I

ndonesia could learn from Rwanda'€™s application of '€œindigenous'€ resolutions to past rights abuse cases, according to former Dutch minister for international development co-operation Jan Pronk.

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, up to one million people perished and at least 250,000 women were raped, leaving the country'€™s population traumatized and its infrastructure decimated. Since then, Rwanda has embarked on an ambitious justice and reconciliation process with the ultimate aim of all Rwandans once again living side-by-side in peace.

According to the UN, more than 120,000 people were detained and accused of bearing criminal responsibility for their participation in the killings.

To deal with the huge number of perpetrators, the country agreed to the formation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the UN in 1994.

The country also decided to hear rights abuse cases through the national court system as well as through a traditional community court system called gacaca, re-established by the government in 2005.

Under the international tribune, the prime minister during the genocide, Jean Kambanda, was sentenced to life in prison, while politician Jean-Paul Akayesu was convicted of nine counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, both in 1998.

Gacaca, Pronk said, was an '€œindigenous'€ way of solving legal problems. Under the system, communities at the local level elected judges to hear the trials of genocide suspects accused of all crimes except the planning of genocide.

'€œThe victims are the first to speak. And they all have to repeat the stories and those who were seen as the possible perpetrators have to listen, but they'€™re also allowed to say something. Otherwise, it'€™s unbalanced,'€ Pronk said on Tuesday after giving a public lecture, entitled '€œThe Geography of Human Rights'€, at the Yap Thiam Hien Foundation in Jakarta.

The courts gave lesser sentences if the accused was repentant and sought reconciliation with the community. Often, those who freely confessed returned home without further penalty, or received community service orders.

The system also served to promote reconciliation by providing a means for victims to learn the truth about the death of their family members and relatives, while perpetrators had the opportunity to confess their crimes, show remorse and ask for forgiveness from their community.

'€œ[The community trials] weren'€™t Western but African. They may not have given satisfaction to the Western feelings of righteousness, but they brought a fair degree of justice to people in Rwanda and did contribute to the healing of society,'€ Pronk said in his lecture.

Rwanda now has at least six reconciliation villages where perpetrators and genocide survivors live as neighbors, although tensions remain.

'€œUnderstanding everything may easily lead to forgiving everything,'€ Pronk added.

In Indonesia, there have been instances of reconciliation between victims and perpetrators taking place at the local level, but not yet on a national scale.

According to Nurlaela '€œElla'€ Lamasitudju, secretary-general of the Solidarity with Human Rights Violation Victims organization in Central Sulawesi, Palu municipality was the first region to adopt a local-justice mechanism.

In 2012, victims and families of the 1965 communist purge attended an event at which those involved in the mass killings confessed publically.

'€œThe victims accepted perpetrators'€™ apologies sincerely, without rancor. Moreover, given that the [communist] party no longer exists, we didn'€™t speak of communist or anticommunist,'€ Ella told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. (rbk)