[Kabar-indonesia] House sends bill against discrimination in limbo

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Jakarta Post 
Monday, July 3, 2006

House sends bill against discrimination in limbo

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Bowing to demands from a number of groups, the House of Representatives has 
decided to halt discussions on an anti-discrimination bill that was already in 
the pipeline.

The decision was made by the House's special committee tasked with 
deliberating the bill to eradicate ethnic and racial discrimination.

The committee accepted a recommendation from the House legal division that 
suggested such a law was not necessary given the numerous laws that already 
regulated the issue.

"After studying input from numerous groups, the House legal division decided 
that numerous provisions in the anti-discrimination bill were merely repeats 
of stipulations in other laws, such as Law No. 39/1999 on Human Rights," deputy 
chairman of the special committee Mufid Busyairi of the National Awakening 
Party told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He said numerous provisions in the draft were also redundant as a number of 
United Nations covenants against discrimination had been ratified by the 
Indonesian government.

Such redundancy was first highlighted by the National Commission on Human 
Rights (Komnas HAM) and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), which later dismissed 
the significance of a new law that would outlaw ethnic and racial 
discrimination.

The Komnas HAM was firm in its opposition of the bill as the draft law, once 
passed, would diminish its authority as the sole institution to hear cases of 
discrimination.

Other groups, such as the MUI, alleged that the bill would only favor small 
and minority groups in the country.

As the bill's title suggests, it seeks to outlaw racial and ethnic 
discrimination. It was proposed by the House and was being discussed simultaneously with 
the bill related to civil registration and citizenship.

The House and the government were to decide whether the deliberation of the 
anti-discrimination bill would continue or not.

"If the representative of the government, in this case the justice and human 
rights minister, suggested that the discussion of this bill should be stopped, 
we could not decide otherwise," Mufid said.

Advocates of the bill, including scores of non-governmental organizations 
grouped in the Committee for Eradication of Discrimination from Indonesia, have 
vowed to press ahead with campaigning for the bill's deliberation.

Swandy Sihotang of the Indonesian Movement Against Discrimination (Gandi), a 
member of the coalition, said the Human Rights Law did not give details about 
what was discrimination and what was not.

"It just gives a general definition on what can be considered as 
discrimination," he told the Post.

The coalition has demanded that the bill not only seek to outlaw ethnic and 
racial discrimination, but also other forms of discrimination.

"An exclusive law on discrimination is needed to incorporate numerous 
stipulations carried by other laws and regulations," he said. 

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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