Month: July 2011

JG: Low-Ranking Soldiers Indicted Over Torture, Killing in Papua’s Puncak Jaya

[The Papua Customary Council (DAP), however, disagreed with the Army’s
version of events. It said Kinderman was a local priest and had no
ties to the OPM.

“He was waiting for a delivery from Wamena, so when a convoy
approached he immediately went up to check for his package,” DAP
member Markus Haluk said. “There are thousands of innocent civilians
in Papua accused of being OPM to justify military tortures and
killings. This trial is just for show, like the previous one.”]

The Jakarta Globe
July 21, 2011

Low-Ranking Soldiers Indicted Over Torture,
Killing in Papua’s Puncak Jaya

by Banjir Ambarita

Jayapura

A military tribunal in Papua indicted three low-ranking soldiers on
Wednesday for the killing of a civilian in Puncak Jaya district last
year.

The defendants were identified as First Sgt. Saut Sihombing, Second
Pvt. Hery Purwanto and Second Pvt. Hasirun. All three serve in the
Army’s Nabire Infantry Battalion, as did four soldiers sentenced in
November for torturing two civilians in the village of Gurage in the
same district.

That incident resulted in international condemnation after a video of
the torture was posted on the online video-sharing site YouTube in
October.

Military prosecutor Capt. Jem C.H. Manibuy charged the three
defendants in this latest case with torture. They are accused of
beating and shooting to death a civilian, identified as Kinderman
Gire. The killing occurred near a military checkpoint in the village
of Illu on March 17 last year, just two weeks prior to the Gurage
incident.

The indictment says Saut, Hery and Hasirun accompanied a civilian
convoy that was delivering food supplies to Mulia, the capital of
Puncak Jaya district, around 10 hours by road from Wamena, Jayawijaya.

Kinderman, according to the indictment, stopped the convoy near Kalome
village in an attempt to extort gasoline from the driver of one of the
vehicles.

Saut disembarked from his vehicle and approached Kinderman who was
with another civilian, Pitinus Kogoya. The indictment says that
Kinderman then said, “I am not afraid of the military. I have 30
friends in the mountains and they are armed,” suggesting that
Kinderman was a member of the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM).

Kinderman and Pitinus were then beaten while being interrogated by
Hery and Hasirun, the indictment says. Pitinus was able to escape by
jumping down an embankment.

The military tribunal was told that Kinderman tried to grab a rifle
from Hery, who reacted by firing at Kinderman. The shot hit Kinderman
in the chest, killing him instantly.

Saut said he reported the incident to his superior, Sudarmin, who told
the three not to say anything about the shooting.

The three soldiers took Kinderman’s body to their vehicle before
dumping it in a river from a bridge in Tingginambut subdistrict, the
indictment says.

The Papua Customary Council (DAP), however, disagreed with the Army’s
version of events. It said Kinderman was a local priest and had no
ties to the OPM.

“He was waiting for a delivery from Wamena, so when a convoy
approached he immediately went up to check for his package,” DAP
member Markus Haluk said. “There are thousands of innocent civilians
in Papua accused of being OPM to justify military tortures and
killings. This trial is just for show, like the previous one.”

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Freeport Indonesia, Union Pay Talks Enter Third Day

Grasberg mine
Image via Wikipedia

JAKARTA, July 22 (Reuters) – Negotiations between Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold and its workers in Indonesia over pay entered the third
day on Friday, industry sources said, as the mining giant reported
losses of copper and gold after a strike at its massive mine.

Chief executive Richard Adkerson said on Thursday the aggregate impact
of production lost during an eight-day strike at the Grasberg mine in
Papua province was 35 million pounds of copper and 60,000 ounces of
gold.

Adkerson also said the strike, which ended on July 13 and production
resumed a day later, led to a temporary suspension of all mining,
milling and concentration shipments from the mine.

“The talks are ongoing but the details are not disclosed to the
public,” said an industry source in Jakarta, who has seen Freeport’s
notice on the talks.

“The meeting is attended by PT Freeport Indonesia’s union team and
witnessed by representatives from the company’s management team.”

A Freeport spokesman in Jakarta did not reply to an email inquiry.

Union leaders started pay talks with the U.S. miner on Wednesday in
the Indonesian part of New Guinea, as they push for a doubling of
salaries for workers earning $1.50 per hour, saying other Freeport
workers around the world get 10 times that.

The company is negotiating with the union on a contract due to be
renewed in October.

The New York-listed firm reported a doubling in second-quarter
profits, citing soaring metal prices and higher copper sales than
expected at its North American mines, but said that costs are creeping
up and it expects to sell less copper in the third quarter.

That outlook, combined with a fall in copper price on Thursday and
some analysts’ concerns with the nagging uncertainties over the labour
situation in Indonesia, led to a more than 1 percent drop in Freeport
share price.

