The Munir investigation

The first anniversary of the death of human rights campaigner Munir Thalib Said passed on 7 September, with little progress in bringing to justice those behind the killing. A Garuda pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, was on trial accused of murdering Munir, but investigations into those who ordered the killing remained stalled. A Presidential Fact Finding Team (TPF), which was established because of public concern about the slow police investigation into the murder, found evidence of collusion between Pollycarpus and senior officials of the state intelligence agency (BIN). However it was unable to question BIN officials despite a presidential order to the agency to cooperate with them. The police also failed to cooperate with the TPF. Despite these constraints, the one TPF member claimed it had assembled enough facts to suggest a conspiracy to murder Munir that involved BIN officials and senior Garuda staff. The TPF was dissolved in June and one member, Asmara Nababan, said ‘Let the public conclude ... who should be held responsible ... because law enforcers appear unable to bring untouchables from a feared intelligence agency to justice’.

Suciwati, the wife of Munir, and other human rights advocates have received frequent death threats since the murder. Munir died on a flight to Amsterdam, and an autopsy found lethal doses of arsenic in his body. The European Union and several international human rights organisations have called for a thorough investigation into the case and for all those responsible to be brought to justice.

Jakarta Post, Asian Human Rights Commission

See Inside Indonesia #81 for an obituary of Munir.

World Bank critical

The World Bank has called for scrutiny of the Australian government’s tsunami aid for Indonesia, because less than 12 per cent of the $1 billion promised will actually be spent in Aceh. Joe Leitman, manager of the World Bank’s $4-billion trust fund for Aceh and North Sumatra, said half of the aid is soft loans which the Indonesian government may not even take up. He said that more than three quarters of the $500 million in grants will be used to pursue broader strategic interests of the Indonesian and Australian governments throughout Indonesia.

ABC Radio, 20 August 2005

Aceh rights tribunal

The national government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) have agreed to prevent past human rights violations in Aceh being investigated by a new human rights tribunal. The tribunal will be established as part of the newly signed peace agreement on Aceh. (See the Final Word, p 31, for more comment on the agreement.) The Minister of Justice and Human Rights and chief negotiator on Aceh, Hamid Awaluddin, said that if retroactive principles were used by the tribunal for Aceh old wounds would be opened and the peace-building process disrupted. ‘If we keep looking back to the past ... there would be no peace in Aceh’ he said.

However, Usman Hamid, the coordinator of the Commission on Missing People and the Victims of Violence (Kontras), said settling all past atrocities in Aceh was necessary to build a lasting peace there. Retroactivity was adopted in human rights tribunals in Nuremberg, Tokyo, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as crimes against humanity in East Timor. Usman added that the MOU did not specify details of the tribunal and the government should refer to existing laws on human rights to determine its operating principles. There have been numerous human rights violations in Aceh, particularly when the province fell under a special military operation between 1989 and 1998. No alleged abuses there have ever been formally settled.

Jakarta Post, 20 August 2005