The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Responding to public skepticism over the credibility of an
investigation team for Maluku, Vice President Hamzah Haz said
Sunday the team should be given time to prove itself.
Hamzah said the team would be evaluated in three months time
and changes would be made if it was deemed to have failed to carry
out objective investigations.
"The team has not commenced its work and people already
doubt (its impartiality). How is that possible? Give it time (to
prove itself)," Hamzah was quoted by Antara as saying
on Sunday.
The government announced Thursday the establishment of a
14-member team to investigate the violence in Maluku, where
religious conflict has claimed more than 6,000 innocent lives
since it broke out in January 1999.
Setting up an investigation team to look into possible gross
human rights violations in Maluku is one of the recommendations of
the peace agreement signed by both Muslim and Christian leaders in
Malino, South Sulawesi in February 2002.
President Megawati Soekarnoputri is expected to install the
team as soon as she returns from a state visit to Europe.
According to Presidential Decree No. 38/2002, the probe team
would be given six months to probe the religious violence,
focusing on nine major cases including the first incident on Jan.
19, 1999 which triggered the protracted conflict between Muslim
and Christian communities.
Other issues included the presence of the hard-line Laskar
Jihad group and the Republic of South Maluku secessionist
movements.
Deputy to the coordinating minister for political and security
affairs I Wayan Karya and human rights activist Bambang W.
Soeharto have been assigned as the team's chairman and deputy
respectively.
Muslim and Christian leaders in Maluku have welcomed the team,
expressing the hope that it would help clarify issues that have
worsened the political-ridden conflict.
They also urged the team to be transparent and be free from any
political interests to ensure that their work would help put an
end to the violence there.
Herman Nikijuluw, chairman of a Christian grassroots movement
who signed the Malino peace deal on Feb. 12 in Malino, South
Sulawesi, said that such a probe, albeit late, was necessary to
unravel the truth about the presence of the South Maluku Republic
separatist movement.
"If the team finds evidence that there is no such
secessionist movement, our name should be restored," he told The
Jakarta Post by phone on Sunday.
However, Idrus Tatuhey, a Muslim scholar who also signed the
Malino peace agreement, doubted the team would succeed in shedding
any light on the what really happened during the first incident on
Jan. 19, 1999 which sparked the prolonged sectarian conflict.
Secretary general of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) Maluku
chapter Azis Fidmatan pledged Friday to assist the team in
obtaining data and information about the violence.
Rights activists expressed concern that the team would meet a
similar fate to that of the government-backed team probing the
murder of Papuan pro-independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay in
November 2001.
They also criticized the government for not consulting
concerned groups before assigning the members on the team,
suggesting that some team members might turn out to be totally
unacceptable to both warring groups in Maluku.
Since the fall of former dictator Soeharto in 1998, the
government has set up numerous 'independent' teams to investigate
various past human rights abuses, but their work has failed to
shed light on issues examined.
A team was established to probe the famous bloody shooting in
Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, in 1984 and numerous alleged human
rights abuses in Irian Jaya (Papua) and Aceh, but no significant
findings have been reported.
Early this year, the government also formed an investigation
team to look into Theys' murder, in addition to teams formed by
the Army and the Indonesian Military (TNI) headquarters, but Theys'
tragic death remains unsolved.