*IBRAHIM ISA'S FOCUS ---**
ON INDONESIA'S HUMAN RIGHTS CONDITIONS**
Thursday, August 02, 2012*
*----------------------------------------*
*Indonesia's Collective Amnesia*
**Indonesia Faces Up to 1965 **
*Attorney General Office: No Prosecutions On 1965 Violations*
*Amnesty International: Past rights abuse may hinder RI's global role *
*/Memories of 'Petrus' resurface after three decades/*
*Amnesty International condemns police brutality*
*Is this the beginning of the end for our civil liberties?*
*----------------------------------------------------------*
*Indonesia's Collective Amnesia*
Endy Bayuni, Jakarta | Opinion | Wed, August 01 2012,
Last week, the National Commission on Human Rights, an independent state
body, released its findings from a four-year investigation into the 1965
purge of suspected communists.
The commission concludes that the Army-led campaign amounted to a gross
violation of human rights. It urged the government to prosecute the
perpetrators and compensate victims and survivors. It also called upon
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to issue a public apology.
But the report failed to generate much public interest, if the reaction
of the country's major newspapers is any indication. They either ignored
the story or buried it in the inside pages --- which made for a jarring
contrast to the hysterical headlines devoted to shooting in faraway
Denver recently. But then the mainstream media have always been
complicit in the conspiracy of silence over the killings, whether
knowingly or out of ignorance.
The killing campaign in 1965 and 1966 was unleashed after an abortive
coup against president Sukarno in October 1965 that the Army blamed on
the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Although the massacre happened on
Sukarno's watch, he had by then become a lame-duck president.
The report instead put the blame squarely on the Command for the
Restoration of Security and Order led by Gen. Soeharto, who went on to
become president in 1967. The commission's recommendation only says that
those most responsible should be prosecuted, though it gives no specific
names.
In spite of its massive scale, the killing campaign has been shrouded in
mystery. No one --- the Human Rights Commission included --- has ever
been able to put a figure on how many were killed. Estimates range from
a conservative 200,000 to as many as 3 million, a figure once boastingly
cited by Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, who headed the military campaign at the
time as chief of the Army's Special Forces.
The Soeharto regime banned any discussion of the entire episode,
including the massacre and the circumstances surrounding the transfer of
power. For more than three decades, only the military's version of
history was allowed to circulate. The veil of silence was lifted only
some years after Soeharto stepped down in 1998.
Official history books today still treat the episode as an attempt by
the PKI, then the world's largest communist party in a non-communist
state, to grab power. They make no mention of the ensuing massacre of
party members, their sympathizers and relatives, and even many innocent
bystanders, or the harsh treatments meted out to the survivors in the
aftermath of the killings.
The report, the most detailed study ever carried out on the massacre,
lists the types of crimes committed, including murder, slavery, forced
disappearances, limits to physical freedom, torture, rape, persecution
and forced prostitution. It also says the killing was widespread across
most major islands in the archipelago, and not confined to Java, Sumatra
and Bali, as had been widely believed. The study also identified at
least 17 mass graves where the victims were buried.
Although Indonesians who went through the period are aware of the
killings, most have turned a blind eye, and many have even managed to
erase them from memory. They accepted the official version that the
military had saved Indonesia from communism, and, by logical conclusion,
that Soeharto and his military cohorts were the heroes of the day.
Time will tell how far the report will go to break these long years of
the conspiracy of silence about the killings, and whether it will
succeed in jolting the nation out of its collective amnesia. The report
also calls for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation
commission to look into the tragedy.
Scholars attempting to study the killings say that many of the
perpetrators and the surviving victims have refused to be interviewed
for events that they said were too traumatic to recount. A few, however,
have been brave enough to break their silence, as captured in the film
documentary 40 Years of Silence --- An Indonesian Tragedy.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for whom the report was prepared,
responded positively by ordering the office of the attorney general to
look into the recommendations, including considering the prosecution of
those most responsible for the killings. His office has also said that
the President is considering an official apology on behalf of the state
for all the human rights violations committed against its own citizens.
