Asia Times, Nov. 16, 2004
An Indonesian murder mystery
By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - A post-mortem examination in the Netherlands has left Indonesian police
with a classic whodunit mystery and human-rights advocates in Jakarta fearing for
their lives. Like any of British mystery writer Agatha Christie's famous novels, this
mystery has a body, evidence of poisoning, and motives galore. The setting, however,
is hardly the English countryside.
A post-mortem by the Netherlands Forensic Institute on diminutive 38-year-old Munir
Said Thalib, a prominent and outspoken human-rights campaigner who died on a flight
to Amsterdam two months ago, revealed last week that his body contained high levels
of the poison arsenic. Why it took two months for the autopsy results to be released
to authorities in Jakarta is just one of the mysteries surrounding Munir's death, which
many are now calling a murder.
Arsenic has been used for criminal purposes throughout history more than any other
poison and was thought to have claimed the lives of many, including Britannicus,
Pope Pius III, Pope Clemente XIV, and Napoleon Bonaparte. The presence of a lethal
dose of arsenic in the body seems to suggest foul play, a judgment the UK-based
Indonesia Human Rights Campaign (Tapol) believes is the case.
In a press release issued on Thursday, the day the news was first made public, Tapol
said the findings of the autopsy confirm "the fears of many of his [Munir's] colleagues
that he was assassinated".
That possibility is worrisome to many, including Jakarta's most famous human-rights
advocate, Todung Mulya Lubis. "If it is a political assassination, it could happen to
any one of us," Lubis said. "It is very dangerous for Indonesian society because it
means people cannot be critics."
A murder mystery
Initial reports suggested that Munir had succumbed to a heart attack - he had been
diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and had suffered bouts of hepatitis C in the
months prior to his trip - yet the head of the Jakarta-based human-rights group
Imparsial, Rachmand Nashidik, said the group had long suspected something unusual
about Munir's death.
"Before going to Holland he was in good health and had a medical checkup. Moreover,
we met with the doctor with him on the Garuda flight, who said that while he had
diarrhea, he was surprised he had died," Nashidik said.
After the autopsy results were released last Thursday, Dutch prosecutors said they
did not have the jurisdiction to launch a criminal investigation, as the death took place
on board a Garuda Indonesia aircraft. The Dutch government then handed a copy of
the report on Munir's death to the Indonesian Foreign Ministry.
National Police criminal investigation chief General Suyitno Landung said an
investigative team had already been dispatched to The Hague to spearhead an inquiry
into the activist's death to determine whether he was murdered. A diplomatic
delegation will also be sent to act as an "intermediary" between the Netherlands
Forensic Institute and the police team, Foreign Affairs Minister Hassan Wirajuda said
on Saturday.
"Certainly we have suspicions and must follow up the autopsy report with an
investigation to determine when, where and by whom [Munir] was poisoned, if there
was indeed such a criminal act," Wirajuda was quoted as saying.
Death on board GA 974
Munir boarded Garuda Flight GA 974 at Jakarta's international airport on September 7.
The plane stopped over at Singapore's Changi Airport before continuing to
Amsterdam.
Three hours out of Singapore, the cabin crew supervisor informed the pilot, Captain
Pantun Matondang, that Munir had fallen ill and was vomiting violently.
According to a Garuda statement, Matondang ordered the supervisor, Najib, to seek
help from a doctor traveling on the plane. Munir was moved next to the doctor but was
reportedly in agony during his final moments. Munir died when the aircraft was about
two hours away from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.
His widow, Suciwati, said she was informed of the autopsy results on Thursday night
by Coordinating Minister for Security Widodo Sucipto, who told her he had phoned at
the request of the president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Shortly after his death,
Suciwati said she would be prepared to have her husband's body exhumed if it would
help solve the mystery about how he died and urged the Indonesian authorities to
provide her with the results. "I want this to be resolved thoroughly," she said.
Dedicated and fearless, Munir was described by former president Megawati
Sukarnoputri as a relentless fighter for democracy who never stopped fighting for what
he believed.
Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group said he was everything a human-rights
activist should be: principled, tough, smart, funny and fearless. "He stood up to
people in power, he made them angry, he got threat after threat after threat, and he
never gave up," Jones said.
In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Yap Thiam Hien human-rights prize and
named Man of the Year by the leading Indonesian Muslim periodical UMMAT. Asia
Week named him one of "20 young Asian leaders for the new millennium" in 2000, the
year when he was one of four recipients of the Alternative Nobel Prize, the Right
Livelihood Award, at a ceremony in the Swedish parliament.
Founder of the award Jakob von Uexkull said at the ceremony: "During the decades of
authoritarian rule, we were told by Suharto's Western friends that different rules, rights
and values applied in Indonesia. Add this to the rise of fundamentalism, the search for
scapegoats, the unwillingness of the military to step back and accept the primacy of
democracy - and you have an idea of the challenges facing Munir," von Uexkull said.
In the final months of Suharto's reign, Munir, who was staunchly critical of the
Indonesian military (TNI), took up the cause of dozens of activists who had
disappeared in suspicious circumstances. He co-founded Kontras, the Commission
for the Disappeared and the Victims of Violence, and later became a director of the
human-rights group Imparsial.
