Maybe Just Scrap Supreme Court, Mr. President?

The next  few days may well see further cause for the collapse of public confidence in the rule of law here in Indonesia.

I could be referring to Tuesday’s chapter in the case of the FPI fanatic facing only four months for vandalising a house of worship, a grim caricature of a trial, with the pitiful demand emanating not from the defence attorney but from the public prosecutor.

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• Meanwhile, the judge quivered like a jellyfish when the rabid gang in the body of the court howled against the right of the victims to take their oath on the Koran, as if a mob of white-robed ignoramuses had any right to interfere with the conduct of the hearing.

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But no, I refer to the Supreme Court, which is not that bad a court at all, but whose rulings – if they offend the scum – are simply ignored by everybody from the top down.

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President SBY has still not ordered his police to enforce high court rulings in Bogor and Bekasi, and given the cowardice and/or collaboration of many (not all) cops here, it may be because he thinks they’d ignore him.

But a new international report gives him the chance to grasp the nettle. So far, his spokesman has not replied to enquiries on the subject.

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Indonesia’s Disrespected High Court

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So why not just abolish the Supreme Court, if it is to be made irrelevant by the State’s indifference to justice?

Ahmadis, Christians, even Shia Muslims, have faint hope of justice under the current regime.

And I’m not alone in my views. Here’s what Human Rights Watch deputy Asia Director Phelim Kine said last week.

“Violence against religious minorities will only get worse so long as the Indonesian government encourages or ignores attacks by Islamist militan­ts,” he said…Yudhoyono (President SBY) hasn’t wanted to touch the issue,”

In the report, HRW accused Indonesian police of remaining complicit with religious violence, citing the failure of police to respond to an attack on a group of Shia students and teachers in August 2012 as one example. The attack killed two people when Sunni militants set fire to houses in East Java.

I see the Jakarta Post also covered the report, but in view of the JP’s owners, Gramedia, being themselves notorious collaborators with Islamist book-burners, I prefer to use the JG.

No point in needlessly promoting the JP whose editors have yet to condemn Gramedia’s grovelling.

 http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/lawandorder/human-rights-watch-slams-indonesia-for-minority-rights-imprisoned-activists/568821