All the key players in the killing campaign, however, are dead: Soeharto
died in 2008, his deputy Adm. Sudomo this past April, and Sarwo Edhie,
in 1989. It will be interesting to see how far the Indonesian Military,
or Yudhoyono for that matter, are prepared to see their seniors tried in
absentia or be dragged through the dirt in the event that the truth and
reconciliation commission is formed. Yudhoyono, a military general
himself, is the son-in-law of Sarwo Edhie.
Many human rights activists have their doubts. They note that a report
by the same commission about the mass rape of Chinese-Indonesians during
rioting in 1998 never received any follow-up from the office of the
attorney general.
The release of the report was hailed as a milestone by a handful of
victims and survivors who had been seeking justice all these years. For
most Indonesians, it was a non-event.
In one of the rare public reactions to the report, Priyo Budi Santoso, a
senior politician from the Golkar Party, said that wallowing in the past
was unproductive for the nation.
"It is better if we move forward," said Priyo, whose party provided the
political machine that sustained Soeharto in power for more than three
decades.
Tragically, he probably spoke for most of the people in this country.
Anyone wondering why the systemic culture of impunity, and with it the
culture of violence, are so notoriously strong in Indonesia, may have
found the answer this week. They are deeply embedded, along with the
nation's collective amnesia.
/The writer is senior editor of The Jakarta Post. This article first
appeared in the Transitions section of Foreign Policy magazine's website
transitions.foreignpolicy.com./
/* * */
*Indonesia Faces Up to 1965 *
By A. Lin Neumann ,Tuesday, 31 July 2012
**Now it can be discussed **
An official commission finally looks at the massacres that ushered
Suharto into power
We hear a lot about the greatness that is just around the corner for
Indonesia, and much of it rings true. There is a palpable sense of
becoming in the air, as if the country has woken up from a long slumber
and is finally finding its way. "There is just a bit more swagger in our
step," one wealthy young businessman told me recently. Much of this, of
course, is down to a huge domestic market with sufficient buying power
to insulate the country somewhat from the shocks that are battering
Europe, the US and parts of Asia.
But there is more to greatness than rising GDP and tall buildings. Part
of any nation's greatness is surely the ability to come to grips with
its own history. By this measure, Indonesia's official blindness over
the events of 1965 has fallen far short.
That may be changing. Last week, the National Commission on Human Rights
(Komnas HAM) declared after a four-year investigation that the
persecution and murders of alleged communists after a botched 1965 coup
was a gross human rights violation. The body noted incidents of murder,
slavery, forced eviction, torture, rape and other abuses committed by
the military in the name of fighting communism.
The commission shied away from naming names but it did say that military
officers from the time should stand trial, if any of them are still
alive. The agency at the center of the killings, the commission
concluded, was the shadowy Operational Command for the Restoration of
Security and Order (Kopkamtib), which then-Gen. Suharto himself
commanded from 1965 to 1967 and used as a vehicle for his rise to power.
For some perplexing reason, most Western news agencies based in Jakarta
ignored the report when it was released last week. They reasoned it was
old news, one editor said. In the words of one prematurely cynical young
foreign correspondent with little experience in Asia, "Nothing will
happen anyway."
In my view, the report is a major step forward for Indonesia, marking
the first time the country has come close to opening an official
dialogue of any kind on a bloodbath that set villager against villager
in an orgy of violence that reshaped the country's politics for more
than a generation. It may not result in court trials but it should at
least remove the cloak of silence from a national tragedy.
One of the report's authors, Nur Kholis, the vice chairperson of Komnas
Ham, described for me last week a painstaking process over four years of
going from village to village in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Bali, Java and
elsewhere to meet with survivors and victims. The commission not only
found evidence of mass murder but also documented cases of accused
leftists who were rounded up and kept in conditions of slavery for
nearly a decade at numerous prison camps. Indeed, it was not until this
century that those who were imprisoned at the time had their full
citizenship rights restored.
