Jakarta – A number of non-government organisations (NGOs) are asking police to investigate the relationship between the recent bombing in Poso, Central Sulawesi, and indications of corruption of humanitarian aid for Poso refugees.

Four NGOs – the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), the Palu Free Land Foundation (YTM), the Poso Foundation for the Strengthening of Civil Society (LPMS), the Tentena Panorama Foundation for Natural Conservation (YPAL) and the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi)  – issued a joint press statement to this effect at the YLBHI offices in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The suspicion is that there is a relationship between the bombing and the corruption of humanitarian aid for refugees was conveyed the director of LPMS Poso, Iskandar Lamuka, who said that after the Malino1 declaration was signed violence has again broken out in Poso.

“There have been widespread efforts to uncover corruption of Poso refugees’ humanitarian aid over the last five months, so a series of [acts of] terror and violence flared up again”, said Lamuka.

According to Lamuka, death threats and violence against social and NGO activists who have been involved in uncovering corruption of refugee humanitarian aid has started to appear all over the place, for example the bombing of the offices of LPMS Poso the Poso Center for Reconciliation of Conflicts on April 28.

It is also believed that the bomb that exploded in Tentena on May 28 is linked with an attempt to “divert” efforts to uncover corruption of humanitarian aid. “The bombings and chaos are only [an attempt] to shift attention from efforts to uncover cases of corruption which are currently being conducted”, said Lamuka.

The coalition of NGOs have recorded corruption of as much as 12 billion rupiah by the Central Sulawesi Social Health Agency which came from deductions to social support funds for refugees including living allowances and aid supplies.

In addition to this, another method is through making false payments to refugees with the recording of fake refugee names or the appearance of thousands of strange names in the list of refugee repatriation funds which is suspected to have cost the state as much as 8 billion rupiah.

The inflation of refugee numbers is one of the charges which was also presented in the joint press statement which said that refugee numbers had been inflated by as much as 15,895 families based on the official data from the Central Sulawesi government of 31,325 families. The inflation of the number of families indicates that corruption to the value of 39.7 billion rupiah.

The coalition of NGOs also urged the Corruption Eradication Commission to prioritise the handling of the corruption of Poso refugees’ humanitarian aid. “Leaving aside these corruption cases which aside from valuing tens of billions of rupiah, [they] are using terror and violence as their method”, said Lamuka. (Ant/OL-1)

Notes:

1. A peace deal was signed in the South Sulawesi town of Malino in December 2001 and February 2002 marking an end to the conflict.

[Translated by James Balowski.]