Indonesia refutes U.S. rights report

Indonesia refutes U.S. rights report

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia strongly refuted allegations of abuses
in response to the U.S. State Department's annual global human
rights report which condemned Jakarta as being "repressive" and
"authoritarian".

Indonesia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas said
yesterday that he had not read the report, which was released in
the United States on Wednesday, but nonetheless lamented the
consistently biased tone of such reports.

He said that the reports were "only zeroing in on certain
categories of human rights and completely ignoring other
categories."

The minister then added that in analyzing human rights one
must not overlook economic, social, development and education
rights.

"It is regrettable also that reports such as these tend to be
unbalanced," Alatas said.

The report, issued in Washington, was a severe reproach of
Jakarta's actions.

"The government continued to commit serious human rights
abuses and in some areas, notably freedom of expression, it
became markedly more repressive," the report said, in an obvious
reference to the government's banning of three publications in
June 1994 for editorial and administrative reasons.

The report also accused the government of manipulating the
national Pancasila ideology "as a justification of restricting
the developments of opposition elements."

The report also deplored what it described as an
"unjustifiably high" army presence in East Timor and said that no
progress had been made in accounting for the persons that went
missing following the 1991 Dili incident, which killed several
dozen civilians.

The exact same issues were also raised by U.S. President
Clinton during his meeting here with President Soeharto on Nov.
16.

Clinton's insistence on these issues was temporarily shelved,
however, as some US$40 billion worth of contracts for U.S.
companies were signed on the same day..

An ambiguous American policy on human rights was evident once
again when one day prior to the release of the State Department
report, a senior U.S. politician spoke understandingly of
Indonesian policy.

During a regional dialog on human rights, Senator Richard
Lugar of the Republican Party and long-standing member of the
United States Senate's foreign relations committee, praised
Indonesia's concept of human rights.

Hearsay

At his office yesterday, Alatas told journalists of how in
general he deplored such reports.

"We don't think that it is a good idea for governments to sit
in judgment over another government or people on the question of
human rights," he said.

"If governments cannot help talking about other governments
and criticizing other governments about it, then at least we
would hope that it is doing so on the basis of facts rather on
the basis of hearsay or highly exaggerated reports," Alatas
stated.

He maintained that such questions should be raised in the
proper way and as defined by the United Nations.

"The question of human rights is an important question but
there are ways in which to deal with it," Alatas said while
alluding to the UN Charter which encourages nations to assume a
more cooperative approach.

The State Department also released yesterday similar human
rights reports reproaching China and India for their lack of
progress in this area. (mds)