti-democratic groupsâ?, and charges
that renewing
military ties with Jakarta would be â?ohelping Jakarta defeat the
movements
for genuine democracy and social justice, [that] begun with the overthrow
of
Suharto in 1998".
â?oTerrorism
in Indonesia, and elsewhere, can only really be tackled by
reducing the inequalities between the impoverished majority and a tiny
elite, and by
ending the reliance on the old Suharto methods of violence, repression,
and
intrigues by the military and intelligence agencies - what Indonesiaans
call
the`security approachâ?Tâ?, ASAP chairperson Max Lane
said.
He said
that Canberra must end its â?ospecial relationshipâ?
with the
Indonesian elite, and instead build one with the democratic forces, including
non-
government organisations, across Indonesia. â?oEnding all military
ties would
send a clear message that Australia does not support this militaristic
policy
which is unlikely to solve the complex range of issues currently facing
the
peoples of Indonesia.â?