A

s President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla continue to contradict each other on how to deal with the standoff between the National Police and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the police force has stepped up its efforts to silence its critics.

On Saturday, the National Police demanded that the Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) make an apology and retract its public claim that the arrest of suspended KPK deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto constituted a human rights violation.

The demand was made only one day after the National Police endorsed the promotion of 16 of former police chief candidate Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan'€™s subordinates at the Police Education Institute (Lemdikpol).

The lawyer of investigators at the police force'€™s detective division, Frederich Yunadi, said on Saturday that he had sent a directive to the commission listing the police'€™s demands.

'€œKomnas HAM does not have the authority to publicly announce the result of its investigation to the media. It was confidential,'€ he said.

Instead, Frederich said, the commission should have submitted its findings directly to the detective division for consideration.

The detective division arrested Bambang in late January for allegedly encouraging perjury after the KPK declared Budi a graft suspect. After his release, Bambang filed a complaint with Komnas HAM as he felt that his rights as a suspect had been violated as the arrest was made without an arrest warrant and was done in front of his two young sons.

Detective division chief Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, who is a close associate of Budi, defended the arrest and said that the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP) stipulated that investigators had the right to arrest a suspect if they felt it was necessary.

The following month, Komnas HAM announced that its investigation led it to believe that the investigators had abused their power during the arrest.

Commissioner Roichatul Aswidah said on Feb. 4 that it was unlikely that it was a coincidence that Bambang was arrested not long after the KPK announced that Budi was a suspect.

Furthermore, a video recording of the arrest showed that the police officers were armed with rifles at the time.

Frederich, who was also Budi'€™s lawyer during a pretrial hearing at the South Jakarta District Court, said that Komnas HAM had yet to respond to the police force'€™s demands even though a directive had been sent a month ago.

'€œThere'€™s been no response, which is insulting. If there'€™s no goodwill from them then let the Jakarta Police investigate them. Don'€™t blame us [if it happens],'€ he said.

Besides pursuing Bambang and Komnas HAM, the police force also named fellow suspended KPK commissioner Abraham Samad a suspect in an alleged document forgery case. They are also investigating an alleged graft case involving former deputy law and human rights minister Denny Indrayana, who has publically condemned the criminalization of the KPK.

Separately, Komnas HAM commissioner Nur Kholis dismissed the police force'€™s threats and said that it was normal for the commission to publicly announce its investigation results.

'€œThis isn'€™t the first time we have announced our results. We often announce the result of our investigations,'€ he said.

The police force'€™s demand that Komnas HAM apologize was made just as the Vice President slammed antigraft activists for continuing to demand that Jokowi stop criminalizing activists and the media for speaking out against corruption within the police force.

'€œThey are not being good sports. They should man up and state their case and stop influencing people with their opinion. Just because they claim to be antigraft heroes, they have declined to be questioned [by the police],'€ Kalla said in response to a move by antigraft activist Denny Indrayana and former KPK deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto to visit the State Secretariat to call on Jokowi to stop the criminalization of fellow activists.

Jokowi earlier instructed acting police chief Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti to stop persecuting KPK commissioners and antigraft activists and for the law enforcement agencies to build synergy in their endeavors.