Indonesian activist's widow asks Australia to reject pact

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

CANBERRA, Feb 26 (Reuters) The widow of a murdered Indonesian human rights champion today asked Australia's parliament to reject a new security pact with Indonesia, warning lawmakers that Jakarta's military would commit fresh atrocities.

Suciwati, whose husband Munir was poisoned on a Garuda Indonesia flight in 2004 in a case that has triggered accusations of state involvement, urged lawmakers not to ratify a security treaty signed on the Indonesian island of Lombok in November.

''Munir had a dream of an Indonesia with democracy, with human rights and with a professional military. Because of his dream he was killed,'' the activist's widow told the parliament's treaties committee, which must approve the pact.

The treaty aims to smooth often-prickly ties between the two neighbours and underline Australian support for Jakarta's sovereignty over restive provinces including the Papua region.

But rights groups said the pact, which will clear the way for joint counter-terrorism training between Australian and Indonesian special forces, would give Indonesia's notorious Kopassus red berets new skills to be used against separatists.

''The military is not yet accountable on human rights,'' Usman Hamid from the Indonesian rights group Kontras told Reuters.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said last year the pact would lead to stronger anti-terrorism cooperation and joint naval border patrols, as well as joint civilian nuclear research and Australian sales of uranium to Indonesia.

BOMBS SPARKED TREATY The treaty was agreed following militant bomb attacks in Bali in 2002 and 2005, as well as on Australia's Jakarta Embassy in 2003, which together killed 92 Australians and scores of Indonesian and foreign bystanders.

Suciwati, dressed in black and wearing a badge photo of her dead husband, told the committee through an interpreter that the Indonesia military was an ''obstacle'' of democratic reform in her country, even though creeping change was underway.

''Until today not a single perpetrator of human rights violations involving the military and security intelligence has been brought to justice,'' she said.

Some members of the Indonesian military have been convicted over rights abuses in places such as Papua, although they have been relatively junior and high ranking military officials have not been prosecuted.

The supreme court last year overturned a guilty verdict on pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto for murdering Munir on a flight in 2004, saying that the charge was not proved.

The ruling in the high-profile case has put pressure on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who vowed to get to the bottom of the case when he took office in late 2004.

There have been suggestions Priyanto had links with intelligence officials, although prosecutors at his trial did not touch on this.

Usman of rights group Kontras said the treaty should include conditions which gave Australia's parliament a regular monitoring role over Indonesia's human rights, an addition which would likely enrage Jakarta.

Pro-Papuan independence groups and the Australian Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told the committee that parts of the pact were at odds with Australian democratic values and without changes it should be refused.

REUTERS SHB ND1022

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