Global Information Network, December 3, 2001
Article #11138 INDONESIA
RIGHTS-INDONESIA: JAKARTA CORNERED BY POOR RIGHTS
RECORD
By Mustafa Ali
YOGJAKARTA, Indonesia, Dec. 3 (IPS) -- Indonesia's list of unresolved cases of
alleged violations of human rights continues to get longer, a situation that recently
caught the critical eye of the U.N. Committee against Torture.
Indeed, as it struggles to pull the country through economic and social hardships, the
Indonesian government is finding itself cornered by increasing local and international
demands that it bear responsibility for the lack of justice in rights cases.
The questions by the U.N. panel on Indonesia's rights record ranged from progress in
looking into the mass violence in East Timor in the last months of Indonesian control
between January and October 1999, to unresolved rights violations in the provinces of
Aceh, Irian Jaya and Maluku.
After the meeting of the U.N. committee in Geneva late last month, newspapers in the
capital Jakarta reported on President Megawati Sukarnoputri's plans to investigate
military abuses in the past.
These include the Trisakti and Semanggi cases where university students were killed
by security forces during the pro-reform demonstrations in 1998, and the mob killings
of Indonesian Chinese there that same year.
Top generals from the military and police will be summoned by the special committee
for investigation, reports say.
The U.N. committee meeting itself was held around the time the mysterious murder of
a Papuan independence leader, They Hiyo Iluay, captured the attention of both the
Indonesian public and the international community.
They, the chair of Papua Presidium Council (PDP), was found dead in his car on Nov.
11, leaving behind widespread speculation among Papuans and some human rights
organizations in Jakarta that the military was somehow responsible for his death.
While the case is under investigation, international groups like the European Union
have demanded the government quickly resolve this case.
International pressure is needed for human rights development in Indonesia, because
there is still a lack of information on military and police wrongdoing among the public,
says Dr Rizal Panggabean from the Center for Security and Peace Studies, University
of Gadja Madah here.
"We have problems of citizens getting killed, but nobody went to court and the public
doesn't know what happened," he said.
"We need more international pressure definitely, especially in the issues of human
rights violations, putting military under civilian control, pushing the military to behave
and to act professionally especially in trouble areas," he explained.
The meeting in Geneva also produced a recommendation that Indonesia, which
presented its report on its reforms in human rights, establish an independent
complaint system for investigations into human rights abuses by police and military,
especially in relation to torture and similar abuses.
The U.N. Committee against Torture questioned Indonesia's overall rights
performance, criticizing its report on its implementation of the convention against
torture to the U.N. panel as being limited and giving little information about practical
implementation.
But Nugroho Wisnumurti, Jakarta's permanent representative to the United Nations in
Geneva, said the country was improving human rights through reforms in the legal
system, the inclusion of a human rights article in the Constitution, the establishment
of a human rights court and the separation of the police from the military.
But committee panelists noted that very few rights cases had received court hearings.
In some cases, the committee found punishment too lenient, as in the killing of three
U.N. staffers by mobs in a Timorese refugee camp in September last year. After an
investigation by Indonesian government, six men who were found guilty were given
only 10 to 20 month jail terms.
The committee also lamented that Jakarta had not been providing enough access to
its appointed official to make investigations in the country, saying that there had been
no response from the government to messages sent by the Committee's Special
Rapporteur on Torture.
Moreover, "he was not invited to visit to country despite requests dating back to
1993," the committee pointed out.
Violence and killings in many Indonesia's conflict areas are widely suspected by the
locals and international community as being the result of military or paramilitary
operations, prompting analysts to say that work needs to be done to improve
understanding between citizens and the military -- given the long years of dictatorship
in the country.
Meantime, some communities fear that violence -- and the rights violations it breeds --
are likely to continue even though Indonesia is supposedly moving toward a more
democratic society.
Human rights NGOs in Papua, or Irian Jaya, say there are strong indications that the
number of victims of violence in Papua could equal or exceed that of East Timor.
In East Timor, which voted to break away from Indonesia in 1999 and is now under
U.N. administration, the estimate of people who have died from war, famine and
disease between 1975 and 1999 is about 200,000. Indonesian troops entered East
Timor in 1975, and Jakarta annexed it the year after.
A total of 614 deaths and 94 rapes by soldiers of the Indonesian Armed Forces,
known by its acronym ABRI, was also recorded by religious groups and tribal people
of Paniai in Papua between 1960 to 1998.
According to these groups, nearly all rape victims were students, some in primary
school. Their reports also say claim that one of the girls who were raped had been
accused of being a child of a member of the armed Free Papua Movement or OPS,
which is seeking secession. She was five years old, they add.
Panggabean says the violence against locals by the Indonesian military increases the
resentment they feel toward the central government.
"Because they have the Indonesians coming, robbing them and violating their rights,
there is a growing awareness of identity in Papua as well as in many conflict areas. It
is the 'we are Papuans, you are Indonesians' kind of feeling," he said.
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