News reports said President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo claimed he had signed a Presidential Decree on the Establishment of the Team of Non-judicial Settlements of Past Gross Human Rights Violations.

Recalling his campaign promises, perhaps, President Jokowi said, “The state, particularly law enforcers and the judiciary, must guarantee safety and a sense of justice.”

As the government is paying “serious attention” to the settlement of past gross human rights violations, Jokowi said, a number of legal instruments were being prepared including a draft law on the truth and reconciliation commission (TRC).

He has probably listened to his advisors on his appropriate legacy at the end of his second and final term in 2024 — although survivors and victims’ families have likely lost count of the “serious attention” pledges of all presidents and other big shots.

Nevertheless this is good news as the TRC never materialized as the Constitutional Court struck down the then TRC law on a legal technicality in 2006.

But what is that Team of Non-judicial Settlements? What would be those “settlements”? And for which “past gross human rights violations”?

Jokowi would be characteristically cautious in approving any “settlement” of any case to avoid rocking the balance of political factions. If political calculations trump the interests of survivors and their families, Jokowi’s one-decade rule faces the legacy of continued impunity instead of the state’s guarantee of safety and justice.

So far the government-sanctioned independent body the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has probed 12 cases of past gross violations of human rights, but the Attorney General’s Office has repeatedly returned the respective files to Komnas HAM, citing a lack of evidence.

The cases include the 1965-1966 mass murders; the 1989 shootings in Talangsari, East Lampung;  the abductions of 1997-1998; two cases in Papua and three cases in Aceh including the torture and killings at the Rumah Geudong in Aceh from 1989-1998;  and three fatal shootings of students in Jakarta in 1998-1999.  The December 2014 shootings in Paniai, Papua, which left four students dead, is scheduled for trial at the nearest ad hoc human rights court later this month in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

The fact-finding teams of some of the above cases included leading human rights defender Munir S. Thalib. He was fatally poisoned on a flight to Amsterdam.

The 18^th anniversary of his death on Sept. 7, 2004 will fall soon — passing the criminal statute of limitations in the case. Thus although the mastermind remains unknown Munir’s murder will never go to trial again despite claims of potential new suspects — unless Komnas HAM declares Munir’s murder a gross human rights violation, which has no such limitation. An ad hoc human rights court for the crime would then be established.

Different interpretations may be in the way — as the Human Rights Court Law defines gross human rights violations as genocide and crimes against humanity targeting a “civilian population”. However activists insist Munir’s murder clearly meets all criteria of a “crime against humanity” listed in the law.  

The earlier trials of Munir’s murder only convicted one suspect, the late Garuda Indonesia airlines pilot whose phone calls believed to relate to Munir’s murder were traced to the then deputy head of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN). The trial of the deputy, Muchdi Purwoprandjono, found him not guilty, so the mastermind and any other possible actors in the crime remain unknown and free — along with all other torturers, kidnappers and perpetrators of extra-judicial killings, rapists etc. in other cases.

Such verdicts, which mostly fail to provide accountability for serious crimes, are found in other cases tried in the human rights courts, like that of the post-referendum violence in Timor Leste.

Therefore some look to “non-judicial settlements” as a possibly quicker way to move on. But again, how will the President decide?

For instance,  the increasingly chummy National Awakening Party (PKB) and Gerindra will likely support  Gerindra leader and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, who has decided for a third time to run for president.

So what “non-judicial settlement” would the government offer to parents of activists who remain missing since they were kidnapped, allegedly by personnel acting for Prabowo? Some of these men are now among respected officials in his ministry.

Or what about a big memorial to at least honor the hundreds of thousands of victims of the communist witch-hunt — while millions of the PKB’s constituents affiliated to Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organization, believe their members rightly killed evil atheists?

Further, rehabilitation of past political prisoners and others who were prosecuted and tortured would be a strong symbolic measure to restore the remaining dignity of survivors and their offspring. But would Jokowi include survivors of the 1989 Lampung shooting, when then Col. AM Hendropriyono led an operation to crush what was believed to be an extremist Islamic stronghold?  He is a known loyalist of Megawati Soekarnoputri, the grande dame of Jokowi's party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the former intelligence chief when Munir was slain.

Despite such likely tricky political calculations, real commitment to what the government can do outside the judiciary could somewhat ease the lives of survivors and their families.  

Without rehabilitation, for instance, even some of the grandchildren have said they still face stigma against their forebears. Their grandparents’ studies were cut short; their parents also struggled to gain education and decent livelihoods and many of the families are still poor.

Historian Asvi Warman Adam has reiterated that rehabilitation of former political prisoners and those forced into self-exile after being made stateless by Soeharto’s government, is among the low hanging fruit, the measure that Jokowi could and should take as he has no past baggage in the 1965 cases – unlike his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono whose father-in-law, the elite Army forces chief Sarwo Edhie, led the communist purge.

In the absence of state recognition, rehabilitation and reparation, let alone accountability of perpetrators, thousands of survivors and their families have long relied on themselves and each other to cope and overcome their trauma.

Their numerous memoirs and peaceful protests have gradually balanced the official narratives of victims as unfortunate casualties of “horizontal conflicts”, or that they got what was coming to them as “communists”, “separatists” and “extremists".

If at least one “ordinary” crime can be accounted for —the murder of a family bodyguard of top police general and main suspect Ferdy Sambo — a bit of trust would be restored in the police force, which should be much more professional in guaranteeing citizens’ safety, after 77 years of independence.

--

The writer is a board member of the independent Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and freelance journalist.