Just go...go...and go...Ms. Suciwati.
Just keep fight for the justice, for your husband.
More love and spirit for you and Allah always with you.
----- Pesan Asli ----
Dari: isa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Kepada: "WANITA [EMAIL PROTECTED]" <wanita-muslimah@yahoogroups.com>
Terkirim: Selasa, 29 Juli, 2008 00:07:09
Topik: [wanita-muslimah] IBRAHIM ISA'S - Selected News And Views
IBRAHIM ISA'S - Selected News And Views
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
MUNIR'S WIDOW PRESSES ON FOR JUSTICE
A SIBLING RIVALRY - Police and the Military, 'INSIDE INDONESIA'
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
MUNIR'S WIDOW -- SUCIWATI -- Presses On For Justice
The Straits Times (Singapore)
July 26, 2008
Activist's widow presses on for justice
John McBeth, Senior Writer
IN A simple floral blouse and black skirt, her face unlined and
free of make-up, the remarkable widow of murdered human rights
campaigner Munir Said Thalib appears almost at peace with the
world.
In the nearly four years since her husband died in agony aboard
a Garuda jetliner over Europe, Ms Suciwati, 40, has expended
most of her energies in a tenacious fight to win justice for her
husband and for the victims of other unsolved crimes.
It has taken an emotional toll on her and her two young
children. But here she is, nevertheless, on a sunlit afternoon
discussing the latest developments and looking as if she is in
no way exhausted by what she has been through.
There has been a major break in the case with the arrest of
former National Intelligence Agency (BIN) deputy director Muchdi
Purwopranjono, 59, one of the alleged masterminds behind the
murder. Ms Suciwati is pleasantly surprised at this turn of
events. But like me, she wonders whether the police have any
more evidence than a string of phone calls between Purwopranjono
and Pollycarpus Priyanto, the pilot convicted of feeding Mr
Munir a fatal dose of arsenic.
Because the case against the former special forces chief is only
circumstantial at this point, there are concerns the government
may only be reacting to international pressure, which Ms
Suciwati helped pump up. The Attorney-General' s Office has
already sent the file back to police investigators for further
work - a sign that they have yet to convince prosecutors there
is a solid case to take to court.
'The police are always saying I would be surprised at what they
have,' says Ms Suciwati. 'They have other evidence, but they say
it is secret. Surely they wouldn't dare go against a two-star
general if they didn't have something.'
The evidence against Priyanto was circumstantial too, but
courtroom testimony and Ms Suciwati's recollections suggest the
airline pilot-turned- assassin had been trying to ingratiate
himself with Mr Munir for months before the bizarre murder.
In fact, the murder plot may well have been hatched in the early
months of 2004, about the time that Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
had announced his intention to challenge Ms Megawati
Sukarnoputri for the presidency.
Ms Suciwati does not know when the two met, but she recalled Mr
Munir telling her in March of that year that Priyanto had
approached him as he was preparing to fly to Geneva and asked if
he could post a letter. Mr Munir declined because he did not
know what was in it.
She became aware of Priyanto's existence only when he called the
house two days before her husband's ill-fated flight and asked
when he was leaving. 'I inquired who he was and he replied:
'It's Polly from Garuda'.'
She said that when she relayed the conversation to Mr Munir that
evening, he told her: 'Oh, that guy. He's a weird one.'
But Ms Suciwati was troubled. 'I thought I had divulged too
much,' she says. She had the same feeling when she learnt of her
husband's death: 'I never believed he was just sick. I
immediately suspected there was something wrong.'
Ms Suciwati says Priyanto also sought to befriend activist Yenny
Rosa Damayanti, who had supported the holding of the 1999 East
Timor referendum that led to the territory's independence from
Indonesia.
For two years, between 2005 and last year, the Munir
investigation went nowhere and Ms Suciwati began to doubt the
trust she had put in Dr Yudhoyono's personal promise to her to
pursue the case to the end.
