Indonesia's rights crimes must be heeded

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?"