Vaudine England, Jakarta – The armed forces are smarting under a welter of rights abuse allegations. They have warned that local and international efforts to call the generals to account will not only fail but could threaten the nation's state of relative calm.
Armed forces chief Admiral Widodo said the military would extend moral support to accused generals: "TNI [the armed forces] will give full moral support to the officers who will be summoned by the human rights investigation commission.
"TNI appreciates efforts to uphold the law. The summons of the generals should be done in accordance with the principles of presumption of innocence ... They only implemented the state's duty." Former military chief General Wiranto, who is now President Abdurrahman Wahid's Co-ordinating Minister for Politics and Security, is more direct, saying simply that claims by the unusually forthright Indonesian Human Rights Commission regarding military behaviour in East Timor are "groundless".
"We expected the government-sponsored commission to work honestly and accurately, but ... what the commission has revealed to the public it is excessive and has gone beyond the judicial process," he said.
Political analysts are divided on whether the comments are the last gasps from an increasingly weakened institution or the portents of a military backlash against the growing openness and criticism now heard throughout Indonesia.
"You've got to be careful about putting these generals in a corner," a Western military expert said. "They might react." Plans by Indonesian legislators to question senior officers over rights abuses provoked the head of the Kostrad elite army force, Lieutenant General Jaja Suparman, to suggest such moves, which have already exceeded "the limits of fairness", could lead soldiers to act "wantonly".
General Wiranto has formed a special team of lawyers to prepare his defence, led by renowned human rights lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution, which plans to carry out its own investigations in West and East Timor to counter the allegations.
A nongovernmental human rights organisation said yesterday it had found new evidence linking Indonesian army generals to atrocities in East Timor.
Munir, a member of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, said new evidence directly linked the formation and growth of pro-Jakarta militia groups with the military.
The army's top generals, including General Wiranto, have denied ordering the violence or that the military stirred up trouble in Aceh as a deliberate ploy to keep troops there.
Meanwhile, both the evidence and pressure on the Government to follow through with investigation findings are mounting.
An independent commission investigating human rights abuses in Aceh province yesterday urged the Government to open a trial as soon as possible.
Commission chief Amran Zamzami said the team had pressed Mr Wahid to hold swift trials in five documented cases of abuses which they presented to him six weeks ago.