Indonesia’s human rights commission on Sunday called on the government to end basic military training for prospective managers of President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship village cooperative programme after five participants died just 10 days into the 45-day training.

Background

The ‘Red and White Cooperatives’ programme aims to establish around 80,000 village cooperatives across Indonesia to create jobs and meet the government’s target of 8% economic growth in 2029. They are intended to sell basic goods, subsidised cooking gas and fertiliser.

The military training, which nearly 35,000 future cooperative managers must complete, started on June 14 and continues until July 31 in several regional military training units.

The defence ministry, which is leading the training, said on Saturday that five people died between June 17 and June 26, and the deaths were the result of a variety of causes including cardiac arrest, heat stroke, tuberculosis and pneumonia.

Response

Pramono Ubaid Tantowi, an official at the rights commission, said capacity-building for cooperative managers should focus on strengthening managerial competence, leadership, and financial literacy. ‘Basic military training does not directly support the achievement of those competencies,’ he said.

The commission called for a government investigation into the deaths and urged police to immediately request forensic autopsies to get evidence regarding the cause of death as part of any criminal investigation.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.