Muhammad Ridwan – The administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vice President Ma’ruf Amin has now been working for 100 days of Widodo’s second term in office. The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) is of the view that the legal and human rights (HAM) situation continues to worsen in concert with ignoring people’s constitutional rights.
“This is an indication of what will happen over the next five years of the Jokowi-Ma’ruf administration”, said YLBHI Director Asfinawati in a press release on Wednesday January 29.
Asfinawati explained that the Joint Decree by 11 Ministries and State Institutions (SKB) on Dealing With Radicalism in the Framework of Strengthen National Surveillance of State Civil Servants (ASN), which contains 11 prohibitions on civil servants expressing opinions on social media that contain “hate speech” against the state ideology of Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution, the country’s motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) and the government.
“Aside from definitions which are unclear it has the potential to be implemented arbitrarily, this SKB broadens the definition of radicalism so that intolerance is included as part of it”, said Asfinawati.
The YLBHI, said Asfinawati, also highlighted the muzzling of civil freedoms. This was shown through intimidating statements by President Widodo and requesting that the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) and the national police (Polri) approach social and mass organisations (ormas) to oppose the draft Omnibus Law.
“This is just a continuation of the policies of his previous term where according to an YLBHI-LBH report 6,128 people suffered HAM violations when expressing an opinion in public. This data doesn’t yet include the 21 people who were arrested when workers held an action during the Presidents inauguration speech on Augusts 16, 2019”, explained Asfinawati.
In addition to this, the Widodo-Amin regime has restored the dual socio-political role (dwi-fungsi) of the security forces which was abolished by People’s Consultative Assembly Decree Number VI/2000 (TAP MPR VI/2000) which declared that the dual socio-political role of the Indonesian Armed Forces (then ABRI) resulted in deviations of the role and function of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the Polri which had the consequence of failing to develop the pillars of democracy in the life of the nation, state and society and because of this dwi-fungsi is abolished.
“But the Jokowi administration has instead re-involved the TNI and Polri in a number of ministries”, said Asfinawati.
Moreover, Asfinawati said that the government has perpetuated impunity [in its failure to] solve past HAM violations. There has been no efforts to pursue criminal investigations to follow up on the investigation dossiers on cases of gross HAM violations which Komnas HAM [the National Human Rights Commission] has sent to the Attorney General.
“Jokowi-Ma’ruf have not made HAM an important issue which should be a mark of all of its policies”, she said in conclusion.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was “YLBHI Sebut 100 Hari Rezim Jokowi-Ma’ruf Kondisi HAM Memburuk”.]
