Looking critically into the abyss of depravity

Looking critically into the abyss of depravity

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Are human beings basically decent, or do they simply go raving
mad at the touch of a button?

Is evil genetic, or ingrained in certain cultures? In any
case, the capacity of humans for violence knows no bounds, as
witnessed by people like Radhika Coomaraswamy.

"It's power, and hate," that drives people to such actions,
the lawyer says. She was the Special Rappporteur on Violence
against Women at the United Nations, from 1994 to 2003.

She was the one that victims of rape in the May 1998 riots in
Jakarta wanted to talk to. They were Indonesian -- yet they did
not want to open up to fellow Indonesians except for one or two
who got threatened themselves.

Apparently, the women agreed to speak to her not only because
she was from the UN -- but she was also a foreigner, she was
heading back to New York so there was no way that she would tell
their terrible secrets to anyone in town. "They didn't trust any
Indonesian," she said.

The National Commission on Human Rights has yet to progress on
its prying open of the 1998 riots. No surprise; even the UN
report to the Indonesian government by Coomaraswamy was ignored,
along with her recommendations.

Chief among them was a witness protection program, which is
absent in the country to this day. There was no way any of the
riot victims would speak up in public; photographs of their own
rapes turned up in the mail.

The response to Coomaraswamy's report, or the lack of it, was
typical, she said, with respect to the findings of UN teams that
"upset governments."

For a country under transition, maybe Indonesia has got too
many problems already to pry open closed cases. It is indeed
difficult, Coomaraswamy says, to bring suspects to trial in such
cases. "But once you fail to punish (perpetrators), it gets
worse, it creates a culture of impunity; the whole fabric of
society begins to rip."

She was in town last week to address talks on the
antitrafficking bill, where she shared her experience in meeting
victims of violence of another kind, the one that borders on what
is seen as self-consent and abuse -- the flesh trade.

The "law-and-order" approach in legislation on trafficking,
like that in South Asia, she says, does not automatically give a
victim's life back or make things better for her. An activist at
the talks last week confirmed the dilemma: "We surely want tough
penalties, but what if the perpetrator is the girl's father?"
Another said, "when we managed to bring the girl home the parents
complained, 'now we'll have to seek extra money again'."

As in Indonesia, governments are used to the traditional
approach of legislation -- which is heavy on retribution -- while
it is best, she says, to follow countries introducing the
"restorative approach" for victims.

This means "making mandatory the social services" for victims
such as counseling, placing the victim's needs firmly in the law,
not just dumping them on ministries of social affairs with small
budgets.

Without a comprehensive approach addressing issues such as
poverty, the law, instead, becomes a derisory issue even among
those whom advocates might categorize as victims. In a Bombay
suburb in India, Coomaraswamy recalls how she was once scolded
and "lectured about middle-class values of sexuality" by sex
workers. They were angry at suggestions to help their
rehabilitation, and said they just needed "assurance for their
children's education."

Coomaraswamy concludes that "the law may not be enough" for
cases related to trafficking. Other ways must be found to deter
people from, for instance, selling off their children even if
they are poor. Shaming and embarrassing those involved could be
one way, she says.

The images of victims she has met stick with her: The teenage
Nepali girl, who was sold by her boyfriend to a brothel, after
which she developed HIV/AIDS; the young Indonesian Chinese
"clinging to their clothes" as they told her their stories, and
also a rape victim from Rwanda.

The Tutsi woman whom she met in Rwanda had been raped,
macheted and forced out of hospital because of her ethnicity, had
survived on berries in the forest, and had chopped off her own,
gangrene-infested arm.

"It is this resilience" of victims that is inspiring, she says
-- while countless, silent others, "have become broken."

Coomaraswamy, who graduated in law from Yale University in the
United States, still expresses shock when asked to cite the worst
cases she has come across. "East Timor," she says, of the
destruction and killings after the 1999 referendum, which some
have explained away as caused by mere "emotion" among heartbroken
patriots at the loss of Indonesia's province in a "UN-rigged"
poll.

She said the testimonies from this area, which she sought for
another UN report, reflected cases of impunity involving a
military "beyond civilian control": The TNI, she said, "had
simply 'lost it'." However, all TNI officials brought to the
human rights ad hoc trial have been acquitted.

Although cases like these are from the recent past, and while
armed conflict is still ongoing in various pockets, her feeling
is that "we're moving out" from models of the use of violence
involving state institutions. However the tendency now is towards
no less violent "religious fundamentalism," she said, involving
followers of all kinds of supposedly peaceful faiths.

Coomaraswamy, who has written books on law and human rights,
no longer lives the privileged life of a UN official. Then, "it
was easier," she said, despite seeing all kinds of abusive
people, the impact of their crimes, and all the trouble going
into the reports to the UN and to governments that dismissed
them.

At the UN, "You were aloof, detached. People tend to give you
the benefit of the doubt and take your objectivity for granted":
Now, it's more intense, everyone is watching you, it needs much
more energy."

She is referring to one of her current jobs chairing the Sri
Lanka Human Rights Commission, which receives some 700 cases a
month. She first faced resistance, having stayed abroad for many
years.

But some of that criticism has died down, she said, as the
rights body with Coomaraswamy, her four colleagues and their 200-
strong staff seem to have played a role in the decline of
extrajudicial killings and torture in custodial places.

Respite from daily pressure, she said, comes from Indian
music, classic and jazz. Sources of inspiration, says the
recipient of many awards, are the victims she has met.

South Asian countries, and others in Asia, she notes, are
indeed becoming more democratic, but this does not, in itself,
lead to "a culture of human rights". While there has been
"tremendous awareness of individual rights" this has so far come,
she says, with "no awareness of other people's rights".

Outside the interview venue, in just another Jakarta rush
hour, motorists vied and honked, bumper to bumper, for their own
individual right to a section of the road.