Jan. 21, 2016

The government must take a real step toward settling unresolved human rights abuses by first issuing a national apology to the victims and their families in a bid to move forward as a nation, a non-governmental organization has said.

The International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) called on President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo to issue a government regulation arranging settlement of the past human rights violations that still shadow Indonesia as a country.

'€œPresident Jokowi should apologize to the victims and their families since they have been victims of past government policies, as well as to Indonesia in an acknowledgement of past wrongdoings so that we can all move on as a nation,'€ INFID senior program officer for Human Rights and Democracy Mugiyanto told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Your comments:

By murdering people? During the Soeharto years, Oct. 1 was set aside as a day to mark the '€œsanctity'€ of the state ideology Pancasila against a communist takeover attempt.

Those who chose the date did not seem to see the irony that the second of the five principles of Pancasila is '€œhumanitarianism'€. There was nothing humane about the mass killing of fellow citizens.

Since the killing was never officially documented, no one knows exactly how many people died during the carnage in 1965 and 1966. Estimates ranged from a conservative 500,000 to 2 or 3 million people. Many historians regard this as the worst genocide since the Nazi Holocaust.

The main difference is, in the case of Indonesia the deniers ruled and they still do. Force and violence today are still used to settle differences or to bully people into submission.

Although the military has stepped out of politics and national security is now the domain of the police, the political culture it left behind is still widely felt and, from time to time, rears its ugly head.

One problem is society'€™s prevailing attitude toward the massacre, ranging from a complete denial to a justification that it was an inevitable and necessary killing.

Even when they recognize that the massacre of communists took place, the old guard claims it was a necessary killing. They believed then and still do today that the communists would have killed them if they had not acted first. So long as such attitudes take hold, those who expect an apology from the state will have to continue to wait.

Willo1246

The US Congress made an apology to Native Americans in 2009.

Does that make it Indonesia'€™s turn to apologize?

RDT

US President Barack Obama signed the Native American apology resolution in 2009.

So now perhaps, it is time for Indonesia to apologize. Please, no more excuses. Especially not ones with no logical connection to the subject at hand.

Randomthought

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