ASIET News Updates - December 28, 1998 ====================================== * Portuguese lawyers demand Suharto extradition - Itar/Tass * Christmas violence hits parts of Indonesia - Reuters * Rights watchdog lashes out at court martial - AFP --------------------------------------------------------------- Portuguese lawyers demand Suharto extradition ============================================= Itar/Tass - December 27, 1998 Madrid -- Portuguese lawyers on Saturday demanded the extradition of Indonesia's ex-president Suharto to bring him to court for genocide of the population of East Timor, Portugal's former colony. The Portuguese Law and Justice Association, which is part of the International Jurists' Commission said in a statement that Suharto is to face trial in Portugal for his role in genocide of a third of East Timor's population. East Timor was seized by Indonesia in 1975 after Lisbon announced granting independence for its colony. Over 200,000 civilians were killed in East Timor since that time. In formal terms, these people were Portuguese citizens since East Timor is still recognized as being Portuguese by the United Nations which granted Portugal the right to rule the territory until its status is finally determined, the document said. The association expressed disagreement with the position of Portugal's Attorney-General who said that Suharto's case did not fall under the jurisdiction of Portuguese law. The association, however, maintains that the country's law provides for punishment for those who violate the rights of Portuguese citizens. Christmas violence hits parts of Indonesia ========================================== Reuters - December 27, 1998 Jakarta -- An angry mob set fire to a discotheque and damaged shops selling liquor in Christmas violence on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, government officials and residents said on Sunday. And in a separate incident, dozens of people were injured in a religious dispute over a red-light district in the Sumatran city of Medan. About 5,000 people stormed the red-light district demanding the closure of the area during Ramadan, the Moslem fasting month, the official Antara news agency reported on Sunday. Both incidents occurred on Christmas Day, although the violence in Sulawesi only ended on Saturday. Both areas have mixed populations of Christians and Moslems. The violence in the town of Poso, in Central Sulawesi province, followed reports that a drunken Christian had stabbed a Moslem man, residents said. Poso, a town of 30,000 people located 1,565 km northeast of Jakarta, was calm on Sunday, government officials said. However, troops and police were stationed in the town. No church or mosque was damaged. "Things are cooling down this morning and troops are deployed around the town. It was so tense last night," one government official told Reuters by telephone. There were no immediate reports of casualties apart from the initial incident, the official said. One discotheque was set on fire and four others were damaged, the official said. The mob unloaded liquor from six shops selling such goods and burned them on the street. The shops were also damaged, he said. The incident which sparked the violence happened on Christmas Eve, residents said. A drunken man, believed to be a Christian, stabbed a Moslem man with a knife following a quarrel. The wounded man sought refuge at a mosque. "Reports that the man had been stabbed by a drunken man enraged local people. They started to damage shops on Christmas Day. The incident lasted through last night," one resident said. A number of hotels were also damaged and their furniture was burned by the mob, residents said. On Friday in Medan, capital of North Sumatra province, scores of people, including protesters and guards employed by pimps, were injured after thousands of people stormed a red-light district, Antara said. The clashes lasted about an hour. Medan, with two million people, is 1,350 km northwest of Jakarta. The city was the site of numerous riots earlier this year, which led in May to the resignation of former president Suharto. Indonesia has been hit by a series of religious riots as the country grapples with its worst financial crisis in decades, which has driven up the prices of essentials and created mass unemployment. In late November, Christian mobs torched and ransacked mosques in the eastern town of Kupang in West Timor during a protest against ethnic and religious riots. Religious discord is a sensitive issue in Indonesia, where about 85 percent of the country's 200 million people are followers of Islam. But there are strong communities of Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics and Protestants, who are in the majority in some areas of the vast archipelago. Rights watchdog lashes out at court martial =========================================== Agence France Presse - December 26, 1998 Jakarta -- A leading Indonesian human rights watchdog Saturday lashed out at the court martial of 11 soldiers on charges of abducting activists as "simplistic," and demanded that their commanding officers also be dragged to court. The Jakarta Military High Court on Wednesday opened the court martial of the soldiers with the prosecutor saying the defendants had acted on their own initiative in the abduction and torture of activists in the last months of the Suharto era. "That the abductions were conducted by the defendants because of their 'calls of conscience' to safeguard the national interest, is not only illogical ... but also directly closes the road for the legal process against their superiors," the Indonesian Association for Legal Aid and Human Rights said in a statement. The association said the soldiers would not have dared to act on their own in holding activists for lengthy periods at their units' facilities. "The 'call of conscience' argument appears not only simplistic but also foolish and far-fetched," it added. The prosecutor has said that the defendants, eight of them junior officers, were all members of the Kopassus elite corps and had formed a "Rose Team" that abducted at least nine activists in February and March. Kopassus was under the command of a son-in- law of former president Suharto, now-retired general Prabowo Subianto, at the time of the kidnappings. The elite troops were believed to be involved in the kidnapping and torture of at least 23 activists in the months preceding the resignation of Suharto in May. But the charges only relate to the nine activists who have since surfaced with tales of torture and incarceration. One other activist has been found dead and 13 are still missing. Military prosecutor Colonel Harom Wijaya said the Rose Team was set up by one of the defendants to arrest individuals deemed "radical" because "his conscience called for safeguarding the national interest." If found guilty the 11 defendants, who have been in detention since July 14, face up to seven years' imprisonment. The association said that the charges were meant to block further legal moves against the defendants' superiors, adding that a "just" trial should also investigate the commanding officers. "This means the legal process should be extended to cover not only retired lieutenant general Prabowo Subianto but also the heads of the Jakarta police and military, the chief of the national police and the army, the armed forces commander," it said. Suharto, as the then commander in chief of the armed forces, should also be investigated over the case, it added. Munir, the head of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), had earlier described the court martial as a "comedy." He said after the trial opened that it was designed "to minimalize the faults of ABRI (the Indonesian armed forces) as an institution and turn it into a procedural mistake by a number of Kopassus members." Munir also questioned why the charges did not mention the torture that the victims have said they were subjected to. Three senior Kopassus officers, including Prabowo, have been disciplined by the armed forces. Prabowo was honorably discharged from the armed forces and is now in Jordan. The two others were barred from holding an operational command posting within the armed forces. The court martial is to resume on December 31. ********************************************************** Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) PO Box 458, Broadway NSW 2007 Australia Phone: 61-(0)2-96901230 Fax : 61-(0)2-96901381 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW : http://www.peg.apc.org/~asiet/ Free Xanana Gusmao, Budiman Sujatmiko and Dita Sari! Free all political prisoners in Indonesia and East Timor! ********************************************************** end ============== Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html The Year 2000 Bug - An Urgent Sustainability Issue http://www.peg.apc.org/~psutton/grin-y2k.htm
