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Jakarta Post

Activists show solidarity for victim

Dozens of members from the Alliance of Safe Transportation for Women marched in the compound of the Central Jakarta District Court on Tuesday in a show of solidarity for the victim of an alleged sexual assault that reportedly took place in a Transjakarta shelter, for which hearings are still ongoing

Indah Setiawati (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, June 11, 2014

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Activists show solidarity for victim

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ozens of members from the Alliance of Safe Transportation for Women marched in the compound of the Central Jakarta District Court on Tuesday in a show of solidarity for the victim of an alleged sexual assault that reportedly took place in a Transjakarta shelter, for which hearings are still ongoing.

The alliance consists of activists from various organizations, including the Women'€™s Legal Aid foundation (LBH APIK), One Billion Rising Indonesia and Magenta Legal Research and Advocacy.

'€œWe want to show the judges and the prosecutors that we are watching this case. We want to hand a support letter for the victim to the head of the Central Jakarta District Court, asking the court to hold a fair trial,'€ alliance coordinator Nisaa Yura said.

She said the alliance would also give letters of support to officials such as acting governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama, the director of PT Transjakarta and head of the Central Jakarta Prosecutor'€™s Office, Diatas Ginting Suka.

Kartika Jahja, another activist, said the alleged victim in the Transjakarta shelter sexual assault case, for example, did not know when her trial began that she could access free advocacy services. Kartika said the victim contacted her after seeing a comment about sexual abuse on her Twitter account.

One of the prosecutors, Sinta Dewi, said the closed court on Tuesday was supposed to hear testimonies from two witnesses from the defendants'€™ side, as well as her witness '€” a police officer from the Central Jakarta Police.

She said the trial was adjourned until Wednesday because the witnesses for the defendants were not present at the trial.

'€œMy witness, the police officer, could not testify today because the witnesses from the lawyers did not come to the trial. Previously, the judge asked the police officer to testify at the court because the defendants said they were forced and beaten by the police into signing the dossiers,'€ Sinta said.

Bambang Setiawan, one of the defendants'€™ lawyers, said his witnesses, two Transjakarta employees, previously agreed to testify for the defendants.

'€œHowever, they suddenly cancelled today. They were our last witnesses who were supposed to support the defendants,'€ he said.

Bambang said earlier the defendants signed the dossiers without the presence of a lawyer. He said the families of the four defendants hired three lawyers just before the trial began.

On Jan. 21, 2014, the victim was allegedly sexually assaulted by four men after losing consciousness following an asthma attack while onboard a Transjakarta bus from Cempaka Putih in East Jakarta to Harmoni in Central Jakarta.

The defendants '€” Edwin Kurniawan Lingga, Dharman L. Sitorus, Ifan Lutfi Akbar and M. Kurniawan '€” were on-duty Transjakarta officers at the time of the alleged incident. They are charged with violating two articles of the Criminal Code, which carry a maximum seven-year prison sentence and a maximum two-year-and-eight-month sentence, respectively.

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