RI questions standard of rights tribunal

RI questions standard of rights tribunal

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government questioned on Friday the international standards
in the human rights tribunal demanded by the international
community for Indonesia to accomplish, saying that even the UN
had failed to achieve quick results in similar cases.

Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra told
the media on Friday that in the recently concluded human rights
meeting in Geneva, the European Union asked Indonesia to conduct
the current rights trial in accordance with international
standards, but failed to specify them.

"If they say Indonesia is slow in dealing with the human
rights violation cases, we all know that former Serbian president
Slobodan Milosevic was brought before an international tribunal
ten years after he committed the crimes," Yusril.

"We all know what happened in the Vietnam war in the 1970s,
and the UN has never brought anyone to international tribunal for
the killings," he said.

"If they accuse us of being too slow, please show us in what
cases the UN acted more quickly than our government has done
now," the minister added.

Indonesia has come under strong criticism for dragging its
feet in prosecuting alleged perpetrators of gross human rights
violations in East Timor in 1999.

Military-backed militia groups wreaked havoc in East Timor in
1999 after its population voted overwhelmingly to break away from
Indonesia in a UN-organized referendum.

A total of 18 senior civilian leaders and military personnel
are either being tried or will be tried in an ad hoc rights
tribunal for failure to stem the mayhem that killed dozens of
innocent proindependence supporters and destroyed almost 80
percent of the infrastructure in the former 27th province of
Indonesia.

The outcome of the trial could determine the restoration of
military cooperation between Indonesia and the United States,
suspended in 1999, following the mayhem in East Timor.