President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono must be commended for his plan to issue a formal apology to the nation for every abuse of human rights committed by the state against its own citizens.

This is a nation whose modern history since independence in 1945 is filled with stories of state-sponsored killings and abuses, for one reason or another. An apology is not only long overdue, but it will also send a powerful message: From this time on, the nation will respect the rights of every citizen, irrespective of race, culture, customs and traditions, language, religion and political beliefs.

But before we cheer the President's noble intentions, we should really ask him: What exactly are we, as a nation, apologizing for?

An apology entails an admission of guilt. Many, if not all, human rights atrocities committed by the state have never been officially admitted, although we know they happened. Few, if any, have been prosecuted for human rights violations. As far as the state is concerned – and official-history school textbooks would vouch for this – they never happened.

The purge of communists, their families and supporters over 1965 and 1966 reached genocidal proportions, but as far as the state is concerned, it never happened. We don't even know – nor even been bothered to find out – the exact death toll. Estimates range from 300,000 to 1.5 million. The late navy admiral Sudomo, given a hero's burial after dying last week, was one of the leaders in the killing campaign and once even bragged that there were three million deaths.

The systematic killings and abuses against Papuans as part of the government's campaign to win over the territory since 1963 have also not been properly reported and documented because, officially, they never took place. We should include Indonesia's brutal military occupation of Timor Leste from 1975 to 1999, even though the territory is no longer part of the republic today.

Some, but not all, of the abuses committed by the military in Aceh have been well-documented by the National Commission on Human Rights, but many of the perpetrators have been left off the hook. And there are many other "smaller" ones in between these major atrocities. They happened, but we as a nation have never formally admitted them.

As welcome as the idea of an apology is, which Yudhoyono's chief legal advisor Albert Hasibuan says is intended to be one of his legacies upon leaving office in 2014, the President cannot claim this to be a novelty for he has previously killed off a similar initiative.

President Abdurrahman Wahid started moving to the establishment of a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" in 1999, and the law mandating such a commission was passed by the House of Representatives five years later during Megawati Soekarnoputri's presidential term. It was made in the spirit of "to forgive but not to forget". Law No. 27/2004, however, was dead on arrival – not on the legislation's arrival, but President Yudhoyono's arrival to the Presidential Palace. He quietly sent the law to the Constitutional Court and succeeded in having it repealed. The law and the issue have practically been forgotten.

Now, President Yudhoyono is trying to revive the issue and claim this as his legacy.

Sorry is the hardest word indeed, because it entails honesty and humility on our part and a genuine admission that we have done all those horrible things to our own people. Do we as a nation have the ability to do that? Does the President have that ability?