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Attacks on

Indonesian poll

watchdog

condemned

JAKARTA: Controversy over Indonesia's independent poll watchdog intensified on Tuesday, with analysts seeing a campaign of intimidation against those associated with the body.

Members of the Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP), set up last month to monitor next year's general elections, have been subjected to assault, an office where they met set on fire and at least one of them accused of belonging to the banned Communist party.

"What we are most concerned about is the growing tendency among anti-KIPP parties to resort to harassment, and even force, to express their animosity toward the poll monitoring body," the Jakarta Post said in an editorial on Tuesday.

"We don't know what will happen next, but if this trend goes unchecked, and if certain government officials continue to tacitly endorse this harassment tactic, then the situation could turn nasty," it added.

On Sunday, activists in the north Sumatra city of Medan were attacked by a stone-throwing mob when they met to set up a KIPP branch. Hours later the office of the Legal Aid Institute (LBH) where they met was severely damaged by fire.

On Monday, two Jakarta newspapers carried reports that LBH lawyer Mulyana Kusumah, the secretary-general of KIPP's presidium, was a member of the banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and barred from voting.

Kusumah told the Jakarta Post that the reports were not true.

In a statement obtained by Reuters on Tuesday, the LBH said the stone-throwing and the fire were linked and the fire may have been set deliberately.-Reuter