JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (Menkopolhukam) Mahfud MD dismissed accusations by the United States (US) Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the PeduliLindung application, which is part of the COVID-19 pandemic policy in Indonesia, violating human rights (HAM). .
"We created the PeduliLindung program to protect the people," said Mahfud MD in a written statement in Jakarta, taken from Antara, Friday, April 15.
He said the PeduliLindung application, which was launched in 2020, has helped the Government in suppressing cases of COVID-19 transmission. "In fact, we managed to cope with COVID-19 better than the United States," he stressed.
In the same statement, he explained that the protection of human rights must be carried out as a whole, which means not only individually, but also the collective rights of the community.
"In this context, the state must play an active role in regulating. That is why we created the PeduliLindung program which is very effective in helping to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 infection to the Delta and Omicron types," he continued.
Regarding the US accusation of alleged human rights violations by the Indonesian government through the PeduliLindung application, Mahfud said the US had received more reports than Indonesia regarding human rights violations.
"We have a record that the US has been reported more by the Special Procedures Mandate Holders (SPMH). In the period 2018-2021, for example, based on the SPMH, Indonesia was reported to have violated human rights 19 times by several elements of society, while the US in the same period was reported 76 times," he said.
Meanwhile, the US Ministry of Foreign Affairs on its official website uploaded the 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices report on human rights enforcement in countries that received assistance from the US and UN members throughout 2021.
In the report, the US stated that a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were concerned about the information collected in the PeduliLindung application and how the data was stored and used by the Indonesian government.
The report is contained in a sub-chapter that discusses random and illegal government intervention in privacy, family, and domestic affairs. However, the report does not elaborate in more detail on the potential human rights violations referred to. The US also did not fully name the source of the complaint in the report.
Regarding the report, Mahfud said that on the one hand it was a form of strengthening the role of civil society. However, on the other hand, he warned that the report needed to be verified. "Reports like that are not necessarily completely true," he said.
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