Indonesian president acknowledges past human rights abuses

By NINIEK KARMINI
Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian President Joko Widodo has acknowledged that serious human rights violations occurred across the country in recent decades and vowed to compensate victims and prevent such abuses from happening again in the future. In televised comments on Wednesday, Widodo admitted a total of 12 incidents categorized as gross human rights violations that occurred from the northernmost province of Aceh to the easternmost province of Papua between the 1960s and early 2000s. The president’s comments came a day before Human Rights Watch was to release its annual world report on human rights conditions in more than 100 countries and territories.