APSN Banner

Last political prisoners freed

Source
Agence France Presse - December 23, 1999

Jakarta – The Indonesian government Thursday released 105 political prisoners, the last still held in the country's jails, Minister of Law and Legislation Yusril Ihza Mahendra said.

"There are practically no more political prisoners and detainees," Mahendra told journalists at the presidential office after announcing the releases.

"But if there are families who know that their relatives are not yet free please come to the ministry of law and legislation," he said, adding some people might still be held in military detention centres. He said the prisoners and detainees would all be freed by Friday at the latest.

The government on December 10 released 91 political prisoners, mostly East Timorese, in the first release of political detainees under the new government of President Abdurrahman Wahid. Wahid was elected the nation's fourth head of state in October.

A total of 72 prisoners were freed under a presidential amnesty which cancelled all legal punishement for a criminal deed. The 33 others were freed after the president cancelled all charges against them.

Mahendra said most of the prisoners freed on Thursday were those convicted for separatist activities in the easternmost Irian Jaya province.

According to a list of the freed prisoners attached to the presidential decree dated Thursday, 61 of them were political prisoners linked to separatism in Irian Jaya.

The Free Papua Movement has been fighting for a free state in Irian Jaya since 1961 and calls for independence have mounted following the fall of former Indonesian president Suharto in May 1998.

Most were jailed in towns in Irian Jaya but a few had been serving in jails in other Indonesian towns, such as Eliezer Awom, 48, who is serving a life sentence for separatism in a jail in Surabaya, East Java.

Also among those released were 15 political prisoners from East Timor, which voted to sever links with Jakarta in August, several from the strongly Muslim province of Aceh where separatism has also been on the rise and some prisoners dubbed Muslim radicals, the minister said.

President Abdurrahman Wahid had also decided to grant "special sentence reductions" to prisoners to mark the religious holidays of Christmas and Muslim Eid-al-Fitr, he added.

"This is a breakthrough of the present government. Now a prisoner can get two sentence reductions in a year," he said. Traditionally the government only grants mass sentence cuts to prisoners every August 17 to mark the country's declaration of independence.

He said some 3,800, or 10 percent of the 38,000 prisoners in the country's jails, will be freed by having their sentences cut early next year.

Mahendra said the present government will not jail those dissenting with the government's opinion unless they commit criminal acts.

Country