It was all done, Nur Kholis recounted, with the cold precision of a
military operation. There were lists of supposed communists in the hands
of soldiers who would enter villages and oversee the killing. Often
neighbors would point out neighbors who would subsequently be hauled
away or simply executed. "We owe it to the victims," he said quietly.
"They deserve some justice."
Nur Kholis and others hope that the report and its aftermath will begin
a process of healing that the country has so far avoided. Coming as it
did during the Cold War, with the escalation of US involvement beginning
in Vietnam, the interest shown by the CIA and other Western powers in
the events of 1965 has been well documented. With Indonesia now a rising
power, perhaps the nation can finally come to terms with its dark history.
The details of the supposed communist "coup" attempt that led to the
violence that killed hundreds of thousands of people -- estimates vary
from 300,000 to 3 million have been obscured and covered up for
decades, despite the horrors of the brutality. Officially, the coup
attempt, which claimed the lives of six top generals in the early
morning hours of Oct. 1, 1965, was blamed on the Indonesian Communist
Party, which was close to Sukarno at the time. The subsequent massacres
of alleged leftists -- many of them no more than illiterate villagers
has never been officially explained. Suharto took full control of the
country from Sukarno in 1967 -- after the massacres were largely completed.
In a 1978 article in the New York Review of Books regarding 1965,
Cornell University scholars Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey cite an
internal report made by the CIA on the events that swept over Indonesia
that year.
"In terms of the numbers killed, the anti-PKI [Indonesian Communist
Party] massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of
the twentieth century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the
Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath
of the early 1950s," the CIA report concluded. "In this regard, the
Indonesian coup is certainly one of the most significant events of the
twentieth century, far more significant than many other events that have
received much more publicity."
Despite the fact, about all that most people here seem to have been told
is that Sukarno was followed by Gen. Suharto and the New Order regime
and the whole thing was kind of messy. The events of 1965, beyond the
deaths of the six generals, are not taught in schools here. The dead
generals are treated as national heroes.
In ordering the Attorney General's Office to follow up on the
commission's conclusions, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose own
father-in-law served as a general in the armed forces during the time of
the purges, set the legal process in motion and made good on his
frequent talk of national reconciliation. In citing the need for a
"just, factual, smart and constructive settlement," Yudhoyono noted the
experiences of South Africa, Cambodia and other countries that have had
to contend with a dark and violent legacy.
Indonesia is no longer the perilous place it was for the first five
decades after independence. Government power now changes hands
peacefully and democratically, which allows the economy and the people
to prosper. The many problems the country faces are discussed openly in
the media.
Coming to grips with history can be unsettling. But the Komnas HAM
report could spur the kind of national introspection that will deepen
Indonesia's understanding of itself. And out of that process, a measure
of greatness might emerge.
(A. Lin Neumann is a co-founder of Asia Sentinel and is the host of
Insight Indonesia, a talk show on BeritaSatu TV in Jakarta. A version of
this article appeared in the Jakarta Globe.)
* * *
*Attorney General Office: No Prosecutions On 1965 Violations*
The Jakarta Post | National | Wed, August 01 2012,
Despite a recommendation from the National Commission on Human Rights
(Komnas HAM) to follow up on the 1965 rights violations, the Attorney
General's Office (AGO) says it is unlikely any cases will be brought to
court.
Deputy Attorney General Darmono said the 1965 human rights violations
cases would instead be settled through reconciliation or out-of-court
settlements.
"Reconciliation is the preferred option as long as there is hard
evidence," Darmono said late on Monday as quoted by Antara news agency.
Concluding its four-year inquiry into the 1965 purge following the
alleged abortive coup by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), Komnas
HAM declared that gross human rights violations did take place.
Komnas HAM demanded that the AGO begin an official investigation as a
follow-up to the commission's inquiry. Darmono argued that the 1965
rights violations could not be settled in an ad hoc human rights court
as stipulated in Law No. 26/2000 on human rights courts.
"The [human rights] cases from Timor Leste and Tanjung Priok are
exceptions," he added.
"The 1965 rights violations are beyond [the scope of] the existing law,"
he said.
