Indonesia tells U.S. senators to mind own business
Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta
The government told United States senators on Sunday to mind their own business and not to interfere in Indonesia's internal affairs.
Twenty U.S. senators sent a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan last week urging the latter to appoint a special envoy to monitor and report on the situation in Papua and Aceh where troops are fighting against secessionist movements.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Marty Natalegawa said on Sunday that U.S. lawmakers should focus on their own domestic problems.
"Thanks for the concern, but I think they have to focus on their own internal affairs," Marty told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
The senators had suggested the UN assign a special envoy to monitor and recommend steps the UN Security Council and its General Assembly might pursue "to end the troubling and deadly conflicts that continue to engulf these regions".
They argued that the international community has remained silent for too long over the continued conflict in Aceh and Papua where the scale of human rights violations warrant special attention.
"In Aceh, the year-long period of martial law that ended in May with the imposition of a civil emergency has had an extraordinary human cost. While it is impossible to verify the precise number of extra-judicial incarcerations and killings, accounts suggest that more than 2,000 people have been killed in the past year, the majority of whom have been civilians," the senators said in their letter.
They cited a recent report by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) which said that even the Aceh martial court failed to prove whether the unarmed civilians killed, tortured, raped and sexually abused were GAM members.
"Komnas HAM alleged that most violations were committed by the Indonesian security forces, including both high-level political and military authorities, though some deaths have been attributed to GAM," they said.
While in Papua, where the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM) has engaged in a low-level armed struggle for decades, the number of civilian casualties are inestimable following a military campaign in the territory, the senators said, citing recent reports documented by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Separately, Komnas HAM member Hasballah M. Saad told Indonesia that any violence could no longer be hidden from international eyes and that "the country should have anticipated it by taking stern legal action against violence."
"If we (Indonesia) fail to handle the violence by ourselves, we cannot prevent international interference," Hasballah said.
He said the Attorney General's Office and other law enforcers must immediately take the initiative to file cases of rights abuses in the two provinces, so that Indonesia would not lose face when the UN assembly asked about the cases.
The UN assigned last year special envoy Malaysian Tansri Razali Ismail to Myanmar to meet with the country's opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who is being held under house arrest by the Myanmar junta.