Indonesia urged to take care in mass grave probe

Jakarta / AFP

Indonesia must use forensic experts to help with exhuming suspected mass graves from 1960s anti-communist massacres to preserve crucial evidence and identify victims, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged on Tuesday.
The rights group said it had written to the government about the matter after authorities announced this month they would form a team to investigate what activists say are mass graves.
“Mass graves are legally crime scenes, they should be treated as such,” Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for HRW, said.
The group warned “spontaneous and disorganised” exhumations could complicate victim identification and destroy evidence, and also urged the government to arrange
security at suspected grave sites.
The purge in 1965-66 was one of the worst killings of the last century and saw at least 500,000 alleged communists and sympathisers perish, but had long remained a taboo subject in Indonesia.
The government re-opened the painful episode last month by backing a series of public discussions into the atrocity for the first time.
After the discussions, President Joko Widodo ordered Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan to launch a probe.