David family feels unfairly treated by Singapore court

The Jakarta Post ,  JAKARTA   |  Thu, 06/25/2009 11:03 AM  |  National

The case of David Hartanto Wijaya, an Indonesian student who died at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in March, is entering a crucial stage, but the family continues to suspect an unfair process.

David’s family filed a request in April to the Singaporean coroner court to consider the case as a murder, challenging conclusions made by the NTU and Singaporean police that David had committed suicide.

Only if the coroner court finds it was not suicide will the case be forwarded to the criminal court.

However, David’s family has felt that they still received unequal treatment throughout the process.

The case has just entered the third phase of the court process, with more new witnesses to be presented by the NTU and the family.

Hartono Wijaya, David’s father, said the NTU had already presented 22 witnesses, with four more to be presented soon.

“But so far we were only given opportunities to present four witnesses, out of nine names we have submitted,” Hartono said on the telephone from Singapore.

“Our request that David’s laptop and digital hard disk be returned to the family was also denied. And we just found out that the judge never received the family’s request until today,” he said Wednesday after one of the court’s sessions.

Wednesday saw the coroner court receive testimonies from four witnesses brought forward by David’s family.

“One of them is his brother, the other three are his friends. But they are not eyewitnesses. They were all witnesses to David’s life as a brother, as a friend,” Hartono said.

The family had tried to find eyewitnesses from the university but everyone had remained tight-lipped, he said.

Hartono said the President of NTU Su Guan Ning had told the family that the university had a witness who saw David attempt to slit his wrist before he jumped from a building in the university.

“But when we asked to meet the person? The NTU rejected us.”

The NTU alleged David had attempted to kill Chan Kap Luk, David’s professor, just before David committed suicide.

Indonesian lawyer O. C. Kaligis, an advisor to the family, said the Singapore’s coroner court process turned out to analyze the possibility whether there had been a murder attempt on Professor Chan Kap Luk.

“What we see is that the court only focused on how David Hartanto Wijaya tried to murder the professor,” Kaligis said.

“From the start there has never been an analysis on the cause of David’s death.”

The pictures that show his deep wounds were never exhibited, said the lawyer who advocated the family pro bono.

Horrendously graphic pictures of David’s corpse showed he did not commit suicide. The pictures had been analyzed by Indonesian forensic experts Djaja Surya Atmadja and Evi Untoro, and they said any forensic doctor around the world would see from the forensic report that David’s body had defense wounds.

“It was absolutely not a suicide.”

Iwan Piliang, a blogger who has been accompanying the family since the beginning, said that they would bring forward two forensic experts from Indonesia who had analyzed David’s body from the Singaporean doctors’ forensic report and pictures of his body, “including a digital forensic expert who is the one and only expert in Indonesia.” (bbs/iwp)

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