The Jakarta Post, March 04, 2006
Anti-discrimination bill needs overhaul: Legislators, analysts
Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The anti-discrimination bill currently before the House of Representatives is too narrow
in scope and will do little to end unfavorable treatment against minority groups, say
legislators, analysts and activists.
Nursyahbani Katjasungkana of the National Awakening Party and Sutradara Gintings
of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said the draft law was "too
shallow" because it didn't address many of the underlying problems that triggered
social conflicts.
Legislators needed to get down from their ivory towers to see what was going on in
society and then redesign a more comprehensive bill, they said.
Nursyahbani said the bill only targeted racial and ethnic discrimination in the country.
"What about gender and religious discrimination? Socio-economic discrimination and
many other forms of injustice?" she told a discussion organized by the PDI-P here on
Thursday.
Many women were abused at home and in the workplace and were being deprived of
their basic rights, but no protections were given to them in the bill, Nursyahbani said.
Neither would the bill do anything to stop the continuing religious discrimination in the
country.
"(Under the new bill) could we bring Religious Affairs Minister Maftuh Basyuni to court
for his recent statement that the Ahmadiyah (sect) should abandon Islam and create
a new religion?" she said.
Ahmadiyah is a small Islamic group that recognizes another prophet after
Muhammad. Its followers have been attacked and arrested in many regions across
the country after the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) issued a fatwa that declared the
group a heretical sect.
Harry Tjan Silalahi, a social analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS), said the bill made too much of the May 1998 riots.
This gave the impression the bill was aimed at compensating Chinese-Indonesians
that suffered at the hands of their countrymen during the disorder, he said.
"There are too many other racial and sectarian conflicts which are not mentioned in
the bill, ranging from the 1965 coup attempt to the sectarian conflicts in Ambon
(Maluku) and Poso (Central Sulawesi). We need not only to eliminate the
discrimination against Chinese-Indonesians but also many other forms of
discrimination," said Harry, who is of Chinese descent.
Discrimination continued to exist in the country because the process of
nation-building was not yet complete, he said.
Some of the best laws against discrimination already existed in the nation's revised
1945 Constitution.
"Our founding fathers were really aware of the importance of living in togetherness --
which they saw as being part of a national consensus. Discrimination and social
conflicts have emerged because the virtues of common sense and togetherness are
now absent from society," he said.
Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, the chairman of the National Commission on Human
Rights, said the government did not need another anti-discrimination law because all
forms of discrimination were already dealt with in the 1999 Human Rights Law and
many other United Nations covenants the government had signed.
Instead it should ensure the existing laws were properly enforced, he said.
"We already have the Constitution and many laws guaranteeing human rights and the
equal treatment of citizens, but so far there is no legal certainty and the rules have not
been properly or fully enforced," Abdul said.
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