Irawaty Wardany, Jakarta – The National Commission for Human Rights last week established a new ad hoc team to investigate the 1989 shooting at Talangsari village, Lampung, a commission member said Thursday.

The Talangsari incident occurred on Feb. 7, 1989, and saw a battalion of soldiers equipped with assault rifles from the Garuda Hitam Military Resort Command launch an attack on the village.

Johny Nelson Simanjuntak, who chairs the new ad hoc team, spoke to a group of university students visiting the commission's office Thursday. The students wore tapes across their mouths to imitate the commission's silence around the case.

Johny told the group the new team would investigate results from the previous team chaired by Zoemrotin K. Soesilo, which had summoned some 60 people. He said the new team was also in the process of arranging a schedule to summon 32 more people to testify, but he refused to reveal who they were.

"We are expecting to finish the investigation on the Talangsari case in November and hopefully we can come to a conclusion in December," he said.

The two teams previously investigating the Talangsari incident had reportedly not made any progress.

Talangsari village was the center for a Muslim preaching group led by Warsidi – a group known for its scathing criticism against the then-powerful New Order regime.

A local students' organization said the fatalities reached as high as 246 people. The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence said 47 people were identified and 88 others went missing.

Student representative Hari Purwanto said the commission had not been doing its job seriously, especially on three major human rights violations, including the shootings of university students in Semanggi in 1998 and 1999, the Talangsari incident, and the murder of prominent human rights activist Munir said Thalib.

Hari said even though the public could guess who the intellectual actors behind the cases were – "still the commission has failed to uncover them".

He said Col. A.M. Hendropriyono, the Lampung military commander at the time the Talangsari incident took place, was an example. "We are afraid there is some kind of political contract between high officials in the commission and the government."