Then National Police chief of detectives Bambang Hendarso Danuri
took charge of the investigation and everything seemed to
change. 'I believe in him,' she told The Straits Times, 'because
what he has said has always turned out to be right.'
Ms Suciwati has few doubts about who planned the murder and why
they went to such bizarre lengths: 'I think it can only be the
work of intelligence people. They thought that the more
complicated things were, the more difficult it would be to
solve.'
But why kill Mr Munir in the first place, particularly when he
was going off to Holland for a year? Most people still feel it
was an act of malice, directed at a man who had carried out an
unrelenting campaign against the military and its record of
human rights abuses.
Not Ms Suciwati. She links his murder to the presidential race,
noting that it took place only weeks before the second round
run-off between Ms Megawati and Dr Yudhoyono, the retired
general who was previously her subordinate.
Her theory: Mr Munir's death would be blamed on the military and
that, in turn, would rebound on Dr Yudhoyono at a key stage in
the race.
Even Ms Suciwati understands, however, that Ms Megawati's new
administration would have been far more militaristic, given the
support she enjoyed from hardline figures like former BIN chief
Hendropriyono and former army chief Ryamizard Ryacudu.
Suspicions that Mr Hendropriyono himself may have played a part
of the murder plot have been circulating for years. His response
has always been to confront the allegations head-on. After all,
the evidence against him simply is not there.
Ms Suciwati presses on with her quest for justice. 'I didn't
have high expectations to start with, so I'm not giving up
here,' she says. 'My hope is for the case to be resolved and for
the guilty to be prosecuted.'
She owes it to the man she fell in love with at first sight.
* * *
<Watch Indonesia>
==Responsible for the article below are author and publication. The
contribution does not necessarily mirror the views of Watch Indonesia! ==
'INSIDE INDONESIA'
============ ========
A SIBLING RIVALRY
Since their institutional separation, the relationship between the
police and the military has been troubled
<Jacqui Baker>
*Since their separation from the armed forces in 1998, the
police have competed
with the military over control of local resources. *
/Ian Wilson/
When former armed forces commander Wiranto announced in 1999 that the
Indonesian National Police were to be pried from the military and made
an independent body tasked with security, press response was largely
tepid. This was indicative of how little the public, and the military
itself, believed that President Habibie's reforms would actually change
the military's control over internal security.
Long discredited within the military family as a corrupt,
bumbling institution of little capacity and vision, the police
now handle the biggest internal threats of contemporary Indonesia.
Yet, as Indonesia's democracy has consolidated over the past 10 years,
the Indonesian National Police has been thrust into the forefront of
security. Long discredited within the military family as a corrupt,
bumbling institution with little capacity and vision, the police now
handle the biggest internal threats of contemporary Indonesia --
terrorism, communal violence and separatist conflict. For many civil
society activists, the rise of the police represents an essential tenet
of democracy -- civilian supremacy in matters of security and a military
firmly lodged in its barracks. To the military, it is a perverse
inversion of the old familial relations inside the security apparatus.
In ABRI, the militaristic institution that administered the police,
army, navy and air force under General Suharto's 32-year regime known as
the New Order, the police were the 'youngest child' or 'anak bungsu'.
Now that 'anak bungsu' suddenly has the authority to bark out orders.
National tensions
Although initially befuddled by their independent status, police
officers have now started to flex their political muscle in front of
their 'older siblings' in the military. Out of respect for the old 'ABRI
family', little is said publicly. Instead, the generals have fought out
their turf wars over the 'lahan' (fertile field) of security through
their proxies in civil society, parliament and the civilian bureaucracy.
This proxy war has been most evident in recent debates over the national
security bill, currently being drafted by the Department of Defence, the
bureaucracy that administers the military and that the police see as the
military's main ally.
The police have rejected the new draft bill outright. Their hostility is
due to their fear that it will roll back their newfound authority. Legal
reforms since the fall of Suharto are widely understood to have put the
police at the forefront of domestic security. The general agreement is
that the police are responsible for everyday order and security. Even
lowly police stations have the power to second the military to police
operations.
