The Ministry of State Secretariat on Tuesday received a delivery of thousands of postcards sent by agroup of activists campaigning to push the government to solve the murder of human rights and anti-corruption activist Munir Said Thalib.
Titled "Postcfards from Heaven", the cards were written by individuals across 20 cities in Indonesia.
"The name is an analogy of God-send values and anyone who fight for those values are promised heaven," Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) coordinator Haris Azhar said. "After all, what we're demanding is a necessity and is reasonable."
Munir was murdered on Sept. 7, 2004 on a flight to Amsterdam, while Pollycarpus Priyanti, a former Garuda Indonesian pilot, has been sent to jail after being convicted as a perpetrator. However, the mastermind behind the murder plot remains a mystery to this day.
Despite calls for the government to provide concrete answers, the case has continued to stall with no clear development or progress over the years. A report put together by a fact-finding team formed in December 2004 remains unpublished.
"We've demanded the result to be opened for public, but the government said that it was lost," Haris said.
"[Former] President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration said the investigative report has been sent to the State Secretariat, but President Joko Widodo's administration says they don't have it. I mean, how does such a thing go missing?"
According to Kontras, SBY had received the report on June 24, 2005, and subsequently passed on to an office assigned to handle the case. SBY, who still had a copy of the report, claimed to have sent another copy of the document to the State Secretariat on Oct. 26, 2006.
The Public Information Commission (KIP) on October 2016 ruled in Kontras' favor, ordering the State Secretariat to disclose the findings, but no answers have been given to date. The current government instead challenged KIP's order through the Jakarta Administrative Court on November 2016.
The government shouldve dug deeper to find the report instead of dismissing KIPs order, Haris said. We can sue the government if they keep denying KIPs order.
Governments silence adds to its pile of disappointing moves on issues of human rights violations.
See, it was just a bunch of empty promises. Old cases remain unsolved and new cases keep happening, Haris said.
(brl/red)
