Another bad year

Another bad year

In terms of human rights observation, 1999 has been another
botched year for Indonesia. Ironically, this year rampant human
rights violations occurred while democracy was flourishing in the
country. One would have thought that the two were incompatible,
that human rights abuses of the scale we have seen in Indonesia
in the past year would have been impossible in a democracy.

But Indonesia is undergoing massive changes, from being a
repressive society to a more open one, from a military-style
tyranny to a civil society. The country is in a transition, where
old values and practices often still clash with new ones, where
the old guard resists changes which undermine its power. Change
nevertheless is inevitable in Indonesia. The country has come a
long way from the days when human rights abuses were not only
tolerated, but were also part of state policy. The only question
remaining today is how fast can Indonesia implement the changes.

This time next year, when we mark the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights again, hopefully we can be more positive about the
whole issue. This year, with more of a downside than positive
development, Indonesia's overall human rights record is negative.

The country held its first truly democratic general election
in June, and, in a similarly democratic fashion, elected
Abdurrahman Wahid as president in October. The country now enjoys
unprecedented freedom of expression. The fact that few people
talk about this issue nowadays is because such freedom has come
to be taken for granted as an inalienable right of the people.

But why has violence continued to dog us throughout 1999?
Bloody unrest in East Timor, Aceh, Maluku and Irian Jaya stole
the spotlight more so than the remarkable democratization process
that has been taking place in the country. If we accept the
theory that Indonesia is in a period of transition, then we could
attribute these rampant human rights abuses to the carry-over
practices of the past. Certainly, most of these atrocities
occurred in the first 10 months of the year under the
transitional administration of B.J. Habibie, who belonged to the
old guard. President Abdurrahman, whose commitment to democracy
and human rights is beyond doubt, marks a break from the past.
His election has raised hopes that things can only get better.

Indonesia's human rights record, however, will not be judged
solely by the way the new government has stopped the killings and
other forms of abuse -- assuming that this will be the case under
the new government -- but also by the way it deals with past
abuses. The atrocities committed by the previous regimes of
Soeharto and Habibie have left plenty of work for President
Abdurrahman. There are still the questions of compensating the
victims of human rights abuses, and most of all, prosecuting the
guilty parties, not in the name of exacting revenge, but in the
name of upholding justice. On the last issue, the new government
unfortunately faces a major stumbling block.

The military, which conducted most of the past atrocities, has
continued to block or to slow down any and every effort to
prosecute the responsible parties. We have seen this in the way
the atrocities in Aceh and East Timor are being dealt with. While
acknowledging its mistakes, be it in East Timor or Aceh, and
despite findings by independent inquiries confirming its
complicity in these acts, the military has blocked efforts to
bring justice to those who gave the orders or to those who
carried them out.

Given that orders are normally passed through the military
hierarchy chain, then it is not impossible that these orders came
right from the very top of the military structure. Yet the
military is only willing to allow investigations into enlisted
personnel. Even then, it has deployed delaying tactics by
refusing to allow soldiers to be tried in a civilian court.

The loss of East Timor in a way was a blessing because it
means Indonesia no longer has to worry about new human rights
abuses committed in that territory. But even assuming that such
abuses will no longer occur in Aceh or elsewhere in the country,
Indonesia's human rights reputation still hinges on its ability
to bring to justice past violators.

This will probably be President Abdurrahman's biggest test and
his credibility, at home as well as abroad, will largely be
determined by his ability to carry out this process of justice.
It does not matter whether the perpetrators are tried at an
Indonesian or an international court; what matters most is that
their trials are perceived as credible and fair.