RI seeks UN Human Rights Commission membership

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia is seeking one of the 53 seats on the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) for 2003-2004, hoping that its own poor human rights track record will not count against it.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Marty Natalegawa, said on Tuesday that despite its shortcomings, Indonesia deserved the nomination because it was a recognized democracy.

"Though we admit there were many flaws in the past, we are a democratic nation and it would be an advantage for us to sit on the commission," Marty told The Jakarta Post.

He said Jakarta would not allow East Timor and all the rights abuses committed there deter it from seeking membership to the main UN rights watchdog.

"It is a fact that we had human rights violations in East Timor in the past, but we are a new Indonesia and we have the democratic credentials," Marty said.

He added that membership on the commission would help bolster human rights back home in Indonesia.

Indonesia is among several countries seeking seats on the UNHRC in an election scheduled for next week.

The election next week will coincide with the commission's decision to drop from its agenda the matter of the postreferendum violence that took place in East Timor in 1999, for which several Indonesian Military officers have been implicated.

Indonesia's permanent representative in Geneva, Switzerland, Nugroho Wisnumurti, would be the country's representative to the rights commission should it win its bid.

Other countries with poor human rights records such as North Korea, Iran and Nigeria are also seeking seats on the rights commission.

"Indonesia would like to underline human rights as one of the pillar of democracy and also would like to disseminate the code of human rights for our own domestic interests," Marty said.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Press-Agentur reported that human rights organizations are protesting the inclusion of countries with some of the worst records of abuses on a list of candidates for election to the rights commission.

North Korea, Iran and Nigeria are likely to win membership to the commission. Egypt is another candidate and, even though its abuses are not on the same scale as the other countries, it has been conducting a vigorous campaign against homosexuals.

Other members seeking election this year are Eritrea, Mauritania, Bhutan, Cambodia, Nepal, Qatar, Hungary, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal.

Seeking reelection are Britain, Costa Rica, Guatemala, India, Peru, South Africa and Thailand.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among the organizations complaining that the inclusion of these countries makes a mockery of the organization, and are urging reform of the process.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch described the list of candidate countries as "a Who's Who of the worst human rights abusers".

The body has a membership of 53, each member serving a two- year term. It catalogs human rights abuses, investigates claims and puts pressure on governments to change.

A group of countries with poor records can block or slow the work of the commission.

Amnesty International said it would like to see a benchmark set for membership: each candidate would have to ratify guarantees of basic human rights and open its borders to investigators.

Melinda Ching, a spokeswoman for Amnesty, said that without such a benchmark, the signal being sent out was that the commission "lures those countries that have been under the body's spotlight -- North Korea, Iran -- into gaining membership to the UN's supreme human rights body for the very purpose of deflecting criticism of each other's human rights situations".