Judicial bodies are still reluctant to uphold citizen's rights to access public information, a study says.
Through the 2008 Access to Public Information Law, researchers found that courts only granted 45 percent of the 180 requests filed by students and activists in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and West Sumatra, while prosecutors only granted four of 60 inquiries.
Astriyani, a member of the Judicial Data Center that conducted the study, said most officials were unfamiliar with the law and the benefit of having such data disclosure because they were used to the old habit of hiding information from the public.
"The public remains largely unaware of its right to access state information," she said.
She highlighted the study found that judicial institutions in Jakarta was the worst in disclosing information, followed by both West Sumatra and Yogyakarta.
The 2008 law, which came into effect on April 30 this year, stipulates all public institutions – including all levels of government institutions, political parties and NGOs – must disclose requested information to the public.
The government also set up the Central Information Commission (KIP) to guard and ensure that institutions complied with the law. The Judicial Data Center is a coalition of legal activists, researchers and advocates in the three provinces.
Abdul Rahman Iswanto from the Indonesian Judiciary Supervisory Community (MAPPI) at the University of Indonesia said Jakarta courts and prosecutors were just as secretive as those located in more remote areas, although the officers were well-versed in the law.
"They rejected our requests by saying such data were state secrets. They also often interrogated us when we requested the information."
Abdul's team sought information from the Jakarta High Prosecutor's Office and its five district attorney's offices, the Attorney General's Office (AGO), as well as the Jakarta High Court, its five district courts and the Supreme Court.
"What's strange was that officials from the West Jakarta District Court eventually gave us the data after we pretended that we had the consent of the Supreme Court," he said.
Ronny Saputra from the Padang Legal Aid Institute (LBH) in West Sumatra said judicial officers in the three provinces violated people's constitutional rights to access public information.
"They violated our rights both verbally and on paper," said Ronny, whose team requested information from, among others, the West Sumatra High Prosecutor's Office and the West Sumatra High Court and its nine district courts.
Trust issues were less of a problem in Yogyakarta, where team members introduced themselves as students, said Danang Kurniadi from the Center for Anticorruption Studies at Gadjah Mada University.
Danang's team collected data from the Yogyakarta High Prosecutor's Office and its five district attorney's offices.
Rifqi S. Assegaf from the Institute for Assessment and Advocacy of Independent Judiciary said there was a lot of information that could not be obtained by NGOs or journalists but were available to students. (ipa)