Witness Care Body Pushes Change
The Witness and Victims Protection Agency is pushing the government and parliament to approve revisions to the current law on witnesses and victim protection as it looks into expanding its role in the nation’s law enforcement sector.
Abdul Haris Semendawai, chairman of the agency known as LPSK, said on Tuesday the institution needed to minimize dependency on the National Police by having its own security squad in offering physical protection, an issue addressed in the proposed revisions to the law.
“We want to have our own armed squad,” Abdul said in Surabaya on Tuesday.
He explained that ideally, the security squad would still be members of the police force or other law enforcement institution, but instead of reporting to their institutions, officers would coordinate and report directly with the LPSK.
“Today they are still officers on assignment and can be pulled back by the National Police at any time,” Abdul said.
In the proposed revisions to the bill, the LPSK would also be allowed to expand its work by having representatives in regions across the archipelago.
As of today, the Jakarta-based institution has been handling work across the country from its headquarters in the capital, limiting its scope of work amid rising demand and requests for protection.
“Requests for the protection of witnesses and victims have also been coming in from the provinces. Meanwhile, our workforce in Jakarta is very limited,” Abdul said.
Since last month, the LPSK has received up to 715 requests for protection, out of which only 55 percent have been approved.
“The number of those who have submitted requests for protection has continued to increased by 100 percent annually, most of them coming from witnesses and victims in human rights and corruption cases,” Abdul explained.
In addition to regulating security forces and work expansion plans, the LPSK emphasized that the revision in the law would need to provide a clear definition of individuals categorized as whistle-blowers as well as those categorized as justice collaborators.
Abdul emphasized that the blurred definition of the two terms have in the past resulted in more problems for victims and witnesses as the law failed to offer a clear policy on the type of protection individuals in each of the categories were entitled to.
“Since the beginning the law should have regulated the kind of protection they were going to receive,” he said.
In a report by MetroTV earlier this month, former Constitutional Court chairman Jimly Asshiddiqie said the establishment of the LPSK was a mandate to uphold democracy.
“This is a mandate for reformation. This institution plays an important role in our democracy, political law as well as justice system,” Jimly said, as quoted by MetroTV.
However Djamal Aziz of the parliament’s Legislative Board has expressed pessimism on the revisions’ ratification this year as legislators still had several other laws on their hands.
He added that revisions were best discussed by House Commission III, which is currently doing so for the criminal law.
“So it will be in sync with the criminal law. Because, in reality, many laws out there have not been well implemented due to a lack of harmonization with other policies,” Aziz said.
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