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.