Munir rues DPR's human rights stance

JAKARTA (JP): A combination of incompetence and legacies from past regimes are inhibiting the government from upholding the law and protecting human rights, a watchdog chairman said on Thursday.

Chairman of the supervisory board of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), Munir, said that faulty legal instruments inherited from the past administration were still under its influence.

"As its result, the government has no moving space to reform them," Munir said at a seminar on the work of the Abdurrahman administration on legal and human rights affairs.

He suggested the government reshuffle the Cabinet, especially those members who deal with legal matters.

"How can the government effectively approach the problem when its ministers of law and legislation and human rights affairs and the Attorney General, who are supposed to work with the same vision, all come from different political parties?"

He further blasted what he saw as a lack of synergy between the government and the House of Representatives (DPR) in facing this situation.

Munir said the two bodies were using legal affairs and human rights issues to attack each other.

By way of example, he said that the House had accused the government-sanctioned National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) of being ignorant and biased, and urged that its members be reshuffled, but it had failed to consider that the commissions' membership is regulated by the law.

"It's the House's task to first change existing laws which might hamper the government's legal reform efforts rather than exploit these issues to judge the government. There is a double standard there," he added.

Commenting on the handling of human rights cases, Munir accused both the government and the House of lacking concern for conditions across the nation.

He pointed to the House's use of its interpellation motion not to censure human rights abuses occurring across the country but on a political party matter. Numerous rights abuses in Maluku, Aceh, Irian Jaya and Lampung have never been touched upon by the legislative body, he added.

"Instead they used it (the interpellation right) to question the President over two sacked ministers whom no one actually cares about," he remarked.(bby)