(New York) - In a new report issued today, Human Rights Watch criticized the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas-HAM) for failing to actively pursue an investigation into one of the worst massacres in post-Soeharto Indonesia.
The Indonesian government in general and Komnas-HAM in particular have failed dismally to investigate serious human rights abuses in Aceh," said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "And Komnas-HAM has gone from being the most credible institution in the country to being a real hindrance to human rights progress."
The 44-page report, "Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Aceh," focuses on the killings of thirty men and a two-year-old child in August 2001 on a rubber and palm oil plantation in Julok, East Aceh. The victims were all ethnic Acehnese; they were lined up and executed by a group of armed men in camouflage uniforms. The Indonesian army and police accused the rebel Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or GAM) of responsibility; GAM insisted that the killers were members of the Indonesian security forces.
The new report includes excerpts from an internal report of a Komnas-HAM "observation" visit to East Aceh two weeks later. The report includes transcripts, which Human Rights Watch has translated in full, of taped interviews between two commissioners of Komnas-HAM and eyewitnesses to the killings.
Virtually all witnesses asserted that the Indonesian army was responsible, although they could not name individual perpetrators. The Komnas-HAM team, however, failed to follow up important leads. The two senior Komnas-HAM representatives on the team allowed military officers to accompany them on some interviews, a clear inhibition to free discussion. After their return to Jakarta, the commissioners sat on their findings for five months. Only on January 8, 2002 did Komnas-HAM agree to set up a formal commission of inquiry, but more than two months later, no progress was evident.
Human Rights Watch said that establishing accountability for human rights abuses in Aceh, and ensuring that the perpetrators are brought to justice, are essential if the decades-long conflict there is to be resolved.
"When not just the security forces and the executive branch of government - but even the national human rights commission - fail to give sufficient priority to ensuring justice is done for so grave a crime, the prospects for ending the violence seem dim indeed," said Jones.
In the report, Human Rights Watch calls on the government of Indonesia to give the highest priority to ensuring that the perpetrators of the August 2001 massacre are identified and brought to justice. It calls on the Indonesian parliament to hold hearings into why so many serious human rights violations in Aceh remain unsolved, the perpetrators not only unpunished but unidentified. The parliament should examine the role of the police and security forces, the justice system, and Komnas-HAM.
They should also make recommendations for strengthening mechanisms for investigating allegations of human rights violations to ensure that those whose rights are violated have prompt and effective access to judicial or other remedies. Finally, it calls on donors, both private and governmental, who have funded Komnas-HAM in the past, to jointly fund a thorough and impartial external evaluation of Komnas-HAM's work and approach to human rights over the last two years, and ensure that the findings of the evaluation are made public, in English and Bahasa Indonesia
