‘Tribunal’ opens hearings into 1965 mass murder of Indonesian communists News
‘Tribunal’ opens hearings into 1965 mass murder of Indonesian communists

A “people’s tribunal” opened Tuesday in The Hague to investigate the murder of thousands of alleged communists by Indonesian authorities in 1965. Human rights lawyers have charged Indonesia [AP report] with nine counts, including torture, sexual violence, and murder, for the government’s involvement in the deaths of roughly 500,000 people. The tribunal has no legal authority, but prominent human rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, acting as prosecutor, said [Demanjo report] “the truth has to be told” about an issue that remains taboo in Indonesia. Non-legally binding verdicts are expected next year.

Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission [official website, in Indonesian] released a report [executive summary, PDF, in Indonesian] in 2012, which found that the mass killings constituted gross human rights violations. The government dismissed the report’s findings and refused to take further action. The killings followed a fail coup attempt and led to the downfall of President Sukarno and the beginning of of Suharto’s 30-year rule. Rights activists also blame the US, UK and Australia for complicity in the killings by providing support to Suharto’s forces.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.