Jakarta – The murder of human rights activists Munir will be one of the cases taken up in the annual report on human rights in Indonesia, which will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in April. This is being done as a means to accelerate a resolution of the case.

Speaking in Jakarta on Tuesday February 19, Human Rights Working Group deputy director Choirul Anam said that the UN Human Rights Council would discuss the annual report from Indonesia on April 15. As well as the official government report, the council will also be seeing a number of reports from non-government organisations (NGOs) as a comparison.

"In the case of reports from NGOs, we will be including developments in the Munir murder case as one of the main reports", said Anam. The Munir case continued Anam, will also be included as part of a report by the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Hina Jilani, who visited Indonesia in June 2007.

When Jilani was in Indonesia, she said that as long as the Munir murder remains unsolved, human rights defenders in Indonesia will never feel safe. The case has also attracted the attention of the international community so she suggested that the Indonesian government ensure that the law is properly applied in the case.

Suciwati, the wife of the late Munir, added that she and a member of the European parliament, Ana Maria Gomes, are currently collecting signatures from the European parliament to support resolving the Munir murder case. "I am still collecting various facts requested by Ana Maria Gomes. It is hoped that there will be at least 200 signatures for Munir", she said.

Jhon Muhamad from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) hopes that the case can be resolved this year. If it is delayed until next year, there is concern that significant amounts of material evidence will be lost.

Speaking yesterday in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung, Indonesian Police Chief General Sutanto said that police are continuing to conduct a follow up investigation into the Munir case. Following the sentencing of Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, Sutanto said that they would be working more intensively to uncover the possibility that other parties were involved. He denied remarks that they had they had been discriminative in the examination of certain people who are suspected of being involved. (CHE/NWO)

[Translated by James Balowski.]