Kevin Rudd Should Raise Human Rights Issue in Indonesia

July 21, 2011

Kevin Rudd Should Raise Human Rights Issue in Indonesia and Implementing the Australian Commitment on the UN Conventions.

Sydney, 22nd July 2011 – The Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd should raise security accountability for abuses, the rights of religious minorities and death penalty during his visit to attend the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers Meeting, the ASEAN-Australia Ministerial Conference and the 18th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Bali. Indonesian Solidarity also requests the Australian government must release all Indonesians under 18 years old who have been held in Australian jail and detention.

Under the Lombok Treaty Australia in effect promised not to notice any 'seperatists' and so to ignore their human rights. The footage on Youtube of cruel intimidation used by the TNI (Indonesian National Army) against Papuans was mentioned during the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard's visit to Indonesia. The soldiers who tortured the Papuans received light sentences for “disobeying orders”.

Meanwhile the Indonesian Solidarity welcomes the decision of Mr Kevin Rudd who visited Indonesia July 8-9 to raise the issue of the death penalty as two Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran have lost their final legal appeal against the death sentence for heroin smuggling. More importantly, the Australian government should encourage the Indonesian government to ratify the Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which Indonesia. Meanwhile Amnesty International believes there are currently over a hundred prisoners on death row in Indonesia. There have been no reports of death sentences being carried out in Indonesia since 2008.

Meanwhile a special police counter-terrorism force (Detachment 89) that receives funding and training from Australia to the tune of several million dollars a year has committed several human rights crimes, including in Ambon in 2010. To respond to this abuse, the Australian embassy in Jakarta had sent an official to investigate. However until this day, there not a single perpetrator has been brought to justice.
There is political silentness in Canberra about brutal attacks on religious minorities in Indonesia by hardliner religious organisations including the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). The National Police chief Comr. Gen. Timur Pradopo is one of the founders of the FPI. President Yudhoyono himself issued a decree restricting activity by the Ahmadiyah religious community in 2008 and since that time 180 attacks against Ahmadiyah mosques and other properties have been recorded. Australia’s government should defend the rights of this minority group to worship as they choose.

According to the Indonesian government, 506 Indonesian poor fishermen are held in jail and detention centres in Australia for people smuggling and face up to 5 years jail. Meanwhile 70 other Indonesian crew members claiming to be under 18 are being held as adults in jails and immigration detention in Australia. Sixty of them are being held on the controversial evidence of wrist X-rays as proof they are adults. Australia is a party to the UN Convention on Children, but Indonesian crew who are children are regularly locked up in Australian prisons.

Australian tax payers will spend more than $4 million prosecuting Indonesian fishermen; this will increase with the longer sentences. The Australian government argues this spending is part of their commitment to stopping people smugglers. Dr John Rawson, as Director of Indonesian Solidarity, says a humane Australian government would amnesty and repatriate those poor fishermen and $4 million would be allocated in improving income per capita in Eastern Indonesia, where most of the fishermen come from.

ENDS

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