'Authorities commit most rights violations'

'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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