Komnas HAM Says Reform Era Has Not Advanced Since 1998

Amiruddin Al Rahab, a commissioner of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), believes Indonesia has not truly moved beyond the starting point of reform since the fall of the New Order regime in 1998. He argues that today’s climate is not far different from that of the past, when human rights violations continued to occur.

“Reform is a transitional event. In reality, we have merely emerged from the New Order but have never moved on,” Amiruddin said during a discussion on the fate of pursuing accountability for human rights violations after 28 years of reform at the Komnas HAM office in Jakarta on Friday, 22 May 2026.

According to Amir, this condition continues to ensnare Indonesia because there is no legal accountability for various serious human rights violations that occurred in the past. As a result, trauma still envelops survivors, while those who committed human rights violations have never truly been brought to justice.

Therefore, the reformist goal of upholding human rights and freeing Indonesia from corrupt practices would never be realised. “The main issue is that accountability for various human rights violations during the New Order has never truly been pursued,” he said.

Amiruddin then highlighted various efforts by Komnas HAM to deliver justice to victims of human rights violations that have never reached a final settlement. The situation has left the public in a psychological deadlock. The state, he said, continues to doubt the truth of past human rights violations, questions the evidence, but is also unable to resolve them through adequate legal mechanisms.

He cited the handling of the mass rapes in May 1998, which has not yet been brought to a Human Rights Court, although Komnas HAM’s investigations have been ongoing for some time.

He argued that the debate over whether there were gross human rights violations should be tested in court, not halted by political polemics or public denials. “If you want evidence, hold a court. Evidence can only be tested in court,” he said.

In addition, Amiruddin noted that the lack of commitment from the Attorney General’s Office and other state bodies to resolve human rights violation cases has stalled Komnas HAM’s efforts. He explained that the case files submitted by Komnas HAM are often rejected. Prosecutors frequently apply a general criminal approach to gross human rights cases, whereas Komnas HAM operates under the mandate of the Human Rights Court Act. Amiruddin cited prosecutors who rejected case files because they judged the evidence submitted by Komnas HAM to be merely a collection of media reports; prosecutors even asked for victims’ national identity cards. The two approaches have never found a meeting point. “Thus the Attorney General has repeatedly said that the evidence from Komnas HAM is no more than people’s opinions,” he said.

For Amiruddin, reform requires a national willingness to confront all past gross human rights violations and then prosecute them. The first step could begin with revising Law Number 26 of 2000 on Human Rights. In that revision, he proposed that human rights cases have their own procedural law and should not be treated as ordinary criminal offences. Amiruddin then urged the government to take joint responsibility for every human rights violation that has occurred, and to stop shifting responsibility only onto Komnas HAM. “The statutory duty has already been carried out by Komnas HAM; the plenary has been completed. Other agencies that have not been willing to pursue it should also act,” he said.