Farouk Arnaz & Ezra Sihite – Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights has established a joint fact-finding team with police following a meeting with National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo on Friday.
Members of the commission known as Komnas HAM have said they had found "indications of human rights violations" by the police in the shooting of protesters in Bima, West Nusa Tenggara, on Dec. 24 and argued that three people were killed and not two as the police had claimed.
But in an apparent wavering step, Komnas HAM chairman Ifdhal Kasim said the commission and the National Police agreed to form a joint fact-finding team to seek the true death toll.
"We had clarification and there was an agreement for a joint investigation, so that there is clarity because there were two shot dead outside of the port and one who died in his home and the perpetrators need to be ascertained," Ifdhal said after a meeting at the National Police headquarters.
Ifdhal, who was accompanied by commission members Nurkholis and Ridha Saleh, could not say who would be part of the team, when it would be formed and when it would begin work.
Timur, speaking on the same occasion, said the joint investigations would be "to clear what has so far been a problem, for example on the matter of the deaths, whether they are because of [security] personnel or what," Timur said.
Ifdhal and Ridha said earlier in the week that a Komnas HAM investigation team had found indications of human rights violations by the police.
Police have remained adamant that only two protesters were shot dead in the incident and the third one, whom they said had not taken part in the protests, had died of stomach problems. They also said they were still looking for the shooters.
Three members of the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) and two police intelligence unit officers have been punished over the incident in Bima. They were ordered detained for three days for beating and kicking the protesters when police tried to disband them in an attempt to clear the Sape harbor, which they had occupied for days in protest against a gold mining operation in the area.
Who owns gold miner Sumber Mineral Nusantara, the company that received the gold exploration permit from the Bima district chief, is still unknown. The permit is at the core of the protest.
"PT SMN is just at its exploration phase, but it is already chaotic. The forest has started to be logged," said Adian Lubis, from the Bima chapter of the National Student League for Democracy.
The students were accompanying Bima residents, who also did not know who owned the company, in meeting members of House of Representatives Commission III on legal affairs here.
Meanwhile, Ramadhan Pohan, a lawmaker from the Democratic Party, said he had information from journalists that he had already verified that suggested SMN might have been working in collusion with Bima district chief Ferry Zulkarnain, who is also the local Golkar Party chapter chief.
"We have discovered that SMN was one of the main financial backers of the district chief during the local elections," Pohan said. Ferry and his officials could not be immediately reached for comment.