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Making an ass of the law
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Written by IRIP News Service
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Spend a day in an Indonesian courtroom during the recent wave of political trials and you will probably leave at the end of the day hot, sweaty and confused. Make a habit of it and cynicism becomes the order of the day.
IRIP News Service
The trial's opening is always a standing room only affair, thanks in part to the intelligence agents or 'intel' who these days always arrive first and fill up the front pews. It's not hard to find the bulky middle-aged men or bored young ones, sporting short military haircuts and an odd assortment of 'Sunday bests' including batik shirts and leather jackets. They will often pass the time of day by picking each others' pockets. It would be funny if you were not always closely guarding your own.
Welcome to the Central Jakarta State Court, home to most of the recent political trials in Jakarta and some of the capital's most adept pickpockets who operate with impunity despite the presence of hundreds of police and troops and ID checks, bag and sometimes body searches to enter the compound at the time of any political trial.
Candid camera
Coming into the low ceilinged courtrooms on levels two or three of the 1960s blocky and nondescript whitewashed complex, don't forget to smile because you're on candid camera. The man with the Handycam is not going to submit your picture to the Funniest Home Video show. You're probably not laughing at this stage, not sure who among the people in plain clothes is friend or foe.
But don't get too self conscious. In the Central Jakarta court you will soon be soaked in sweat as the two lazy fans are not nearly enough to circulate air in the chambers, which can sometimes be crammed with more than 200 people. If you are planning a visit, take a tip from Megawati Soekarnoputri and bring your own paper fan.
Outside on the balcony the Mobile Brigade troopers, who never seem to know what they are doing there, loiter twirling their rattan canes, passing the time with more intel or 'Pentium' who carry their walkie-talkies subtly wrapped in the morning's Pos Kota or Suara Karya.
Acoustics
Inside the court, on both sides, you'll find the journalists standing in the isles with their mobile phones, jockeying for position near the windows and loudspeaker where air circulates. If the sound system is switched on, the proceedings can be heard. But Central Jakarta Court has seemingly only one set of microphones, which are seldom used. Acoustics mean the hacks often spill into the area behind the prosecutors, the accused and the lawyers, straining to hear what is being said by soft voiced judges, or by the accused who sit with their back to the spectators' gallery.
The diplomats are easy to spot, last to arrive and first to leave, but their presence keeps the system on its toes, producing a brand of mass produced justice that would have done Henry Ford proud.
Round one
Round one goes to the head judge, generally one of three sleepy looking figures sitting up on the green felt topped bench, undoubtedly sweating more profusely than anyone else in their black gowns with red and white trim around the shoulders. 'Are you in good health?', they ask, showing mock concern for the accused's welfare. If the judge truly wants to set a farcical tone for his proceedings, he will insist or re-asking questions such as 'what is your gender?' until rebellious defendants answer. Stupid questions are a judge's prerogative and defendants must suffer them.
Next, buckle down for the prosecutor's reading of the indictment. This formally gets the hearing underway and here a combination of stamina and super-human concentration is required. The indictment, sometimes running up to 100 pages long, quotes all the clauses of Criminal Code and Criminal Procedures Code that the accused is said to have violated in a long winded justification of why they have been brought to trial for doing things those who founded the Indonesian Republic considered their birthright.
Colonial law
In an atmosphere rich with irony, the recent trials of spreading hatred use a law created in the Dutch colonial period to suppress the nascent independence movement. The prosecutor, usually a lifeless and bland figure showing little facial expression, drones throughout the inevitably lengthy indictment, never deviating from the heavy legalistic prose and excessively long sentences of the document obviously produced in the back rooms by someone else. They seem to possess no independent comprehension of what they are reading, are often unable to answer questions on the document without consulting their superiors. Like the foot soldiers of oppression the world over - they are just following their orders.
Soporific
This is the time you are most likely to catch the judges asleep. However, watch closely as they are masters at masking their drowsiness with an inactive pen poised in one hand, the other studiously under their chin as they slump in their high backed leather upholstered chairs. Everybody else who is lucky enough to have a seat makes do with hard wooden benches. The startled way the judges react to the opening of an unoiled door by an attendant or the scrape of a bench by a spectator, gives them away. Like everybody else, the soporific atmosphere has caught them.
In the next session, the defence led by idealist lawyers tilts against the wind putting up spirited cases. They inevitably point out the sloppy way in which the indictment has been put together despite months of preparations, and the legal contradictions upon which it is based. The prosecution has consistent problems with getting people's names right and quoting the appropriate articles.
