Rights activists ask govt to free political prisoners
Rights activists ask govt to free political prisoners
JAKARTA (JP): Human rights campaigners called on the
government on Saturday to release political detainees and
prisoners and to discontinue the practice of political detention,
because Indonesia means to be a democratic country which highly
respects humanity.
During a one-day seminar held by the Indonesian Society for
Humanity, it was agreed that citizens should not be detained or
imprisoned because of their political beliefs. Rather,
participants argued, people should be allowed freedom of
expression.
"The 1945 Constitution protects every citizen from detention
or imprisonment on the basis of their political beliefs. People
may be detained only if they express their ideas with physical
violence," said Marzuki Darusman, a member of the National
Commission on Human Rights.
Marzuki was insistent that the state ideology Pancasila does
not permit Indonesians to be held as prisoners of conscience. The
five tenets of Pancasila are belief in one God, national unity,
consensus through deliberation, humanism and social justice.
Marzuki was one of the speakers at the seminar, which was
entitled "Fifty years of Indonesia's independence and the problem
of political detainees and political prisoners in Indonesia" held
at the headquarters of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation on
Saturday.
Participants included government critics such as former
Jakarta Governor Ali Sadikin, human rights activists H.J.
Princen, Adnan Buyung Nasution, Mulyana W. Kusumah and the
prominent mystic Permadi. Ex-political detainee H.M. Sanusi was
also present.
Held under the watchful eyes of some 20 police officers, who
constantly moved in and out of the building, the participants
held a lively discussion, making many critical comments about the
observance of human rights in Indonesia.
The gathering would have been dispersed by the police if
Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation activist Hendardi had not
succeeded in convincing the police officers present that they
lacked the legal grounds to move in.
Marzuki said that in 1994 the number of political prisoners in
Indonesia reached 195. However, other participants put the number
at 246. In the 1970s, not long after the tragic Sept. 30, 1965
coup attempt by the Indonesian Communist Party, the figure was as
high as 1.43 million, Marzuki said.
Many people who were involved in, or known to have links with,
the communist party have remained in detention until the present
time.
However, even being released does not mean full freedom: the
ID cards of such people are marked with the initials "E.T." (ex-
tapol, or "ex-political detainee") and their children and
immediate relatives -- "cursed" as being ideologically "unclean"
-- cannot hold positions in government.
Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, a professor at the University of
Indonesia's School of Law, brought up the basic question of what
exactly a "political crime" is and who has the right to judge
whether or not a person could be punished because of a "political
crime".
"How do you actually define a political crime?" she asked.
A study she had conducted showed, she said, that even the
courts and the jails did not agree on the proper use of the term,
resulting in different statistics under the term "political
detainees".
Inhumane
Franz Magnis-Suseno, a professor from the Driyarkara School of
Philosophy, and Aswab Mahasin, a religious scholar and a teacher
at the Institute for Research, Education, Economic and Social
Information, both considered the continued punishment of ex-
political criminals to be "inhumane."
Magnis-Suseno viewed the "guilt and shame" inherited by
descendants of ex-political criminals as a punishment which is
given simply as a means of revenge, while Aswab described this as
an "inherited sin".
"No matter how guilty a person was, is it humane to make him
continue paying for his crime after these 30 years -- and for the
rest of his life?" Magnis-Suseno asked.
The Sep. 30, 1965 abortive coup has been brought up again and
again "for the sake of political opportunists", he said.
Aswab said that the institution of inherited sins was against
the basic notion of "a just and civilized humanity" contained in
Pancasila.
"We have to see a person as a human being, as a subject with
rights and responsibilities... Justice and harmony can only be
achieved by guaranteeing a balance of all forces, not by
eliminating an opposing force or by establishing uniformity. True
democracy does not recognize such a thing as a political
detainee," he said.(pwn)