Indonesia human rights picture in tatters: U.S.

Indonesia human rights picture in tatters: U.S.

WASHINGTON (Agencies): The human rights picture in Indonesia has steadily deteriorated as Jakarta loses control over ethnic, social and religious strife in its most unstable provinces, the U.S. State Department said on Monday.

Despite the efforts of the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid to build on Indonesia's democratic transition of 1999 and expand basic freedoms, violence by security forces as well as by separatist groups and others in 2000 resulted in widespread human rights abuses, it said.

"The government was ineffective in deterring social, interethnic and interreligious violence that accounted for the majority of deaths by violence during the year," the department said in its annual human rights report.

That ineffectiveness could be a factor again in the latest ethnic violence in Central Kalimantan in which 400 people have already been killed, said Michael Parmly, acting assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

"I think you'll see two phenomena ... that are most troubling, and I don't know to what extent one is seeing that in the events in Borneo over the past several days," Parmly said at a briefing on the report.

"One is impunity ... The other is simple weakening of control and of the elements of control by the central government over events like this. It's an absence of government more than a misbehaving of government," he said.

The killings in Kalimantan erupted over a week ago when indigenous Dayaks, once feared headhunters, began attacking immigrants from the island of Madura in some of the most savage bloodshed to hit the archipelago, racked by three years of violence.

The State Department report, issued every year to assess human rights in aid recipients and UN member states, painted a violent picture of 2000.

"Security forces were responsible for numerous instances of, at times indiscriminate, shooting of civilians, torture, rape, beatings and other abuse, and arbitrary detention in Aceh, West Timor, Irian Jaya (also known as Papua or West Papua), the Moluccas, Sulawesi and elsewhere in the country," it said.

At the same time, the report said most of the killings in 2000 were caused by citizens' attacks on other citizens.

In resource-rich Aceh, one of Indonesia's most rebellious provinces, dozens of low-level civil servants, police, and military personnel were murdered and abducted during the year, the report said.

"It generally is believed that separatists carried out many of these, and other, killings," it said.

The government enacted a series of human rights protections during the year, including an amendment to the 1945 constitution modeled on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratification of an International Labor Organization convention on the worst forms of child labor.

Enforcement of such laws, however, remained the greatest problem, the report said.

The report was published with U.S.-Indonesian relations at a delicate stage.

Indonesia bristled last year when the U.S. ambassador to Jakarta Robert Gelbard engaged in a war of words with senior Indonesian officials who objected to his criticism of the government.

Last week, the State Department warned Americans against traveling to Indonesia, warning renewed unrest and violence could erupt at any time.

In a related development, China on Tuesday expressed concern over the ethnic violence in Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan and called on Jakarta to ensure the safety of its citizens.

"We've taken note of reports that there have been large-scale riots in Kalimantan (Borneo) of Indonesia," foreign ministry spokesman Zhang Qiyue said at a news briefing.

"We hope the Indonesian government will take effective measures to protect the lives, property and security of all ethnic people, including Chinese there."