On 6 January Lt. Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin was appointed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to the position of deputy defence minister. Sjarfie was the Jakarta military commander during the last years of Surhato’s rule in 1997 and is widely believed to be responsible for the still unexplained forced disappearances of 23 student activists.
One of the key events that led to the reformation of the current Indonesian state, were protests against Suharto’s New Order regime and the abuses of the past. In 1997/98 students and other activists were abducted and forcibly disappeared by the Army Special Forces Command (known as Kopassus), under the command of Sjafrie, because of their political activism in the struggle for change and democracy.
Sjafrie and the officers under his command are also implicated in the human rights abuses during the Bloody May riots of 1998 in which rioters attacked Chinese-Indonesian businesses and raped Chinese-Indonesian women in Jakarta and in other cities, as well as for crimes committed in East Timor.
For more than a decade local non-governmental organisations such as Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KONTRAS), as well as the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) have urged the government to resolve these cases and have conducted campaigns to push for justice for the victims and their families without success.
1) In 2006 KOMNAS HAM submitted a report to the Attorney General detailing the incidents of illegal arrest and detention, torture and enforced disappearances which took place during the 1997 /98 protests. To date the attorney general has continued to abdicate his duty to investigate these abuses.
2) In 2009 the House of Representatives recommended the establishment of an ad hoc human rights court to investigate the forced disappearances of the student activists. So far no court has been established.
Victims and rights groups, including KONTRAS filed a petition on Monday 5th April 2010 challenging the appointment of Sjafrie, who continues to bear criminal responsibility for the alleged atrocities committed under his command. Sjafries appointment should be challenged and he should be subject to a judicial investigation prior to any awarding of political office.
The appointment of Sjafrie is just the latest example of the prevalence of impunity in the current Indonesian government which contains Surharto-era military figures, like Sjafrie, who block any attempt to investigate the crimes of the past and continue to deny the victims of state abuse justice and truth.
