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The week in review: Spotlight on Indonesia
The country was on the global stage this week for far from enviable reasons in The Hague, where activists and scholars held the International Peopleâs Tribunal 1965 on atrocities following political upheaval in the 1960s
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he country was on the global stage this week for far from enviable reasons in The Hague, where activists and scholars held the International People's Tribunal 1965 on atrocities following political upheaval in the 1960s. Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan said the event from Nov. 10-13 'made no sense' as various elements of state and society ' mass organizations, the military, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and others ' were equally guilty of attacking each other at the time.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla was typically witty, remarking that Indonesians could also 'put the Dutch on trial' here for the deaths of millions under Dutch colonial rule.
These were just two of many statements dismissing the historic, courageous testimony on the international stage of a few elderly survivors who braved the cold weather, their own poor health and the risk of being labeled as 'traitors' back home. For reasons of security their names were not revealed ' although the fact that the tribunal has taken place is also testimony to Indonesia's freedoms today. Foreign and Indonesian researchers, as well as representatives of Indonesia's human rights bodies, also testified at the tribunal led by retired justice Zak Yacoob, a blind judge formerly with South Africa's Constitutional Court.
The location of the tribunal in the Netherlands incurred negative reactions, including from Kalla, whose statement naturally raised recollections of brutal colonial rule. The Hague houses among other bodies the International Court of Justice, also fueling sensationalist headlines about the 'attack on Indonesia's judicial sovereignty'.
Such reports fail to educate the public on the dozens of 'people's tribunals' held to campaign for acknowledgement and pursuance of justice for victims. They are often survivors of human rights violations involving states and state apparatus that it is often impossible to make accountable.
One such people's tribunal was the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo. Though lacking binding verdicts, without the tribunal in 2000, hundreds of thousands of former military sex slaves from Japan's former colonies across Asia, including Indonesia, would have been forgotten in the face of repeated denials from the Japanese government.
Similar to the case of the jugun ianfu survivors, those authorized to act on 1965 pretend to forget that we must race against time. They simply lash out at any 'foreign intervention', saying Indonesia is preparing its 'own ways' to settle the issue. Officials say we aim for reconciliation, but efforts in that direction are so far unseen.
Among other issues we remain unsure about what is to be reconciled; historical textbooks do not, for instance, report the atrocities detailed in the report on the 'gross human rights violations of 1965-1966' released in 2012 by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM). Survivors say at least their names need to be cleared. Unsurprisingly, most remaining survivors have given up.
This is not to mention the survivors of Indonesia's other chapters of similarly unresolved extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, sexual assault, slavery, detention without trial and prolonged stigma and discrimination against survivors and their families ' among the nine counts that prosecutors of the 1965 tribunal said the Indonesian state was responsible for. The crimes were already largely elaborated in the Komnas HAM report, dismissed by Attorney General M. Prasetyo for 'lack of evidence'.
Hopefully this tribunal will help push the way, albeit slowly, to a follow-up to the state report on 1965. Because as writers from Aceh and Papua told the recent Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, prolonged impunity has reproduced senseless violence in whatever name ' if in 1965 it was to 'crush communism', today lawless violence continues on the pretext of security against separatists in Papua, or the perceived right of anyone to take the law into his or her own hands to uphold Aceh's sharia bylaws.
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Our convenient excuse for addressing such urgent problems is that we have too many issues needing immediate attention today. Just look ' the jails of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) are full! The arrest of North Sumatra's councilors this marks just only one of scores of cases of korupsi berjamaah, the popular cynical label for systematic, massive corruption involving regional leaders, lawmakers and others.
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Yet another pressing problem regards the end of the prolonged drought. Smiles appeared this week as more rains led to a cooler capital ' and residents hoped their water supply would run smoothly again.
But as the rains come, Jakarta has still not solved its garbage problem, while property and infrastructure construction continues. This leads us to fear that preparation measures for the next expected round of floods will not be enough to compensate for today's even smaller water-catchment areas.
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At the end of the week, President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo welcomed Australia's new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whom we hope to get to know better, given the relatively short terms of his predecessors. His first visit to Indonesia was accompanied by a large business delegation, reflecting hopes for improved ties among our two peoples, no matter who the leaders are.
' Ati Nurbaiti
