Indonesia

Indonesia’s next government must put human rights at the center of its policies after the serious abuses that have marred the country in recent years, Amnesty International said ahead of polling day on 17 April.

With nearly 200 million registered voters expected to cast their ballots in Indonesia’s general elections, Amnesty International have published a Human Rights Agenda targeting 7,968 parliamentary candidates and the two presidential candidates.

“Our agenda puts forward a concrete action plan that the next government and parliament must deliver to improve the human rights situation in Indonesia, after the deteriorating environment experienced by so many people in the past four and half years – especially minorities and other marginalized groups,” said Usman Hamid, Amnesty International Indonesia’s Executive Director. “The next government has an opportunity to turn the tide and prevent Indonesia from squandering the vital human rights progress made since 1998.”

LGBTI communities in Indonesia are facing increasing crackdowns both from the police and the municipal police (Satpol PP) with at least four series of arrests and public humiliations having taken place across the country in the past month, Amnesty International says.

The latest crackdown took place on November 4 when Satpol PP in Padang, West Sumatra, arrested ten people assumed to be lesbian women after one of them posted a photo of her kissing and hugging her girlfriend on Facebook. The Satpol PP moved to make the arrest after people in Padang complained about the picture. They said that the ten people would be sent to a local social affairs agency to undergo an “education program” without elaborating further.

Meanwhile, in the neighboring province of Lampung, local Satpol PP also raided a beach and arrested three people whom they suspected of being transgender women in an operation said to “provide safety and maintain public order” in the city. Following the raid, the Satpol PP hosed these people down in public using a fire truck as part of what it called a ‘mandatory bath’, or ghusl.

Amnesty International Indonesia tomorrow will hand over thousands of pages of its documents to the Aceh Truth and Reconciliation Commission (KKR Aceh), detailing hundreds of human rights violations and abuses involving thousands of victims during the conflict between the Indonesian security forces and the pro-independence Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The documents also include the organization’s persistent calls on the Indonesian and Acehnese authorities to fulfil their international obligations to acknowledge the truth and to ensure accountability for victim of serious human rights violations and their families.

The move, which marks the 13-year anniversary of the peace agreement signed in Helsinki that ended the conflict, saw a team from Amnesty International Indonesia travel to Aceh to meet with KKR Aceh Commissioners in a show of support for the Commission’s work to ensure truth and reparation for victims of the conflict and their families.

Reacting to the decision of the House of Representatives on Friday to pass into law the revision of the anti-terrorism bill, Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid said:

“The newly-passed law contains a number of draconian articles that threaten to undermine human rights in Indonesia. The law erodes safeguards against arbitrary detention and against torture and other ill-treatment, as well as expanding the scope of the application of the death penalty. Plans to deploy the military in counter-terrorism operations are also deeply concerning.

“The vagueness of some of the law’s wording could be used by authorities to restrict freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly or misused to label peaceful political activities as terrorism. This lack of clarity violates the requirement under international human rights law that  criminal law must be formulated with enough precision for people to understand what conduct is prohibited.

Responding to the caning of several people – including unmarried couples, punished for showing affection in public, and two women sex workers – in Aceh on Friday, Amnesty International Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid said:

“Caning is an inhuman and degrading form of punishment that may amount to torture which should never be used in any circumstances. The Aceh authorities’ decision to cane unmarried couples, whose only ‘crime’ was showing affection in public, in front of hundreds of spectators, is an act of utmost cruelty.

“Since January of this year, a total of 47 people have now been caned in public in Aceh, and the list is only getting longer. The provincial administration of Aceh must immediately remove this abhorrent form of punishment from its law books.

“It is also high time for the international community to press Indonesia to provide a safer environment for everyone in Aceh. The situation risks deteriorating rapidly unless the local administration is pushed to take its obligations to respect human rights seriously.”

Background

Reacting to the news that the Aceh provincial administration in Indonesia is considering the introduction of beheading as a punishment for murder, Amnesty International Indonesia executive director, Usman Hamid said:

“The Aceh local government must immediately drop any plans to introduce the gruesome punishment of beheading as a method of execution and should instead get rid of the death penalty all together. The Aceh administration’s argument that beheading could prevent murder is both baseless and unacceptable. There is no evidence that the death penalty has a unique deterrent effect on crime, no matter how shocking the method of execution is.

“The Aceh administration cannot use its special autonomous status in order to introduce laws and policies that flagrantly violate human rights. The authorities need to focus on the root causes of crime and informed debates on the death penalty as a human rights violation, and swiftly move to abolish this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Indonesian authorities are completely failing to protect the transgender women who were appallingly ill-treated and humiliated by police in North Aceh on January 27, some of whom have since had to go into hiding due to fears for their safety, Amnesty International Indonesia said today.

Amnesty International Indonesia interviewed some of the victims in an undisclosed location near Aceh, to where they had to flee after they lost their jobs while also suffering verbal and physical abuse from family members and the general public.

They spoke in detail of their harrowing experiences on 27 January when police raided the beauty salons where they work, publicly humiliated, kicked and slapped them and cut their hair in an effort to get "rid of all transgender people from Aceh".

"Not only have these transgender women been arrested and ill-treated by police for no other reason than who they are, some of them now continue to suffer as they have lost their livelihood and have had to flee their homes. This is a complete failure by the Indonesian authorities to protect their human rights," said Amnesty International Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid.