The Wire

Although Indonesia is being dubbed a “fledgling democracy”, it still has a long way to go before democracy becomes a matter of practice rather than rhetoric. The memory of life under dictatorship remains strong in a country where former president Sueharto used the armed forces, including the police, as an instrument to maintain his power in Indonesia over 30 years. These years witnessed many cases of human rights abuse, with the military and police implicated in thousands of deaths. Rafendi Djamin is from the Human Rights Working Group, an umbrella organization for NGO’s working to expose and stop state sanctioned violence against peaceful opposition groups, and to find non-violent solutions in Papua and Aceh.