Rangga Prakoso – The National Commission on Human Rights will resubmit its landmark findings of past rights abuses by the state to the Attorney General's Office this week, after prosecutors earlier refused to follow up on the matter.
Nurkholis, a commissioner at the body known as Komnas HAM, said on Saturday that the dossier would be resubmitted before the end of the month, complete with all the amendments and additional documentation requested by the AGO.
"We're currently preparing [the paperwork] necessary to meet the AGO's formal requirements," he said. "We hope to be able to submit the dossier to the AGO before December."
The Komnas HAM report, completed in July after a four-year investigation, concluded that there was evidence of serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity during the state's anti-communist purge of 1965-1966 and in a spate of extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals from 1982 to 1985.
The purge of members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and their families and suspected sympathizers was believed to have left up to 1.5 million people dead.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono initially welcomed the release of the report and ordered the AGO to follow up with a legal probe into the findings.
However, Attorney General Basrief Arief announced in November that his office could not proceed based on the dossier submitted by Komnas HAM, saying that the evidence gathered by the rights body was "insufficient to justify an official legal investigation."
Nurkholis acknowledged that the report only identified the institutions that Komnas HAM believed should be held responsible for the atrocities, but added that the necessary proof would be included in the resubmission.
Rights activists have criticized the AGO for refusing to follow up on the findings, accusing it of shirking its duty.
Haris Azhar, coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said last week that the AGO had no legitimate grounds to reject the report.
"Their actions are a shirking of their duty as law enforcement agency. This is simply a way of freezing any inquiry into gross rights abuses," he said. He added the AGO had been turning down similar cases for the past 10 years by citing a lack of evidence.
Haris said these other cases included the rape of ethnic Chinese women and looting of ethnic Chinese-owned businesses in May 1998, the shooting of student protesters at Jakarta's Trisakti University in the same month, and the killing of more student protesters in November 1998 and September 1999 in the Semanggi area of South Jakarta.
"This refusal [to investigate rights abuse cases] has gotten stronger and stronger, in line with the growing apathy shown by the president and the House of Representatives toward these cases," he said. "Meanwhile, the victims and their families have been left in legal limbo."
Other officials who have expressed reluctance to resolve these past cases include Djoko Suyanto, the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, and House Deputy Speaker Priyo Budi Santoso.