Fretting over freedom of national rights body

Ati Nurbaiti, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While the public frets about the future effectiveness of the National Commission on Human Rights, the few members regarded as the more committed ones will have to keep the Commission an independent body that can effectively combat human rights abuses.

The Commission was seen as a beacon for human rights in the earlier period of its existence from 1993 to 1997, but now the signs are that it is expected to make compromises with alleged masterminds behind various human rights violations including respected figures in the civilian and military establishment.

One reason for the rejection of popular figures -- notably Wardah Hafidz of the Urban Poor Consortium and renowned lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis -- was that they were "too stubborn in their advocacy of human rights" said a legislator on the selection team for new Commission members.

The 23 new members of the rights body, who will soon be installed, will start their terms amid controversy over their recruitment process by legislators.

The desperate attempts made to turn the human rights body around from what it used to be -- a surprisingly effective and independent advocate for human rights -- were apparent in the violation on the law on the Commission itself -- a 1999 law that states that members can only serve two terms. The House of Representatives selection committee chose five members who have served two terms.

While some suggest a judicial review to overturn this decision, a number of human rights workers are keeping their fingers crossed.

"We'll give them six months," said Asmara Nababan, an outspoken Commission member. New member Zumrotin K. Susilo, a former chairperson of the Indonesian Consumers' Foundation, already knows the challenges ahead.

She is one of five members known for their work in advocating people's rights; the 23 members include a number of others with no experience in such work. "We didn't really have a standard criteria," one legislator admitted.

At last week's launching of a book on the Commission, Zumrotin shared her experience in two investigation teams the Commission had set up for the cases of the students shot in the Semanggi and Trisakti incidents in Jakarta.

The Commission was clearly "half hearted", "as if they didn't want us to succeed" in revealing who was behind the shootings, Zumrotin said. Only low ranking soldiers have been tried in the cases.

Set up under a decree of then president Soeharto in 1993, the Commission at first defied all expectations that it would merely be a showcase for the government.

The Commission, until 1997, proved its capacity in "adopting collective energy" of the public which yearned for changes under an authoritarian government, said Cornelis Lay, who conducted a joint study on the Commission with his colleague Pratikno of the Gadjah Mada University. The book by the professors of politics compares the Commission in its first period, 1993 to 1997, to the second period from 1998 to 2001.

In the first period the Commission investigated, among other notable cases, the murder of labor activist Marsinah and the July 27, 1996 PDI incident. Its surprising degree of independence indeed had some support from the government, mainly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which current Minister Hassan Wirayuda was among the initiators of the Commission.

Hassan cited how then minister Ali Alatas questioned why the Commission was set up by a presidential decree, which of course would not help the government's effort to improve its image.

The independence of the Commission was not quite the issue; at that time, Hassan said, "a presidential decree was the most realistic" in a situation where a human rights discourse was not quite welcome, and was better compared to the red tape that similar bodies in other countries had gone through.

Hassan said Soeharto only asked that Marzuki Darusman, a Golkar executive, be named head of the Commission. Marzuki rose to popularity, which quickly faded only after he became attorney general under the next president B.J. Habibie.

Rather than independence, the more important thing for the Commission was the integrity of its members, Hassan said, its transparency and the public support it enjoyed.

In Southeast Asia, other countries followed suit wih similar national bodies for human rights. But as many have said, in 1998 it was only Soeharto, and not the New Order regime as a whole, that had exited public life.

Earlier, members had initially upheld ethics to avoid conflicts of interests, but from 1998 to 2001 Commission members resorted to fighting over their own interests, the researchers said. The investigation teams for various cases continued to be set up but progress was slower than before. Members have also been spread thinly with only a few active, elderly members becoming members of at least two teams.

The Commission had become a microcosm of the general political fragmentation in society since 1998, Cornelis and Pratikno said. The gaping divisions among members was evident when the team set up to investigate the atrocities in East Timor sharply differed over the definition of "gross human rights violations".

Let alone high profile human rights violations, "The Commission will not be able to settle prolonged conflicts," said Ikhsan Malik, a conflict resolution facilitator who has worked in Maluku and Aceh. He cited the Commission's Bambang Soeharto, a Golkar executive, who visited the conflict area of Ambon, talked to military and civilian officials, and had left the following day following the signing of an agreement.

Since 1998, the researchers said, the Commission went into a "self destruction" mode, despite seemingly greater acceptance of human rights issues by the government.

The 1999 law was issued to strengthen the authority of the Commission by giving it certain powers. It had previously only been able to make non-binding recommendations to the government.

All the hard work that had gone into the investigation team looking into the May 1998 riots, including rapes of Chinese- Indonesians, ended at the Commission's recommendations, mainly for further investigation into an organized scheme.

But as the new 1999 law also gave authority to the legislature to select members, rather than the President, legislators found another new toy -- just as in the case of the selection of ambassadors -- hence the controversial result.

Human rights workers say that from outside, they will continue to support the earlier spirit of the Commission, through the few members expected to strive to at least retain what Komnas HAM once achieved. In Minister Hassan's words, this achievement was the "erosion of a monopoly of truth" with regard to violations of human rights, a monopoly once only enjoyed by the military and other state institutions.