Respect for human rights?

Onghokham wrote in The Jakarta Post on Nov. 12 that reticence in arresting Abu Bakar Ba'asyir was part of a trend to greater respect for human rights.

I find this hard to believe after watching an episode of Patrol, the crime news program on Indosiar.

I noticed that police auxiliaries in West Jakarta were throwing suspected prostitutes into a truck. The evidence against them was that they were standing near the road where the officers were performing their "human trash" sweeping operation.

The cameras then moved to Central Java, where police had arrested some suspected drug sellers. The suspects, half naked, hobbled out of the police station with bruised and swollen faces.

After this we saw a suspected thief who was not hobbling but rather hopping on one leg. The reporter explained that to stop him running away the police had "burned his foot with hot lead", meaning they shot him.

Unlike the secret taping of the removal of Ba'asyir from hospital, all these stories were obviously filmed with the cooperation of the police and both police and reporters seemed proud of their actions.

Several other TV channels have similar programs focussing on self-righteous voyeurism, invasion of privacy, violation of the presumption of innocence and the public humiliation of suspects who are denied access to lawyers and subjected to police interrogation under the glare of television lights.

So I doubt that police caution and the outcry from some quarters in the Ba'asyir case arise from consistent human rights standards. Rather they reflect Ba'asyir's higher status as a man with potentially violent followers and commodity value for politicians hoping to exploit sectarianism.

JOHN HARGREAVES, Jakarta