Ary Hermawan, Denpasar – The Bali-chapter of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Institute (PBHI) said the government needed to take action on the prevailing local customary laws because it said they violated human rights.

"Customary punishment is prone to human rights violations," PBHI Bali head I Wayan Suardana said while he was speaking at a seminar on human rights and customary laws on Monday.

"The state should do something about it because it is responsible for the protection of the human rights of its citizens," he said.

The Balinese people apply what they call customary laws to preserve the ancestral values of the cosmic order. They say this not only relates to the real, tangible world (sekala), but also to the invisible world (niskala).

But they said the nature and implementation of the traditions today had changed because of what experts call external influences, especially western thoughts.

"The customary laws have become less pedagogical and are now often used as vengeance instruments," professor of customary laws from the Udayana University, Tjok Istri Putra Astiti, said.

Harsh punishments such as banishment and alienation for customary law offenders, which were originally aimed at educating people, are among the local laws considered harmful to human rights.

I Ketut Riteg, 65, who once lived in the village of Kedungu in Belalang, Kediri, Tabanan regency, was in the public eye recently for being alienated, or kasepekang, by his community for two years – for damaging a sacred shrine. The punishment can be canceled only if the family pays a Rp 200 million (US$22,200) fine.

The Bali Customary Council, an umbrella organization of 1,440 Desa Pekraman (traditional customary villages) all over Bali, recently agreed to disallow kasepekang (isolation by alienation), kanorayang (being dishonorably discharged from village membership) and kalaad (banishment from the banjar's territory).

The council said however this would not instantly put an end to the imposition of malicious customary punishment, given the autonomous nature of the desa pekraman in their efforts to keep public (cosmic) order and the sanctity of sacred places.

Tjok said the practice of isolating women if they gave birth to mixed-gender twins, known as manak salah, was still applied in some villages.

"This kind of punishment has actually been abolished by the council of Hindu's high priest in 1951," she said. The practice was a violation of human rights and discrimination as it applied to lesser castes only, Tjok said.

PBHI said it would provide legal assistance to 61 citizens from the Banjar (traditional customary neighborhood association) at Kadewatan, Bongkasa Village, Badung regency, because they had been denied their civil rights for more than five years.

"This is indeed erroneous – how can a customary punishment also dictate the denial of the civil rights of citizens," Suardana said.

The 61 residents of the southern Kadewatan opposed the plan of the residents of northern Kadewatan to hold a bazaar to generate money to refurbish the banjar's shrine.

The northern people invited the southern people to a meeting to discuss the problem but the southerners said they had declined to attend it because they were always outnumbered.

The southerners were then punished for being absent at a banjar meeting four times.

"They refuse to provide us with administrative services," Agung Oka Tamba, one of the citizens, said. "I can't apply for an identity card. And because of that, I can't apply for a job nor (can I) get the health insurance for the poor. This is really frustrating and it's been too long," he said.

Bali Customary Council official Dewa Ngurah Swastha said some of the local leaders had not completely understood the essence and purpose of awig-awig (the traditional laws).

"What we need to do is educate them and create a normative instrument to confine the authority of customary village leaders," Dewa said.

He also said, "people with certain personal and political interests might have infiltrated the traditional institutions, corrupting and diverting customary law from its primordial purpose".