Jakarta cornered by poor rights record
Indeed, as it struggles to pull the country through economic and social hardships, the Indonesian government is finding itself cornered by increasing local and international demands that it bear responsibility for the lack of justice in rights cases.
The questions by the UN panel on Indonesia's rights record ranged from progress in looking into the mass violence in East Timor in the last months of Indonesian control between Jan and Oct 1999, to unresolved rights violations in the provinces of Aceh, Irian Jaya and Maluku.
After the meeting of the UN committee in Geneva late last month, newspapers in the capital Jakarta reported on President Megawati Sukarnoputri's plans to investigate military abuses in the past.
These include the Trisakti and Semanggi cases where university students were killed by security forces during the pro-reform demonstrations in 1998, and the mob killings of Indonesian Chinese there that same year.
Top generals from the military and police will be summoned by the special committee for investigation, reports say.
Mysterious murder
The UN committee meeting itself was held around the time the mysterious murder of a Papuan independence leader, They Hiyo Iluay, captured the attention of both the Indonesian public and the international community.
They, the chair of Papua Presidium Council (PDP), was found dead in his car on Nov 11, leaving behind widespread speculation among Papuans and some human rights organisations in Jakarta that the military was somehow responsible for his death.
While the case is under investigation, international groups like the European Union have demanded the government quickly resolve this case.
International pressure is needed for human rights development in Indonesia, because there is still a lack of information on military andpolice wrongdoing among the public, says Dr Rizal Panggabean from the Centre for Security and Peace Studies, University of Gadja Madah here.
''We have problems of citizens getting killed, but nobody went to court and the public doesn't know what happened,'' he said.
''We need more international pressure definitely, especially in the issues of human rights violations, putting military under civilian control, pushing the military to behave and to act professionally especially in trouble areas,'' he explained.
Complaint system
The meeting in Geneva also produced a recommendation that Indonesia, which presented its report on its reforms in human rights, establish an independent complaint system for investigations into human rights abuses by police and military, especially in relation to torture and similar abuses.
The UN Committee against Torture questioned Indonesia's overall rights performance, criticising its report on its implementation of the convention against torture to the UN panel as being limited and giving little information about practical implementation.
But Nugroho Wisnumurti, Jakarta's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, said the country was improving human rights through reforms in the legal system, the inclusion of a human rights article in the Constitution, the establishment of a human rights court and the separation of the police from the military.
But committee panelists noted that that very few rights cases had received court hearings. In some cases, the committee found punishment too lenient, as in the killing of three UN staffers by mobs in a Timorese refugee camp in September last year. After an investigation by Indonesian government, six men who were found guilty were given only 10 to 20 month jail terms.
Improve understanding
The committee also lamented that Jakarta had not been providing enough access to its appointed official to make investigations in the country, saying that there had been no response from the government to messages sent by the Committee's Special Rapporteur on Torture.
Moreover, ''he was not invited to visit to country despite requests dating back to 1993'' the committee pointed out.
Violence and killings in many Indonesia's conflict areas are widely suspected by the locals and international community as being the result of military or paramilitary operations, prompting analysts to say that work needs to be done to improve understanding between citizens and the military - given the long years of dictatorship in the country.
Meantime, some communities fear that violence - and the rights violations it breeds - are likely to continue even though Indonesia is supposedly moving toward a more democratic society.
Human rights NGOs in Papua, or Irian Jaya, say there are strong indications that the number of victims of violence in Papua could equal or exceed that of East Timor.
In East Timor, which voted to break away from Indonesia in 1999 and is now under UN administration, the estimate of people who have died from war, famine and disease between 1975 and 1999 is about 200,000. Indonesian troops entered East Timor in 1975, and Jakarta annexed it the year after.
Rape victims
A total of 614 deaths and 94 rapes by soldiers of the Indonesian Armed Forces, known by its acronym ABRI, was also recorded by religious groups and tribal people of Paniai in Papua between 1960 to 1998.
According to these groups, nearly all rape victims were students, some in primary school. Their reports also say claim that one of the girls who were raped had been accused of being a child of a member of the armed Free Papua Movement or OPS, which is seeking secession. She was five years old, they add.
Panggabean says the violence against locals by the Indonesian military increases the resentment they feel toward the central government.
''Because they have the Indonesians coming, robbing them and violating their rights, there is a growing awareness of identity in Papua as well as in many conflict areas. It is the 'we are Papuans, you are Indonesians' kind of feeling,'' he said.
