Jokowi admits to past human rights breaches in Indonesia.

Joko Widodo, Indonesia's president, has acknowledged "grave human rights violations" in his country's history and committed to preventing a repeat.

Hi identified 12 "regrettable" episodes, including an anti-communist purge during the Cold War's height.

According to some estimates, the massacres killed approximately 500,000 people.

Mr. Widodo is the second Indonesian president to publicly apologize for the violence of the 1960s, following the late Abdurrahman Wahid's apologies in 2000.

The violence erupted after communists were suspected of assassinating six generals in an attempted coup during a power struggle between the Communists, the military, and Islamist groups.

"With a clear mind and an earnest heart, I as (Indonesia's) head of state recognize that egregious human rights breaches did occur in many instances," Mr. Widodo said during a news conference outside the presidential palace in Jakarta on Wednesday.

"And I deeply regret that those transgressions occurred," the president, often known as Jokowi, continued.

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He mentioned events that occurred between 1965 and 2003, including the kidnapping of democracy activists during rallies against former President Suharto's iron-fisted administration in the late 1990s.

The president also emphasized human rights breaches in the Papua region, which borders Papua New Guinea and has a long-running separatist movement, as well as during an insurgency in the Aceh province, which is located in the north of the island of Sumatra.

He said the government wanted to restore victims' rights "fairly and sensibly without undermining judicial resolution," but he didn't say how.

"I will work tirelessly to ensure that serious human rights breaches do not occur again in the future," he added.

line Analysis box by South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head

Even hearing a political leader admit to state abuses is uncommon in this region, so President Widodo's expression of remorse for darker periods in Indonesia's past crosses a very low bar for human rights norms in South-East Asia and will be widely applauded.

It is a step toward fulfilling a campaign vow he made when he ran for president for the first time in 2014, to hold people accountable for previous human rights breaches. But it's only the first step.

This comes just a year before President Widodo is set to step down. He just formed the team last year to look at 12 of the most egregious incidents, and its mandate is strictly non-judicial; it seeks to shed light on what happened, not to bring the culprits to justice in a court of law. Instead, he promised to "restore victims' rights in a fair and wise manner," as well as to heal the nation's wounds.

What he proposes sounds more like the South African truth and reconciliation approach, which was employed in Timor Leste after Indonesia's severely repressive government ended. It can be therapeutic for victims simply to have the state acknowledge and mourn their pain, but for some, this is insufficient.

Critics have pointed out that military officers implicated in some of the worst crimes, like the kidnapping and murder of political activists in early 1998, have been promoted rather than held accountable under President Widodo.

New laws enacted recently have constrained rather than increased the liberties gained following the fall of the autocratic Suharto dictatorship in 1998. The already poor human rights situation in the unstable province of Papua has deteriorated since 2014. And any reckoning with the mass killings in 1965-66, in which at least 500,000 suspected leftists were murdered with the collusion or direct order of the military, will take place long after the majority of those involved have perished.

However, rights organizations criticized his admission for failing to address government accountability.

Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International in Indonesia, has asked for legal action to be taken against the perpetrators of these crimes.

"Recognition without an attempt to bring those responsible for previous human rights atrocities to justice will simply add salt to the wounds of the victims and their families. Simply put, without accountability, the president's declaration is useless "He stated.

Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch said Mr. Widodo "stopped short of directly recognizing the government's complicity in the killings or expressing any vows to pursue accountability".

Mr. Widodo recently got a report from a committee he commissioned to investigate human rights incidents last year.