Jakarta – The scheduled visit of the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, will give Indonesia an opportunity to show the world its progress in human rights reforms despite serious obstacles, a rights activist said. Nowak is scheduled to visit Indonesia from Nov. 10 to 25.

"Today's outcome shows a considerable improvement to human rights since the New Order era. Several positive steps have been made to strengthen the legal and institutional framework involved... but most have yet to be fully implemented," Poengky Indarti from Imparsial human rights watchdog said.

She cited constitutional amendments to ensure the reinforcement of human rights values, the approval of a human rights law, the establishment of human rights tribunals – whether permanent, as in the Abepura case, or ad-hoc, as in the East Timor and Tanjung Priok cases – and the establishment of a national commission for women.

Poengky pointed out that the Indonesian government had ratified some UN covenants, like the convention against torture and the convention on civil political rights, but currently one of the biggest obstacles was the poor implementation of these conventions and laws.