Indonesia's rights crimes must be heeded

Cramming for attention: Indonesia's crimes against humanity This is the first of two articles on crimes against humanity by Vanessa Johanson, an adviser to the National Commission on Human Rights in Jakarta.

JAKARTA (JP): "The men seemed to get angrier and angrier... We explained that we were not political, but humanitarian workers... [They] said we were lying... Ampon Thayeb came to us and said, 'Now you are going to confess if you want to live. We will give you 15 minutes.' One of us said, 'What can we confess, we are just volunteers?' 'Then it's clear you want to die,' Thayeb replied."

This is from a testimony to the international group Human Rights Watch of Nazaruddin, 22, a former volunteer in Aceh with the Rehabilitation Action for Torture Victims in Aceh (RATA) on Dec. 10, 2000.

He continues, "[Later], Idris and Ernita got out of the car. They were brought to the house by the one with the red moustache and one of the (suspected) TNI (Indonesian Military members) who had their guns against the heads of Idris and Ernita. Thayeb said, 'Don't shoot them standing up, make them lie down. It's enough to use one bullet per person.'

"Ernita and Idris were then kicked to the ground, and immediately shot in the head ... Rusli told me, 'What will happen to my wife and children?' We were marched for about a meter, and when we got closer to the house I just ran. I later heard two shots as I took off, and believe that Bachtiar and Rusli were killed then."

Nazaruddin continues, "The men opened fire on me as I was running and emptied a full magazine trying to hit me ..."

Have crimes against humanity been committed in Indonesia? Do they continue to be committed? If so, what can be done about it? The term "crimes against humanity", like "genocide", "war crimes" and such other terms invite strong emotions and conjure images of unimaginable brutality.

They have become familiar over the last decade in association with such characters as Slobodan Milosevic; and atrocities like the lightning deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens of Rwanda. Crimes against humanity are referred to as such because they are the enemy to all humanity, everywhere, and therefore must be opposed by all people regardless of national boundaries.

No one in Indonesia has ever been prosecuted for crimes against humanity, despite incidents like the one described above which occurred only six months ago in Aceh. However this may soon change.

Crimes against humanity bears a strict legal definition under international human rights law. According to the statute of the International Criminal Court (also known as the Rome Statute), yet to come into full force but nevertheless already implemented in a number of cases such as those mentioned above, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: (a) Murder; (b) Extermination; (c) Enslavement; (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population; (e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; (f) Torture; (g) Rape and other serious sexual violence; (h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender; (i) Enforced disappearance of persons; (j) The crime of apartheid; (k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

As if to acknowledge that such crimes have occurred in Indonesia, the legislature passed the Human Rights Court Act in November last year. The Act reinforces the extreme criminality of gross violations of human rights by all applying severe penalties for two of the four crimes laid out in the Rome Statute: Genocide and crimes against humanity. The other two crimes in the Statute, war crimes and crimes of aggression are inexplicably left out of the Indonesian Act.

The Act, while containing a number of faults, is a strong basis for determining and punishing incidences of gross violations of human rights perpetrated by Indonesians.

Unfortunately, it remains untested.

This is despite the fact that, according to the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), in its preliminary inquiries under the mandate given to it by the Human Rights Court Act and its predecessor, the Presidential Decision in Lieu of Act No. 1 of 1999, crimes against humanity have indeed occurred in Indonesia. Their suspected perpetrators, named in the inquiries, must be duly tried and suitably punished.

Famously, the international community has placed strong pressure on the Indonesian government to bring to justice the perpetrators of gross violations of human rights in East Timor before, during and after the public consultation on independence in August 1999. However many other equally terrible cases also need attention.

Komnas HAM's Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights in Irian Jaya/Papua (KPP-HAM Papua), for example, in its recently released report thus described the brutal and orchestrated attacks by police at six separate locations in Abepura, near the provincial capital of Jayapura in December 2000. The KPP HAM team named 21 police suspected of being direct perpetrators of crimes against humanity and four senior police responsible through the chain of command for these gross violations.

Few would deny that such atrocities occurred in Indonesia hundreds, if not thousands of times during the authoritarian New Order era.

So our question should not be so much: "Have crimes against humanity occurred in Indonesia", or even "Do they still occur?" but "Now, what can be done about it?"