When a law clearing the way for ad hoc courts to try human-rights violations was passed in Indonesia last November, some saw it as a sign that high-ranking military officers would finally be punished for the many abuses committed by the nation's armed forces.

Previously, military human-rights violations had either been ignored or tried as "ordinary" crimes. Only low-ranking soldiers were punished and they usually received light sentences.

Now, it was argued, a law spelling out severe penalties for crimes against humanity (murder, torture, etc. when committed as an instrument of government policy) meant that those who planned and directed violations could also be prosecuted.

However, the chances of that happening remain slim, according to lawyer Munir, Indonesia's most prominent human-rights activist and head of the nongovernmental organization Kontras (Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence).

In Tokyo recently to meet with local nongovernmental organizations, Munir, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said that the ability of the courts to try past violations would be impeded by a constitutional amendment made last August that guarantees nonretroactivity in Indonesian law.

While the right not to be tried for offenses that were not crimes at the time they were committed is, of course, well-established, Munir explained that the amendment was made not to further human rights, but to protect the military.

"It's a political game," he said. "They're using a principle of human rights to give the military protection and impunity (for past crimes)."

Before, our biggest challenge was trying to reform the (corrupt) legal system. Now we have to deal with a much tougher problem -- the constitution."

He added that political interference was also likely to stop many ad hoc courts from ever being established in the first place. Indonesia's lower house must first recommend that a court be set up, and that recommendation must then win the president's approval, leaving the judicial process open to political manipulation.

Such manipulation has, in fact, already occurred. On Monday, the lower house concluded that the notorious Trisakti and Semanggi incidents, in which a total of 30 youths died when security forces fired on student demonstrators on three separate occasions in 1998 and 1999, were not gross violations of human rights and therefore no ad hoc courts would be convened to try the cases. President Abdurrahman Wahid criticized the decision, claiming it was politically motivated.

A separate military tribunal was formed in June to try the Trisakti case, despite the obvious conflict of interest.

"The military are pushing for military courts instead of human-rights courts, and some politicians support this, because they're afraid that if they support human-rights investigations they may end up being held accountable for (the mass killings) in 1965," Munir said. "The people involved in (those killings) protect the military from what they did in more recent cases."

Munir served as a member of the committee that drafted the human-rights court law but quit when conservatives succeeded in watering down the bill.

He said that the law was in large part intended as a sop to the international community. The violence orchestrated by the Indonesian military at the time of the 1999 referendum in East Timor, he explained, led to strong pressure for the United Nations to set up an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible. The military and its allies were determined to avoid this, and intended to use the law to "prove" that Indonesia could deal with human-rights violations domestically.

Many other observers have come to the same conclusion, noting that the law was rushed through Parliament in November -- days before U.N. Security Council delegates visited East Timor and Indonesia as part of a preliminary U.N. investigation into the violence and the need for an international tribunal.

An Indonesian ad hoc court to try crimes against humanity committed in East Timor was finally approved in April, following an investigation last year (in which Munir also participated) by Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights. The Commission's investigative team concluded that the Indonesian military was responsible for the violence, named a number of high-ranking officers as suspects, and recommended that an ad hoc court be formed to prosecute violations committed from the time of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975.

However, the court mandate approved in April is restricted to prosecuting violations that occurred after the August 1999 referendum. As an Amnesty International report has noted, this "denies the connection between the post-ballot violence and the pattern of events throughout the year in which militia were established, armed and trained by the Indonesian military."

The court was due to start hearing cases this month, but Munir said that the process has been stalled.

With ad hoc human-rights trials so vulnerable to the political climate, prospects for ever obtaining meaningful justice for victims seem bleak.

President Wahid, who Munir believes is the only prominent politician in Indonesia with any genuine interest in human rights, is likely to be impeached next month on corruption charges, and Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri is almost certain to be his successor. Despite her reputation as a reformist, Munir said her human-rights credentials are weak, pointing to the fact that she has appointed notorious East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres to head her party's youth organization and espouses military solutions to the conflicts in Aceh and West Papua.

The obstacles are daunting, but not nearly as insurmountable as they seemed during the Suharto years, Munir said.

The key to securing justice, Munir said, lies in the overall process of democratic transition in Indonesia.

"Of course, if I look at the squabbling among the political elite, it's depressing. But if I look at the ordinary people genuinely committed to democratic change, I feel optimistic about our future."