The defence points to the roots of the political laws in Dutch colonial law and its inappropriateness in a modern late 20th century society which calls itself a democracy of sorts.How a lawyer, particularly an idealistic one, survives in a legal system where form rules over substance and the rule of law is but a distant dream is one of the eternal fascinations of these trials.
The next scene in this legal pantomime is when the panel of judges have to make a decision on whether the trial should go ahead or not. Brushing aside all the concerns of the defence about the legality of arrest, about the detention or the suitability of holding a trial, the panel decides, with the inevitability of a runaway steamroller heading down hill, that the trial will proceed. No-one but the uninitiated is surprised.
Memory loss
The following evidence taking is the most amusing part of the trial. It was at this stage in the recent trial of 124 supporters of opposition leader Megawati Soekarnoputri that you encountered the detectives with such bad memory loss they had to be warned against contempt of court. The warning did little to improve one police captain's memory. Despite heading to PDI headquarters on the morning of July 27, 1996 with the intention of making arrests, he could not recall how many people were outside PDI headquarters and what they were doing.
Pity he did not have time to watch CNN. He could have seen,like the rest of the world did, the 200 hired thugs wearing the red shirts branding them supporters of Megawati's rival Soerjadi. This is also the time when witnesses never seem to be able to agree or recount the statements they supposedly made to the investigators.
The prosecutor, often on his or her lonesome, never really seems committed to the task. Follow-up questions are rare and little information is extracted from their witnesses in cursory and apathetic 10 or 15 minutes of questions. In contrast, the 90 minute pounding a prosecution witness takes from the defence team, as each circles to take their turn, makes a mockery of the system.
Shabby
Increasingly, the lacklustre cases presented by the prosecution are being reported in the press, and even the judges chastise the shabby prosecution cases. Detached from the discipline of having to prove anything to get a conviction, the prosecution case and police investigation often comes across with a childlike simplicity and naivety. There's little determination in the execution of their duties.They do not care and do not need to. The New Order's legal juggernaut always get its man or woman.
But increasingly the community is becoming aware that it is not getting what it deserves. It's hard to judge the corrosive effect on an already disrespected legal system, but whatever the damage done by these limp presentation of evidence, particularly in the case of the 124, the damage must be multiplied by a least a thousand fold when the staid Kompas daily exposes it on its front page. Let alone the hundreds who attended the trials of their friends or relatives. What they saw or heard, the indifference to the legal procedures and to the rights of the accused, must be still reverberating around the kampungs.
The prosecutor's sentencing demand is the step where the first rays of compromise come through, often stopping short of making a martyr of the accused with a demand less than the maximum. It is still not a light punishment. Unless you are a millionaire like Eddy Tansil, a few years in Indonesia's badly funded penal system is not a pleasant experience.
But the trial is a show, or to put another way a show of force. A demonstration of the power of the state to deprive the liberty and rights of those it considers aberrant. Those unlucky enough to be tried are being made an example of. The convictions are pro-forma despite any weight of legal argument, because a political trial has been set up to legitimise a punishment.
After the sentence demand, no amount of reasoned objections in the defence statement will have an effect. It is academic. But it is the occasion when the accused has his or her day to speak out publicly in anger for the last time in a number of years. It always feels like a cathartic experience after days of sitting through hearings whose destination, although maybe not time of arrival, can be predicted like reading a train timetable. The crowds of supporters, which traditionally wane during evidence, return for defence statements. They listen, part in sorrow and part in anger.
Disrespect
The verdict invariably brings shouts of 'rigged', and every trial adds to the mounting disrespect for the legal system and the judges who personify it. These days judges, after they hand down a verdict, are escorted from the their own courtroom by riot police.
Each case is a drama in itself. Each day a new episode with ins and outs, ups and downs. But these trials each fit an easily identified pattern. They fit into a much a bigger picture painted by a government perpetuating the fiction that Indonesia is a nation built on laws rather than political power.
Indonesia's political trials are show trials put on for audiences at home and abroad. Anyone who spends a bit of time in one of them can witness for themselves the classic example of the Javanese condition of form over substance.
The writer has attended many political trials in Jakarta in recent years.
Political trials
At the end of February, the following individuals were among those facing charges for their political activities. The list may not be complete. Trials are running separately in several court rooms in the city indicated. Some have not yet begun.
