Jakarta – Indonesian police said Sunday they had arrested a common thief for the brutal murder here of a young woman activist who counselled girls raped during savage May riots here.
But shocked religious and rights leaders deplored her killing, cast doubts on the police version and voiced alarm that the government and the military, who have tried to deny the rapes, could be involved in silencing witnesses.
The body of Marthadinata, a 17-year-old high school senior known to fellow human rights activists as Ita, was found by her father in a second-floor room of her modest Jakarta home Friday night. Her neck had been slashed and there were stab wounds to her stomach, chest and right arm. The Saturday evening Suara Pembaruan newspaper and independent sources said the autopsy report showed signs of sodomy.
Jakarta police chief Major General Noegroho Jayusman said the 22-year-old suspect was arrested with fake jewelry and blood-stained clothes belonging to the victim, and that the motive had been simply robbery. The announcement of the arrest was met here with general incredulity, as Lieutenant Colonel Imam Haryatna, head of the central Jakarta police precinct had said Saturday nothing was missing from the house, and robbery had been ruled out as a motive.
Rights activists said Ita and her mother had been scheduled to travel to the US this week to testify before a human rights group on the rapes, mainly of ethnic Chinese women, during the May riots. They said they saw the murder as a grim warning to silence all those working with the ethnic-Chinese victims of the rapes – which top government and military officials, including President B.J. Habibie and armed forces chief General Wiranto, say may never have happened, as they have found no evidence.
Prominent human rights lawyer Albert Hasibuan told AFP Sunday he too was convinced that the murder was linked to Ita's activities with rape victims and said the Independent National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas Ham) would carry out its own investigation.
When asked who he thought the murder might have been carried out by, Hasibuan suggested "parties" who in the past had expressed doubts over or denied that the rapes in mid-May. He cited as examples of people casting doubt on the rapes as "the government and other parties."
"There will be a further investigation from Komnas Ham," he said. On Sunday, Ita's body was cremated in a brief ceremony at which her parents and elder sister shed tears but refused comment on the police claim.
"This is a terrible blow for us. In a way the murderer intended to send us a message that they could really kill," Karlina Leksono of the Volunteers for Humanity, which the slain girl worked for, told AFP Saturday. "It was only on Tuesday that we held a press conference about how humanitarian workers (working with rape victims) have recently been terrorized," Leksono added.
Nugroho said Sunday the arrested suspect was an "unemployed man (who) had planned the robbery long beforehand," and added he had confessed to throwing the girl's room key into a gutter after the murder. He also said a syringe was found under Ita's bed, indicating she was a drug addict.
Ita worked for the Volunteers for Humanity, one of the first groups to disclose the May rapes. They said some 168 women and girls were either gang-raped or sexually assaulted.
They also said 20 of the rape victims, women or young girls, died from their wounds, were murdered by their attackers or committed suicide. Survivors, some of whom had fled the country, were too afraid to testify, the rights groups said. On Sunday, leading Indonesian Moslem figure Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, denounced the murder as "inhumane and unforgivable."
"This is a cruel act that cannot be forgiven," Gus Dur, head of the Moslem Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) group, said in a speech to about 3,000 loyalists here. "The Indonesian nation is heading towards destruction with all the rapes and the killing of a child," he said.