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Masterminds got off scot-free, say activists

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South China Morning Post - May 18, 2000

Chris McCall – Top Indonesian human rights activists heaped scorn on yesterday's convictions in Aceh, saying they set a bad precedent for future human rights trials over a host of unsettled cases from the past.

The convictions of 24 soldiers and one civilian for murder under ordinary criminal law had allowed those who planned the operation against Islamic scholar Teungku Bantaqiah's school to get off scot-free, they said. This did not have to happen.

Asmara Nababan, secretary-general of the National Human Rights Commission, said the prosecutors should have waited several months for new laws relating to special human rights tribunals to get through parliament. Under these courts, those who ordered the killings of Bantaqiah and at least 56 of his followers could also have been brought to book.

"Human rights violations should be brought before a human rights tribunal," Mr Nababan said. "But of course it would have meant waiting another two to three months. My own opinion is it is would have been better to wait, but the Government had other considerations."

Indonesian law states that international standards can be applied in serious cases, but legislation to implement this domestically is still not in place. Although in theory President Abdurrahman Wahid has the power to order it by decree, there is great reluctance to govern through the same type of order that disgraced former president Suharto used to perpetuate his own hold on power for 32 years.

On the positive side, the sentences of 8.5 to 10 years handed down were far heavier than those imposed on soldiers in similar cases held when Mr Suharto was in power, Mr Nababan said.

Politics had taken priority over good legal sense, said Munir, co-ordinator of the leading rights lobby, Kontras. The consequences would be seen in future human rights trials in Indonesia, he added. A series of further cases may be brought later this year over last September's violence in East Timor. These may be the first that the new human rights courts deal with.

But the military insisted on a joint military and civilian court in the Aceh case, and Indonesia's police and military are those leading the inquiries into East Timor under the umbrella of the Attorney-General's Office, Mr Munir said.

Like other activists, he doubts Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman's commitment to dealing with these cases and suspects that Human Rights Minister Hasballah Saad, an Acehnese, is desperate to be seen as the man who can solve the Aceh crisis. Mr Saad also played a leading role in last Friday's preliminary peace accord. "This compromise with the military is a very bad precedent for the future of human rights," said Mr Munir.

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