Absence of laws lead to rights abuses

JAKARTA (JP): Former state minister of human rights Hasballah M. Saad on Monday blamed the absence of laws for rampant human rights violations across the country.

"As a matter of fact, there have yet to be any powerful laws to sentence human rights perpetrators," Hasballah told a discussion on human rights held by the Kanisius Catholic senior high school.

He quoted a statement by a government official over the death tolls in Aceh, saying: "If 200 people died in Aceh, there are still 200 hundred million others in Indonesia.

"Such a statement was a reflection of how trivial the state official considered the value of human rights," Hasballah told the discussion participants from 19 senior high schools in Jakarta.

He said violations against human rights in Aceh were mostly committed by the state security apparatus from the National Police and the Indonesian Military (TNI).

"This is a reality that we are now facing. Since international campaigns on human rights have been launched, violations seem to occur at an even greater scale," he said, citing sexual abuse inflicted upon an Acehnese woman by a security officer at his home village in Pidie, North Aceh.

Hasballah, however, admitted that the empowerment of human rights in political affairs has at least shown some improvement.

The former minister's statement was challenged by a student participant, who cited Megawati Soekarnoputri's failure to be elected as president despite her Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) winning the 1999 general election.

Hasballah said the presidential election was held by the People's Consultative Assembly, which was not free from manipulation.

"There was always an opportunity to engineer the presidential election. Who knows?" he said.

Ita Nadia, of the National Commission on Violence Against Women, who also addressed the discussion, said men's whistling at a passing woman could be categorized as violating human rights.

"And if there is physical abuse done by men against woman, for example, the groping of a woman's breast, it could be considered as a serious violation," she said.

She cited an example of a human rights violation, experienced by an Irian Jaya rights activist Mama Yosefa Alomang, last year's co-recipient of the Yap Thiam Hien human rights award.

Ita said Mama Yosefa was placed in a wet cell full of human feces because of her continuous resistance against mining operations by U.S.-based mining firm PT. Freeport Indonesia in Timika regency.

The discussion also featured the student participants' joint statement on the country's human rights performance, read out by Clark Raphael, a Kanisius student, on behalf of all the participants.

Clark said human rights was considered a new issue among Indonesian people.

"The majority of people have yet to understand the concept of human rights due to the lack of laws on human rights," he said.

"We think that the protection of human rights means only paying lip service, because it has never been practiced properly in reality," he added.

He cited rampant cases of people taking the law into their own hands.

He also said that people frequently do not realize that their rights have been violated.

"Opening one's personal letter can be considered as a rights violation," he said.

Clark added that the government must pay extra attention to human rights in the sociocultural fields.

"There are many of the nation's children who have not been able to enjoy an education since the monetary crisis," he said.

He called on the government to provide a bigger budget for the education sector, in order to develop human resources through educational qualifications. (01)