US Report Calls Care To Protect Human Rights Violations, PDIP Legislator: What's The Motivation?

ILLUSTRATION DOC BETWEEN

JAKARTA - Member of Commission IX of the House of Representatives from the PDI-P faction (PDIP) Rahmad Handoyo questioned the basis of the report from the United States Department of Foreign Affairs which stated that there were indications of human rights violations from the use of the PeduliLindung application. He considered that other countries could not be arbitrary in giving assessments.

The PeduliLindung application is an application used by the Indonesian government to track the spread of COVID-19.

"As a sovereign country, we deserve to question America's motivation for releasing this issue of human rights violations," Rahmad said in a written statement quoted on Saturday, April 16.

Rahmad asked for reports like this to be corrected. Do not let a country conduct an assessment based solely on reports from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) without prior confirmation.

"America must be corrected, the US Ministry of Foreign Affairs should not arbitrarily judge a country based on NGO reports without any confirmation from the Indonesian government," he stressed.

He said the government had the right to protect the public from the threat of COVID-19 in various ways, including by implementing the PeduliLindung system. Moreover, Rahmad said, this method has succeeded in suppressing the rate of addition of cases in the country.

The US government, he continued, also must not forget that Indonesia has been recognized as one of the best countries in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, Rahmad said, the US had also invited Indonesia to talk about controlling this virus in the community. Thus, these facts should be respected by the land of Uncle Sam.

"Don't forget, Indonesia was once invited by the United States to exchange ideas on how to control COVID-19," he said.

"This fact should be respected, not just looking for a fault based solely on NGO reports," Rahmad added.

For information, the report entitled 'Indonesia 2021 Human Rights Report' states that there are indications of human rights violations related to the implementation of the COVID-19 tracking application, PeduliLindung.

This report was issued by the United States Department of State, where in the report, the country mentioned indications of human rights violations that had been voiced by NGO groups. However, it did not specify who the non-governmental organizations were.