Jakarta – Victims of human rights abuses should move on because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (KKR) is currently dead in the water, State Secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra said Monday.

Yusril made the comment when announcing the government had ended the selection process of 42 Truth and Reconciliation Commission members following the annulment of the 2004 law mandating the body's existence.

Yusril suggested victims of human rights abuses should "move forward" and use normal legal channels to settle their cases through the district courts and the ad hoc human rights tribunal.

He said while the controversial annulment of the law could be debated in future, it would be upheld for the meantime.

Yusril said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had not yet commented on the annulment and its implications. Separately, presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng said the government was watching events unfold and considering its response.

"An ad hoc human rights court is a compromise for the settlement of retroactive legal cases. But it is very difficult to pursue them (in this forum), especially to obtain evidence. The witnesses and suspects have generally all died," Yusril told the kompas.com website.

Yusril, meanwhile, said it was up to victims to find solutions to their problems. In cases of past human rights violations, he said, reconciliation was best achieved "naturally" without formally establishing a commission, as happened in Maluku province, a former conflict area from 2000-2001, he said.

"Establishing a commission, which is followed by summoning and investigating people could create new conflicts. (If) we can forget the (past violations by) Westerners (colonialists), why can't we forgive our fellow Indonesians," he said.

The Constitutional Court recently annulled the 2004 law on the establishment of the KKR, because it was rife with inconsistencies. Eight of the nine judges were of the opinion the articles in the law were "problematic" and did not encourage people to settle cases through the commission.

The ruling sparked disapproval from human rights activists, who had asked the court only to review three articles, not scrap the entire law, as demanded by petitioners.

The verdict prompted the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle last week to make a plea for the House of Representatives to curtail the court's powers to annul laws.

Meanwhile, human rights activist Asmara Nababan, who was among those who demanded the KKR law's judicial review, said the state remained under the obligation to settle past human rights violations through such a commission.

"If the government thinks that this is not their priority, then they still perceive the KKR in only its reconciliatory function, while it is actually supposed to function both as a means of reconciliation and also to reveal the truth about past human rights crimes.

"Without revealing the truth, we won't be able to sort out the problems and make sure they won't happen again," he told The Jakarta Post.

Activists will continue to demand the government and legislators establish a commission as stipulated in the 2000 People's Consultative Assembly's decree, he said.

Another alternative would be to establish a non-legal commission of public figures to hear abuses, he said.

"If the members are credible, it will be legitimate enough. The purposes of reconciliation and amnesty might not be pursued through such a commission, but at least we will be able to reconstruct the truth," he said.