The Jakarta Post ,
Jakarta | Wed, 06/10/2009 1:02 PM |
National
The family of David Hartanto Widjaja, an Indonesian student who
died at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) on March
2, and a local verification team doubt the Singaporean court
process of his death.
The coroner court under the subordinate court in Singapore has been
processing the case to decide whether David's death was a suicide.
If it not, then the case will be forwarded to the criminal
court.
However, it appeared the court process was intentionally directed
to a conclusion of suicide despite evidence showing a strong
possibility of murder, according to David's family and the
verification team.
"We have strong evidence that he was murdered but that fact was not
brought up in the court," David's father, Hartono Wijaya, told a
press conference Tuesday at the National Commission on Human
Rights.
"Testimonies from witnesses presented by the NTU were fictitious
and none of our witnesses was brought to the court."
Djaja Surya Atmadja, a forensic expert from the Faculty of Medicine
in the University of Indonesia, said any forensic doctor could see
from the forensic report that David's body had defense wounds, and
that there were no wounds of suicide.
Djaya and another forensic doctor, Evi Untoro, analyzed the case
based on the forensic report. Using a mannequin, they visually
demonstrated the locations and forms of wounds that David had.
Hartono also showed pictures of David's corpse. A deep cut at the
neck, splintered legs and defense wounds all over his arms and
hands all showed that he did not commit suicide. All these facts
were never mentioned in the Singaporean court.
Iwan Piliang, a blogger who formed and led the public verification
team with other bloggers, said the court process was like a play,
where everything had to go according to a script.
"It is about nationalism. A citizen died in another country, with
strong evidence it was murder, and then he was condemned to be a
suicide."
He added there was a suspicion David's death was related to his
research: "Multiview Acquisition from Multi-camera Configuration
for Person Adaptive 3D Display".
"His friends said his three-dimensional study could be used for
various purposes, either for entertainment or even for military
needs."
"And we must not forget that after David's death, there were two
unusual deaths at NTU - his professor's assistant *committed
suicide' four days later and another researcher was hit by a car 25
days later."
Nurkholis, member of the National Commission of Human Rights, said
that the commission would keep monitoring the next court process
between June 17 and 25.
"We will also approach international human rights organizations,
such as Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch."
(iwp)