T

he Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) has issued a report detailing the government'€™s failure to protect basic human freedoms across the country in 2015.

The Kontras investigation has found that there have been at least 283 cases in which human freedoms have been violated in 2015.

'€œBasic human freedom has four components freedom from fear, freedom of speech, freedom of worship and freedom from want. However, it has been hard for the people to express their aspirations, because they are afraid of being criminalized,'€ Kontras coordinator Haris Azhar told reporters at a press conference during the Human Rights Day commemoration in Jakarta.

Kontras found that a majority of the violations related to the forced dispersal of street protests, the forced closure of places of worship and unwarranted arrests.

The rights watchdog group found that the police were the main culprits, as they had been named in 85 human rights violation cases, the Indonesian Military (TNI) were involved in 17, while other government agencies had been responsible for a further 49 cases.

Kontras said that the police had not given priority to the consideration of human rights as they had considered it to be a trend.

'€œThe institution admits to being democratic, but it does not put the ideology into practice'€, Haris said.

During its research, Kontras found that a wide variety of individuals had been subject to violations by the police.

'€œThe criminalization does not simply target average ordinary people. We have discovered that students, journalists, activists and laborers have been targeted when they have attempted to express themselves, to exercise their freedom of speech,'€ said Puri Kencana Putri, Kontras Deputy Coordinator for Strategy and Mobilization.

The rights group also found that there had been an increase in the severity of violations during 2015.

One of the most serious cases involved Salim Kancil, who was murdered in October, after he co-organized a protest against invasive sand mining practices occurring in his village in East Java.

To date, none of his attackers have been prosecuted and the murder case remains in limbo.

As President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has continued to show disregard for the issue, future promotion of human rights throughout the country could fall by the wayside, added Haris.

'€œThe President has the tendency to allow officials on the ground to respond to human rights issues according to their own best judgement,'€ he said.

Separately, the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam) called on President Jokowi to immediately take concrete steps to resolve past human rights abuse cases as well as to incorporate human rights into relevant government policies.

'€œAs the President, he has an essential role in determining the direction of human rights [promotion in Indonesia],'€ Wahyudi Djafar of Elsam said.

Wahyudi also urged the House of Representatives to apply human rights principles when drafting laws and regulations and called on Jokowi to be resolute in bringing closure to past human rights abuses.

'€œPeople are waiting for the President to take real action in ensuring that the state play its role in resolving past human rights abuse cases,'€ Wahyudi said.

Although the government had expressed the commitment to resolve a number of past human rights violations, the Attorney General'€™s Office has not yet followed up on the results of an investigation conducted by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) on past rights abuses.