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18Islam, Democracy and Human Rights in Contemporary Indonesiaengage in capacity building and work on the adoption of thenecessary legislation in order to provide a structural frameworkconducive to the promotion and protection of human rights.To effort to promote and protect human rights across thecounty covering over 17,000 islands with over 210 million peopleis not an easy task. However, Indonesia is now in thischallenging phase of its transition. A number of thedevelopments have been encouraging:a. The press, which during the 32 years of President Soeharto%u2019srule was basically limited to publishing the government line(except for a few underground, on-line news organizations),is now vibrantly free. New radio and television stations, andon-line news service, are being launched almost daily. Weare encouraged that Indonesians value and want to protectthis precious press freedom.b. There have been some encouraging developments in thestrengthening of human rights protection. President Wahidappointed the world%u2019s first - and only - Minister for HumanRights which is now integrated within Ministry of Justiceand has released all Soeharto - era political prisoners. TheIndonesian Government is determined to investigate andprosecute cases of past human rights abuses (including in Aceh,East Timor, the May 1998 violence in Jakarta, the 1984 TanjungPriok incident and the 1996 attack on PDI-P headquarters)and to hold accountable those who were responsible.c. During the Soeharto era, only three political groups weresanctioned by the Government. Now we open up the politicalprocess and allowed new parties to form. Forty -eight politicalparties competed in the 1999 General Elections. Now its about200 political parties have been enrolled in our ministry for