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House opposes apology for 1965 purge
Jakarta Post - August 22, 2015
House deputy speaker Fadli Zon advised President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo against offering them a formal apology, arguing that it would cause unrest among the public.
"We welcome the idea of reconciliation; it depends on how that will be achieved. We also want to settle [rights violation cases in the country], but apologizing to the PKI [the Indonesian communist party] is not the way to do it. Instead of resolving the issue, that would just create new ones," Fadli told reporters.
According to him, the bad reputation of the PKI has been so long ingrained in the public psyche that it is considered a historic fact by the majority of people. Offering an apology to them would just spark a conflict among people who harbored antipathy toward communism, Fadli said.
"What's happened in the past involves both winners and losers and both feel entitled to justice," he said, while also suggesting that the government take a more natural approach to national reconciliation.
Separately, newly appointed Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut B. Pandjaitan said the issue of past human rights abuses needed to be handled with the utmost care.
Luhut, who is expected to expedite the ongoing process for settlement, said he was still looking at the options available. "I think we can't force the process to speed up. We want to resolve all of these cases in the best way possible," he said at the State Palace on Friday.
Meanwhile, a government-sanctioned team, set up last April and tasked to find options on how to solve past rights abuses, had concluded after long discussions that a truth and reconciliation committee should be established to answer directly to the President.
The team recommended that the choice between using judicial or non-judicial mechanisms should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
The team consists of officials from the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister, the Law and Human Rights Ministry, the Attorney General's Office (AGO), the National Police, the National Intelligence Agency (BIN), the military and the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).
Although discussions are ongoing, the team is convinced that national reconciliation is preferred over establishing an ad hoc human rights court.
"It's not easy to set up a human rights court if, for example, we agree to take on that [option] in two or three years," said the Law and Human Rights Ministry's director of human rights and justice, Mualimin Abdi, on the sidelines of a discussion on Friday.
Civil society groups have opposed the government's proposal for reconciliation. The Coalition for Justice and Revelation of Truth (KKPK), which houses various human rights watchdogs in the country, is convinced that reconciliation alone is not enough to comprehensively bring about justice for all, especially for victims and their family members.
"It is still unclear how the government defines reconciliation," said KKPK coordinator Kamala Chandra Kirana.
"We believe that one single way – judicial or non-judicial – is not enough to solve such complicated cases. We need a multi-dimensional approach to really settle them. We want to introduce a six-pillar solution to the government that, if upheld, needs to involve all ministries, including the Social Affairs Ministry and the Coordinating Human Development and Culture Ministry, to restore the rights of the victims and their families," she added.
The six-pillar solution entails upholding the law, which would allow the establishment of a human rights court, revealing the truth, restoring the dignity of victims in order to fulfill their rights, providing education to the public about the cases in order to achieve reconciliation, eliminating the culture of impunity by issuing progressive policies and involving the voices of victims in the whole process.
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/08/22/house-opposes-apology-1965-purge.html.
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