However, in legislative terms, the sector is still murky. The police
bill of 2002 carved the scope of police authority out of the areas
formerly under military jurisdiction. However, in 2004, parliament also
passed a military bill that continues to provide a legal basis for the
military's involvement in security incidents of a distinctly civilian
flavour, such as strikes and threats to the national economy.
The national security bill is supposed to clarify the scope of authority
of the military and the police in administering domestic security.
However, by refusing to acknowledge the bill, the police are suggesting
that they would prefer practices to continue under the current arrangement.
Physical clashes
These national tensions around structural and legislative issues have
been accompanied by ongoing clashes in the regions between military and
police officers. According to media reports, the clashes typically occur
over a day or two, usually beginning with a fist fight between a number
of individuals from the military and the police, and expanding out to
include a greater number of soldiers and officers using weapons to
battle it out. Weak on firepower and tactical skill, police have very
rarely 'won' one of these battles. Ironically, Jakarta is one of the few
provinces not to have hosted a major altercation. The police and the
military elites have quickly dismissed the violence as a kind of
over-enthusiastic horseplay with guns. Their views are not entirely a
white-wash. Macho spats within the great ABRI family over girlfriends or
petty slights have apparently occurred since the 1950s.
However, most of the altercations of the past 10 years of Indonesia's
democratisation era have followed patterns entirely different from those
of previous wrangles. In all of the post-1998 cases, personnel involved
in the spats are not a mixture of the police's older siblings from the
navy, air force and army. Rather, the violence nearly always occurs
between members of the two institutions that claim direct authority over
territorial security: the police and the army. Moreover, some sections
of the police and the army appear more likely to be involved in such
fights than others. Attacks are most frequently initiated by members of
an army battalion permanently stationed in a region. Their usual targets
are either Brimob (Mobile Brigade), the paramilitary police force
controlled centrally and seconded to regional police stations or, where
the civilian police are involved, personnel stationed at the
sub-district commands, the Polres. The sub-district commands have
benefited most from recent police reforms by gaining some fiscal and
human resource powers from the centre.
Police and army personnel wounded or killed in the clashes are always
from the second-lowest and lowest bands of officers, suggesting that it
is these foot soldiers that are doing the bulk of the fighting. Though
the generals label them 'loose cannons', actually the opposite is true.
Those on the bottom rungs are the ones who most feel the pinch of
limited resources and are dependent on their immediate commanders for
career advancement and access to the informal payments that supplement
their meagre salaries. They are therefore unlikely to engage in physical
violence without the knowledge, or instruction, of their seniors.
Unsurprisingly too, police tend to nurse more wounds from the clashes,
in terms of both damage to infrastructure and loss of human life.
Despite the loss of dozens of lives on both sides, frustratingly little
information is available on the results of investigations into the
hostilities.
Turf war
Although security apparatus personnel are reluctant to discuss the
post-1998 rash of battles between the police and the army, most
Indonesian analysts agree that that such clashes generally flow from
turf wars for control of locally based semi-legal and illegal economies.
They argue that newly emboldened police officers are demanding a larger
share of the funds generated by control of the supply or distribution of
commodities such as petrol and narcotics, or the provision of security
services to illegal industries such as timber smuggling and prostitution.
Many clashes have occurred in Indonesia's conflict areas of Papua and
Poso. Commentators have long argued that conflict conditions provide
security forces with a cover for profiteering. But even more clashes
have occurred in regions that have few resources of national importance.
Sites of conflict such as Bulukumba in South Sulawesi and Binjai in
North Sumatra, for example, do not have the economic clout of places
like Exxon Mobil's plant in Lhokseumawe, Aceh, or even the Medan city
centre. 'Vital projects' such as mines or plantations that lie at the
heart of the national economy are the most significant off-budget money
spinners for security actors, and therefore according to the
conventional wisdom should have the greatest potential for clashes. But
the armed spats between the army and the police are not usually around
these sites.
