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2 JSEAHR 236 (2018)
When Human Rights Are Not Enough: A Failure of Multiculturalism in Indonesia: (A Preliminary Hypothesis)

handle is hein.journals/jseahr2 and id is 33 raw text is: 236 journal of Southeast Asian Human Rights, Vol. 2 No. 1 June 2018. pp. 236-247 doi: 10. 1914/seahrv2i15322 0 University offember & Indonesian Consortium for Human Rights Lecturers When Human Rights are not Enough: A Failure of Multiculturalism in Indonesia? (A Preliminary Hypothesis) Joeni A. Kurniawan, PhD Candidate, University of Pisa, Italy and Lecturer at University of Airlangga, Indonesia Abstract As far as the judiciary is concerned, there have been quite a number of legal instruments created in Indonesia for the protection of human rights. These legal instruments include the Indonesian Constitution, which possess special articles pertaining to human rights: the Human Rights Act (the Law Number 39 of 1999), the National Commission for Human Rights, etc. Thus, normatively, all of these legal instruments should be adequate to protect human rights in Indonesia, including the protection of the minority groups. However, the reality does not seem in line with these expectations. There have been a number of cases in Indonesia that have brought into serious question the county's ability to protect the rights of minority groups. The persecution of the Ahmadiyah and Shia sects, the rejection of the establishment of non-Muslim places of worship, and, the most recent case, the imprisonment of Jakarta's governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, are just a few of the distressing incidences which show how Indonesia's poor performance in the protection of minority groups. Identity politics, and even a sentiment of racism, are re-emerging in Indonesia, a fact which seems to be affirmed by the findings presented by the Wahid Foundation, which show that 59.9% of 1520 respondents from 34 provinces in Indonesia said that they harbor hatred towards some groups of their fellow citizens, such as those who are non-Muslims, of Chinese-descent, communists, etc. (Hakim 2016). Among this 59,9%, 92,2% of them reported that they are strongly opposed to a person from one of the aforementioned groups taking office as a leader in the government, and 82,4% even reported that they don't want to have a neighbor who belongs to one of those groups (Hakim 2016). Such re-emergence of identity politics and racism, as well as the frightening degree of hatred displayed among the population, give rise to questions about why all of the human rights instruments which already exist within Indonesia's legal framework seem to fail in preventing the prevailing modem sentiment and incidences of abuses. In this article I will present my hypothesis that all that the tragedies regarding the mistreatment of and negative sentiments towards minority groups in Indonesian are due to the failure of the 'multiculturalist' approach implemented in Indonesia so far. I will also propose that an 'interculturalist' approach be implemented in Indonesia as means to critique and refine the failed multiculturalist approach in dealing with Indonesia's multicultural society, and in dealing with the protection of minority groups in particular. Keywords: Multiculturalism, Interculturalism, Human Rights, Indonesia

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