In the human rights report of 2010, ELSAM had predicted that the human rights conditions would move towards a worse direction than the previous years. The prediction became stronger when, in the early of 2011, there was an incident that struck the public, namely the attacks against an Ahmadiyah group in Cikeusik, Pandeglang Banten. As a result of the incident, several people were killed, some were injured, and the properties of the group were destroyed. The incident has opened a dark page of the human rights condition in 2011.

Furthermore, a series of violence also had continued to take place in various forms, and occurred in some areas in Indonesia. While the violence occurred in Cikeusik was based on religion or belief, violence with various backgrounds had continued to occur, among other things, on the basis of land disputes, conflicts with corporations, restriction of the freedom of expression, and violence related to the state personnel’s behaviors that have led to torture.

Some of the violent acts were not balanced with a fair and an adequate enforcement of law. Law enforcement institutions have not reflected their impartiality in providing protection for all citizens. In fact, the judiciary was still far from the expectation of becoming a fair ground for all parties. To make matters even worse, the judicial institution and law enforcement apparatuses were alleged of committing legal engineering and performing a deviant judiciary. The right to a fair and impartial judiciary became more rare, while the urge for a penal reform still has not been fulfilled.

Amid the said situation, however, the strengthening of human rights mechanism was not even an important priority. There were still many bills, in which the deliberation should have been accelerated under the framework of human rights strengthening, protection, respect and fulfillment, remained unfinished by the government and the House. In fact, the production of policies has the tendency of repression, although human rights principles were briefly considered. At the local level, the production of policies that perpetrated human rights was continually carried out.

The exclusion of human rights agendas by the government and the House was worsened by the discriminatory attitude from public officials who have been abandoning the rights of minority groups, providing excessive protection for the interests of investment, suppressing political expressions, and the ongoing practice of corruption, which have a serious impact on human rights. Political considerations and transactions were far more dominant than the efforts to enforce human rights, law and constitution.

The deterioration of the guarantee of human rights protection was extended to the implementation level. In terms of past human rights abuses, the constitutional obligation to enforce the law and human rights was continuously neglected. Instead of resolving past human rights abuses in accordance to the existing mechanism, the government opened a room for settlement that departed from human rights principles. The fate of the victims has been ignored, and justice was denied.

Although the human rights condition has been worsening, the government has become smarter now in hiding the real human rights condition, as part of its politics of image. The politics of image has created positive appreciation for Indonesia as a democratic country and a country that upheld human rights. The situation was different if we look at the number of complaints from the people alleging human rights violations to the National Commission on Human Rights, in which , until November 2011, the National Commission on Human Rights had at least received 3780 complaints submitted by the people on the allegations of various human rights violations.

This human rights report was drafted based on the result of our monitoring of our focus of work on two main issues, namely the efforts to break the chain of impunity and the promotion of human rights protection mechanisms, and to curb the threat of market and religious fundamentalisms.

For details please download attachment