Lawmakers Call for Action Following Military-Police Clash in S. Sumatra
Markus Junianto Sihaloho | March 08, 2013
Following the recent violence in South Sumatra that pit soldiers against police officers, lawmakers on Friday called for the chief of the Indonesian Armed Forces to issue a public apology and take steps in preventing future conflicts.
?I hope that the TNI [Indonesian Armed Forces] Commander quickly comes out with an apology to the public at large,? Lukman Hakim Saefuddin, the deputy chairman of the People?s Consultative Assembly (MPR), said on Friday.
The military chief, he added, should also within three days issue strict sanctions against those soldiers involved in Thursday?s scuffle in the Ogan Komering Ulu district.
Furthermore, the MPR deputy chairman suggested that the military head should join forces with the National Police chief in helping to thwart potential violence between the two units.
?These are important steps that must be taken rapidly by the leaders of the TNI and the National Police to prove their seriousness in dealing with the problem and to regain the public?s trust,? he said.
Some 70 soldiers with the Indonesian Military?s (TNI) Yon Armed (Field Artillery Battalion) converged on a police station in Ogan Komering Ulu to demand officers investigate the recent fatal shooting of a soldier by a police officer. The two sides reportedly disagreed on how to handle the case and a riot broke out.
The protest quickly degenerated into violence, and by the end of the riot, the station was ablaze and six people were injured, two of them seriously.
Meanwhile, the deputy chairman of the House of Representatives commission on defense, retired Gen. Tubagus Hasanuddin, said that the Ogan Komering Ulu case uncovered a structural problem in the relations between the two forces, including between their leaders.
?If the trigger was a mere traffic problem, there could have been simple steps taken by their respective leaders, putting aside their egos. But there is a structural problem that needs to be tackled with a reorganizing of their respective roles,? Hasanuddin said in Jakarta.
He identified the problem as one that is constantly being denied by both the police and the military, and said that the leaders of the two forces also have the tendency to blame rogue elements on the field.
The matter, Tubagus said, stemmed from unresolved issues regarding the separation of the National Police from the TNI in 1999. Previously, the military was seen as being the more senior of the two forces, though once the police were made a self-contained unit, many viewed them as being too disrespectful of the military, which irritated many soldiers.
?This conflict is structurally rooted in access to resources. There is a deep social gap among fellow security personnel, and this can erupt into a conflict at anytime,? the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician said.
Tubagus noted that unless the existing structural problem is seriously addressed, violence and clashes between soldiers and police could flare up unexpectedly.
?It is just a matter of when,? he warned.
Additionally, Mahfudz Siddik, the chairman of the House?s Defense Commission, said that it was crucial for the government to address this division between the police and the military by improving the welfare of certain soldiers.
?Many of the clashes involving soldiers and police officers are based on an accumulation of social jealousy and the wealth gap between them,? Mahfudz said.
He said that since the separation of the two forces, the government appeared to accord more attention to the police rather than to the military. This stance was reflected in the imbalance in the budgets for the two forces and the smaller salaries of the soldiers.
However, Mahfudz also warned that the discrepancy in welfare between the two forces was only one of the factors that led to the violence.
?There is still much more homework to do,? he said.
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