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In Indonesia, millions of families have been affected by such tragedies. In the developed world, in countries that for the most part respect human rights, there would be options. In Indonesia there are none at present. Such crimes, perpetrated on a massive scale in recent decades, have not been investigated and remain unsolved and unpunished, while those responsible enjoy a life of impunity.
How can a nation continue not only to ignore this reality, but persist in committing the same crimes over and over again? What efforts have to be made by the state to legitimize such cruelty and at what cost? Could such efforts not be put into creating state mechanisms to prevent such atrocities?
It all comes down to political will. Where there is acceptance of a problem and a genuine will to solve it, humans are capable of great things. Where there is only greed, corruption and a will to cover up one's ill deeds, there is little to be proud of and little hope.
Indonesia is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council and has pledged to protect and promote human rights to the highest possible standards. Are we to believe that mass killings and disappearances going unresolved represent such standards?
These are the questions that the Indonesian state and its people have been grappling with for years. The failure to publicly recognize the gravity of the situation in good faith and to take action to ensure the prevention of such abuses in future has contributed to the perpetuation of a culture of violence that is hard to overcome.
The killing of prominent human rights defender Munir Thalib three years ago is an example of this culture of elimination. He struggled to change this culture and founded Kontras, a non-government organization working to help disappeared persons, before being poisoned and killed. In court hearings, allusions have been frequently made concerning the involvement of prominent persons from government institutions in Munir's killing. All evidence suggests this is the case.
This culture has prevailed since 1965 -- a time of unparalleled violence in the country, in which it is conservatively estimated that over 1.5 million persons were killed or disappeared. It is customary for older generations to provide the younger generation a living memory of what a nation has been, which perpetuates a nation's culture and identity. When all voices of opposition are silenced and when the memories of times past are tainted with blood, the nation's cultural legacy and identity suffer greatly, as does the respect for life, the hallmark of any civilization.
By tradition, Indonesians exhibit great respect for life. This is manifest in the manner in which the dead are revered, the rituals surrounding funerals, the manner that dead bodies are respected and adorned, the place of burials, and customs following burials. It is seen as an obligation and a right for family members to recover the body of a deceased person in order to pay their last respects. A denial of this right profoundly offends the aggrieved party. In the many cases of disappearance that have occurred in and since 1965, the victims' families suffer from this continuous pain.
Indonesia is failing to accept and deal with its terrible past, from the massacres under the Suharto regime in 1965, through the following decades in which further mass killings and disappearances occurred. Successive governments have either denied or legitimized these atrocities.
The current government is now trying to withdraw numerous high school history textbooks in which the history of the 1965 massacres contradict the latest official version of events. On a more positive note, schoolchildren who until recently sang songs that extolled the saving of the nation through the killing of its own people, are doing so less these days. Perhaps there is hope for Indonesia's culture in future?
Germany, for example, took the mature decision to acknowledge the crimes committed by the Nazi regime in its past, and to take action to compensate the victims and to prevent the repetition of such crimes. Germany's perpetrators of atrocities were publicly acknowledged as criminals and punished, where possible. This is the only way for a nation to move on from the dark pages of its past.
Thursday, Aug. 30, is the International Day of the Disappeared. It is an occasion for Indonesia to assert its commitment to its people and to move forward in nation building. Indonesia should commit to the rapid ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the promulgation of the corresponding national legislation that is required in order to criminalize disappearances and ensure adequate punishment and reparation concerning such acts. Efforts to cover up the past will stunt all attempts at nation building and sustainable development in Indonesia, leaving the country stuck in the throes of its growing pains.
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(Philip Setunga is a staff member of the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, responsible for the organization's research on Indonesia. He has a doctorate in sociology.)