His work covered the full spectrum of human-rights concerns in Indonesia, from
abuses by the military and police, to attacks on labor activists, impunity for
human-rights crimes in Aceh, East Timor and Papua (Irian Jaya) to the rights of the
Chinese ethnic minority.
East Timor probes
On September 21, 1999, shortly after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for
independence, Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes, who had just turned 31, was brutally
murdered. His throat was slashed, one of his ears was cut off, the skin on his face
was peeled away and a gaping hole was dug in his left breast. Battalion 745 of the
TNI, which included many troops of East Timorese origin, was the prime suspect for
the murder.
The case sparked widespread international criticism of Indonesia. To avoid an
international trial, the Commission for Investigating Human Rights Abuses in East
Timor was formed. Munir was appointed a member of the commission, which later led
to an investigation into the conduct of six senior army officers, including the former
commander-in-chief, General Wiranto.
A year later the names of 19 suspects were announced by the head of the
investigating team, M A Rachman, who was - incidentally - later to become
Megawati's attorney general. Thoenes' murder was one of the five cases presented to
the Attorney General's Office (AGO), together with an attack upon a Dili diocese, and
attacks on the house of Manuel Carrascalao, a church in Liquica and the Ave Maria
Church in Suai.
Months later the Thoenes case was officially closed by the AGO, on the grounds of
insufficient evidence and a lack of witnesses available to take the case any further. At
the time Munir said there appeared to be a plan on behalf of the AGO to freeze the
East Timor case and to release, one by one, the generals listed for trial. That is
exactly what happened.
Progress under Wahid
Things seemed to change for the better under president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur"
Wahid, who on Friday urged police to "seriously hunt down the syndicate or group
that poisoned Munir". During his period in power, 1999-2001, Wahid pushed ahead
with special tribunals to prosecute human-rights abuse in East Timor, forced General
Wiranto from his job as military commander, and engaged separatist forces in Aceh
and Papua in dialogue.
Wahid appointed Baharuddin Lopa to replace Marzuki Darusman as attorney general.
The corruption charges against former president Suharto were to be Lopa's test case.
"I only need two of the documents that the attorney general has and I would be able to
drag Suharto into court," he told Asia Week in 1999.
Lopa had built a reputation as a serious, crusading and incorruptible lawyer when he
served as secretary general of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas
HAM). Unfortunately he died of heart failure in Riyadh's al-Hamadi hospital while on a
visit to Saudi Arabia. According to the then-minister of defense, Mahfud M D, Lopa
and his predecessor realized that their positions were vulnerable to possible poisoning
or black-magic practices.
An editorial in a mainstream daily in Jakarta even hinted at black magic in its obituary
on Lopa. This was a reference to Indonesians' belief in the mystical powers, for good
or evil, possessed by dukun (witch doctors).
Just two weeks before his death Lopa told a hearing with the House of
Representatives that he would pursue several major cases concerning human-rights
abuses in East Timor and several banking-corruption cases.
Attack after attack
Munir regularly spoke out for justice in the face of intimidation. His work made him
many enemies in powerful places and he said he had "lost count" of the number of
death threats he had received from anonymous telephone callers.
His activities provoked the fury of thugs said to be acting on behalf of the military and
often became the target of brutal physical attack. The headquarters of Kontras in
Jakarta was often a target of gangs bent on intimidating its activists. They made no
secret of the fact that they were looking for Munir, and the office was several times
subjected to abuse and the threat of destruction.
On March 13, 2002, a 300-strong mob smashed all of the windows and many of the
desks of the office and all but one of their computer terminals. They also raided food
supplies meant for flood victims and stole vital documents related to human-rights
abuses around Indonesia - in particular those related to the killing of Theys Eluay, a
Papuan independence leader, and the engineering of the communal violence in
Maluku and Central Sulawesi. Members of the mob criticized Kontras for attempting
to have Wiranto prosecuted for massacres of pro-democracy activists.
On May 27, 2003, thugs struck again, accusing Munir of being unpatriotic because of
his criticism of the military's offensive in Aceh, and demanding that Kontras
investigate the deaths of several Muslims killed at the same time as several students
were killed by the military during the Trisakti and Semanggi incidents in 1998 and
1999.
But Munir knew what the real agenda was: "When they were attacking me, I told them
that if they felt there was a case of discrimination or human-rights violation that they
should give me the information and I will take this case up as well. But they said, 'No,
we just want you to stop investigating the student deaths.'"
There has been no explanation from The Hague or from Jakarta as to why it took two
months for the post-mortem results to be released to authorities in Jakarta. Foreign
Affairs Minister Wirajuda said after the death that Indonesian officials had not been
allowed to see Munir's corpse, which was kept under close guard by the Schiphol
Airport authorities while awaiting the work of the pathologist.
Munir died on the day the House of Representatives approved the setting up of a
South African-style Truth and Reconciliation body to investigate killings and
abductions during the Suharto regime.
Bill Guerin, a weekly Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has
worked in Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial positions. He has been
published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and
political analysis in Indonesia.
Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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