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delegation of government officials led by Law and Human Rights Deputy Minister Denny Indrayana is slated to visit the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.

The mission of the visit is to learn about academic argumentation and the administrative and the technical procedures required for the ratification of the 1998 Rome Statute, according to a statement of the ministry made available to The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

“This will be an important initial step toward the ratification of the statute, which will serve to protect all Indonesians from any possible extraordinary crimes in the future and to ensure that they are subject to the ICC and international law,” Denny said in the statement.

The deputy minister said that he also wanted a definitive answer from the ICC on a lingering question that has dogged the country’s legal experts.

“Will crimes that were committed in the past but categorized as ongoing without a statute of limitations, such as forced disappearances, be subject to ICC scrutiny?” Denny said.

Currently, the ICC can only investigate serious crimes that were committed after the Rome Statute came into force in 2002.

The ICC investigates and adjudicates cases in nations that have ratified the statute, except under certain conditions as determined by the UN Security Council.

Ratification of the Rome Statute will allow the ICC to intervene in the nation’s judicial system to investigate and prosecute gross violations of human rights, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.

Human rights groups have repeatedly called on the government to ratify the statute to uphold justice and protect human rights as mandated by the 1945 Constitution.

Activists have said that the government’s reluctance to ratify the statute would only give impunity to human rights violators.

Others have said that the Indonesian Military (TNI) had been in the forefront in rejecting the statute’s ratification, which was feared might pave the way for the prosecution of generals allegedly involved in rights abuses.

As of February, 121 member nations of the UN were party to the Rome Statute. A further 31 countries have signed but not ratified it.

Indonesia has so far only stated that it supports adoption of the Rome Statute by adopting the National Plan of Action on Human Rights in 2004, which stated that the government intended to ratify the statute by 2008.

After more than four years, the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has pushing to establish an ad hoc human rights tribunal to hear cases of gross human rights violations that took place during the May 1998 riots, which some say may be a stumbling block to the presidential aspirations of Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party chief patron Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto.

— Jp/Bagus BT Saragih