Gold was steady around $1,589 an ounce on Friday, not far from a
record around $1,609 hit on Tuesday. Three-month copper on the London
Metal Exchange edged down to around $9,650 a tonne.(Reporting by Lewa Pardomuan and Samuel Wanda; Editing by Ramthan Hussain)

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WPAT: Letter to Secretary of State Clinton on West Papua

The Honorable Hillary Clinton
Secretary of State
Department of State
Washington, D.C.

July 20, 2011

Secretary Clinton:

The West Papua Advocacy Team is writing to you on the eve of your
visit to Indonesia to request that you use this opportunity to raise
with senior Indonesians the Indonesian military operation that is
occurring in the Puncak Jaya regency of West Papua.

Media reports have indicated that up to 600 Indonesian military (TNI)
personal are involved in “sweeping ” operations in the region. This
operation is only the latest in a series of such operations which the
Indonesian military has conducted in the Puncak Jaya region over many
years. These operations have had a devastating human toll including
civilian casualties, destruction of civilian homes, churches, public
buildings gardens and livestock as well as broad displacement of
civilians from towns and villages, often to nearby mountains and
jungle. Due in part to routine military closure of these zones of
conflict to humanitarian operations, displaced civilians suffer and
die as a result of lack of food, shelter and access to medical care.

Typically, military forces, including forces which benefit from U.S.
government equipment and training, fail to distinguish between those
they are targeting, the lightly armed Free Papua Movement (the OPM),
and the general public. While the OPM is committed to peaceful
dialogue, it retains the right to self defense and protecting the
local people if attacked. Although the security forces blame all
incidents in the area on the OPM, many attacks on the TNI are by
unknown attackers. Some of these arise as a result of disputes
related to commercial interests among military units and/or with
police units which compete over exploitation of natural resources and
extortion of local and international commercial operations.

In the current sweep operation media reports indicate four civilians,
including one women and 3 children, were wounded on July 12 when
Indonesian troops from the Infantry Battalion 753, who are based in
Nabire, fired into huts in the village of Kalome while searching for
members of the Free Papua Movement (OPM). Thus far, the military has
refused to acknowledge this incident.

In May the military began a “socializing program” in Puncak Jaya
involving up to 300 Army, Air Force and Navy personnel . The program
is proposed to include the renovating of homes, churches and markets.
The military personnel, as part of the program, also lecture local
Papuans at Papuans Sunday church gatherings. Local people, according
to media and other accounts, have described the program as in reality
only a shield and a cover-up of the military and police’s violation
of human rights abuses that have transpired in the region for many years.

Papuan civil society leaders, non-governmental organizations,
churches and ordinary civilians have long called for transformation
of Papua into a “Land of Peace,” a concept that would demilitarize
West Papua and end the Indonesian government’s reliance on a
“security approach” to address peaceful, political dissent.
Currently, many Papuans are incarcerated in prisons due to their
peaceful exercise of freedoms of speech and assembly which are denied
them by the Indonesian government.

We urge you to use the opportunity of your visit to Indonesia to call
on the Indonesian President to halt all military operations in West
Papua and return all military personal to their barracks as a way of
easing tension and saving lives. We also urge you to raise with
senior Indonesians, the plight of dozens of Papuan prisoners of
conscience who were jailed as result of peaceful dissent and who now
face health and even life-threatening conditions in Indonesian
notorious prisons.

Yours respectfully,

The West Papua Advocacy Team

(Edmund McWilliams, Acting Secretary)

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KINGMI Church makes its aspirations known to President

Bintang Papua, 21 July, 2011

KINGMI Church writes to SBY

Jayapura: The chairman of the Synod of the KINGMI Evangelical Church Dr Benny Giay, has written to President Yudhoyono to explain the church’s aspirations, in response to a statement by the Cenderawasih military commander, Major-General Erfi Triassunu who alleged that the church was set up to get as much money as possible from the government in order to fund its political campaign for independence.

Following a prayer meeting, the prayer co-ordinator Rev Domminggu Pigay read out the aspirations, watched by Dr Benny Giay and other victims of stigmatisation as separatists.

Dr Giay later put the sheets of paper with the aspirations written on
them on the ground in front of the office of the DPRP – provincial
legislative council. There were not many local people around to witness the event as they had returned to their homes about 200 meters away.
Yunus Wonda, deputy chairman of the DPRP, said he had facilitated the
meeting in order to get clarifications from the military commander.
‘This is a long struggle and needs to support of the whole KINGMI
congregation,’ he said.

Dr Giay, as leader of the KINGMI Church, said he had made their
aspirations known to the President publicly, in response to the
statement made in Arpil by Major-General Triassunu, which had been
disseminated to all the local military commanders, and made public in
the media on 7 July.

Dr Giay’s letter to the President made a number of points, one of which rejected all efforts to drive public opinion in the direction of
reducing the right of religious bodies to become political
organisations, or identifying the church as the OPM. ‘We reject the
efforts by the government which have been under way for a long time to see everything connected with the churches from a political perspective.’

‘They fail to see,’ the statement said, ‘that it is the role of the
church to strengthen friendship and solidarity for those who suffer and are excluded.’

