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Indonesia misses opportunities to protect rights: HRW
Jakarta Post - January 27, 2016
HRW reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries in the 659-page World Report 2016, its 26th edition.
"Jokowi's first year as president was a missed opportunity to adopt urgently needed human rights measures," HRW deputy Asia director Phelim Kine said on Wednesday.
"But there is still time for him to adjust his policy priorities to actively protect human rights rather than turn a blind eye to serious abuses," he went on.
HRW noted that Jokowi released some Papuan political prisoners in 2015 and announced a plan to address decades of gross human rights violations, including the massacre of up to 1 million people in 1965-1966.
However, the group said, Jokowi largely ignored security force impunity for rights abuses and violations of women's rights and religious freedom.
"He also embraced the use of the death penalty for convicted drug traffickers, resulting in 14 executions in 2015, including a Brazilian citizen diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia," HRW said.
Citing rights group Setara Institute, HRW said 194 incidents of violent attacks on religious minorities had occurred in the first 11 months of 2015. They included the forced demolition by the Singkil regency, in the Aceh province, of nine Protestant churches in November, following the burning down of a church by militant Islamists on Oct.13, 2015.
The group praised Jokowi's policy to grant clemency to five of Papua's political prisoners in May 2015, followed by the release of Filep Karma, Indonesia's highest profile political prisoner, and in November. Approximately 45 Papuans and 29 Ambonese are still imprisoned for peaceful advocacy of independence, however.
"Despite Jokowi's pledge to thoroughly investigate and punish security forces implicated in the December 2014 deaths of five peaceful protesters in Papua's town of Enarotali, the government has failed to publicly release the results of three separate official investigations into the incident," said HRW, adding that Jokowi also failed to implement its promise to lift decades-old restrictions on foreign media access to Papua.
Citing the National Commission on Violence Against Women, HRW later criticized national and local governments, which passed 31 discriminatory regulations in 2015, leaving Indonesia with 322 discriminatory local regulations targeting women, ranging from compulsory hijab to tolerating polygamy.
The government also failed to end the documented use of abusive and discriminatory "virginity tests" for female applicants to the Indonesian Military (TNI) and National Police.
"The Jokowi government's approach to human rights has been more rhetoric than reality, while serious rights abuses go unpunished," Kine said. "Jokowi can and should take strong actions to advance justice and curtail abuses in 2016." (ebf)
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