Human rights commission receives over 100 complaints per month

The complaints come from individuals or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in all parts of the country and vary widely in substance with most of the cases related to conflicts over natural resources and agrarian matters, Syafruddin Ngulma, a Komnas-HAM member for mediation, said here Friday.

But there were also a relatively high number of reports on acts of violence by police, he said. In the period February 2007 - February 2008, for instance, the commission received about 100 reports on police brutality.

Such cases, however, were not difficult to handle as the commission had already signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Police Headquarters whereby reports on police officers could be directly passed on to the police for further action.

In reply to a question, Ngulma said there were two possible reasons for the high number of complaints on human right violations. One was that there was growing awareness among the public about Komnas Ham`s existence. The awareness made people more daring or willing to report human rihts abuses.

The other possible reason was...