Subject: TAPOL on eve of CGI: Reforming zeal, how
real is it?
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 16:52:51 +0100 (BST)
From: tapol@gn.apc.org (TAPOL)London 28 July 1998
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, has issued the following statement on the
occasion of the CGI Meeting in Paris on 29-30 July, 1998:
Jakarta's Reforming Zeal on the Eve of the CGI Meeting How real is it?
During the past week, the Habibie regime has announced two measures which it hopes will
persuade the international community that it is dedicated to upholding human rights and to
a switch in policy towards East Timor. On Friday 24 July, the Justice Minister Muladi
announced the release of fifty political prisoners. On the same day it was announced that
one thousand Indonesian troops would be withdrawn from the occupied territory of East
Timor on Tuesday, 28 July.
It is no coincidence that these announcements came just days before the international
aid consortium for Indonesia is to hold its annual meeting. Habibie’s moves have
already succeeded in bringing the Dutch back on board. In 1992, Suharto declared that he
wanted no more aid from the Dutch because of their criticism on Indonesia’s human
rights record. Now the Dutch are satisfied that Indonesia is changing direction and moving
towards democratisation and better human rights.
However, as we will show below, Habibie’s measures are not quite what they seem
and are more than likely to be part of a diplomatic offensive to persuade the country's
ever-faithful multilateral and bilateral donors to support Indonesia's gravely battered
economy.
1. The CGI's 1998 Meeting The major Western backers of Indonesia will meet in very
different circumstances this year when the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) convenes
in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday, 29 and 30 July, to determine aid commitments for the
forthcoming year. This meeting of Indonesia’s multilateral and bilateral aid donors
will be dominated by the economic crisis and its social effects, but this year it cannot
again avoid the fundamental issue of political reform.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the CGI, chaired by the World Bank, has bankrolled
the Suharto regime to the tune of more than $5 billion in financial assistance each year.
Massive loans were granted with total disregard for the regime’s contempt for
democracy and human rights and its lack of transparency and accountability. Yet no remorse
has been shown by the donors for helping to keep Suharto in power for so long and for
ignoring the corrupt foundations on which economic growth was built.
Even now the World Bank’s Country Brief on Indonesia, updated in June 1998,
stubbornly proclaims Indonesia’s ‘remarkable economic development success over
the past decade’ and repeats the controversial mantra about a decline in poverty from
60 per cent. to 11 per cent. of the population - about 28 million people - between 1970
and 1996.
Although the Bank acknowledges that poverty may now double to affect around 50 million
people, Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that 95.8 million people,
about 48 per cent. of the population, will be living below the poverty line by the end of
the year. This represents a regression to the poverty levels of 1976.
The right of the World Bank to retain the chair of the CGI is questionable. For some
time, analysts have criticised the Bank’s poverty figures and its tolerance of
corruption in its own projects, but a devastating critique of World Bank policies in the
Wall Street Journal on 14 July suggested that the Bank is also partly to blame for the
disastrous economic crisis. Critics argued that as well as lending money and credibility
to the Suharto regime, the Bank may have stoked corruption by covering up the problems of
nepotism and collusion in its annual country reports produced for the CGI.
In the past, aid commitments at the CGI were largely concerned with project aid, but
this year a much larger proportion will take the form of programme aid to help balance the
state budget. Some of the additional $4 to $6 billion which the IMF says will be needed to
top up its $43 billion bail out may be provided by the CGI’s multilateral donors,
such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
Donors must now recognise the need for aid to be conditional on political as well as
economic reforms. Without substantive reforms by the Habibie government there will be no
end to the crisis. There is already conflicting evidence as to whether Habibie is really
committed to reform…
2. The latest batch of releases The releases announced on 24 July included fifty names,
making this the largest wave of releases since Suharto's fall from power on 21 May.
Excluded from the release programme are those held for alleged involvement in the events
of October 1965 and the Indonesian Communist Party, those seeking to undermine the
ideological basis of the Indonesian state and those allegedly involved in criminal
activities.
