Indonesia told to promote reconciliation

Indonesia told to promote reconciliation

Annastashya Emmanuelle, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A local human rights activist and legal expert said during a
seminar on Monday the government should emulate South Africa's
experience in promoting reconciliation to enable Indonesia to
emerge from its prolonged crisis.

Speakers at the seminar said neither government officials or
politicians had yet taken the initiative to help solve the
country's multidimensional crisis.

In a seminar titled Human Rights for Indonesia -- The South
African Experience, activists and experts asserted the importance
of establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, similar to
the commission that became a pillar for upholding human rights in
South Africa.

The commission, once established, would play a major role as
an extra-judicial body with the task of uncovering the truth of
past abuses of power and human rights violations.

"Reconciliation always begins with the confession of sins.
After the confessions there must be forgiveness," Kusparmono
Irsan, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights, said,
adding that such a Truth and Reconciliation Commission must be
established by law.

Sunaryati Hartono, a legal expert from the Office of the
Ombudsman, said reconciliation was needed for the survival of the
nation after years of conflict. She said people had become
exhausted with arguing, fighting and being forced from their
homes, and longed for peace and prosperity.

"It is unfortunate that the democratic successes of the reform
movement have not ended peacefully.

"We must take the lead in steering us to reconciliation and
peace," she said.

The question, however, is whether Indonesians are wiling to
forgive past abuses for the greater cause? And should the
perpetrators of human rights abuses be allowed to roam free?

In the experience of South Africa, the people had to pardon
the past rights abusers in order to give the new democratic
nation a chance for survival, Zonke Majodina of the South African
Human Rights Protection Commission said.

This was made possible through the promotion of the goals of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and by the figures who
led the reconciliation process.

"Of course there are people who just got away, such as the
army generals and other top-ranking officials who committed
brutal human rights violations .... Answers could not be found
for everybody," Zonke Majodina told The Jakarta Post on the
sidelines of the seminar.