** * **
*Amnesty International: *
*Past rights abuse may hinder RI's global role *
Bagus BT Saragih, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Fri, May 13 2011,
*Indonesia is risking its potential international role should the
government fail to resolve past human rights cases and end all manner of
torture, ill-treatment and discrimination*, UK-based human rights
organization Amnesty International says.
"It will be much more difficult for Indonesia to play a leading role,
particularly on human rights issues, if it does not get its own house in
order," Josef Roy Benedict, Amnesty's campaigner for Indonesia, said
during an interview with The Jakarta Post on Friday.
"*If the Indonesian government wants to be taken seriously by other
nations, it will have to take immediate steps to deal with a range of
human rights issues in the country," *he added.
Indonesia is currently seeking a chance to obtain a seat at the United
Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, boosted by its present chairmanship
of ASEAN. It chaired the council in 2006 and became a member between
2007 and 2010.Josef said Amnesty would continue documenting and
reporting any human rights abuse should Indonesia be elected a member of
the council.
"*The Indonesian government has the duty to resolve past human rights
issues, such as the killing of human rights defender Munir and bringing
the perpetrators to court. We will keep reminding [them of their
duty],"* he said.
In its annual global report, released on Friday, Amnesty says there
remained a considerable number of human rights violations in Indonesia
in 2010, including the "excessive use of force" by authorities, torture
and other ill-treatment, discrimination against minorities, the lack of
protection for domestic workers and *suppression of freedom of expression."*
* * *
/*Memories of 'Petrus' resurface after three decades*/
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Headlines | Thu, July 26 2012,
Sumardi, 44, a Karawang resident says the days when Karawang villagers
repeatedly found bodies from the penembakan misterius (mysterious
shootings), or Petrus, in the area of Citarum River, Karawang, West
Java, remain fresh in his memory.
"I remember it was 1984, and I was 16. We found bodies floating in
Citarum River maybe once every two days, some of them had tattoos, some
had no tattoos at all," he said.
"Some of the bodies got stuck at the edge of the river, while some were
carried away by the current, but we just let them go, hoping the river
would take them to the sea," he added.
Sumardi said that the villagers simply didn't want to get involved.
He said that it was a terrifying time, but he and his family didn't feel
threatened because they knew the killings only targeted specific people.
"We didn't feel threatened because we knew they only went after people
with tattoos and criminal records," he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
One of his neighbors was one of the operation's targets, he said. The
man, a much-feared gang member in the neighborhood, was abducted by a
group of people who looked like military officers in 1984, Sumardi
explained.
"This neighbor of mine was suddenly abducted from a wedding party by a
number people who carried weapons. I saw them push him into a hardtop
jeep. Witnesses said that later that night they saw him being dragged
like an animal and tied up behind the jeep. Since then, we have never
seen him again," he said.
Sumardi is not the only one who still remembers the era of the Petrus
killings as a frightening time.
Yosep Adi Prasetyo, the deputy chairman of the National Commission on
Human Rights (Komnas HAM) remembered that time as a terrorizing period
for his generation. "The Petrus killings have left behind a generation
with scars from tattoo removal. It left a very big hole in our hearts,"
Yosep said.
According to the result of a Komnas HAM investigation announced on
Tuesday, as many as 2,000 bodies of Petrus victims were found in cities
throughout Central and East Java, Bogor in West Java, Jakarta, Palembang
in South Sumatra and Medan in North Sumatra.
Yosep said that according to the Komnas HAM investigation, some of the
victims had been murdered in unusual ways.
"We interviewed doctors, forensics experts, and nurses who had contact
with the victims' bodies, and according to their information, some
victims were killed with gold bullets," Yosep said, in reference to the
belief that people could use black magic to make themselves impervious
to all but gold bullets.
"Some victims had their chests split open with axes when the
perpetrators noticed they were still breathing after being shot," he added.
Asvi Warman Adam, a historian at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences
(LIPI) and a former member of
the 1965 purge investigation team, said that Komnas HAM had found
indications of gross violations of human rights in the Petrus killings
as early as 2003.