Activists of the informal political party PRD, for subversion (carrying a maximum penalty of death):
Budiman Sudjatmiko, 26, autodidact and Yogyakarta human rights campaigner, chairman of PRD. Jakarta.
Garda Sembiring, 27, former law student, chairman of PRD's Jakarta student branch SMID. Jakarta.
Petrus Hari Hariyanto, 27, former Semarang literature student, democracy activist. Jakarta.
Ignatius Damianus Pranowo, mid-20s, former trainee teacher, activist in PRD's labour union PPBI. Jakarta.
Jacobus Eko Kurniawan, 25, member of the PRD executive and active in student and labour demonstrations. Jakarta.
Suroso, 23, former science and technology student, secretary of SMID for the Jakarta area. Jakarta.
Georgeus Ken Budha Kusumandaru, 23, former Bogor economics student. Jakarta.
Victor da Costa, 22, self-employed high school graduate born in Flores, SMID activist. Jakarta.
Ignatius Putut Arintoko, 20, former boy scout, law student in Purwokerto, SMID member opposed to Abri's 'dual function'. Jakarta.
Dita Indah Sari, 23, chairwoman of PRD's labour union PPBI and prominent in actions around Java. Surabaya.
Coen Hussein Pontoh, early 20s, chairman of PRD's farmers union STN. Surabaya.
M. Sholeh, SMID activist. Surabaya.
Wilson bin Nurtyas, 28, PPBI executive member, to face trial soon.
I Gusti Anom Astika, 25, PRD executive member, to face trial soon.
A labour leader, for subversion:
Muchtar Pakpahan, 43, chairman of the independent labour union SBSI, charged over several books he wrote. Jakarta. The Supreme Court earlier revoked its own decision quashing a four-year sentence after the 1994 Medan riot.
Parliamentarians and a printer, for insulting the President (maximum penalty six years jail):
Sri Bintang Pamungkas, 52, former PPP parliamentarian, is appealing to the Supreme Court against a 34-month conviction passed against him last year. Jakarta.
Aberson Marle Sihaloho, 58, PDI parliamentarian, is standing trial over speeches he made at the PDI headquarters last July. Jakarta.
Andi Syahputra, 31, business manager of the dissident periodical Suara Independen. Jakarta.
Other activists:
Agustiana, 34, for subversion over his alleged role in the Tasikmalaya riot of 26 December 1996. Six others may also stand trial on similar charges. Tasikmalaya.
Ecep Suardi Yasa and Abu Hasan, students in Purwokerto, for spreading inflammatory writings, because they sold stickers advocating an informal vote in the 1997 election. Three others may also stand trial. Purwokerto.
Inside Indonesia 50: Apr-Jun 1997
Tags: Justice System
New Order (1967-98)
National
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'All a pretence' - Interview with parliamentarian Aberson
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Written by Sharon Tickle
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Parliament, Aberson Marle Sihaloho explains to SHARON TICKLE over lunch, can never do a good job under Suharto.
A long jail term and the loss of a Rp 5 million (AU$2,777) a month salary would be enough to take most people's appetite away, but ever ebullient Aberson Marle Sihaloho is in the mood for fried fish. It's Ramadan so the canteen at parliament house is empty but for we two non-Muslims. The whole fried fish, vegetables and rice appear quickly and are consumed with gusto as Aberson expounds on his favourite theme, how only a return to the letter and spirit of the 1945 Constitution will allow the realisation of democracy.
Charged with insulting President Suharto, the Armed Forces and parliament during a speech at an open forum last July, Aberson faces almost impossible odds to win his case. No one accused of these crimes has ever been found 'not guilty'. Also, he will not be able to contest the May 29 parliamentary election. Supporters of Megawati Sukarnoputri didn't make the list of approved candidates.
Improved democracy
This outspoken, optimistic 58 year-old Christian Batak from Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra, has ridden out many political storms since his student activist days in the mid-sixties. He has been a member of parliament, or the House of Representatives (DPR), for 20 years on a PDI ticket.
He has often told the army to return to barracks. Political parties, not the army, represent the people and should have the say, he maintains.
Then, early last year, he circulated a petition nominating Megawati Sukarnoputri for president in 1998. It carried the plea: 'If you want to improve democracy, fill in this form'.
