Jakarta, Kompas – The Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) is of the view that law enforcement in Aceh since a state of martial law was declared is not working. This follows large number of cases of abductions of civilians who are believed to be members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) where there was no clear evidence but their cases were still tried by the courts.

At a press conference on Friday March 26, PBHI chairperson Hendardi said that PBHI had found 43 violations of law enforcement which had occurred in Banda Aceh, the Greater Aceh regency and the city of Lhokseumawe between May 2003 and February 2004.Z

"We found a great many [cases of] arrests which were not carried out by police officers, which were made without written arrest warrants and then during interrogation they were invariably tortured", said Hendardi.

No positive impact

According to Hendardi, the kind of law enforcement which has been applied under a state of martial law against the civilian population represented a form of mass law enforcement through political stigmatisation. Anyone he continued, who has been stigmatized as a member or sympathiser of GAM, can become a target of law enforcement operations, and are inevitably convicted even though there is no supporting evidence.

With this kind of law enforcement said Hendardi, it is extremely difficult to hope that law enforcement operations will have a positive impact on advancing peace and justice, especially for the civilian population in Aceh.

PHBI secretary general, Johnson Panjaitan, explained that although the number of law enforcement violations which are being handled by PBHI are small, only 43 cases, these cases are actually being handled directly and being checked in the field. As many of 14 out of these are being processed in the courts.

"If there are other parties who say that [there has been] hundreds of cases [of violations] of law enforcement, we cannot determine if this is valid or whether the data has been checked in the field", said Panjaitan. (SIE)

[Translated by James Balowski.]