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IDHAE INFORMATION
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On 20 December 2005, a pilot of Indonesian
national airline Garuda, Mr Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto was sentenced to 14
years in jail for murdering Indonesia’s fearless human rights defender, Munir
The
sentencing of a pilot of Indonesian national airline Garuda, Mr Pollycarpus
Budihari Priyanto to 14 years in jail is a step in the right direction.
However, it seriously falls short of identifying the masterminds of the
murder. The role of Pilot Priyanto in the "premeditated murder and of
falsifying documents (in order to fly aboard the same plane as Munir)"
has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. At the same time, the fact
that officials of Indonesia's powerful spy agency, State Intelligence Agency
(BIN), masterminded the murder has also been established beyond reasonable
doubt. The issue is whether President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) will
ensure compliance with the order of the Central Jakarta District Court to the
law enforcement agencies to further investigate the high-profile murder so as
to find the masterminds of the murder. On 7 September 2004, Munir was found
dead aboard a Garuda flight from Jakarta to the Amsterdam. When the flight
made a stopover at Singapore airport, Munir is said to have sent an SMS text
message to his wife telling her that he was feeling ill. A few hours later he
was dead. His death had been put down to natural causes by the Indonesian
government. But an autopsy by the Dutch authorities found a lethal dose of
arsenic, of nearly 500 milligrams, in his bloodstream. The arsenic was laced
in the orange juice served to Munir. After the findings of the autopsy,
Indonesian government was forced to take some action. The police charged Garuda pilot Mr
Pollycarpus for the murder and named two others - Oedi Irianto, who was
working in the galley in the flight Munir died on, and stewardess Yeti
Susmiarti, as suspects. Mr Pollycarpus admitted to giving
his business class seat to Munir during the flight from Jakarta to
Singapore. In addition to conspiring to murder Munir, Pollycarpus was
also found guilty of forging a letter that authorized him to travel to
Singapore as an aviation security officer to ensure that he was on the same
flight as Munir. Pollycarpus had initially been assigned to fly to Bangkok
from 5 September 2004 to 9 September 2004, but he produced falsified
documents so as to be able to be on the same flight as Munir to the
Netherlands on 6 September 2004. Lawyers
for Mr Pollycarpus have accused prosecutors of fabricating a motive for the
killing. They
said Mr Pollycarpus had been made a scapegoat because the real murderer had
not been found. More by IDHAE : Cak Munir, 38-year old, a lawyer for human rights in Indonesia, was active on
human rights issues even as a law student. After obtaining a law degree from
Brawijaya University, he worked for the East Java Branch of the Indonesian Legal
Aid Foundation (YLBHI), and during the 1990s he was legal counsel for a number of victims of official
violence and repression. Until his death he was leading YLBHI's operational division. When still a young lawyer in East Java, he took
up the cause of workers' rights and came out in their support. This led him
repeatedly against the political elite who felt intimidated by actions of
workers which they saw as “acts of anarchy”. He joined the ranks of LBH, the
Legal Aid Institute, the foremost human rights organisation at the time. During
the closing months of the Suharto dictatorship, Munir was instrumental in
confronting the disappearances of dozens of Indonesian pro-democracy leaders,
many of whom were recovered thanks to his efforts. Munir founded the
Commission for Missing Persons and the Victims of Violence (Kontras), which
became a beacon for the human rights movement, challenging the impunity which
protected and still protects the
members of TNI, the Indonesian armed forces. Kontras
focuses on fighting political violence, encouraging respect for due process
of law, ensuring victims' physical and psychological recovery, and promoting
reconciliation and peace. Even
when the problem of East Timor under Indonesian occupation was a taboo subject
in Indonesia, Munir visited the country several times and spoke out on his
return about conditions there. Following
on his years of personal support for East Timorese struggling for
independence, in
September 1999, Munir was appointed a member of the Commission to Investigate
Human Rights Violations in East Timor (KPPHAM), set up by Indonesia's
National Human Rights Commission. The commission’s report produced a wealth
of evidence of the Indonesian army's involvement in recruiting, financing,
training and using the militia which caused such havoc at the time of the UN
Referendum. His
activities provoked the fury of thugs acting on behalf of the military and
often he and the headquarters of Kontras became the target of brutal attacks
and intimidation. The office has several times been subject to abuses and the
threat of destruction. According to
witnesses on such occasions, it was no secret that they were looking for
Munir. In 2001, his family home in
Malang, became the target of an intended bomb attack while he was there on
vacation with his wife, Suciwati, and his son. In
2002, he co-founded the Indonesian Human Rights Watch, or Imparsial. Munir became an icon for
fearlessly defending human rights and fundamental freedoms. He earned the
wrath of the military for taking up the cases of numerous activists who
disappeared in suspicious circumstances as well as for exposing violations
committed by the Indonesian military across the country during the rule of
former President Soeharto. Munir
was named Man of the Year by the leading Muslim periodical, UMMAT, Kontras
received the prestigious Yap Thiam Hien human rights award in 1998. In 2000,
he was given the Right Livelihood Award in Sweden, regarded as the
alternative Nobel prize, “for his courage and dedication in fighting for
human rights and the civilian control of the military in Indonesia”. In the same
year, Kontras was given the Yap Thiam Hien award, the highest award in
Indonesia for services to human rights. Munir’s
life was often threatened, and organized groups of thugs invaded his office a
number of times. He once said he had lost count of the number of death
threats he had received. On November 20, Suciwati received a
headless animal carcass in the mail with the warning: "Be careful!!!!!
Do not connect the TNI [the Indonesian military] to the death of Munir. Do
you want to end up like this?" Recently,
the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding
the arrest as a suspect of an off-duty pilot with the airline Garuda Indonesia,
Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who telephoned Munir three times prior to his
departure and gave him, his seat in
business class, allowing the activist to move out of the economy section. Background information
The
ethnic, religious and political tensions kept in check during Suharto’s 32
years (1967-1998) of authoritarian rule erupted in the months following the
downfall. Rioting and violence shook the provinces of Aceh and especially
East Timor which since 1975 that had
been invaded by Indonesia, and even after the referendum for its
independence, in 1999 with 78.5% voting to secede from Indonesia, the
violence didn’t stop. One third of the population was forced out of the
region and many civilians were killed. While the violence continues in
East Timor and the impunity reigns in it, in the Northern Sumatra province of
Aceh, a devoutly Muslim province of
4.5 million people and an oil- rich region becomes the next troubled area of
Indonesia, due to the separatists who demand independence. In
both cases the violence, the corruption, the terrorism and the indifference
for the human rights reigns. Scores of unlawful detentions by both the police
and the militants are reported, torture and ill-treatment of detainees
continues to be routine. The victims are from both sides but also innocent
civilians and political activists and human rights defenders who wish to
condemn the abuses and often become objects of intimidations, extra judicial
executions, tortures and unlawful
arrests. Several requests from UN Special Commissions but also UN Special
Representative on human rights to visit the country have been denied.
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