Every day, security in this vast archipelago is actually
provided by a series of fragile and shifting pacts between
locally-based police and military leaders
In fact, the small number of clashes in resource-rich areas is a telling
indication of how the military--police relationship works on the ground.
So much has been made of the tension between these institutions that the
underlying cooperation between them is often forgotten. The great
national resources that provide the biggest off-budget funds of the
security apparatus are not a source of conflict precisely because the
military and the police have established agreements for cooperation and
mutual gain around those industries. This cooperation is part of a
bigger picture. Police and military personnel routinely coordinate their
work even in everyday security operations such as controlling public
demonstrations, border control and transport security.
Every day, security in this vast archipelago is provided by a series of
fragile and shifting pacts between locally based police and military
leaders. Even the most cursory scan of regional newspapers throws up
evidence of the ongoing relationship. In 2006 mass demonstrations in
Makassar over the alleged rape of a local girl by an ethnic Chinese were
pacified by police backed up by a large military contingent. In May this
year, in Kampar, Riau, police deployed the military to break a blockade
in an illegal logging case. Even roof riders on PT Kereta Api trains in
Jakarta were busted in a series of raids last February by a joint
military and police taskforce. Despite the grey areas in legislation,
these are threats to security that border on the banal and lie firmly
under police authority. Why then do the police invite the military back
into the management of day-to-day security?
Family is family
The reason the police agree to military units helping to provide
internal security is rooted in police officers' continuing belief in the
kinship of ABRI. Under Suharto's New Order regime, military education
engendered familial ties, both real and imagined, between the officer
classes. In the Armed Forces Academy (AKABRI) officers across the
military and police participated together in generalised military
training for one year. As they climbed the career ladder, senior
generals often found themselves reunited with their classmates in
officer schools or the National Resilience Institute (Lemhanas) for more
advanced courses of study, creating tight military--police cliques at
the senior level. Evidence of these upper echelon buddy groups can be
found in police--military veteran clubs which continue to wield
significant political influence, or in businesses run jointly by police
and military. Rank-and-file police officers do not get these elite
scholarly opportunities. Yet they continue to experience a deep
nostalgia when remembering ABRI. Officers in both the army and the
police frequently reminisce to me of a time when the security forces
were a 'compact' family, united in defence of Indonesia.
But as in all good families, the relationship is intimate, complex and
ambiguous. Police affection for ABRI is also tinged with unease about
the tenure of police authority over internal security. Many police
officers in the middle rungs of the hierarchy harbour anxieties that the
seesaw of security politics might one day tip back in favour of the
army. Asked why the army was permitted to maintain some of its
protective rackets under his territorial command, a middle-ranking
general said to me, 'Who knows how long this will all last? And who
knows when the military will be back?' From a police perspective, the
army's return to power not only would propel the police back to
'youngest child' status in the great military family, but might also
prompt acts of older sibling vengeance for police disloyalty. Indeed,
given that Indonesia's last experiment with messy democracy ended in
military rule, it is not so surprising that some officers express
deep-rooted anxieties about the longevity of civilian supremacy.
That police are willing to cooperate with the military at the local
level in ways that are as yet unregulated and unaccountable is what
presents the biggest challenge for ongoing democratic reform of the
security sector. If democracies by definition hinge upon a military
limited to defence and a civilian force charged with internal security,
what might be the consequences for Indonesia's democratisation if the
military is consistently being invited back into the field of policing?
Regulation of the police--military relationship is urgent, but is blood
thicker than water? *ii*
/*Jacqui Baker ([EMAIL PROTECTED] ac.uk)*// is currently doing PhD research
in Indonesia on police reform./
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
___________________________________________________________________________
Dapatkan nama yang Anda sukai!
Sekarang Anda dapat memiliki email di @ymail.com dan @rocketmail.com.
http://mail.promotions.yahoo.com/newdomains/id/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
