For an administration that has been vociferous on following through with the letter of the law, the government of President Joko Widodo has shown a callous and wanton disregard for human rights.
By Jakarta Globe on 10:41 pm May 22, 2015
For an administration that has been vociferous on following through with the letter of the law, the government of President Joko Widodo has shown a callous and wanton disregard for human rights.
Attorney General H.M. Prasetyo, the frequently gleeful official behind the executions of drug convicts earlier this year, has made a big show about how the government wants to address past human rights abuses. The catch? There will be no prosecutions of violators; only attempts at “reconciliation” between the families of the victims and their persecutors, and vague “non-judiciary” resolutions.
In murdering the likes of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran by firing squad last month, the president and his henchman Prasetyo insisted repeatedly that they were simply following through on court rulings handed down years earlier; they failed to consider the fact that the condemned had genuinely reformed and were active in helping other inmates turn a new leaf.
So why should the army-backed militiamen who slaughtered up to half a million alleged communist sympathizers in the 1965-66 purge not be subject to the same unrelenting course of justice? There is no statute of limitations on murder – and apparently no consideration for character reformation in Joko’s book, remember?
Why should A.M. Hendropriyono, the general behind the Talangsari massacre, who continues to enjoy close ties to Joko’s patron, Megawati Soekarnoputri, not be brought to justice for the deaths of innocents?
Prasetyo’s so-called “reconciliation committee” borrows from South Africa’s exemplary Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The reason the latter proved instrumental in reuniting a country long riven by a racial divide was that it had the blessing of truly great moral authorities like Nelson Mandela and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the willing participation of the one-time stewards of apartheid.
In Indonesia, where the perpetrators continue to justify or obscure their crimes, and even blame the victims, such a commission could never work. We simply don’t have the moral leaders in our government to make it work.