The sixteen political prisoners in Cipinang Prison have strongly criticised the release
programme for being avowedly discriminatory. It will exclude thirteen men who have been in
prison for more than thirty years, all of whom are elderly and most of whom are suffering
from chronic ailments. On humanitarian grounds alone, the release of these men should be
given top priority.
More than thirty of those released on 24 July were convicted in connection with a
messianic movement in East Java centred around the figure of the late President Sukarno.
In addition, five officers charged with desertion, apparently supporters of the same
movement, have also been released.
The remainder include four members of the radical political party, the PRD, leaving the
other eight PRD prisoners behind bars. Two journalists included among the 50 were in fact
released in July 1997. Two others, a former MP and a publicist, were not in detention at
all; the charges against them were lifted.
More than two hundred political prisoners still remain in Indonesian gaols. The largest
groups by far are the East Timorese (well over 120), West Papuans (at least two dozen),
Acehnese (at least 55) and Islamic prisoners (at least 30). So far 15 East Timorese have
been released, most of whom had already served their sentences anyway.
The Habibie government still has a long way to go before releasing even one half of the
political prisoners it inherited from the Suharto regime. As the 16 prisoners in Cipinang
Prison stressed, the post-Suharto government can only be true to its reform-minded claims
if it releases every single one of those victimised by Suharto.
3. Will the number of troops in East Timor really be reduced? Few people in East Timor
give credence to the announced reduction in the number of Indonesian troops in East Timor
scheduled for 28 July. There will even be a ceremony to mark the occasion to which foreign
journalists have been invited. Two weeks ago reinforcements were brought in to the
territory in advance of the anniversary of so-called 'integration day' on 17 July. Could
it be that those departing on 28 July will be none other than the troops which arrived
there two weeks ago? In any case, troops in East Timor are rotated every six months.
Since Suharto fell, the pressure on Indonesia for a substantial reduction in the number
of troops in East Timor has mounted. The European Union Trioka mission stressed this in
its recommendations following its visit in late June and Bishop Belo is insistent on the
need for a reduction, proposing that UN troops be brought in to replace the Indonesian
troops.
A reduction in the size of the forces of occupation cannot be left to Indonesia, nor
can the ceremonial departure of troops be accepted as a real change in troop deployment.
There must be independent monitoring of the reduction, a task which only the UN can
handle.
A properly-supervised withdrawal of Indonesian troops from Indonesia must be part of
the preparation for a referendum in East Timor, giving the long-suffering people of that
country the right to determine its future status.
4. How reform-minded is the Habibie government? In the past few weeks, governmental
decrees have introduced serious restrictions on democratic freedoms in Indonesia. The
Information Ministry will now require all journalists to be registered members of a
professional association. The Interior Ministry will require new political parties to
comply with certain conditions. Thus for example, parties will not be allowed to be
gender-exclusive or open only to certain ethnic groups, such as the persecuted Chinese
minority.
Last week, President Habibie enacted a Presidential Decree seriously restricting the
right of people to demonstrate. Advanced notice will have to be given to the police and
rallies will not be allowed in the vicinity of the presidential palace, military
installations, airports, train stations and other 'vital objects'. Anyone planning to hold
demonstrations will need to state in advance the number of people involved, the route and
the length of time. Human rights groups, lawyers and NGOs have condemned the decree as an
insult to the reforming demands of the pro-democracy movement that forced the dictator
Suharto from power, and are calling for its repeal.
Bilateral and multilateral donors meeting in Paris this week should be warned that
supporting the Habibie Government means supporting a government that is betraying the
demand for political change. By closing their eyes to these danger signals, the CGI member
states and institutions will be condoning a government that is slipping ever more rapidly
into the authoritarianism which distinguished the previous regime, giving little hope for
a solution to the economic woes now bedevilling Indonesia.
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