Daily Archives: October 1, 2012

Jakarta - Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi said on Monday that his ministry was working with the Law and Human Rights Ministry to draft a joint ministerial decree to define "human rights"- a definition that will be used as benchmark in drafting bylaws.

According to Gamawan, such a decree is important due to the many definitions of human rights being promoted nationwide.

"We must regulate the definition of human rights so that the implementation will not violate religious and cultural values embraced in certain parts of the country, which have their own traits," Gamawan said on sidelines of a hearing with the House of Representatives Commission II on regional administrations on Monday.

He cited Aceh as an example, highlighting that the implementation of human rights - as is internationally understood - must adapt to the sharia implemented in the province.

The joint ministerial decree is among the three regulations the Indonesian government has offered to set up in response to its refusal to adopt 30 "critical" recommendations by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) after a quadrennial human rights review in May.

In addition to the decree, the government has also announced that it will establish a law on human rights friendly districts and finalize the long-awaited truth and reconciliation bill to deal with past human rights abuses.

"People usually condemn the government's attempt to regulate them as a violation of human rights. They forget that they must also respect the rights of others. Article 28 of the Constitution clearly states that our rights are limited by the law. Therefore, there is no such thing as total freedom. We are bound by the rights of our neighbors," Gamawan said.

Article 28(j) of the 1945 Constitution stipulates that each person has the obligation to respect the fundamental rights of others while partaking in the life of the community, the nation and the state.

It further says that in exercising rights and liberties, each person has the duty to accept the limitations determined by law for the sole purposes of guaranteeing the recognition and respect of the rights and liberties of other people and of satisfying a democratic society's just demands based on considerations of morality, religious values, security and public order. (swd)

--Courtesy of The Jakarta Post

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Human Rights Must Bow To Religious Values: Home Minister

By Joe Slezak Press & Guide Newspapers Twitter: @joeslezak1

Contract extended with developer offormer Montgomery Ward site

DEARBORN Alan Wozniak will celebrate his 30th anniversary with the citys Human Resources Department on Jan. 20.

On Tuesday night, though, he got to celebrate something different being named as the departments administrator.

The City Council voted 6-0 to appoint him to the top post. Council President Thomas Tafelski was absent because he was ill.

Wozniak, 57, was one of 20 applicants. Eight were offered interviews; seven accepted. The field was narrowed to three before he was picked.

The city has about 650 full-time and about 800 part-time employees.

Wozniak began with the city as a personnel specialist, working his way up to senior human resources analyst. Along the way, he earned a masters degree in general administration from Central Michigan University in 1991.

He said after the meeting that being named administrator was a goal of his.

I enjoy the challenge and the opportunity, he said.

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City hires human resources administrator

Nigeria is just two years away from becoming a 100years post amalgamation.Yet, when the United States of America, USA, celebrated her second centenary in 1976, the escapist wisdom dominant in Nigeria at that time was simply that Nigeria was merely 37years as an independent nation.

Today, that excuse no longer suffices because by the time America was two years from its first centenary, it had wrought many wonders. What wisdom has Nigeria wrought?

The new wisdom is about Nigeria becoming one of the greatest 20 economies of the world by 2020. A tall dream! In this interview with Chief Richard Osuolale Abimbola Akinjide, CON, SAN, FCI Arb. FCE, reflects on Nigeria, two years from its centenary post amalgamation. Excerpts:

The things he sees of Nigeria two years before its centenary as an amalgamated body?

Some times success, some times disappointment.

I do not want to make a judgment of which one is bigger than the other. But something over which I have no doubt is that Nigeria should have been a bigger and better country than what we are today.

At independence Nigeria was far better than Singapore and Malaysia and a number of other countries of the world; but today, Nigeria is not what it should be and I think the problem is human; it's a human problem.

It is not a question of resources because we've got enormous resources - is it cocoa, groundnut, oil and gas, rubber? We've got everything.

The critical factor is what do you make of what you produce and what do you make of the proceeds of what you produce?

Look at Sierra Leone, it was founded before Australia and Switzerland but look at these two Western countries and look at where Sierra Leone is - our African neighbour is one of the worst in the world.

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Nigeria: Nigeria Is a Country, Not a Nation - Akinjide

BHUBANESWAR: The complaint management system of the Odisha Human Rights Commission went hi-tech with the launch of Web-based Human Rights Complaint Management System (eHRCMS) here on Sunday.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurated the system, which will work as a data sharing platform between OHRC and its national counterpart, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

"At times, complainants submit the same petition at OHRC and NHRC, leading to conflict in decisions. Through the online system, we can check the duplicity," OHRC registrar C R Mohapatra told TOI. The commission receives nearly 2,000 petitions from across the state in a year and disposes around 200 cases in a month.

"Until now, OHRC was sending letters by post to defaulters, which was time consuming. Now we have developed a software through which reminders would be shot off automatically through e-mails to the person concerned," said an officer of National Informatics Centre (NIC), a central government institution which provides e-government / e- governance solutions in the country.

eHRCMS would also improve the monitoring mechanism of recommendations made by the commission. Besides, complainants would now receive acknowledgement via SMS and e-mail soon after filing complaints at the OHRC. However, the complaint filing mechanism has remained manual as usual.

"Like before, complainants will either have to send their petitions by post or lodge them personally at the OHRC office. Later, they acknowledgement letters would be sent to them electronically," the NIC officer said, adding, "We will soon develop an online complaint filing mechanism also."

Though eHRCMS is aimed at simplifying the complaint management system, uncertainty looms large over its sustenance, thanks to acute shortage of skilled manpower at OHRC. "The commission is now relying on a few NIC officers to run the show. The government should appoint dedicated IT staff to manage it," said an officer. "Many of the employees here have either been appointed after their retirement from government service or come on deputation from different departments," he said.

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Odisha Human Rights Commission's complaint management goes online

Jakarta (The Jakarta Post/ANN) - In spite of new evidence that the prosecution of alleged members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) after the failed 1965 coup was a gross human rights violation, survivors from the tragedy do not hope that justice will be served anytime soon.

Historian Asvi Warman Adam said that the 1965 anticommunist purge, just like every other gross violation of human rights in the country, remains an unsolved mystery because of governmental inaction.

"Looking back at the long list of human rights violations in Indonesia, the buck stops at the National Commission on Human Rights [Komnas HAM] and none of the perpetrators were ever brought to court. The government failed to punish them," Adam told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

Adam, a historian with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, said that survivors from the tragedy could take solace from the fact the Komnas HAM had declared the purge a gross violation of human rights.

In late July, Komnas HAM declared in its findings that the systematic prosecution of alleged members of the PKI after the failed 1965 coup was a gross human rights violation. The commission urged that military officials involved in the purge be brought to trial.

"It is very important for the history of our country that in 2012 Komnas HAM officially declared the 1965 purge to be gross violation of human rights. It was an official statement by a government institution, based on the commission's thorough investigation in all provinces in Indonesia," Adam said.

Adam said that the ball is now in the court of the Attorney General's Office (AGO), a government institution with a long history of failure to prosecute cases of human rights violations.

Chairman of Komnas HAM Ifdhal Kasim said that the biggest obstacle for the institution to finalise its findings was the absence of concrete evidence such as weapons and bullets that were used to execute the victims.

"The events happened long time ago and it is difficult to obtain such evidence. Komnas HAM only collected information and testimonials from victims, former members of the security agencies and forensic evidence from the crime scenes," Kasim said.

Kasim said that Komnas HAM could do little but call on the AGO to follow through its findings.

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Indonesian history may be rewritten but no rehabilitation yet for anticommunist victims