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)