Politics turns people into mere pawns

Politics turns people into mere pawns

Harry Bhaskara, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post

Human rights violators might have nodded with approval as the
year 2001 drew to a close. They can look ahead convinced that
their impunity will remain in their pockets.

Those who hope to bring them to justice had better known that
it is an illusion. Like fireflies at night, their hope only lit
intermittently in the dark.

The vanguard of human rights protection in the country is the
National Commission on Human Rights, set up by the Soeharto
government in 1993. Throughout 2001, however, the commission was
engaged in an internal squabbling over trivial matters like how
many members should it have and whether its secretary general
should be a civil servant.

When will they start working? No body knows.

As time went by, new violations were being committed pushing
past violations into the back of the public's mind.

Behind the quarrel over whether the commission should have 25
or 35 members was a resolute determination to protect the wrongs.
Early this year there was a need to recruit seven new members to
fill in the vacant seats left out by those who went into the
government. They were to be selected by a team out of 14 names.
When the final selection came the worms in the can burst out.

Overnight the public learned that the commission was plagued
with internal rift. The status quo camp in the commission
rejected the proposed names citing as irrational a reason as that
the candidates were mostly NGO activists. They came up with a
demand to increase the total member to 35.

In neighboring countries, such a commission has 15 members at
most with hundreds of staff. They work full time on the policy
level. In Indonesia, many of the members work part time and it
only has about two dozens staff.

Assessment to seriousness to address human rights issues can
start here.

Analysts said they believed the status quo forces closed to
the repressive New Order regime in the commission had been
defensive because it could be instrumental in deciding the fate
of a perpetrator.

They remembered that Gen. Wiranto was forced to resign as
senior security minister by then president Abdurrahman Wahid
after the commission asked the Attorney General in February 2000
to question Wiranto over his role in 1999 East Timor post-
election riots.

And as unscrupulous military members were believed to be
behind numerous cases of human rights violations, analysts
reasoned that bad elements in the military were behind the
intervention into the commission membership.

The oldest human rights organization, the Legal Aid Institute,
said in its year-end report that there had been a systematic
effort by the power holder to dump true human rights defenders
from the commission and to let in people with questionable tract
record especially after Megawati Soekarnoputri became president
in July.

The institute itself was not immuned to such an intervention,
it said, citing persistent character assassination war against
its many activists as well as terror and intimidation.

The death of Papuan independent fighter Theys Hiyo Eluay in
November was one the most spectacular, brutal and blatant
killings peaking a systematic cleansing of human rights
defenders.

As with other cases, Theys' case would likely to remain in
mystery in the coming months, of course after the usual lip
serving attempts to investigate it.

The usual pattern of perpetrators protect fellow perpetrators
will come into play with network and money becoming pertinent
factors.

Many high profile human rights cases this year were carryovers
from the past such as violations accrued from the ten-year period
of military operation in Aceh ending in 1999, the brutal fight
against separatist elements in Papua, ethnic conflicts in Sampit,
killings in Trisakti University (1998), the first (1998) and
second Semanggi shootings (1999).

Others were forced disappearances of more than 1,000 people
missing during the Soeharto 30-year rule throughout the country
in cases related to land, religion and separatism.

Secretary to Commissions for Missing Persons and Anti Violence
(Kontras) Usman Hamid said in August that he had not much hope
that Megawati would like to address the issue as many of those
guilty of committing the crime were included in her government.

Megawati showed reluctancy even to probe forced disappearance
cases linked to an attack to the headquarters of her party, the
PDI Perjuangan, in Jakarta on July 27, 1996.

During the May 1998 riot in Jakarta, 14 people were missing.
Aceh recorded 486 people missing, the highest number throughout
the country, during the ten-year of military operations there.

None of these cases has been thoroughly processed.

A parent whose son, Petrus Bimo Anugrah, was missing in the
May 1998 riots said in August that he had been tracing for his
son for three and a-half-years without a success. He said the
government had no attention at all to his cause.

The fight to uphold justice was further frustrated by the
controversial House of Representatives' rejection in July to set
up an ad hoc human rights tribunal for those responsible for the
killing of 14 students during the Trisakti, Semanggi I and
Semanggi II incidents.

This people's representation body believed that the killings
were not a crime against humanity but a common crime. The House
reasoned, therefore, the crime were to be tried in either
military or civil courts.

This whole episode only showed the strength of remnants of the
New Order elements in the House and boiled down to the 1945
Constitution's shortcomings that gives much power to the House.
At times the House could behave as if it was the Supreme Court
office.

The then President Wahid openly showed his disagreement to the
House's decision over the killings taken by a House special
committee.

Adding insult to injury, the Commission only set up a fact-
finding team on the killings in August, two years after the
second Semanggi killings.

Alas, an ad hoc tribunal for these cases was scheduled early
next year after several postponement with unclear reasons.

Sincerity to follow due process of law seems to be a crucial
element in the probe into human rights violation cases.
Unfortunately, the government seems to be suffering from the lack
of it.

The government has guaranteed the freedom of workers to unite
under Law No. 21 enacted in 2000 but there were 22 violations to
the law in Jakarta alone this year with the Shangri-La hotel's
workers-management dispute featuring prominently, so much so that
it drew the attention of the International Labor Organization.

Various violations have been committed by the state against
civilians this year, most of them went unpunished despite the
fact that the country has been a signatory to International
Convention Against Torture since 1998 and has enacted Law No. 39
on human rights in 1999.

In Jakarta those violations included violence acts
accompanying efforts to force poor people out of their homes,
drive out becak drivers, street-side vendors, street children,
workers, and pacify student protests.

The police and education institutions are not exempted from
abuses. When eight police officers presented their ideas on how
to turn the police into a civilian and professional force
following its dissection from the military in 2000, the national
police chief brought them into the military court.

Similarly, the University of Indonesia unheeded the Higher
State Administration Court decision which favored several
students who protested a hike of 2000 education fee at their
university. The punishment, a six-month to a year suspension from
study, sticked.

It is no doubting that bad elements in the government along
within the military, the legislative and the judicative branches
as well as in business sectors are good team playmates in the
protection of human rights violators.

They played total football so beautifully at times edging to
theatrical dexterity as some trials in military courts for
offending state apparatuses showed.

The hours of the trials were never fixed in these courts, some
of which started late at night ending at midnights with a clear
purpose to avoid public scrutiny.

Whether or not all these institutions want to give dignity and
respect to this nation among the international community of
nations by defending human rights will depend entirely on
themselves.

The people, for the time being, are mostly reduced to pawns in
the prolonged power struggle equation starting with the fall of
Soeharto in 1998. It was a Goliath versus David fight, with David
being a mere spectator.