The Indonesian government should investigate the assassination of Prof. Safwan Idris, a prominent academic in the Aceh region of Indonesia, Human Rights Watch said today.
Prof. Idris, the rector of the Ar Raniry State Institute of Islamic Studies (IAIN) in Banda Aceh, was assassinated on September 16 by unknown gunmen who entered his home.
A letter signed by Dr. Yolanda Moses, president of the American Association for Higher Education and co-chair of the Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee, urged the Indonesian government to investigate this crime immediately and thoroughly.
"It seems as though no one is safe in Aceh now," said Saman Zia-Zarifi, director of the Academic Freedom Program at Human Rights Watch. "If the Indonesian government doesn't investigate his murder, that will send a dangerous signal that Jakarta is not committed to a peaceful solution in Aceh."
Prof. Idris was a prominent member of civil society in Aceh, Indonesia's restive northern province. He served on the Independent Investigation Commission set up by the Indonesian government to investigate past military atrocities and other gross human rights violations in Aceh. He was also a leading candidate for Aceh's governorship.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Prof. Idris' assailants may have been associated with the Brimob (Mobile Brigade) police forces in Banda Aceh. In August, Jafar Siddiq Hamzah, a leading Acehnese human rights activist, was abducted and brutally murdered. Earlier in the year Nasharuddin Daud, an Acehnese member of Indonesia's national parliament, was similarly abducted and killed.
The Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee is a group of prominent academic leaders and scholars, including Yuri Orlov, senior scientist at Cornell University and founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and Jonathan F. Fanton, former president of the New School for Social Research in New York. The committee membership includes the current and past presidents of Harvard University, Columbia University and over a dozen other universities in the United States, as well as internationally prominent academics such as Lord Ralf Dahrendorf of St. Antony's College at Oxford, Krzysztof Michalski of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Ariel Dorfman of Duke University, John Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard University, and Fang Lizhi of the University of Arizona
The full text of the Academic Freedom Committee's letter can be found at https://www.hrw.org/press/2000/09/marzuki.htm.
