The police have been challenged to prove their claim that its officers were not involved in Thursday’s assault on an antigraft activist who reported the suspiciously large bank accounts of police generals to the antigraft body.
“This is a real terror to silence activists. But let me tell you, we are not afraid at all. This [incident] only boost our courage and solidarity in combating corruption,” said Teten Masduki, the secretary-general of the Transparency International Indonesia (TII) and a former ICW leader.
Tama S. Langkun, who heads Indonesia Corruption Watch’s investigation division, was assaulted by four men on two motorcycles at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday. He sustained severe head injury after being hit with iron sticks.
“This isn’t going to stop me. There’s still a long way to go [to win the fight against corruption],” he said from his hospital bed in South Jakarta.
There is widespread belief the police are responsible for the incident given Tama’s role in the efforts to disclose the suspicious nature of the wealth of high-ranking police officers.
Tama reported National Police internal affairs division chief Insp. Budi Gunawan, one of the police officers whose Rp 95 billion wealth was deemed questionable, to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) last month.
ICW researcher Febridiansyah said Tama was also in the middle of investigating other graft cases still to be made public.
Al Araf of human rights group Imparsial challenged the police to arrest the attackers as soon as possible. “Given their success in arresting and killing so many terrorist suspects, the police should find it easy to arrest the perpetrators. Otherwise, the public will suspect the police themselves were involved in the incident,” he said.
Usman Hamid of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) said he found it difficult not to link the assault to Tama’s efforts to disclose the officers’ bank accounts.
“I think it was also somehow related to the Molotov cocktail attack on Tempo magazine’s office. The police must prove that they were not behind the incidents,” he said.
Last week’s edition of the weekly news magazine ran a cover story about seven high-ranking officers who allegedly amassed billions of rupiahs.
Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) deputy executive director Choirul Anam alleged that the attacks had two goals.
“First, to terrorize activists. Second, to divert public attention from corruption issues, which allegedly involve many senior officers.”
Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) senior activist Erwin Usman said there had been many attacks against activists that had never been investigated by police.
“Tama is not the only victim. In other regions, many activists have been victims of violence. Some have even been killed and the perpetrators were never caught,” he said.
Usman cited the intimidation of Papuan human rights activist Albert Rumbekwan as an example.
Albert received threats when he and other human rights defenders met with UN Special Representative Hina Jilani in 2007.
“Other human rights and anticorruption activists in Aceh and Timor Leste [when it was still Indonesian territory], were killed and the police never investigated,” Usman said.
A 2009 report released by Imparsial showed there had been at least 96 cases of violence and threats against rights activists from 2005 to 2009 nationwide.
The report said police officials were among the main perpetrators of violence against human right defenders, followed by military officials and hired thugs.
