Putu Ayu Palupi – Scores of students in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta held a protest action at the Pal Putih Monument on December 10 to commemorate International Human Rights Day.
Action coordinator Tri Hananto said that December 10 as International Human Rights Day is the right moment to maintain the spirit of struggle, particularly in the field of human rights. The struggle to uphold human rights is an obligation because human rights are a basic right belonging to all people and cannot be allowed to be taken away by anyone.
Independence which was won by the Indonesian nation on August 17, 1945 was unable to provide justice for all citizens. There were no laws which regulated human rights at that time giving the impression that the government was not serious about upholding human rights in Indonesia.
The Human Rights Law was only created 54 years later with the enactment of Law Number 39/1999. Over these 54 years however many cases of human rights violations still occurred which deprived people of their independence and individual freedoms.
“Because of this we demand that the government immediately resolve cases of past human rights violations and try human rights criminals”, he asserted.
One thing that the government of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vice President Ma’ruf Amin could do is play a role in upholding human rights and solving the 2017 acid attack on Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) senior investigator Novel Baswedan.
In addition to this, the government must end all forms of repression and criminalisation of the people’s movements. “We are also urging the state to firmly uphold and create HAM justice in Indonesia”, he said.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was “Peringati hari HAM, Mahasiswa Jogja Tuntut Penuntasan Kasus Novel Baswedan”.]
