Hanin Marwah, Ahmad Faiz, Jakarta – The Indonesian Legal Entity Foundation (YLBHI) has criticised the Indonesian Military's (TNI) plan to investigate the mastermind behind the petition against the Draft TNI Law (RUU TNI) and the Dark Indonesia movement.
The YLBHI suspects that this is an attempt to create an impression among the public that the wave of public criticisms against the RUU TNI was orchestrated by certain parties. In this case by a suspect accused of obstructing an investigation, Marcella Santoso.
"We suspect and presume that there is some kind of direction to spread information that is directed at insinuating or attacking critical civil society movements", said YLBHI Chairperson Muhammad Isnur when contacted by Tempo on Tuesday June 24.
TNI Information Centre head Major General Kristomei Sianturi said earlier that they would follow up on Santoso's statement in her video apology regarding her involvement in the issue of the RUU TNI and Dark Indonesia, which she herself later denied.
According to Sianturi, Santoso was indeed not directly involved in the field in spreading the issues. However, he believes that there are other parties such as buzzers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), individuals or foundations who received funds from Santoso to spread the issues, including the petition against the RUU TNI and the Dark Indonesia protests.
"This means that later we will find out who the real actor is who was behind all this, and why, what was the motivation, what was the motive, so why (they made an issue over) the RUU TNI", Sianturi told reporters at the Attorney General's Office (AGO) on Friday June 20.
In a statement, the YLBHI highlighted several points in the series of events. One of these was that the YLBHI condemned the screening of Santoso's video confession by the AGO. Isnur believes that the making of the video is a form of pressure and disinformation that endangers democracy.
The YLBHI emphasised that it is not appropriate for a suspect who is still being tried in court and has not been declared guilty to provide information to the mass media. "The information used in court should focus on the testimonies given in court", he said.
Aside from this, the YLBHI sees indications of an orchestration or efforts to provide information to the public as if Santoso was the mastermind behind all these actions. YLBHI asserts that this is clearly wrong because civil society and students have consistently been in motion from the 60s, 70s, 80s to the 1998.
The YLBHI said it regrets and condemns how law enforcement is being used as a tool to pressure or influence suspects and influence issues or public opinion. "This is part of branding or part of building an opinion as if critical social movements, journalists, students are being taken advantage of, being manipulated", said Isnur.
Notes
Jak TV's news director Tian Bahtiar along with lawyers Marcella Santoso and Junaedi Saibih are currently being prosecuted for obstruction of justice related to the handling of several high profile corruption cases and alleged payments by Santoso and Saibih to get Bahtiar to create negative news to discredit AGO investigators. At a press conference on June 17, AGO Director of Investigations Abdul Qohar played a video of Santoso apologising for producing negative content related to the prosecutor's office in which she also apologised to the government over the petition against the RUU TNI and the Dark Indonesia movement.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "TNI Dikritik soal Video Marcella, Ciptakan Kesan Demo RUU TNI Ditunggangi".]
