Dicky Christanto, Jakarta – A human rights watchdog has slammed the government for not taking human rights cases in the country seriously.

"To date, the government has continuously ignored any calls from the international community regarding the handling of human rights cases. The government has apparently used any rights violation issues solely as image polisher," executive director of the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) Rafendi Djamin said in a press release sent to The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

He said among the obvious examples where human rights violations could be easily spotted was in migrant workers' protection. He added that the implementation of migrant workers' protection was contrary to the fact that Indonesia was among the countries that had endorsed the UN resolution on migrant workers' protection and had even called on other countries to ratify the migrant workers' convention.

"It is obvious that migrant workers' protection procedures in Indonesia have yet to be optimized; diplomacy for migrant workers is not supported by an improvement in the national migrant workers' protection mechanism," he said.

The government was also accused of being inconsistent in upholding religious freedom. In practice, he said, religious-based violence and discrimination continues to take place in Indonesia. The beleaguered GKI Yasmin Church congregation and a clash between Shiites and Sunnis in Sampang, Madura, were just two examples of how the Indonesian government is incapable of settling religious-based human rights violations, he said. (iwa)