Govt accused of poor human rights development
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) accused the government and the Armed Forces of poorly supporting the advancement and development of human rights.
The respected legal aid body said in its 1997 evaluation Wednesday that the government had failed to accommodate the universality of human rights as stipulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
The foundation's 29-page evaluation, Negara Makin Kuat, Rakyat Makin Lemah (The State Becomes Stronger, the People Become Weaker), claimed the government and the military had persistently demanded public obedience.
Chairman Bambang Widjojanto said the Armed Forces (ABRI), as one of Indonesia's major political players, had objected to the universality of human rights. He cited a number of public statements made over the year by high ranking ABRI officials.
ABRI Chief Gen. Feisal Tanjung, for instance, had once said that human rights should be implemented in ways which were in line with national interests. Former ABRI chief of sociopolitical affairs, Lt. Gen. Syarwan Hamid, had also said that human rights should conform to Indonesia's perception of it, Bambang said.
Even members of the National Commission on Human Rights have yet to agree whether human rights is a universal concept or particular to different societies in nature, Bambang said.
Baharuddin Lopa, Marzuki Darusman, Miriam Budiardjo and Nurcholish Madjid were among the commission's members who believed in the universality of the concept, while Muladi was one who considered that a country's social and cultural interests should precede human rights implementation, Bambang claimed.
The House of Representatives had also tended to refuse the universality concept of human rights, he said.
The body, however, lauded active support from a number of non- governmental organizations, scholars and activists in promoting human rights in 1997.
Bambang also claimed that most of the country's legislation produced in 1997 was repressive and created greater openings for human rights violations to occur.
Law No. 28/1997 on Police and Law No. 25/1997 on Manpower were among such laws, Bambang said. The latter, for instance, did not provide adequate protection of workers' rights and only served employers' interests, according to YLBHI head of labor division Teten Masduki.
Students
Separately, in Bogor, West Java, some 200 students of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture held a gathering on Wednesday to mark the end of 1997.
The students demanded that the 1998/2003 president launch a campaign to cure social ills and moral degradation which were the roots of various crises. The National Moral Awakening Movement should be treated first and foremost in the next president's agenda, the students said.
Organizers Agus Purwoko, Heri Ardin and M. Najib said the various crises befalling Indonesia over recent months were the consequence of the nation's depravity.
Agus cited practices of corruption for which Indonesia was infamous. "Illegal levies and other collections by bureaucrats are the cause of our high-cost economy and the low efficiency in our production," Agus said.
The students deplored private businesspeople who had access to vast amounts of foreign loans while millions of farmers could not even obtain small capital for their own ventures. "The economic crisis preys on the weak," Agus said.
In the face of the ongoing monetary crisis, capital owners fled with their assets in the hope of seeking even greater profits from the suffering of other people, he said.
"The declining public trust in the currency was not merely an economic factor, but was brought about by businesspeople's poor nationalism and morality," he said. (24/10)