Rights body announces new members today
JAKARTA (JP): The National Commission on Human Rights is scheduled to announce today four new members to replace those who have died.
Commission activist Clementino Dos Reis Amaral said yesterday that the new members will be selected from about 20 candidates, three of them women. Candidates names were proposed by commission members.
"The nominees come from different backgrounds, there are politicians, academics, NGO activists, retired military officers and a member of the Petisi 50," Amaral told The Jakarta Post.
Spearheaded by Jakarta governor Lt. Gen. (ret.) Ali Sadikin, Petisi 50 is known as a group of government critics.
Commission chairman Munawir Sjadzali said recently that two of the four new members will be experts in the fields of labor and land disputes. He said many of the complaints filed to the commission were human rights violations in those two fields.
The commission statutes say the commission formed by the government in 1993 must comprise 25 members with personal integrity, capability, knowledge, and commitment to improving Indonesia's human rights record. Membership should reflect the pluralism of Indonesian society.
The four members who have died are A. Hamid S. Attamimi, Ign. Djoko Moeljono, former Supreme Court chief Ali Said, and police general Roekmini Koesoemo Astoeti.
Today's election is the first by the commission since it was founded. Its first members were appointed by President Soeharto.
Munawir, former minister for religious affairs and a respected Moslem scholar, was elected chairman in October with Baharuddin Lopa serving as the commission's secretary general.
The commission has won respect, even from rights activists, since its establishment and it has been flooded with requests for investigations on a variety of cases.
Last year it received 3,321 letters, more than half of them related to rights violations in land acquisitions, house demolitions, labor disputes and torture of prison inmates. The commission helped investigate, solve or clarify 867 cases last year, up from 572 cases in 1994. (08)