April 17, 2012
East Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. The family of one of three Indonesian migrant workers murdered in Malaysia last month alleged that the workers’ organs were removed before the bodies were sent home.
Abdul Kadir Jaelani, 24, and Herman, 28, from Pancor Kopang village in East Lombok district, went to Malaysia in late 2010 along with Mad Noor, from neighboring Pengadangan village.
On March 30 they were found dead in a fishing pool in Seremban, in the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan. All three had gunshot wounds to the bodies, while Herman and Mad Noor had also been shot in the head, according to a Malaysian police report. No one has been arrested for the murders.
Firman, Jaelani’s older brother, said that when he went to collect the bodies last week, he was shocked to find that their eyes had been stitched shut. There were also sutures on their chests and abdomens, he said.
“I suspect that their eyes, hearts, kidneys and perhaps other organs were removed,” he said.
Other families, he added, had previously reported that the bodies of relatives who died in Malaysia were later found to be missing organs. The bodies were always quickly buried, however, thus preventing any official investigation, Firman said.
The three latest victims from East Lombok were all buried in their home villages last Friday, the same day the bodies arrived from Malaysia.
Firman said his family had reported their suspicions to the local branch of Koslata, a nongovernmental migrant worker advocacy group.
Muhammad Soleh, head of advocacy at the group, said witnesses who saw the bodies before they were sent back to Indonesia had also raised questions about the unusual sutures.
“We have reason to believe that similar cases have befallen many other of our migrant workers,” he said in Mataram, the provincial capital. “But those cases have always been hard to follow up on because the families have always been reluctant to allow the exhumation of the bodies for an autopsy.”
H.M. Saleh, head of worker protection at the Mataram Migrant Worker Placement and Protection Agency (BP3TKI), said he did not know the details of the latest case but vowed to look into Koslata’s report.
Zaenal, the head of the local manpower office, said he would write to the West Nusa Tenggara governor, the Home Affairs Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to demand an investigation into the organ harvesting allegations.
In a letter from the embassy dated April 3, however, second counselor Heru Budiarso said they were not in a position to check the condition of bodies prior to their being sent back to Indonesia.
(also from the JG)
wo 18 apr 2012 - 2:29