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Victims of past human rights abuses have called on the president to help them achieve justice in their cases.

“Based on its mandate, the state is under the obligation to remember, punish and present justice to the victims of past human rights violations,” said Indria Fernida, a deputy coordinator of rights group Kontras, at a news conference on Thursday in which victims put forth their case.

Indria said the state was obliged to investigate and punish any cases of human rights violations, adding that the victims had the right to the truth, justice and rehabilitation.

Victims addressing the news conference included those of the aborted 1965 coup, the 1984 Tanjung Priok massacre, the 1989 Talangsari raid, the May 1998 Jakarta riots, the 1998 Trisakti and Semanggi shootings, the political abductions in 1997-98 and violence in Papua.

Indria said the government continually had failed to settle all the cases of suspected human rights violations, meaning a growing number of cases remained unresolved.

“The result is that the cases of severe human rights violations are piling up at the Attorney General’s Office,” Indria said.

Bejo Untung said that as a victim of the 1965 coup, he was jailed for decades without trial because of suspicions that he was linked to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which the government blamed for the putsch.

“I call on President [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] to come out with a decree that says my friends and I are not guilty because in all truth we never were guilty,” Bejo said, speaking for himself and approximately 300 other surviving victims.

He also called on the president to restore their reputation and openly apologize to them in the name of the state for the suffering they endured. “This apology can be a starting point for a national reconciliation,” he said.

Rights activist Usman Hamid said that despite many failures in upholding human rights in 2011, there also had been some positives this year.

“These positive notes came from the judiciary, not from the government. One came from the Dutch court that ruled in favor of the demands of the victims of Rawagede,” Usman said.

A court in The Hague in September ordered the Netherlands to apologize for the massacre of 400 men in Rawagede, now Balongsar in West Java, during its occupation of the country in 1947 and pay compensation to eight surviving widows of the victims.

Usman said 2011 was a year of official “denial,” referring to Yudhoyono’s claim that there had been no serious cases of human rights violations since he assumed the presidency in 2004.

“This is also the year of unfulfilled promises. The president made a written province to push for the accountability of law enforcers, but this promise has not been met,” Usman said.

Mugiyanto, a political abductee in 1997-98, said that during Yudhoyono’s presidency, “there have not been any state institutions ordered by President SBY to punish serious human rights violators.” Instead, the president had merely formed small teams that had yet to deliver results, he said.

“We should all make an effort to ensure that 2012 is not another year of unrealized promises,” Usman said.