Sunanda Creagh – Almost 40 human rights groups combined on Tuesday to claim Indonesia's reputation was being tarnished by the inclusion as vice presidential candidates of two former generals accused of rights abuses during the era of former strongman President Suharto.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is favored to win a second term in the July 8 vote, but faces a challenge from Vice President Jusuf Kalla and former President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Kalla is running with Wiranto, a retired general who has faced allegations over abuses in East Timor when he was army chief.
Megawati is standing with Prabowo Subianto, another former general, who was fired in 1998 after troops under his command abducted and tortured pro-democracy activists.
The emergence of Prabowo and Wiranto as contestants in the 2009 presidential election highlights a weak commitment by our political actors to uphold human rights," said a statement from the group of rights organizations.
The public must realize that to forget the crimes of the past will allow the same crimes to be repeated in future." Both men have denied wrongdoing and said they were simply doing their duty as soldiers.
Wiranto was indicted by a UN panel over the bloodshed during Dili's 1999 independence vote but never stood trial. He said last year the episode had been resolved.
Prabowo, who is from a wealthy family and was once married to Suharto's daughter, told reporters in February his "conscience was clear" and noted some of the tortured activists had even joined his Gerindra Party.
Arief Priyadi, whose son was killed in 1998 when the military under Wiranto's command at the time – opened fire on students protesting against Suharto in Jakarta, said people should be careful with their votes.
We, as a society, should be rejecting human rights abusers as presidential or vice presidential candidates," he said. "To accept this is a step back for reform."
The rights record of Yudhoyono, who was also a general during Suharto's New Order era, was also brought into question at a meeting organized by the Coalition of Indonesian Human Rights Activists.
He was accused by some activists of neglecting human rights issues because of his government's handling of the mud volcano disaster that displaced tens of thousands of people in Sidoarjo, East Java. The scandal over the subsequent compensation payments has hurt the government's reputation.
Yudhoyono's approval rating in a recent poll of 67 percent, compared to 12 percent for Megawati and 2 percent for Kalla, makes it look almost certain he will win a second term in office, bar some unexpected blow.