"Komnas HAM faced a lot of obstacles in completing this investigation,
that's why the progress was very slow and that is also why I'm not
letting my hopes get too high that the Attorney General's Office [AGO]
will follow up on this case or even take it to the ad hoc human rights
court," he told the Post.
Asvi added that a major hindrance to further investigation by the AGO
was a required recommendation to proceed from the House of Representatives.
"The further investigation is not only up to the AGO but also the House
of Representatives, which makes it a lot harder to finish. As we know a
Golkar politician recently rejected any further investigation of
human-rights violations occurring before 1998. I don't know whether the
government will take serious action to close this case or not," he said.
"I am happy enough knowing that the Komnas HAM finished their
investigation and declared this case as a gross violation of human
rights, because this means they have made it a matter of official
record," he added. *(nad)* * **
*Amnesty International condemns police brutality*
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Thu, April 26 2012,
London-based human rights watchdog, Amnesty International (AI), called
on Indonesian police officers to stop using excessive force when dealing
with peaceful demonstrations in the country.
In a statement released on Tuesday, AI charged Indonesia's police with
beating, shooting and even killing people with no fear of prosecution,
leaving their victims with little hope of receiving justice.
AI's Indonesia Campaign Coordinator, Josef Roy Benedict, said an
independent body should be set up to properly investigate all
allegations of human rights violations but with a mandate to enable it
to submit its findings for prosecution.
"So far, most police personnel who are accused of misconduct are only
subjected to internal proceedings," Josef said.
*
He added that despite over a decade of reform, police officers continue
to be implicated in cases of shooting and beating individuals taking
part in peaceful protests and land disputes, as well as heavy-handed
treatment of suspects during regular arrests.
*Josef said Indonesia had no independent national body to effectively
deal with public complaints about alleged human rights violations by police.
The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the National
Police Commission can accept complaints by the public about police
misconduct, but they have no authority to refer the cases to prosecutors.
AI reported that in December 2011, three people were killed and dozens
injured when 100 people peacefully blocked a road in Bima, West Nusa
Tenggara, in a protest over a mining exploration permit.
Around 600 police personnel, including members of the police's Mobile
Brigade (Brimob), were dispatched to disperse them. According to the
group, the Bima Police chief ordered officers to use force to quell the
protest.
In the subsequent internal disciplinary proceedings, five police
officers were reportedly punished with three days detention for beating
and kicking protesters who put up no resistance.
In North Sumatra, in a land dispute in June 2011 Brimob officers, who
were attempting to forcibly evict a community in Langkat district,
reportedly fired tear gas as well as live and rubber bullets at
villagers defending their homes, injuring at least nine people. *(fzm)*
** * **
*Is this the beginning of the end for our civil liberties?*
Endy Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Commentary | Wed, May 30 2012,
Lady Gaga has canceled her sold-out show in Indonesia over security
concerns after Muslim hard-liners threatened violence if the pop diva
went ahead with her "Born This Way Ball," promoters said Sunday. (AP
Photo/Joel Ryan, File)Indonesia may have lost a lot more than the
opportunity to see Lady Gaga when she canceled her June 3 concert
<http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/05/27/gagas-romance-with-indonesian-little-monsters-ends-badly.html>in
Jakarta last weekend. The episode could mark the beginning of the end
for Indonesia's civil liberties as radical groups continue unabated in
their assault on the nation's freedoms.
Those who care about their freedom should speak up and fight to defend
it rather than busily trying to distance themselves from Lady Gaga and
whatever it is they believe she represents through her songs and stage
appearances.
The news that the American pop diva had canceled her Indonesian gig must
have come as a huge relief to many people, most particularly the police.
The prospect of a violent disruption by the Islam Defenders Front (FPI)
as 52,000fanswatched Lady Gaga at Bung Karno Stadium has now been averted.
Thanks to her, police do not even have to deal with the dilemma of
whether or not to issue a permit. They would be very unpopular with the
conservative Muslims if they decided one way, or earn the wrath of her
young fans if they went the other way.
