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AKARTA: The Indonesian Media Defense Litigation Network (IMDLN) will hand out human rights-themed blogging awards (IHRBA) aimed at encouraging bloggers to write more about the issue.

IMDLN secretary Wahyudi Djafar said on Sunday that the competition was also aimed at encouraging bloggers from various backgrounds to help promote human rights.

“All this time, human rights campaigns are done mostly by activists, intellectuals or journalists, with most of the issues brought up were either too instrumentalist or concerned only with gross human-rights violations, like murders or physical abuse,” he said.

As a result, Djafar said that human right issues were beyond the grasp of ordinary citizens.

He also said that there was so much more to talk about in terms of the issue.

“Human rights also deal with smaller issues such as the rights of pedestrians to use sidewalks,” he said.

Online registration for the competition has been opened to the public since Feb. 27 at hamblogger.org, and will wrap up on May 31.

Indonesia has the largest number of Internet users in Southeast Asia and is ranked 8th in the world, according to data from the Internet World Stat.

There are more than 55 million people who have access to the Internet in Indonesia as of Dec. 31, 2011.

At the present, participants have registered 45 blogs, with total 125 articles, on the IHRBA competition website.

Winners of the competition will be announced on June 29.

Some of judges include Public Interest Lawyer Network (PIL-NET) coordinator Wahyu Wagiman, Information and Communication Technology Watch (ICT Watch) chairman Donny Budi Utoyo, Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) chairman Indriaswati D. Saptaningrum and the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) chairman Ifdhal Kasim.