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Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs, Mahfud MD. (ANTARA/HO-Humas Kemenko Polhukam RI/FR) - 

Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs, Mahfud MD, has denied allegations leveled by the United States concerning potential human rights violations linked to the PeduliLindungi application.

"We created the PeduliLindungi program to protect the people," he remarked in a written statement issued on Friday.

The PeduliLindungi application, which was launched in 2020, has helped the government in stemming the spread of COVID-19, he said.

"In reality, we managed to handle COVID-19 better than the United States," he stressed.

The protection of human rights must be assured comprehensively, meaning not just individually, but also through the people's collective rights.

"Within this context, the state must play an active role in regulating," he noted.

"This is why we created the PeduliLindungi program, which has been very effective in reducing COVID-19 infection spread by the Delta and Omicron variants," he added.

Concerning the US allegation of human rights violation by the Indonesian government through the PeduliLindungi application, the minister said that there are more reports against the US concerning human rights violations than Indonesia.

"We have a record that shows that the US is reported more by Special Procedures Mandate Holders (SPMH)," he said.

"Within the 2018–2021 period, for instance, based on SPMH, Indonesia was reported to violate human rights 19 times by several elements of society, while the US, within the same period, was reported 76 times," he added.

In the 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on the United States Department of State’s website, which covers human rights enforcement in nations that received aid from the US and UN members in 2021, the US mentioned that a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had expressed their concern over the information collected by the PeduliLindungi application.

The NGOs also voiced concern over how the data is stored and utilized by the Indonesian government.

The report was contained within a sub-chapter that discussed random and illegal government interventionwith regard to privacy, family, and household affairs.

However, the report did not further elaborate on the potential human rights violations that it referred to. The US also did not completely mention the source of the complaints cited in the report.

In response to the report, Mahfud said this is the realization of civilian organizations' role. However, the truth of the report must be examined, he added.

"Reports such as this one are not necessarily completely true," he remarked//ANT