Human rights in Indonesia

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The United States Department of State’s Human Rights Report for 2003 (issued in February 2004) rates the Indonesian government’s human rights record as “poor” and notes that Indonesia has “continued to commit serious abuses.” Murders, torture, rape, beatings, and arbitrarily detaining civilians and members of separatist movements were all documented as abuses by security force members. The government also was accused of having frequently failed to protect adequately the fundamental rights of children, women, peaceful protesters, journalists, disabled persons, religious minorities, and indigenous people, among others. Aceh and Papua provinces were seen as the scenes of the most apparent human rights abuses, but human rights appeared to have improved in some provinces, for example Maluku and North Maluku, despite sporadic outbreaks of violence.^[1]

[edit] HR 2601 Section 1115

In 2005, the US Congress revised the previous fifty six year US policy of silence about human rights abuses in Indonesia, and on July 28 passed the US Congress 2006 Foreign Relations Authorization Bill H.R. 2601 which made specific mention of the ongoing genocide and legitimacy of its sovereignty of West Papua. Section 1115 was specific section referring to Indonesia and on 30 July 2005 the Jakarta Post reported:

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned the U.S. not to interfere in Indonesia's domestic affairs after the U.S. House of Representatives recently approved a bill that questions the status of Papua.

Although not mentioned in the US media, Section 1115 had become a leading Indonesian news story through August and September 2005. In the United States, the US Senate had since early 2001 been rejecting repeated efforts by the Bush administration to have US funding of the Indonesian military resumed, a ban which had been reluctantly imposed by the Clinton administration after TNI officers were filmed coordinating the Dili Scorched Earth campaign. By writing and passing Section 1115, the US Congress joins the Senate's earlier efforts to reduce, if not disengage, from the US fiscal and political support of the Indonesian military, a change of policy which brings both houses into conflict with the Bush administration and the executives of companies such as Bechtel.

Though Section 1115 states humanitarian and legal reasons for its existence, an additional factor would be security concerns due to ongoing employment of Al Qaeda related terrorist militia by the Indonesian military and their continued funding programs for the Al Qaeda network. Given that the Senate opposition since 2003 has been strengthening on account of the TNI involvement in the death of Americans at the Timika mining site in 2002, the 2005 decision by Congress may reflect a desire to find more economical methods of cripling the Al Qaeda network.

Following President SBY's denouncement of Section 1115, Indonesian lobby groups such as The US Indonesia Society began renewed efforts to promote an Indonesian image of good management and renewed non-militant behaviour under General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration. SBY follows the administration of Megawati who in 2001 gave a public speech to the TNI instructing all members that they should disregard the issues of human rights in enforcing Indonesian unity and repressing any independence movements.