JAKARTA (Yosefardi) – A group of students from the Trisakti University staged a rally on Sunday (May. 3) at the Bundaran Hotel Indonesia in Central Jakarta demanding the government to establish the long-delayed ad hoc human rights tribunal.
President of the Trisakti University’s students Muhammad Puri Andamas explained they ask President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to fulfill his promise to establish the long-delayed ad hoc human rights tribunal.
Puri said the ad hoc human rights tribunal is necessarily needed to settle a lot of unresolved human right cases in the past, including they May 1998 tragedy.
Actually, the establishment of ad hoc human rights tribunal is already regulated under the Human Rights Court Law No. 26/2000. Specifically, Article 43 of Law 26/2000 that reads ad hoc human rights tribunal can be established by way of a Presidential Decree upon the recommendation of the House of Representatives (DPR).
In relation to the May 1998 tragedy, the DPR, in its plenary session back in Sep. 28, 2009, had passed the recommendations to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) to, among others, establish an ad hoc human rights tribunal on the case of the kidnapping and the elimination of activists by force during the 1997-1998 period. But SBY has never established said tribunal until he ended his term in October 2014. (haryantosuharman@yosefardi.com)