New Human Rights Watch report on TNI's businesses

Human Rights Watch has published a new report on the Indonesian miltiary's (TNI) businesses. The report makes clear that efforts to reform the TNI - in this case its business empire - are severely compromised. In sum:

"Five years after the government of Indonesia committed to end the money-making ventures of the Indonesian armed forces, the promise of reform remains unfulfilled. New reform measures will perpetuate military businesses, rather than eliminate them."

The report, Unkept Promise: Failure to End Military Business Activity in Indonesia, chronicles the government stalling that has delayed implementation of the flawed 2004 law, which was supposed "to shut down or take over all TNI businesses by October 16, 2009" -- flawed because "it did not clearly cover illegal and informal businesses." (For example, "protection payments for security services, criminal enterprises, and corruption.")

The regulations implementing the law are so weak that they

do not require the military to give up its businesses, but merely provide for a partial restructuring of the entities—military cooperatives and foundations—through which it holds many of its investments. The government formed an inter-ministerial team on November 11 to oversee the limited transformation of TNI businesses. However, this team has no clear authority over the TNI or its businesses, lacks independence, is not required to report publicly on its work, and faces no deadline to complete its work. Instead, the government’s actions at best set in motion a new process to gradually assert greater government oversight, but not ownership, over TNI business activities. Nor do the new measures address accountability for human rights violations and economic crimes associated with military business activities.

 The report includes with a set of recommendations.

see also Human Rights Watch's earlier report Too High a Price: The Human Rights Cost of the Indonesian Military’s Economic Activities (June 2006).