Extra efforts needed to ensure human rights

Extra efforts needed to ensure human rights

JAKARTA (JP): Prominent activists said yesterday that proper observance of human rights in Indonesia is a long way off and that "extra-efforts" will be necessary to reach the goal.

Activists Soetandyo Wignjosoebroto, Todung Mulya Lubis and Hilman Farid Setiadi agreed in a seminar that 50-year old Indonesia was too young to have its own model of human rights.

Indonesia will need at least another 50 years before it can implement principles of human rights properly, said Soetandyo, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights, in a panel discussion held by the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI).

The discussion was organized in connection with the upcoming world human rights anniversary which falls on Dec. 10. Also present were Roekmini Koesoemo Astoeti, a member of the rights commission, human right campaigner H.J.C. Princen and Adnan Buyung Nasution of the YLBHI.

Indonesia officially believes that while the country acknowledges the universality of human rights, any policy should take local cultural, political and economic conditions into account.

Soetandyo said although Indonesian officials liked to claim that Indonesia has its own unique system of human rights, the concept was in fact not original.

"We only adopt the values of western human rights principles and make some adjustments," he said. "Indonesia has no original concept."

Citing an example from a western country, Soetandyo said that the human rights principles in the U.S. developed long after it gained independence more than 200 years ago.

"It seems that Indonesia will follow the same pattern as that of the United States unless some extra efforts are made," he said.

Lubis and Hilman threw their support behind Soetandyo's argument.

"Observation of human rights will go slowly unless there is political will on the part of the government to speed up democratization," said Lubis, also known as a senior lawyer.

"Economic liberalization and wide-open global communication will also help accelerate the transfer of information, including human rights issues," Hilman said.

The activists also agreed that human rights observance in Indonesia had been marred this year with several gross violations.

They said in a separate session that one obvious example of a major human rights violation in the country this year was the banning of three weeklies, Tempo, Editor, and DeTik in June.

Lubis said the press ban proved that the freedom of speech and expression and the right to organize were hampered for unclear reasons.

However, Hilman said that to a certain degree there was still freedom of organization in Indonesia, saying that several outspoken non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the Alliance of the Indonesian Journalists and the Indonesian Prosperous Workers Union (SBSI), were not banned by the government.

"There was only pressure on the organizational leaders and activists," he said.(imn)