The United National Commission on Human Rights (UNHRC), the world's annual human rights meeting, has falied to deliver an effective response to the deteriorating situation of human rights in Indonesia, Amnesty International said today.

"Although East Timor remains a critical human rights situation, the political and economic crisis in Indonesia has given rise to 'disappearance' squads in Jakarta, incommunicado detention and torture, and the arrests of at least 371 peaceful activists this year alone," Tony O'Connor, Amnesty International's spokesman on Indonesia said.

"Governments participating at the Commission this year have abdicated their responsibility to provide an effective response to the human rights crisis in Indonesia. This crisis requires urgent and independent investigation and monitoring by the UN," O'Connor said.

On East Timor, the Commission last night sacrificed a detailed and critical resolution for a consensus statement that the Indonesian government says it will accept. The Australian delegation played a very active role here and is particularly pleased that the Indonesian government says it will invite the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to East Timor before March 1999. Amnesty International hopes that the visit will occur but it notes that the Indonesian government has already failed to act on reports by UN experts on torture and political killings and also its own Human Rights Commission. The Indonesian army still tortures and detains East Timorese for peaceful actions and it has ignored seven UN requests for the early release of East Timorese imprisoned after the Santa Cruz massacre.

"Unfortunately this consensus statement and the proposed visit are no guarantee the Indonesian government intends to do anything at all to really make sure that its soldiers and police respect human rights in East Timor. Muted diplomatic criticism cuts little ice in the prisons cells of Dili," O'Connor said.