Tony Hotland, Jakarta – Threats and intimidation against rights defenders increased in Papua and West Papua provinces in 2007 while efforts at military reform stalled, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday in its global report on human rights.
It praised the revocation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the criminalizing of public expressions of hatred toward the government, as well as efforts toward accountability for the murder of rights icon Munir Said Thalib.
"Some progress was made in addressing the human rights crimes of the (former president) Soeharto era," said the HRW's World Report 2008.
It considered the revocation of the Truth Commission a move ahead in abolishing impunity since the commission would have been able to grant amnesty to those responsible for past crimes.
National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) chairman Ifdhal Kasim said the report underlined Jakarta's half-hearted human rights protection despite various legally binding instruments.
"The fact that we still talk about the unresolved cases of the (1989) Talangsari incident, the military operations in Papua and Aceh or the 1965 coup shows we have been running to a standstill. Many rights cases that the commission has brought to the prosecutor's office are gathering dust in their office," he said.
The report also says that peaceful political activists in Papua and West Papua continued to be classified as separatists, facing arrest and criminal conviction, while excessive and often brutal force was still used by the government against civilians.
Ifdhal said the current government was still clinging to the ways of past administrations to isolate the eastern-most, resource-rich Papua region. Foreign journalists need approval to enter the region, while international rights officials have been denied entry.
The report cited a May 2007 incident in East Java when 13 Marines shot and killed four civilians over a land dispute. It said this incident exemplified continuing human rights violations associated with the involvement of security forces in private business.
Freedom of religion, meanwhile, was rated low with the report referring to incidents of radical elements forcibly closing minority places of worship with little response from local authorities.
On child domestic and migrant workers, the report said poorly monitored labor recruiters often deceived workers about their jobs abroad and returning migrant workers were diverted to a separate terminal and subjected to extortion.
A current draft law that would mandate an eight-hour work day, a weekly day of rest and an annual holiday, it added, carried no sanctions against employers or recruiting agencies that violate its provisions.
The annual report is the 18th compiled by the group, founded in 1978 as Helsinki Watch's Europe and Central Asia divisions. It summarizes the human rights situation in more than 75 countries.