"The President has legal responsibility to settle the cases," Kontras` coordinator Haris Azhar said at the office of the Presidential Advisory Council here on Friday.
Several activists from Kontras, along with representatives of the victims was received by Council member Albert Hasibuan to whom they had asked to advise the President to immediately settle the cases.
Besides having legal responsibility, Haris said, the President also has moral and political responsibility. The political responsibility arises in connection with recommendations of the House of Representatives for the government to take several actions.
The House of Representatives presented the recommendations on September 28. 2009. They contain requests for the President to set up an ad hoc human rights court, for the President and all governmental institutions and parties concerned to immediately find 13 persons that had been declared missing by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).
They also asked the government to rehabilitate and give compensations to the families of the missing persons and also to ratify the convention on anti-forced disappearances.
Based on Kontras` records several gross human rights violations that had not yet been thoroughly investigated include the Trisakti case, the Semanggi I and Semanggi II cases, the May 1998 case, the Talangsari case and the Tanjung Priok case.
President Yudhoyono had said that the government was serious in its efforts to settle the cases.
"We are serious to settle the cases. Thank God in the past seven years no gross human rights violation had occurred. We have the desire and responsibility to settle them," he said to newsmen at the presidential palace on February 13.
President Yudhoyono said the government had always opened its door for discussions on the settlement of the cases with all parties.
He said he wished all cases could be settle so that the state would not have pending problems. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2012
