ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the mass incarceration of thousands of political detainees between 1969 and 1979 on Buru, an island located in Maluku province, eastern Indonesia. It focuses on the findings of an investigating team established by Komisi Nasional Hak Asasi Manusia in the early 2000s into human rights abuses committed during former President Suharto’s regime, the ‘New Order’. These findings were presented to the Prosecutor of the International People’s Tribunal 1965 and brought before the Panel of Judges. They documented the evidence of grievous abuses against political detainees held on Buru Island during this period. The chapter argues that the forced transportation of political prisoners from the island of Java to the island of Buru and the inhuman conditions under which they had to work constitute crimes against humanity. As crimes against humanity, one element of the crimes is that they are systematic in nature and perpetrated on a widespread scale against a civilian population.
