The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has called on the government to honor its pledge to address issues relating to the 1965-1966 communist purge by taking into consideration measures already taken by then-Palu mayor Rusdy Mastura.

Komnas HAM commissioner Roichatul Aswidah said on Wednesday that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration had made little substantial progress, even though the President had promised to do so during his election campaign.

“What I mean by little progress is that there has been no serious effort shown by the government, even though there are two possible ways to address it: through the judicial mechanism stipulated in the 2000 Human Rights Court Law or the establishment of an ad-hoc commission, which is stipulated in the National Mid-Term Development Plan [RPJMN],” Roichatul told reporters on the sidelines of a book by Rusdy at the Komnas HAM office in Central Jakarta.

Komnas HAM has conveyed its investigations into six past gross human rights violations, including the 1965-1966 purge as a result of an attempted coup blamed on the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), in the hope that the latter would take the dossier to the hearing process. However, there has been no follow up by the AGO until now.

Meanwhile, according to the RPJMN, the other option in addressing past human rights cases is the establishment of an ad-hoc commission under direct supervision of Jokowi to facilitate the efforts to properly investigate cases in order to find means to resolve them.

Roichatul said the commission hoped the government would “show remorse by acknowledging what happened in the past so that those gross human rights violations will not take place in the future”.

She said the central government could take as an example what Rusdy had done in his efforts to deal with the 1965 issue in Palu.

In 2013, Rusdy issued a mayoral decree on a human rights action plan, after finding that Palu residents, who were families of victims of the 1965 tragedy, were living in poverty.

“Through the decree, I can make programs to better their life, such as providing assistance for them to rebuild their houses and allowing them to take the civil service test. Previously, most of them were afraid to take the test due to their status as families of people accused of communist affiliation in the past,” Rusdy said.

On Monday, the President said during a breaking-of-the-fast event with the Indonesian Military that he would not apologize to former members of the PKI.

The move was made to counter rumors of a planned government apology. (mos)

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