Examining the Differences Between Human Rights Violations and Gross Human Rights Violations

Gross Human Rights Violations

From the understanding of human rights violations and gross human rights violations, we can actually know what the difference is between the two. According to Article 1 number 2 of Law No. 26 of 2000 that gross human rights violations are human rights violations referred to in the law. Furthermore, Article 7 states that gross human rights violations include:

1. Genocide
2. Crimes against humanity

Article 8 explains that what is meant by the crime of genocide is any act committed with the intent to destroy or exterminate all or part of a national, racial, ethnic, or religious group, by:

1. killing members of the group;
2. causing serious physical or mental suffering to members of the group;
3. creating conditions of life for the group that will result in physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or
5. forcibly transferring children from one group to another.

Meanwhile, Article 9 explains that one of the acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack, knowing that the attack is directed specifically against the civilian population, is in the form of:

1. murder;
2. extermination;
3. enslavement;
4. forced eviction or transfer of population;
5. deprivation of liberty or other arbitrary deprivation of physical freedom that violates the basic principles of international law;
6. torture;
7. rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization or other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
8. persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law;
9. enforced disappearance of persons; or
10. the crime of apartheid.

Thus, it can be interpreted that gross violations of human rights are violations of human rights as referred to in Article 7, namely the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity, and the forms of these two types of crimes are explained in Articles 8 and 9 of Law No. 26 of 2000 concerning the Human Rights Court.