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| Sunday, 5 February 2006 |
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Indonesia defends rights record over tsunami survivors JAKARTA, Feb 3, 2006 (AFP) Indonesia defended Friday its record of protecting the human rights of tsunami survivors, after a report by international aid groups released this week alleged it was neglecting them. Foreign ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin described the report as "concocted" and said Indonesia was doing its best to rebuild Aceh province. "We are conducting the reconstruction and rehabilitation in Aceh diligently and with good intentions. We always try to ensure that the process is being carried out with credibility and accountability," Thamrin told AFP. Aceh was the hardest hit by the tsunami triggered by a 9.3-magnitude quake off the coast of Sumatra in December 2004, with some 165,000 people there being killed. The report was released Wednesday by ActionAid International, the People's Movement for Human Rights Education and Habitat International Coalition. The authors conducted research involving more than 50,000 people in India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand, the countries worst hit by the disaster. They found that many survivors had complained of lack of government protection against discrimination, land grabs and violence while the poorest, particularly women, were subjected to sexual abuses. Ministry spokesman Thamrin said Indonesia had admitted that reconstruction in Aceh "is not perfect" but the government was doing its best to allocate aid donated by foreign countries. The chief of the agency tasked with reconstruction in Aceh, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, also told the state news agency Antara late Thursday that there were "no human rights violations against refugees in Aceh." He said he had never heard of discrimination against women. "I appreciate what the NGO friends have done but... I do not think that such a thing existed," he added. |
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