"The new government under President Prabowo Subianto will continue efforts to revisit the truth and reconciliation commission law as a legal basis to resolve major human rights violations in the past," Mahendra stated during the 76th Human Rights Day commemoration here on Tuesday (December 10).
The minister remarked that Indonesia's effort to establish a truth commission a few years after the collapse of the New Order in 1998 was inspired by South Africa while adding that activists and officials at that time studied South Africa's strategies for resolving human rights violations.
"As a result, Indonesia passed its first law on truth and reconciliation commission (in 2004)," the coordinating minister stated.
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However, the Constitutional Court later declared the law unconstitutional, stalling the government's effort to resolve grave human rights violations, he remarked.
Mahendra stated that the decision of then-President Joko Widodo to sign a regulation legitimizing non-judiciary resolution of past human rights violations in 2022 sparked another hope for its resolution.
The minister then called on all parties to support the government's determination to be more attentive to human rights issues and resolve grave human rights violations in the past.
Indonesia's first truth and reconciliation law, passed as Law No.27 of 2004, was quashed by the Constitutional Court in 2006 due to concerns that the law failed to provide legal clarity to achieve its purpose of national reconciliation.
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Translator: Fath Putra Mulya, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Yuni Arisandy Sinaga
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