Shifting from International to “Indonesian” Justice Measures: Two Decades of Addressing Past Human Rights Violations

ABSTRACT

What do Indonesia’s democratisation efforts look like when examined from the lens of human rights? Using the 1965 violence as a case study this article analyses human rights and justice reform after the end of the Suharto regime in 1998. We argue that despite the initial push to adopt international human rights principles and transitional justice mechanisms in Indonesian law, human rights reforms have stagnated. Explanations for this include the weakness of the human rights movement preceding 1998 and efforts by parties implicated in past violence to block justice initiatives. Through a close analysis of recent efforts during the Joko Widodo presidency to address past human rights abuses we highlight a further shift away from support for international justice measures towards what have been labelled “Indonesian” justice measures. Although there is certainly a place for the use of culture-specific justice mechanisms, we argue that these new initiatives are instead underpinned by an instrumentalisation of ideas of culture to shield perpetrators from accountability. By highlighting the history of the use of ideas of culture to justify authoritarianism and reject so-called liberal values, we demonstrate why the latest trends are further evidence of an illiberal turn in Indonesia.

KEYWORDS:

• Indonesia
• 1965 violence
• transitional justice
• human rights reform
• military
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editors of this special edition, Rachael Diprose, Dave McRae and Vedi Hadiz, for comments on earlier drafts of this article. We also acknowledge the feedback of two anonymous reviewers and Kevin Hewison. The insights offered by our interviewees are also greatly appreciated.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Of these missing persons (orang hilang) nine returned and another was found killed, while until today the fate of 13 activists remains officially unknown. A 2005 investigation by Komnas HAM concluded that a team established by Kopassus, the Special Forces Command, was responsible for the disappearances. This team acted on the direct orders of the then commander of Kopassus, Prabowo Subianto, who was a main contender in both the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections. Komnas HAM omitted in its report information privately obtained from Wiranto, former commander of the Armed Forces, who stated that the missing persons had died (Setiawan 2016, 19).

2. The first international treaty ratified was the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment in 1998. The following year Indonesia acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, followed in 2006 by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

3. YPKP was founded by the high-profile former political prisoner and novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, prominent former Gerakan Wanita Indonesia (Gerwani, Indonesian Women’s Movement) activist and political prisoner Sulami and the political exile Umar Said, who campaigned for years in France for justice for this case. YPKP had strong representation around Indonesia and adopted several strategies to gain redress.

4. Other cases included were the Petrus (penembakan misterius, mysterious shootings) killings that took place between 1981 and 1983, the Tanjung Priok case, violations committed in military operations in Aceh (1989–1998) and Papua (1963–2003), as well as the 1996 attack on the headquarters of the opposition party Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI or Indonesian Democratic Party).

5. At the same time, many of Jokowi’s allies are members of Indonesia’s political and business elites, including some with a poor human rights record (Warburton 2016, 304-305, 314).

6. A well-known example of local support was the public apology of the Mayor of Palu in Central Sulawesi who promised free healthcare to the families of victims and scholarships for their children (Lamasitudju 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This article was completed with the support of Katharine McGregor’s Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT130100957) for the project Confronting Historical Injustice in Indonesia: Memory and Transnational Human Rights Activism, and Ken Setiawan’s McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from The University of Melbourne.