Looking critically into the abyss of depravity<\/p>\n
Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Are human beings basically decent, or do they simply go raving
\nmad at the touch of a button?<\/p>\n
Is evil genetic, or ingrained in certain cultures? In any
\ncase, the capacity of humans for violence knows no bounds, as
\nwitnessed by people like Radhika Coomaraswamy.<\/p>\n
\"It's power, and hate,\" that drives people to such actions,
\nthe lawyer says. She was the Special Rappporteur on Violence
\nagainst Women at the United Nations, from 1994 to 2003.<\/p>\n
She was the one that victims of rape in the May 1998 riots in
\nJakarta wanted to talk to. They were Indonesian -- yet they did
\nnot want to open up to fellow Indonesians except for one or two
\nwho got threatened themselves.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the women agreed to speak to her not only because
\nshe was from the UN -- but she was also a foreigner, she was
\nheading back to New York so there was no way that she would tell
\ntheir terrible secrets to anyone in town. \"They didn't trust any
\nIndonesian,\" she said.<\/p>\n
The National Commission on Human Rights has yet to progress on
\nits prying open of the 1998 riots. No surprise; even the UN
\nreport to the Indonesian government by Coomaraswamy was ignored,
\nalong with her recommendations.<\/p>\n
Chief among them was a witness protection program, which is
\nabsent in the country to this day. There was no way any of the
\nriot victims would speak up in public; photographs of their own
\nrapes turned up in the mail.<\/p>\n
The response to Coomaraswamy's report, or the lack of it, was
\ntypical, she said, with respect to the findings of UN teams that
\n\"upset governments.\"<\/p>\n
For a country under transition, maybe Indonesia has got too
\nmany problems already to pry open closed cases. It is indeed
\ndifficult, Coomaraswamy says, to bring suspects to trial in such
\ncases. \"But once you fail to punish (perpetrators), it gets
\nworse, it creates a culture of impunity; the whole fabric of
\nsociety begins to rip.\"<\/p>\n
She was in town last week to address talks on the
\nantitrafficking bill, where she shared her experience in meeting
\nvictims of violence of another kind, the one that borders on what
\nis seen as self-consent and abuse -- the flesh trade.<\/p>\n
The \"law-and-order\" approach in legislation on trafficking,
\nlike that in South Asia, she says, does not automatically give a
\nvictim's life back or make things better for her. An activist at
\nthe talks last week confirmed the dilemma: \"We surely want tough
\npenalties, but what if the perpetrator is the girl's father?\"
\nAnother said, \"when we managed to bring the girl home the parents
\ncomplained, 'now we'll have to seek extra money again'.\"<\/p>\n
As in Indonesia, governments are used to the traditional
\napproach of legislation -- which is heavy on retribution -- while
\nit is best, she says, to follow countries introducing the
\n\"restorative approach\" for victims.<\/p>\n
This means \"making mandatory the social services\" for victims
\nsuch as counseling, placing the victim's needs firmly in the law,
\nnot just dumping them on ministries of social affairs with small
\nbudgets.<\/p>\n
Without a comprehensive approach addressing issues such as
\npoverty, the law, instead, becomes a derisory issue even among
\nthose whom advocates might categorize as victims. In a Bombay
\nsuburb in India, Coomaraswamy recalls how she was once scolded
\nand \"lectured about middle-class values of sexuality\" by sex
\nworkers. They were angry at suggestions to help their
\nrehabilitation, and said they just needed \"assurance for their
\nchildren's education.\"<\/p>\n
Coomaraswamy concludes that \"the law may not be enough\" for
\ncases related to trafficking. Other ways must be found to deter
\npeople from, for instance, selling off their children even if
\nthey are poor. Shaming and embarrassing those involved could be
\none way, she says.<\/p>\n
The images of victims she has met stick with her: The teenage
\nNepali girl, who was sold by her boyfriend to a brothel, after
\nwhich she developed HIV\/AIDS; the young Indonesian Chinese
\n\"clinging to their clothes\" as they told her their stories, and
\nalso a rape victim from Rwanda.<\/p>\n
The Tutsi woman whom she met in Rwanda had been raped,
\nmacheted and forced out of hospital because of her ethnicity, had
\nsurvived on berries in the forest, and had chopped off her own,
\ngangrene-infested arm.<\/p>\n
\"It is this resilience\" of victims that is inspiring, she says
\n-- while countless, silent others, \"have become broken.\"<\/p>\n
Coomaraswamy, who graduated in law from Yale University in the
\nUnited States, still expresses shock when asked to cite the worst
\ncases she has come across. \"East Timor,\" she says, of the
\ndestruction and killings after the 1999 referendum, which some
\nhave explained away as caused by mere \"emotion\" among heartbroken
\npatriots at the loss of Indonesia's province in a \"UN-rigged\"
\npoll.<\/p>\n
She said the testimonies from this area, which she sought for
\nanother UN report, reflected cases of impunity involving a
\nmilitary \"beyond civilian control\": The TNI, she said, \"had
\nsimply 'lost it'.\" However, all TNI officials brought to the
\nhuman rights ad hoc trial have been acquitted.<\/p>\n
Although cases like these are from the recent past, and while
\narmed conflict is still ongoing in various pockets, her feeling
\nis that \"we're moving out\" from models of the use of violence
\ninvolving state institutions. However the tendency now is towards
\nno less violent \"religious fundamentalism,\" she said, involving
\nfollowers of all kinds of supposedly peaceful faiths.<\/p>\n
Coomaraswamy, who has written books on law and human rights,
\nno longer lives the privileged life of a UN official. Then, \"it
\nwas easier,\" she said, despite seeing all kinds of abusive
\npeople, the impact of their crimes, and all the trouble going
\ninto the reports to the UN and to governments that dismissed
\nthem.<\/p>\n
At the UN, \"You were aloof, detached. People tend to give you
\nthe benefit of the doubt and take your objectivity for granted\":
\nNow, it's more intense, everyone is watching you, it needs much
\nmore energy.\"<\/p>\n
She is referring to one of her current jobs chairing the Sri
\nLanka Human Rights Commission, which receives some 700 cases a
\nmonth. She first faced resistance, having stayed abroad for many
\nyears.<\/p>\n
But some of that criticism has died down, she said, as the
\nrights body with Coomaraswamy, her four colleagues and their 200-
\nstrong staff seem to have played a role in the decline of
\nextrajudicial killings and torture in custodial places.<\/p>\n
Respite from daily pressure, she said, comes from Indian
\nmusic, classic and jazz. Sources of inspiration, says the
\nrecipient of many awards, are the victims she has met.<\/p>\n
South Asian countries, and others in Asia, she notes, are
\nindeed becoming more democratic, but this does not, in itself,
\nlead to \"a culture of human rights\". While there has been
\n\"tremendous awareness of individual rights\" this has so far come,
\nshe says, with \"no awareness of other people's rights\".<\/p>\n
Outside the interview venue, in just another Jakarta rush
\nhour, motorists vied and honked, bumper to bumper, for their own
\nindividual right to a section of the road.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/looking-critically-into-the-abyss-of-depravity-1447893297",
"image": ""
},
"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
}