PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS, PEACE AND DEMOCRACY IN INDONESIA

111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Tel +44 (0)20 8771 2904 Fax +44 (0)20 8653 0322
Email tapol@gn.apc.org Website http://www.tapol.org

< PRESS RELEASES

TAPOL calls for release of political prisoners

3 August 2001

TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, has today called on President Megawati Sukarnoputri to order the immediate release of an Acehnese activist arrested yesterday in Jakarta and eight activists who were arrested earlier this week in Bondowoso, East Java.

TAPOL also wrote to the British government about the arrests.

The Acehnese activist, Faisal Saifuddin, is chair of the Jakarta chapter of SIRA, the Information Centre for a Referendum in Aceh, who was arrested while responding to a summons to answer questions about his involvement in a demonstration last November outside the UNDP office in Jakarta. Although he had responded to four summonses from the police, the police said they were placing him under arrest because he might try to escape.

The others are eight activists, including two from the People Democracy Party, the PRD, and four from the Nahladul Ulama who were arrested while they were handing out leaflets announcing an East Java People's Assembly to be held on 4 August.

It its letter to the president, TAPOL said:

'These arrests are in violation of the basic human rights of the persons concerned and have no place in a state based on democratic principles. As someone who was yourself subjected to the violation of your rights when your party was attacked in 1996 and your Jakarta head office was raided with devastating consequences, we expect that you will not want to be seen as justifying such human rights abuses so soon after becoming president.'

In its letter to the Foreign Office minister, Ben Bradshaw, TAPOL urged the government put pressure on the Indonesian government to

'…release unconditionally all these political detainees and to halt these politically-motivated arrests and uphold the principles of freedom of expression, assembly and association, or risk Indonesia becoming once again a pariah among nations for its failure to uphold basic human rights.'

ENDS

Press archive

top