He said that the Synod was nothing like what the government and the
military commander imagine. ‘We reject being called OPM which we regard as being a trick to extinguish the church’s role as a prophet in the Land of Papua.

He appealed to the President to stand by his pledge to ensure that
that Papua is a place of tranquillity not only for newcomers from
elsewhere but also for the indigenous Papuan people.

[Abridged in translation by TAPOL]

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ETAN Urges Secretary Clinton to Condition Security Assistance to Indonesia on Rights


Contact: John M. Miller, etan@etan.org,+1- 917-690-4391

July 20 – As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton travelled to Bali, the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) urged her to condition U.S. security assistance to Indonesia on real improvements in human rights by Indonesia government and genuine accountability for violations of human rights.

“The restoration of assistance to Indonesia’s notorious Kopassus special forces announced a year ago should be reversed,” said John M. Miller, National Coordinator of ETAN. “Kopassus training was meant to be the carrot to encourage respect for rights. There is no evidence it has done so. U.S. law bars cooperation with military and police units with such egregious human rights records. The U.S should set an example by following it’s own law.”

On the eve of Secretary Clinton’s visit, ETAN issued the following statement:

In her February 2009 visit to Indonesia, Secretary of State Clinton praised democratic reforms since the fall of the U.S.-backed Suharto, saying “Indonesia has experienced a great transformation in the last 10 years.” While Indonesia has made progress since the dark days of Suharto, crimes against humanity and other violations of human rights continue. U.S. policy has largely focused on narrow strategic and economic interests that have little to do with the well-being of the Indonesian people. Meanwhile, progress has stalled. Human rights remain under threat. The military continues to find ways to maintain its influence. The pleas of the victims of human rights crimes in Timor-Leste, Aceh, West Papua, and elsewhere in the archipelago are ignored. Senior figures responsible for the worst abuses prosper.
In recent years, the U.S. has provided substantial assistance to both the Indonesian military and police. This assistance is said to come with lessons on human rights. The human rights lessons are not being learned. People see the police as abusers, not protectors and military impunity prevails. Indonesia’s security forces are learning is that U.S. will assist them no matter how they behave.

Over the past year, horrific videos and other reports of torture, the burning of villages and other crimes offer graphic proof that the people of West Papua and elsewhere continue to suffer at the hands of military and police. Soldiers prosecuted for these and other incidents receive light sentences. Just this past week, four civilians, a women and three children, were wounded when Indonesian troops shot into a hut in the Puncak Jaya area of Papua.

As many as 100 political prisoners remain jailed: prosecuted and jailed for the peaceful expression of opinion. In many regions, minority religious institutions are persecuted, often with the active or tacit assistance of local security officials. Vigilante groups, like the Islamic Defenders Front, seek to enforce their own extra-legal version of morality, again with the backing of officials. Journalists, human rights defenders and anti-corruption activists are threatened and occasionally killed. The organizers of the 2004 poisoning of Indonesia’s most prominent human rights lawyer, Munir, remain free and seemingly above the law.

In recent years, the U.S. has provided substantial assistance to both the Indonesian military and police. This assistance is said to come with lessons on human rights. Lessons that are not being learned. People see the police as abusers, not protectors and military impunity prevails. Indonesia’s security forces are learning is that U.S. will assist them no matter how they behave.

We urge the U.S. to condition its security assistance on an end to human rights violations and to impunity. The U.S. should heed the recommendation of Timor-Leste’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste (CAVR), which urged nations to “regulate military sales and cooperation with Indonesia more effectively and make such support totally conditional on progress towards full democratisation, the subordination of the military to the rule of law and civilian government, and strict adherence with international human rights, including respect for the right of self-determination.” Indonesia does not yet meet this standard.

The U.S., as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, should work to establish an international tribunal to bring to justice the perpetrators of human rights crimes committed during Indonesia’s 24-year occupation of Timor-Leste. This would provide a measure of justice to the victims and their families and serve as a deterrent to future human rights violators. A tribunal is supported by the many victims of these crimes and by human rights advocates in Timor-Leste, Indonesia, the U.S., and elsewhere.

Finally, we urge Secretary Clinton to apologize to the peoples of Indonesia and Timor-Leste for U.S. support for the Suharto dictatorship. Her visit offers the U.S. a chance to decisively break with past U.S. support for torture, disappearances, rape, invasion and illegal occupation, extrajudicial murder environmental devastation. Clinton should offer condolences to Suharto’s many victims throughout the archipelago and support the prosecution of those responsible.

ETAN was founded in 1991 to advocate for self-determination for Indonesian-occupied Timor-Leste. Since the beginning, ETAN has worked to condition U.S. military assistance to Indonesia on respect for human rights and genuine reform. The U.S.-based organization continues to advocate for democracy, justice and human rights for Timor-Leste and Indonesia. For more information, see ETAN’s web site: http://www.etan.org.

see also West Papua Advocacy Team Writes Secretary of State Clinton on Indonesian military operation in Puncak Jaya

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