According to the prosecution, he took another unforgiveable swipe at the army in the July speech outside the headquarters of Megawati's PDI by saying: 'See those tanks, those bullets? All bought with the people's money, yet used to shoot the people'. They also say he told his enthusiastic listeners that the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) choosing the president will be fundamentally undemocratic. The MPR meets once in five years for two weeks - it next meets mid-1998.
Just doing a parliamentarian's job? Perhaps. But it was enough to earn him the enmity of everyone in power. Article 134 of the Criminal Code threatens those who insult the president with seven years jail. Article 207 threatens 18 months for those who insult other authorities.
Freedom
Despite constitutional provisions to the contrary, he says, 'the freedom to express thoughts through speech and writing is very weak. As in my case. I am being charged although I am a member of parliament. Just imagine - even a member of parliament is controlled by the president. The constitution is not implemented. The government runs the country based on their authority - the rule of the rulers!'
The main cause of this problem, in Aberson's opinion, is the unconstitutional mechanism for the presidential succession. Article One of the constitution identifies the MPR as 'the embodiment of the people, which holds the sovereignty of the state'.
'But who is meant by the MPR?', Aberson goes on rhetorically. 'Article Two, Paragraph One: "The People's Consultative Assembly shall consist of members of the DPR augmented by delegates from the regional territories and groups in accordance with regulations prescribed by statute". That means, the majority of the MPR must come from parliament, the DPR.'
'So I ask - why in recent times are only 40% of the members of the MPR chosen by the people through a general election? Sixty per cent are chosen by the president. How can an MPR like that say they are the embodiment of the people? And if the MPR isn't the embodiment of the people, can their decisions be said to reflect the will of the people? No they can't. This is what I've been saying in various speeches and forums. Where is the evidence that Pak Suharto's becoming president continuously all this time is the will of the people?'
Individual
'Now let's go to Article six, Paragraph two', he continues the lecture. '"The president and the vice-president shall be elected by the MPR by majority vote". So, those who choose the president must be the members on an individual basis, not the leaders of the factions. That's not what has been happening. Individual members have no role. If they don't follow the faction guidelines they will be recalled. We no longer represent the people. We represent an organisation.'
How would people react if Aberson were found guilty, I ask? He was not sure. 'The reaction is always controlled', he said. 'If they react it must be silently within.'
'Freedom is just a formality, an appearance,' he said. 'If we ask is the general election in accordance with the constitution, it clearly is not. It doesn't function to realise democracy. At the moment it's only for show - the appearance of democracy, of law, of freedom.'
'It's all a pretense,' Aberson said. 'It is not real'.
Sharon Tickle is the Brisbane-based Australian correspondent for Suara Merdeka and a Master of Arts candidate at the Queensland University of Technology's School of Media & Journalism.
Inside Indonesia 50: Apr-Jun 1997
Tags: National Politics
Democracy
New Order (1967-98)
Fall of Suharto (1998)
National
Profiles
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Outbreak of rioting: Tinder-box or conspiracy?
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Written by Gerry van Klinken
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Is Indonesia a 'tinder-box'? A potential Bosnia in Southeast Asia? Or is it essentially peaceful, but someone is stirring the pot, perhaps to make a point before the 1997 elections? GERRY VAN KLINKEN visits the sites of three riots.
Tags: National Politics
Communal Violence
Social and Political Unrest
New Order (1967-98)
National
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Read more...
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Sleaze with Balinese kids
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Written by Putu Wirata
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Amidst the 'sea, sand, sun and sex' at Kuta, little girls become sex objects for tourists. Some may even be sold overseas. PUTU WIRATA explores a spat that revealed more than intended.
Tags: Bali
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Read more...
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The world's first street university
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Written by Laine Berman and Mas Didid
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Street children are not social misfits. They are creative exiles from an oppressive state system, according to LAINE BERMAN and HARRIOTT BEAZLEY.
Tags: Children
Education
Youth Culture
New Order (1967-98)
Human Rights (other)
National
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Read more...
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Indonesia brokers Philippines peace bid
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Written by Gerry van Klinken
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On 2 September 1996, the Philippines government signed an agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front that promised to end decades of violence and give Moro Muslims substantial autonomy. Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, Wiryono Sastrohandojo, helped broker the deal.
Tags: International Relations
New Order (1967-98)
National
Interview
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Timor misadventure
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Written by Lt Col Subiyanto
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The world has long known about the East Timorese death toll. Now retired Lt-Col SUBIYANTO speaks out about Indonesian casualties.
Tags: Military and Police
New Order (1967-98)
Timor Leste
Interview
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Read more...
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