Various cases of violence and human rights violations still occur in Indonesia despite existing laws that provide normative protection for human rights. Professor of Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM, Prof. Dr. Mohtar Mas’oed, considered this incident as a tragedy for Indonesia. Cases of human rights violations occur repeatedly because the government mindset is oriented on efforts to collect and accumulate capital.
"The impact, with high economic growth, causes social and political imbalances and ultimately, leads to tension and violence done by people and the state," he explained on Thursday (16/2) in Faculty of Law in a Workshop titled "Indonesia is State of Law: The Paradox of State Existence and Human Rights" to commemorate the 66th Anniversary of Faculty of Law.
Mohtar said human rights violations in Indonesia are systemic and structural. Human rights violation in Indonesia comes from the structural root, not from someone’s fault of crime. For example, the government allows even lets a company that will expand plantations, mining, and projects though it is detrimental to society and even violate human rights.
The strong pro-capital mindset that becomes a problem is also reiterated by Dr. Haryatmoko, lecturer of Sanata Dharma University. According to Haryatmoko, increasing human rights violations are caused by the failure of the courts in serving justice to human rights violations in the past. The violations that continue to be ignored without any judicial process weakened and blurred people’s memory about the past human rights violations that had occurred. "As a result, History will be confused in recording who the executioner actually is and who the real victims are," he said.
Haryatmoko explained that this obscurity makes human rights victims exposed to second victimization, the delay of justice. There is another implication that is more worrying where the public does not learn from history that the human rights violations that once happened are absolutely wrong. As a result, human rights violations are potentially to be repeated. The failure of the court is also caused by the law which takes side on the strong party.
Meanwhile, Dyah Saptaningrum, SH., LL.M., Director of eLSAM, highlighted the government who still cannot realize the normative protection to become empiric reality, though normatively there is already strong textual guarantee. There is still a gap between guarantee and normative such as not able to realize the education budget by 20% of the state budget, not doing the adjustment of legislation with human rights standard, as well as the failure of fulfillment of human rights that has not been able to be fully sued by law.
In addition, according to Dyah, the state seems absent or allows a threat to human rights protection. This can be seen in the case of Yasmin Church, the attacks on religious minorities, such as the Ahmadiyah and Shi’a, as well as other cases involving the non-state actors in the case of Lapindo and Newmont.
"The state apparatus in this matter also becomes an active part in the act of human rights violation, either directly or indirectly. They use excessive force on citizens when land conflicts occur or conflicts happen between company and community in natural resource management, and even become perpetrators in cases of torture," she explained.
Drs. Hery Zudianto, Akt., MM., shared a lot about the development of the city of Yogyakarta while under his leadership. Hery mentioned at the time he applied the governance based on respect for human rights.