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Subject: Edmund McWilliams: U.S. must back human rights, not the army,
in Indonesia
U.S. must back human rights, not the army, in
Indonesia
Providence Journal
Comments
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, April 11, 2010
By EDMUND McWILLIAMS
President Obama’s upcoming visit to Indonesia (rescheduled from late
March to June) will reveal to him an Indonesia substantially changed from
the Indonesia of the Suharto dictatorship he knew as a boy, when he lived
in that nation for a few years.
Indonesia’s democratic progress since the 1998 popular overthrow of
the Suharto dictatorship is a tribute to the courage and determination of
Indonesian reformers.
They have pressed forward demanding respect for human rights and an end
to systemic corruption against great opposition, notably from a still
repressive military and an entrenched, corrupt elite allied to
international corporate interests.
Their achievement has come at a price: In 2004, Said Munir Thalib,
Indonesia’s leading human-rights advocate and critic of the repressive
military, was murdered by those determined to resist reform. His
assassination has never been successfully prosecuted as witnesses have
been forced to change or recant their testimony in Indonesia’s deeply
flawed judicial system. That injustice casts an intimidating shadow over
all those who seek to follow in his footsteps.
But Munir, along with the murdered Papuan leader Theys Eluay and other
martyrs to democratic reform, are not the only victims in this struggle.
Scores of advocates for reform and respect for rights are political
prisoners in Indonesia’s notorious prison system. A 2007 U.N. report
underscored the brutality inflicted on political prisoners and others in
the Indonesian prison system.
In Indonesia’s gulag, political dissidents endure detention in
conditions that endanger detainees’ health and are in some instances
life-threatening.
Amnesty International has identified dozens of “prisoners of
conscience,” incarcerated for peaceful, political protest of
human-rights abuse and security-force impunity.
President Obama’s forthcoming travel to Indonesia affords an
opportunity for the U.S. to take a stand against Indonesia’s continued
violation of the fundamental civil and political rights of its citizens
rights set forth in international covenants to which Indonesia is a party,
including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
President Obama should press the democratizing Indonesian government of
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to act decisively to defend those
Indonesian citizens courageously demanding an end to human-rights abuses
by security forces and other crimes, and for judicial accountability of
those forces.
President Obama should also call for a release of those confined in
Indonesian prisons for their peaceful political dissent.
Finally, the Obama administration should not expand its cooperation
with the repressive Indonesian military, the principal agent for
repression of dissent in Indonesia, absent real reform of that institution
to include an end to human-rights abuse, full military subordination to
civil control and an end to judicial impunity for criminal activity by the
military.
Published reports that the administration is considering training and
other assistance to the Indonesian military’s Special Forces is
particularly egregious insofar as that branch remains the most aggressive
and brutal in suppressing dissent.
Edmund McWilliams, of Harrisville, a retired Foreign Service officer,
was the political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta in 1996-99.
Since his retirement he has been active in pro-bono human-rights causes,
especially regarding Indonesia.
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