RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: Murderous Kopassus must be held to account  Mon Jul 26, 2010 3:45 am | |
| In announcing the US will lift a 12-year ban on providing military assistance and training to Indonesia's special forces unit, the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, spoke about the Indonesian military's reforms and said it was prepared to ensure accountability for any human rights abuses by its soldiers.
My experience with the special forces, Kopassus, and the country's justice system leads me to think that US President Barack Obama is making a dangerous mistake.
My husband, the late Munir Said Thalib, was one of Indonesia's most prominent human rights leaders. He was close in age to and had much in common with Obama. Both men spoke the language of human rights, and both received international recognition for their contributions to humanity: Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize; Munir won Sweden's prestigious Right Livelihood Award in 2000. Obama's boyhood home in the Menteng neighbourhood of Jakarta is a short distance from the office of KontraS, the human rights organisation where my husband worked.
Like the Obamas, my husband and I had two beautiful children, now aged 11 and seven. Unlike Malia and Sasha, my children have lost their father.
In 2004, my husband was fatally poisoned on a flight from Indonesia to the Netherlands. Almost six years later, no one has been held accountable for ordering his murder.
Indonesian courts have found three people guilty of causing Munir's death: two employees of the airline Garuda and an off-duty pilot who was also an intelligence agent. They had no personal motive to kill my husband. All indications are that they did not act on their own initiative. Yet authorities have not determined whether members of the security or intelligence services ordered Munir's death.
In 2008, a senior intelligence official, Major-General Muchdi Purwopranjono, was acquitted of ordering the murder in a trial that Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights has called seriously flawed. Indonesian police and the Office of the Attorney-General have taken no further steps to resolve the case.
Years earlier, Muchdi lost his job in Kopassus after my husband revealed the general's involvement in the abduction and torture of pro-reform student activists in the late 1990s. I helped Munir investigate the disappearances. Munir also brought to light allegations of Kopassus's involvement in other serious human rights abuses in East Timor and Papua, and he strongly opposed the brutal practices of the Indonesian military - including Kopassus - in Aceh.
The US rightly refused to support Kopassus because of its members' involvement in these and other incidents of abuse. But the Obama administration, seeking to improve ties with Jakarta, has agreed to allow training to resume if the government will ensure those convicted of abuse would be moved out of Kopassus.
Promises to shift abusers out of Kopassus and into other military units are simply not enough. Members of Kopassus have no fear they will be prosecuted for serious wrongdoing. The special forces protect members who are implicated in such abuses. Even the few convicted by military courts are largely still serving. This will not change until those who have committed abuses are brought to justice.
The US decision undercuts the work of civil society groups. In March, four prominent Indonesian non-governmental human rights organisations suggested strict conditions for any US re-engagement with Kopassus, noting ''nothing has been done to restore the rights of the victims or punish those who were responsible''.
Indonesia has made much progress on the road to democracy and stability, but enhancing the reach of a powerful military force that lacks respect for the rule of law jeopardises those hard-fought gains. Obama is rewarding Kopassus without requiring accountability. I fear the Indonesian security services will again get away with murder.
The next steps for the Obama administration are clear: reverse the decision to train Kopassus in the absence of such change and persuade President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to honour Indonesia's international obligations for justice. Help me give my children an answer to their father's murder.
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