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Report: Obstacles to protection of human rights remain in Indonesia
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Friday, December 8 10:38 AM SGT
WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (AFP) - As Indonesia lurches further towards democracy, major obstacles remained in the way of ensuring respect for human rights and bringing violators to justice, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a report.
The US-based human rights group said in its annual survey released Thursday that "serious regional conflicts, a weak legal system and delicate civil-military relations posed ongoing obstacles to the protection of human rights."
Acknowledging that "most of the country continued to benefit from increased civil and political liberties," the HRW report noted that "Papua (Irian Jaya), Aceh and the Moluccas (Malukus) continued to experience widespread violations.
"The government failed adequately to protect the hundreds of thousands of people displaced in Aceh and the Moluccas as well as East Timorese refugees in West Timor."
Human Rights Watch noted President Abdurrahman Wahid had begun to assert civilian control over the military and named a civilian as defence minister, while in some high profile cases generals were questioned on past atrocities.
However, the military's dominant role in local government remained and it retained a bloc of appointed seats in the People's Consultative Assembly.
The report noted that in Aceh, while the army, police and the Free Aceh Movement "were all responsible for abuses, including extrajudicial executions of civilians, the violations were disproportionately on the government side."
In Irian Jaya, a pro-independence movement gained pace and major clashes between civilians and security forces occurred, the HRW report said.
The Malukus civil war pitting Christians against Muslims produced the most civilian casualties, it said, noting 5,000 people were estimated to have died from October 1999 to September this year.
"Civilian and military authorities in Indonesia, sensitive to the loss of East Timor and the nationalist backlash it engendered from a wide range of politically powerful groups, rejected any notion of outside assistance in resolving the conflict," it said.
Close to 400,000 people were displaced by the Malukus conflict.
In a separate Christian-Muslim conflict in Central Sulawesi, 200 people died and 60,000 were displaced.
Violence by pro-Jakarta militia against refugees in Indonesian West Timor remained high, and even agencies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees were targeted, the report noted.
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