Jakarta – The family of Papuan Pastor Yeremia Zanambani who was shot dead on September 19 in Hitadipa district, Intan Jaya, Papua, says it does not want Zanambani's killer to be tried in a military tribunal.
They are instead calling for the case to be resolved through a human rights court saying that in previous cases in Papua which have been resolved through military tribunals the punishments have been light and there has been minimal justice.
"We reject our father's murderer being, we don't want him to be tried in a military tribunal", said Zanambani's daughter Rode Zanambani in a declaration recorded on video which was received by CNN Indonesia on Tuesday November 10.
The statement was made after they received information that the Papuan regional police will soon hand the case over to the regional military command (Kodam) military police to be dealt with by a military tribunal.
"We state that we want the legal process in the murder of our father to be carried out in a human rights court. So that the case can be examined as justly as possible and the perpetrator prosecuted in accordance with his actions and to provide us with a sense of justice", she asserted.
In addition to opposing a military tribunal, Rode also rejected an autopsy being performed on her father. This, according to a member of the family's legal team, Yohanis Mambrasar, is related to the family's strong cultural belief that disaster will befall them if a body that has already been committed to the ground is exhumed.
"The family rejects an autopsy because the family members themselves have conveyed that they have a cultural belief in Intan Jaya that if the buried are exhumed from their grave, that if this happens, later there will be problems within the family", said Mambrasar.
Earlier, the government sanctioned Joint Fact Finding Team (TGPF) said that there was a possibility that a member of the TNI (Indonesian military) was involved in the death of the Papuan religious figure.
The National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) meanwhile explicitly named the perpetrator of Zanambani's murder as being Hitadipa sub-district military commander Chief Sergeant Alpius Hasim Madi.
This information was obtained based an admission made by Zanambani before two witnesses before he died as well as other witnesses who saw Alpius in the vicinity of Zanambani's pigpen – the location where he took his last breath.
So far however, there has yet to be any criminal investigation into the Zanambani's murder by the police or the TNI. (khr)