Jakarta – Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights on Tuesday set up a team to probe the 1984 shooting in Jakarta's northern port area that left scores dead.
The commission's Secretary General, Asmara Nababan, told journalists here that team, composed of nine members and headed by Joko Sugianto, will investigate the 12 September 1984 shooting in Tanjung Priok.
Officials have said that 30 people died when troops opened fire on an angry Muslim mob which had already set several shops on fire. Residents have however said the deathtoll was much higher and that scores remain missing.
Several people, including former Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin, have said that the death toll in the Tanjung Priok riot could have reached more than one hundred.
Only eight members of the team, all from the commission, have been appointed and the ninth member, a woman civilian, was still being sought, Nababan said.
Despite objections from activists and family members of those still missing from the Tanjung Priok incident, to the presence of military members in any probe team, Nababan said that two of the members were retired military officers.
"They will work along the lines determined by the Komnas Ham [the commission] and they will not venture off that track," Nababan said, trying to appease worries of partiality with the presence of the soldiers in the team. He said the team will start by studying all documents and reports linked to the accident that the commissions possessed.
Nababan also said that confirmation of facts would also be sought from various individuals, including generals and officers in charge of the capital's security at the time of the incident.
Former vice president Try Sutrisno was then head of the Jakarta military garrison and the military chief was then General Benny Murdani. Sutrisno said last month that he will decline to testify to any team regarding the Tanjung Priok incident, saying that it came about as a result of an institutional decision, that of the military, and was not the result of his decision as an individual.
Sugianto and Nababan, however, brushed aside the reasoning as not valid. "Any human rights trial is based on individuals and institutions cannot be brought to trial," Sugianto said.
Calls for probes into several past incidents involving shooting by the military, including the Tanjung Priok riot, have been repeatedly brushed aside under the government of president Suharto who resigned in 1998. The calls have since redoubled.