RI's anti-separatism bid fueled rights abuses: Amnesty

RI's anti-separatism bid fueled rights abuses: Amnesty

Agencies, London/Jakarta

Indonesia resorted to increasingly repressive methods last year
in its attempts to crush separatist movements in Aceh and Papua
provinces, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

In its annual report, the human rights group reported a rise
in extrajudicial executions, "disappearances", arbitrary
detention, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement and
destruction of property since martial law was declared and a
military operation launched in Aceh on May 19, 2003.

The report, however, did not get much marks from the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs.

"With its track record, nothing that Amnesty says surprises us
anymore," foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa told The
Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

"Come what may, with or without such a report, the government
and people remain steadfast in working toward the promotion of
human rights in Indonesia," he said.

Amnesty also criticized Indonesia's Antiterrorism Law, which
was enacted in 2003, saying it did not fully guarantee suspects'
rights. It said there were reports that a number of Islamist
activists had been tortured or ill-treated.

Police have denied torturing terror suspects.

Marty said the accusation was baseless.

"Indonesia has been consistent in dealing with the threat of
terrorism in a manner consistent with the principle of civil
liberties and human rights."

Amnesty noted that tight restrictions on access to Aceh
effectively prevented independent monitoring.

Official sources say over 1,100 people had been killed by the
end of 2003, including 470 civilians, but local rights groups
claimed that many more civilians were among the dead, Amnesty
said.

In addition, tens of thousands of people were displaced by the
military operations, some forcibly, while people detained as
members or sympathizers of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) "were at
risk of torture or ill-treatment, apparently routine in military
and police custody".

GAM was also found to be guilty of human rights abuses,
including kidnapping.

Amnesty said peaceful expressions of support for independence
in Papua, at the other end of the archipelago, were banned and
several people were jailed unlawfully, and that military
operations against both armed and peaceful independence activists
in Papua had "also resulted in human rights violations, including
arbitrary detention and torture".

It quoted reports from the National Commission on Human Rights
(Komnas-HAM) as saying seven people were killed during an April
2003 military operation in Jayawijaya, Papua, to recover weapons
allegedly stolen by separatists.

During the operation, "villagers were allegedly tortured and
ill-treated, and houses and other property were destroyed or
damaged".

Amnesty also lashed out at other Southeast Asian countries
that made little progress on the human rights front in 2003, with
many of them using perceived internal and global security threats
to curtail freedoms.

The global human rights organization expressed concern about
every country in Southeast Asia, saying a penchant for unfair
jail sentences and capital punishment was a common theme across
the region.

Amnesty pointed out that the death penalty was legal in all
Southeast Asian countries, with the Philippines lifting a ban on
capital punishment and Myanmar sentencing journalists and
political activists to death in 2003.

While thousands of people are on death row in Southeast Asia,
executions were reported to have been carried out only in
Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Amnesty also singled out the government of Laos for its
handling of armed conflict, while criticizing that country for
its stepped-up military campaign against the ethnic Hmong tribe
in a long-running but little-known conflict that was only
publicized in 2003 after Western journalists reported on the
situation.

Myanmar was again criticized for its ongoing crackdown against
Aung San Suu Kyi and her democracy movement.