Review on Indonesia's human rights record (1)
Review on Indonesia's human rights record (1)
Indonesia has come under heavy international fire lately over its human rights record. Columnist Irawan Abidin takes a look at the issue. This is the first of two articles.
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's human rights record has come under heavy fire from Amnesty International in recent weeks. In a report entitled "Power and Impunity," the London-based human rights organization levels some shocking charges at the Indonesian government.
Amnesty accuses Indonesia of condoning "systematic barbarities on a staggering scale," of being ready to "murder, torture and jail its people at the slightest provocation" and of killing "hundreds of thousands of civilians." It also admonishes certain Western governments for the cooperative rather than confrontational stance they have taken towards Indonesia.
These are serious allegations. And while Indonesia's human rights record is far from perfect, anyone familiar with the country can tell you that to stereotype the Indonesian government as "criminal," the sum of the Amnesty report according to one journalist, is more a case of hyperbole and politicking than an objective appraisal of the actual situation.
To be sure, there is a tendency, particularly in politics, to cast issues in stark black and white terms. But Amnesty's wholesale "demonization" of Indonesia's political system -- indeed any such indictment of a nation's institutions and officials -- should be viewed with a critical eye and skepticism.
On the Amnesty International report, Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans recently told parliament that, "it's not an objective or measured or balanced analysis of the situation, either in Indonesia overall or in East Timor in particular.
It is also the case that the report wholly obscures the improvements which have unquestionably taken place in economic and social rights -- whatever may be the case and whatever your assessment may have been when you focus solely on civil and political rights." Evans further stated that Amnesty's report was essentially a campaign document, and that its treatment of the facts produced very "misleading results".
There are two reasons why it is reasonable to believe that Amnesty is merely waging a political campaign against Indonesia and not really concerned about promoting human rights in the country.
The first is the timing of the reports release and the fanfare that attended it. The releases were timed to coincide with the final stages of Indonesia's preparations to host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings last November. Like the APEC meetings that took place in Seattle and on Blake Island the year before, the APEC meetings in Indonesia last November were important building blocks for a stronger multilateral trading system in the region. Approximately 2,500 foreign journalists were on hand to cover the event. At about the same time, Amnesty's chief spokesman traveled to Bangkok, Wellington, Sydney and Tokyo to launch a massive publicity campaign against Indonesia.
The second indication is that the Amnesty report runs counter to the present approach of many Western countries to human rights issues in Asia. In line with the United Nations Charter, the United States and others have placed the promotion and protection of human rights within the context of international cooperation.
Amnesty's defamatory report on Indonesia is clearly out of step with this thinking. In many cases, such as the APEC meeting in Indonesia, questions of human rights have been separated from issues of economic and development cooperation. And there are good reasons why a policy of cooperation, rather than one of confrontation, is likely to be successful in improving human rights in Asia.
Asian countries, too, recognize the universal validity of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. In Indonesia, as is the case in many developing countries, the rights of the individual are balanced by the rights of the community -- in fact the welfare of the community often takes precedence over the desires of any single individual or group.
We also share a strong belief that the most fundamental of human rights -- the right to be free, includes not only the right to political freedom but also the right to be free from want, ignorance, social injustice and economic backwardness. There are cultural, historical and practical reasons why the concepts of basic freedoms have evolved differently in Asia than in the West, a fact which, although little appreciated in the past, is today gaining broader recognition.
In this context, Amnesty's use of high-profile publicity tactics to promote human rights in Indonesia seems all the more anomalous and puzzling. As recent history clearly shows, such efforts actually ill-serve the cause of human rights in Asia.
The brunt of the Amnesty campaign targets Indonesia's policies towards East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, now the 27th province in Indonesia. In 1975, in the midst of the colony's bloody civil war, Portugal abandoned East Timor, leaving it in what many experts have called a pitiful state. A year later, the people of the East Timor, in their first exercise of democratic rights and self-determination, duly elected a representative assembly and chose integration into Indonesia. Although it has been the subject of some international debate, the province's status as part of Indonesia is today recognized as a matter of fact by many countries.
Integration with Indonesia has restored order and stability to the region and enabled the benefits of development to vastly improve the quality of life for thousands of East Timorese citizens. To provide not only for basic human needs but also to lay a foundation for future development, Indonesia has invested six times as many resources on a per capita basis in East Timor than in any of its other provinces. The result has been increasing social progress and growth: whereas 10 percent of the population was literate at the end of Portuguese rule, 70 percent of East Timorese can read today; since 1990, the province has boasted one of the highest average regional gross domestic products (GDP) growth rates -- 9.8 percent.
Despite this large measure of peace and progress, some bitter divisions remain: a small fraction of East Timor's population remains opposed to Indonesian rule; a dwindling band of guerrillas continues to create disturbances in the province; and occasional public demonstrations staged by small groups advocating separatism have been carried out in Dili, the capital, and other parts of the region.
At times this has led to confrontations with military and police units. There have been cases where the response has been excessive. Certainly, the killing of demonstrators in Dili in November 1991 was regrettable and tragic. The highest levels of government, including President Soeharto, promptly condemned the bloodshed and, after due process, those responsible for it, including military officers and enlisted men, were severely punished. The government has taken strict measures to ensure that such an incident does not happen again. A case in point is the recent discharge and jailing of two Indonesian soldiers found guilty by a military court of improper conduct in East Timor. They were sentenced to serve terms of two and two-and-a-half years respectively.