RI seeks UN Human Rights Commission membership
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".