Thoughts on human rights

More than two-and-a-half years after the fall of the authoritarian New Order regime -- and 52 years after the United Nations passed the historic Universal Declaration on Human Rights -- some very basic issues concerning people's basic rights continue to bother this nation.

For sure, the process of change that started rolling with president Soeharto's forced resignation on May 22, 1998, and culminating in the installation of President Abdurrahman Wahid in October, 1999, has brought many positive developments where this particular issue is concerned.

With a newly empowered national legislature and human rights watchdogs keeping a tireless eye on the government, arbitrary action against dissenting citizens by the state has been drastically reduced, although it must be said that the use of excessive force and violence still occur in a number of regions, especially those where secessionist and sectarian conflicts are raging.

In all fairness, it must be said that the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid has so far shown a sincere interest in upholding human rights, even to the point of putting a Cabinet minister in charge of the issue. There is also no reason to doubt the sincerity of the President's concerns over the conduct of security officers in troubled areas, where combatants on both sides easily lose self-control in the heat of battle.

Unfortunately, to note all this is not to say that the willful violation of human rights has ceased to be an issue in this country. Last week, even as the world was marking international human rights day, Amnesty International and the New York-based Human Rights Watch reported that a number of local aid workers were killed "execution style" by government security forces.

Similarly, gross human rights violations committed by both sides in ongoing religious and sectarian violence in Maluku continue to occur, although the situation there has apparently calmed down considerably compared to a few months earlier.

But lest we allow such current improvements in our human rights to whitewash our human rights record, let us not forget that none of the most flagrant human rights violations that were committed by security personnel in the not-so-distant past have, as yet, to be resolved. Indonesians are notorious for having a short memory where such issues are concerned.

Who, for example, still remembers the indescribably human tragedy of May 12 to May 15, 1998, in which more than 1,000 people are believed to have been killed and an uncounted number of women raped? What has become of the so-called Trisakti Incident, in which four students in the prime of their lives were shot dead by still-unidentified gunmen? And what about the Semanggi shooting incident and the disappearance of political dissenters from 1996 through 1968? Not one of those cases has been satisfactorily resolved.

The struggle to protect human rights in this country appears at present to be gradually slowing down, even as Indonesians continue to pay lip service to the issue. Gross violations continue, notably in the remote provinces of Maluku, Irian Jaya and Aceh. The real danger is that Indonesians, absorbed as they are in the political squabbles that are being fought out in Jakarta, gradually start losing interest in what is going on. Because if that happens all the talk about democratic reform and sacrifices that have been paid will have been in vain.