President Jokowi has received a report from the Indonesian anti-corruption commission that places “red marks” next to the names of some of his prospective cabinet ministers.

The red marks are said to signify evidence of money corruption.

That supposedly disqualifies them in Jokowi’s eyes.

They say he wants to build a “Clean Cabinet.”

But if the president is serious about being clean, he should open his eyes to a more important red mark: the kind that comes from killing civilians, from justifying and committing state murder.

General A.M. Hendropriyono, who visited Jokowi at the palace today, has been implicated in a major massacre (Talangsari), a terror and cleansing campaign that constituted a war crime (Timor ’99), and the assassination of the human rights hero Munir.  In each case he was referred for criminal prosecution but escaped.

Hendropriyono’s chief aide, As’ad, was also implicated in the assassination by court testimony stating that he personally placed the killer close to Munir, and by statements to the police by intelligence men who worked for Hendro and As’ad asserting that As’ad was at a meeting chaired by Hendro where they planned the murder.

General Wiranto is under indictment by a UN-sponsored prosecutor for the massacre, rape, and arson campaign in East Timor in 1999.  The previous year he nipped the pro-democracy uprising in the bud when he got a climactic demonstration cancelled after threatening “a Tienanmen.”

General Ryamizard played a key role in the 2001 de facto coup against President Gus Dur, oversaw operations in Aceh that involved mass killings of civilians, praised as “heroes” the army assassins of the Papuan civilian leader Theys Eluay, and responded to a press question about an Aceh massacre of children by saying that women and children can be dangerous too and that, in any event: “If I send someone out to buy fried bananas and that person gets caught stealing them, or stealing money to buy them, should I also be punished?” (Time magazine, June 2, 2003 issue).

These men (and others like them) are close to Jokowi or his party and are candidates for further power.

Will Jokowi put them on trial or in the palace?  Will he put their proxies in office?

If the president shields or promotes murderers, there will be a red mark next to the name Jokowi.

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