RI tells U.S. to take the log out of their own eye

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government has denounced a U.S. report on human rights abuses in Indonesia, saying Washington was not competent to make judgments about what went on here.

Foreign Affairs Ministry chief spokesman Marty Natalegawa said the annual report showed a "new standard of ignorance of what is actually happening in Indonesia."

"Human rights conditions in Indonesia should to be judged by the Indonesian people themselves and not by some bureaucrats sitting in Washington," Marty told The Jakarta Post on Thursday, when he was asked to comment on the controversial report.

The U.S. State Department said in its annual human rights report distributed in Jakarta on Thursday, Indonesian security forces had committed serious human rights abuses, including murder and rape, particularly in far-flung provinces where they were battling separatists.

"Security force members murdered, tortured, raped, beat and arbitrarily detained civilians and members of separatist movements," the U.S. State Department said as quoted by Reuters.

The report also criticized the government for failing to protect the fundamental rights of groups ranging from children to journalists to indigenous people.

"Human rights abuses were most apparent in the Aceh province, the scene of a long-running separatist revolt," it said. The report admitted there was some evidence military commanders wanted to improve the behavior of their troops in the field.

Referring to racial discrimination as a human rights violation in the United States, Marty said: "A country should be very confident of its own conduct on human rights issues before assuming for itself the role of judging other countries' performances."

The report confused the government as it overlooked the democratization taking place in the country, Marty said.

He regretted the report, saying President George W. Bush's government was looking at Indonesia with an outdated attitude and had disregarded significant steps the government had made to develop the democracy.

The government imposed martial law in Aceh on June 19, last year, and has deployed some 40,000 security personnel to hunt for Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels following the breakdown of a peace agreement both sides signed in Geneva in December 2002.

The U.S. said there had been no improvement in human rights in the country's easternmost province of Papua, another conflict area.

An ambush in the Papua regency of Timika in August 2002, which killed two Americans, had become a sticking contentious issues between the two countries, it said.

A preliminary report from Washington suspected the involvement of the Indonesian Military (TNI), but no one had been arrested for the incident as yet, it said.

Last year, the Indonesian National Commission of Human Rights launched a probe of possible human rights abuses in Papua, following the stealing of TNI weapons in the province.

No report has yet been released on its findings.