Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – The country's second largest party faction at the House of Representatives told the government on Friday that it needed to address human rights violation cases.
Secretary of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction at the House, Jacobus Mayong Padang, said the faction might exercise its right to demand an inquiry into President Yudhoyono if he was reluctant to set up an ad hoc rights court to try serious human rights cases.
"We are still optimistic that the House will endorse the law commission's recommendation for the establishment of the ad hoc court in the upcoming plenary session," Jacobus said in a discussion on the settlement of the 1998 and 1999 Trisakti and Semanggi shootings.
Despite the law commission's recommendation, factions in the House are still split over the issue, with only the PDI-P and the National Awakening Party fully supporting the ad hoc court's establishment.
Jacobus said that the manner in which the shootings were handled would set a precedent for the settlement of other human rights abuses and that the House's credibility would be at stake whether it was committed to protecting human rights or not.
Asmara Nababan, the executive director of rights watchdog Demos, appreciated the PDI-P's plan to question the President, saying the President did not have the political will to settle the shootings or the 1997 and 1998 abductions of democracy activists, the May 1998 riots and the shooting of Papuans in Wasior and Wamena in 2002 and 2003.
"The PDI-P's move to use the interpellation rights is actually a good option because the President has refused to comply with the law on the ad hoc court. It's a serious violation. If other factions do not support the move, people will certainly note it and give political punishments in the 2009 general elections," Asmara said.
He said the Wasior and Wamena cases had happened after the law was enacted in 2000 and had been investigated by the National Commission on Human Rights, which later issued a recommendation that the Attorney General's Office follow up the cases. The office yet to respond to the commission's recommendation.
Asmara also criticized the office's decision not to investigate the cases. "The attorney general's office needs no political recommendation from the House to investigate the case or to detain those implicated in the tragedies," he said.
Sumarsih, the mother of one of the four students killed in the Trisakti shootings and spokeswoman for a group representing relatives of human rights abuse victims, said the group would campaign against political parties that were not committed to settling rights cases.
"We are campaigning against at least 14 political parties that rejected the establishment of the ad hoc court," she said.
She also said that relatives of human rights abuse victims in Indonesia planned to bring all unresolved rights cases to the International Court of Justice if the President did not issue a decree to establish the ad hoc court.