The appointment of Wiranto as the new Coordinating Politics, Law, and Security Minister in yesterday’s cabinet reshuffle drew criticism as the controversial former military chief has been accused of serious human rights abuses in the past.
Wiranto, who heads the Hanura party (which is part of the ruling coalition with President Joko Widodo’s PDI-P party), was head of the armed forces when the Indonesian army and paramilitaries went on a bloody rampage in East Timor after it voted to become independent in 1999.
Wiranto today continues to deny any wrongdoing or involvement in the atrocities.
“It’s normal, every time I take up a new official post somebody blows up [the issue]. The locus and tempus delicti of my supposed human rights abuses must be clear – when, where, and how I was involved. I will answer [the accusations] one by one,” he said today, as quoted by BBC Indonesia.
Furthermore, Wiranto pledged to continue his predecessor Luhut Panjaitan’s work in resolving the human rights abuses from Indonesia’s past, possibly alluding to the government’s inquiry into the bloody purge of communists and their supporters that took place from 1965-1966, which historians generally believe led to the deaths of around one million people.
But activist groups such as Kontas have strongly criticized Wiranto’s appointment and many see it as an indication that President Joko Widodo is not interested in pursuing any of his promised human rights agenda.
In 2003, the United Nations’ Serious Crimes Unit indicted Wiranto and charged him with command responsibility for murder, deportation, and persecution of the civilian population of East Timor in 1999. A special court in East Timor also issued an arrest warrant for Wiranto in 2004 for his war crimes.
Despite the charges against him, Wiranto has maintained a prominent position in Indonesian politics, to the point that he was a candidate for Vice President in 2009 and had a short-lived campaign for president in 2014.
