Press release of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
Jakarta, 17 October 2000
N° 5

H.E. Mrs Megawati Soekarnoputri, the Vice-President of the Republic of Indonesia delivered a statement this afternoon before the members of parliaments gathered at the Jakarta Convention Center for the 104th Inter-Parliamentary Conference. In her speech, she expressed the hope that "it is in the context of the new paradigm that concord will grow and develop around the standards and norms, including human rights, which we have agreed upon and which we are jointly committed to bringing into reality".

Mrs Megawati Soekarnoputri, whose case was examined by the IPU Committee for the Human Rights of Parliamentarians in 1996, declared that she was "grateful to God that the focus of attention [of the 104th IPU Conference] will be placed on parliamentary issues, the judiciary, human rights, and economic and social issues".

The Indonesian Vice-President went on to say that "while we are striving to restructure our economy, we also have to solve problems which are manifest in the form of various political, social, and security volatilities which have loomed in our country. It is a fact that those volatilities have given rise to violations of law and human rights; now they have become very vocal whenever there is an indication that such violations have taken place".

"Permit me on this occasion to express my concern about the stands taken by several government leaders of friendly countries. They are not only insensitive to the difficulties we are encountering: they even have displayed a tendency to complicate matters in our nation in a situation which is already very difficult. I consciously use the words "government leaders of friendly countries". This is to distinguish them from the government institutions and from the corresponding nations as a whole. In this regard, I can say that there has arisen an impression in our society that the leaders to whom I refer show arrogance, which is not in line with the new atmosphere of international relationships which we are jointly forging these days", Mrs Megawati Soekarnoputri declared.

"It is my hope - she continued - that this forum, which represents peoples from all over the world, will provide opportunities for an open exchange of opinions on various problems encountered by that group of nations which we once symbolically referred to as the "South Group"...Historically speaking, this parliament and inter-parliamentary international cooperation constitutes a new stage in the history of humankind which has hitherto been centered on the histories of kings and governments. The people and nations only took a marginal position as the indirect object, so to speak, in political discourse both at the national and international level".

The IPU, founded in 1889 and based in Geneva, currently has 140 member parliaments affiliated and 5 regional parliamentary organisations associated. It also has a Liaison Office with the UN in New York.