YLBHI gives thumbs down on rights record
YLBHI gives thumbs down on rights record
JAKARTA (JP): Despite a few bright points, the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) gave Indonesia's overall performance in upholding human rights this year the thumbs down yesterday.
The foundation, in a statement marking tomorrow's international human rights day, highlighted torture and cruelty, and repeated denial of people's rights of association and expression, as marring Indonesia's record throughout 1995.
"Various forms of torture and inhuman and cruelty treatments outside the judiciary system continued to take place, although such human rights violations have now become easily detected by the public, and the government has taken corrective legal and administrative steps," the statement read.
The foundation pointed to the killing of villagers in Liquisa, East Timor and Timika, Irian Jaya, to illustrate its point. In both cases, the government and the National Commission on Human Rights took steps to remedy the situation.
The foundation noted that the security apparatus was still insisting that those incidents occurred during its operations to wipe out "security disturbance groups", or GPK, the term usually used by the military to describe armed separatist movements.
The military saw these incidents as resulting from procedural errors, not from errors in policy or substance. "The GPK stigma gave justification to summary executions and other forms of violence in these incidents," the foundation stated.
The foundation stated that people's right to associate was still being trampled by the authorities, particularly the police, using various legal instruments that empowered them to take preventive, restrictive and repressive measures.
As examples, it cited the bans against the Indonesian Democratic Party to hold its meetings and against the Indonesian Prosperous Labor Union in North Sumatra.
People's right to express their opinion has been the target of the state's "repressive" measures during the year, they stated.
It pointed to the prosecutions against three members of the Alliance of Independent Journalists, Ahmad Taufik, Eko Maryadi and Danang, Pijar Foundation activist Triagus, SBSI's leader Mochtar Pakpahan, soothsayer Permadi Satrio Wiwoho and politician Sri Bintang Pamungkas.
There were also restrictions imposed through the allegations of threats from "new forms of communism", "new leftist", "formless organizations" and others that were thrown in by the authorities.
On the political front, the foundation noted with concern a political system that allowed for the withdrawal of vocal politicians like Bambang Warih Koesoemo and Sri Bintang Pamungkas.
The brighter points of the year occurred in the judiciary.
The foundation noted the Supreme Court's acquittal of the people convicted for the murder of labor activist Marsinah, and the Jakarta district court's ruling in favor of the foundation in its lawsuit against the police for banning one of its seminar as examples of where the judiciary has shown to retain some independence.
The state administrative courts have also at times, though not always, showed their courage to go against the government, as exemplified in their rulings for the Tempo magazine, which was suing the government for closing it down, and for scholar Arief Budiman, who was suing the authorities for dismissing him from the Christian Satyawacana University in Salatiga.
In conclusion, the foundation urged the government to quickly ratify international conventions on human rights and use human rights as its sociopolitical parameters in running the administration and implementing policies. (01)