'Authorities commit most rights violations'

JAKARTA (JP): State officials committed the majority of the human rights violations recorded last year, activists say.

Todung Mulya Lubis, chairman of the Center for Human Rights Studies (Yapusham), disclosed the center's monitoring of rights violations between January 1995 and March 1996 at a seminar at the Center for Information and Development Studies (CIDES) here yesterday.

More than 85 percent of the 194 incidents of human rights violations recorded were committed by the authorities, Mulya said.

He broke the figures down into the following categories: 71 violations were perpetrated by police officers, 23 by rectors of universities, while officials at provincial offices of Social and Political Affairs came third with 18 offenses.

The offenses which trampled people's civil and political rights were against freedom of speech and expression, 101 cases, the freedom to assemble, 57 cases, and the freedom to follow one's faith, 36 cases.

He said the authorities had dispersed or banned social and political organizations' activities 38 times, art and cultural activities 34 times, mass media activities 18 times and speeches 17 times. In addition, the authorities had 14 times denied requests for demonstration permits.

"What was surprising was the fact that most of the violations were committed without any grounds," he said.

The banning of 69 activities happened without explanation, and 29 because the organizers held a deviating political stance.

In the seminar's later session, Armed Forces Chief for Social and Political Affairs Lt. Gen. Syarwan Hamid said promoting human rights protection should not be done at the expense of the greater interests of the state.

He expressed his conviction that controversies over human rights violations generally occurred because of people's different perceptions of what constituted human rights.

The situation called for empathy and wisdom so that one could understand other people's perspectives, he said, because it is possible that the dynamics in human rights promotion may suffer from "imbalance."

"This (imbalance) is only an excess...they are not general occurrences... mistakes that occurred were beyond control and were not intentional," he said.

Commenting on western countries' criticism of Indonesia's human rights record, Syarwan said they should not "teach" Indonesia about human rights protection.

He argued that Indonesia had incorporated human rights values into the first paragraph of its 1945 Constitution Preamble.

The constitution was established on Aug. 18, 1945, while the world was introduced to the values of human rights protection three years later with the establishment of the Charter of the United Nations.

In another session, Moslem scholar Nurcholish Madjid said Indonesia should not worry about its human rights record.

"In terms of racial unrest, the United States record of rights violations is still far greater than Indonesia's," he said.

However, he agreed with Mulya that it was people with power who committed more human rights violations, and against people who were less powerful.

"The more powerful the government is, the more human rights violations occur," he added. (imn)

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