http://alsaindonesia.org/site/weak-enforcement-of-the-legal-protections-against-the-violation-of-human-rights-in-indonesia/

OCTOBER 2011

Contributor: Dyan Sitanggang - ALSA LC Universitas Sam Ratulangi

The human right is a right that every human posses without seeing any difference on race, gender, skin color, language, religion, political or other opinion; in other words, without any exception. That the individual shall have full protection of their fundamental rights from being violated by another individual or group is legally covered by The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 by the United Nations which applies internationally and other instruments of human rights such as a convention of Political Right of Women and so on. As for Indonesia, the law enforcement on human rights has been regulated in UU No.39/1999 about Human Rights and UU No.26/2000 about Human Rights Court. But even before UU No.39/1999 about Human Rights was created by the government of Indonesia, we can see that Indonesia’s commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights in the entire Indonesian territory is already stated in Pancasila (Five Pillars), notably from the second pillar of “A just and civilized humanity” as well as relevant articles in the 1945 Constitutions which came into being prior to the adoption of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

However, despite of all the instruments and regulations regarding the protection of human rights that has been created and ratified in Indonesia and by Indonesia, we can see that the government has failed to do the implementation of those regulations ― the protection of human rights itself. The weak enforcement of the legal protections against the violation of human rights in Indonesia is proven by the circumstances we can all witness.

The protection of human rights is sometimes disrupted by the short-term political and economic interests by the government that caused a lot of the violation of human right cases in Indonesia left unsolved. The government is the one that supposed to be the main protector of the human rights ― as stated in the preamble of 1945 Constitutions, “melindungi segenap tumpah darah Indonesia” or “to protect the whole homeland of Indonesia”. From that statement (to protect the whole homeland of Indonesia), we can clearly and firmly point out that the government is fully responsible to the nation and state in which consists of hundreds of thousands of people without distinguishing the age, religion, status of each and every individuals; which means they are responsible to protect the rights without any exception. But what happens is the opposite. We can see the evidence of weak protection of human rights occurred in all aspects of life and in all regions of this country. For example, violations of human rights happened in Papua ― videos on YouTube showing Yawan Wayeni (a political activist in Papua) who was accused of being members of TPN/OPM was being tortured by Brimob officers; and three citizens of Tingginambut Papua was tortured by TNI soldiers. Even though the case has been judged by the court and the defendants has been sentenced to imprisonment, but there were a lot of neglected facts of that terrible event thus shown the unjust treatment to the victims.

According to Muhadi Sugiono – Director of the Center for Security and Peace Studies (Pusat Studi Keamanan dan Perdamaian, PSKP), at the Universitas Gajah Mada, Indonesia, those all happened due to the strong political intervention against the enforcement of human rights. Besides, the meaning of the enforcement of human rights is limited to how government interprets the articles in our regulations regarding human rights. The protection of human rights is only being interpreted from the availability of existing rules, which resulted to the failure of interpreting the broader meaning of the value of human rights. Another example, the murder of David – a university student from Indonesia studying in Singapore, the persecution and murder of Indonesian migrant workers (TKI), and the persecution of Indonesian students by the Egyptian police, yet none of the case receive serious attention from the government. “If there was a response from political and institutional players in Indonesia, that was merely a political commodity for short-term interest,” said Muhadi. There was no serious action taken by the government, and realize it or not, the government already violated the rights of its people.

And moreover, the government only prioritizes the majority most of the time. So far, the government prefers to protect the rights of the majority because the majority has a larger voice, or in other words the opinion of the majority is more influential. This is another form of disruption to the enforcement of human rights by the short-term political and economic interests. The protection of human rights does not belong only to the majority, but for all the people including the minority. Paying more attention to the majority and tend to forget the minority is by all means weakening the legal protections of human right.

Muhadi stated that at least there were two basic problems that need solution. First, human right protection to Indonesia people is still minimal and weak. Second, there is a difference in the way law and political perspectives interpret human rights upholding.