Lady Gaga has settled the dilemma for the police. She has rightly
refused to comply with the strict requirements regarding her stage
appearance in order to gain a permit, such as submitting in writing the
songs she would sing and the costumes she would wear. And she must have
had her fans as well herself in mind when she spiked her Jakarta date
after police clearly stated that they could not guarantee her or her
fans' safety in view of the protests against her concert.
*
The real losers in this episode, however, are not Lady Gaga and the
52,000 fans who had bought tickets (many of them will be heading to
Singapore where she has apparently added another date to perform, free
from FPI harassment). It is actually the nation that has been made so
much poorer in terms of its freedoms. *
Contrary to what many people believe, even among those who have spoken
for our freedoms in the past, the battle being waged by the FPI and
Muslim conservatives was never really about Lady Gaga. *The stakes were
much higher. This was an assault on our freedom of expression.
It certainly marks the return of censorship on artistic expression, not
by the state as in the past, but by the use of raw mob power. Don't be
so shocked if all Indonesian and non-Indonesian performing artists from
now on are required to submit their song lists as conditions for their
permits. Before long, all types of gatherings will be equally subject to
censorship.*
Coming so close on the heels of the FPI attacks on the promotional tour
by Canadian liberal Muslim writer Irshad Manji, the assault on freedom
of expression is now almost complete. The discussions of her book Allah,
Liberty and Love in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, even those held on
universitycampuses, were forcibly shut down by the FPI with the help of
the police.
Sadly, many Indonesians have been quick to dismiss these events as
problems confined to Lady Gaga and Manji. Performing artists and
scholars who should have been defending their freedom were instead busy
distancing themselves.
It did not escape their Indonesian critics that both Lady Gaga and Manji
are defenders of homosexuality. This could be one reason why many people
in Indonesia, where homophobia runs deep, would have nothing to do with
them.
But as Lady Gaga moves on with her performances elsewhere and sells more
records, and as Manji continues to recruit followers for her moral
courage movement, it is Indonesians who have to brace themselves for
more assaults on their freedoms and civil liberties. Those who think
that the assaults on freedom will stop with Lady Gaga and Manji, and who
thus remain silent, are sorely mistaken. They are the ultimate targets,
and victims.
These two victories have only emboldened the FPI and similar radical
Islamic groups to flex their muscles and torment those who don't follow
their strict moral beliefs. On a winning streak, they must already be
planning their next move and targets.
Just look at the current state of freedom of religion. The silence of
the "silent majority" has allowed the FPI to harass, torment and even
kill followers of religious minorities. The attacks became increasingly
violent and the targets widened because no one, or only very few, spoke
up in defense of the religious freedom of the minorities.
Now freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are about to go the
same way. Don't bank on the police --- the people sustained by
taxpayers' money --- to come and protect our freedoms. In the attacks on
religious minorities and in the episodes with Lady Gaga and Manji,
police were part of the repression.
A pattern is clearly emerging where religious conservatives are pushing
their strict Islamist agenda at the expense of our civil liberties. Not
only do they have representatives in government, in the House of
Representatives and among religious scholars, they also have thugs
working on the streets to impose their agenda by force.
This raises a serious question about where Indonesia is now heading, 14
years after it got rid of the Soeharto dictatorship and launched the
reform movement.
Are we seeing the emergence of a new form of tyranny, one that is
defined more by the strength of the majority? Where are those on the
other side of the fence in this Indonesian version of cultural war? Will
they rise up and speak out to defend Indonesia with all its plurality
and the civil liberties needed to hold this nation together and moving
forward? Or, will they just take these assaults lying ational Police
Traffic Corps headquarters in East Jakarta on Tuesday. The vehicles were
carrying 20 boxes of evidence on a case surrounding the procurement of
vehicle simulators. The KPK named former Traffic Corps chief Insp. Gen.
Djoko Susilo as a suspect on Tuesday and raided the headquarters to
collect evidence. /(JP/Wendra Ajistyatama)/
/* * */
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