|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
JAKARTA, May 3 (AFP)-Two former Indonesian military chiefs denied on Wednesday ordering their troops to shoot at and kill Muslim protesters in northern Jakarta in 1984. Retired generals Try Sutrisno and Benny Murdani were questioned by officials from the Indonesian Human Rights Commission investigating the shooting in Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port area that killed scores of Muslim protestors. "No one gave the order [to shoot]," Sutrisno, the Jakarta military commander at the time, told journalists after the questioning. "No one had wanted the Tanjung Priok incident to happen. It was a disaster not wanted by government forces, nor by the people," said Sutrisno, the Vice President between 1993 and 1998. But neither general denied the troops had shot the protesters. Sutrisno said the harsh action had been taken because the Muslim protesters had "threatened the lives of security forces and tried to seize their weapons." Benny Murdani, who was then the armed forces chief, told investigators in writing that Sutrisno had only notified him of the incident later. "Mr. Benny said he had never technically issued an instruction," one of the investigators, Albert Hasibuan, said. Murdani has had difficulty speaking following a recent stroke. The Tanjung Priok incident was allegedly sparked by an inflammatory sermon at a mosque during Friday prayers in which a preacher incited people to reject a move by the government of then President Suharto to impose the secular state ideology on all socio-political organizations. A dispute arose as intelligence operatives attempted to halt the sermon and the incident quickly degenerated into a mass riot that began with the torching of several businesses in the port area, prompting the heavy-handed security measures. Murdani, in his official statement on the Tanjung Priok incident, then said that nine people were killed and 53 were injured. Independent death tolls, including those from witnesses and one issued by Amnesty International in 1987, spoke of more than 100 dead and truckloads of bodies. The Tanjung Priok shooting is one of several cases of past gross human rights violations committed by the security forces that have been reopened following public pressure since Suharto's downfall in 1998.
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
