Tag: Papua

Komnas HAM warns of human rights violations in Puncak Jaya

Bintang Papua, 20 January 2012Human rights violations are occurring in PuncakThe Papua branch of Komnas HAM, the Indonesian Commission for Human Rights, has confirmed that human rights violations have been occurring in Puncak. These include a number of deaths that have occurred during this prolonged conflict.

‘While not yet knowing the motive or who was responsible, the killings were clearly human rights violations. Lives were lost which is an indication that the right to life has been ignored.,’ said Matius Murib, deputy chairman of the Komnas HAM Papua branch. He made the statement after attending a Forces Group Discussion on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ECOSOC) held by the Papuan branch of Komnas HAM.

When lives are lost, human rights are certainly violated.  No need to ask about the motive as this goes beyond the power of the Almighty. The state or government have no right to destroy life, which is totally without justification .’ The right to life  comes only from God and no one has the right to kill people,’ he said.

In this Puncak case, those involved were planning to conduct investigations in February and were planning to visit the site of the killings, in order to make recommendations to the authorities. Murib said that he could not make any comments until they had visited the site

Responding to a question about whether the government had been responsible fir triggering the conflict, he said that such a charge would need to be investigated. If this turns out to the true, then some individual or institution that had been granted powers by the state had failed o take action quickly enough to prevent the incident from occurring, and this is matter for KomnasHAM to issue a charge.

He recognised that  according to investigations reported in the media, there were indeed actions by the government and related persons, and the question was, why had the conflict occurred and why were casualties still occurring. ‘It is our task to investigate whether actions were taken by the state and whether they were   justified.’

As has previously been reported, the conflict that relates to the election of the head of the district of Puncak and has resulted in 49 casualties among the local community since 30 July 2011. This conflict was still on-going up until 14 January 2012 in the district and the government has not made any efforts to resolve it, nor have the police done anything to resolve the conflict, which is being described as a tribal war between people living in the Central Highlands. It relates to an internal dispute within the political party called Gerindra, between a number of candidates. Gerindra has turned this internal conflict into a conflict between the commnity in general  which has paralysed all development activities there.

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Human rights violations in Papua are very high, according to a three-year survey

JUBI, 20 January 2012

[A photograph at the beginning of the article shows three little boys squatting in the street and inhaling aibon.]

The Papuan branch of Komnas HAM, the National Commission  on Human Rights, believes that violations of economic, social and cultural rights  in Papua are very serious  and can be described as gross human rights violations.

The commission’s chairman for co-ordination, Adriana S. Walli, has drawn together a great deal of information in her review of the prospects for economic, social and cultural rights in Papua which she presented at a Focus Group Discussion which was held in Jayapura on 20 January.

According to Adriana, repression and ECOSOC violations have been perpetrated on a vast scale during the past three years .’These violations are occurring on a daily basis and can be identified as gross violations. However, she said, they are brushed aside as being nothing more than trivia.

She went on to say that there were two indicators for why these violations continue to occur. The first was the prevailing view that these violations were trivial, and the second was the lack of commitment of the government and various related agencies.

While presenting her data, Adriana  said that when she was carrying out her investigations during the past three years, she had come across  a great number of ECOSOC violations, especially in health, economic rights and children’s rights.

She drew attention to the fact that in the various hospitals, little had been done to improve the facilities. Many of the personnel were harking back to Dutch times. The supply of clean water is inadequate while there has been a big increase in the number of street children. Many of these youngsters consume alcohol and sniff dangerous substances such as aibon; they also participate in free sex practices, take drugs and so on.

Small indigenous Papuan traders have great difficulty obtaining credit to grow their businesses while they still use traditional methods to handle their finances.

The chairman of the Papuan branch of Komnas HAM, the National Commission on Human Rights, Julius Ongge, told the gathering that the  government of the province of Papua  must be held responsible for the implementation of ECOSOC rights. When local people call for  their basic rights such as customary rights and their rights to education and health, it is obligatory for the government to respond but what in fact happens is that they come face to face with the security forces.

‘Whenever people make demands for their rights, they confront many alarming accusations  and often have to face lengthy legal processes even they have done nothing wrong,’ he said.

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Amungme leader warns Freeport it could be closed down

”]JUBI, 19 January 2012

In view of the fact that there has been no response from Freeport -Indonesia or Freeport McMoran, ‘I, Anthonius Alomang, as executive-director of Lemasa, the Association of Amungme tribal people, herewith warn Freeport in Mimika district that we may close you down.’

‘As director of Lemasa, I declare on this day that we will close Freeport down,’ Alomang told a group Amungme people, addressing them at the meeting hall in Mile 32, Kuala Kencana, Timika.

He said that this was not just a joke but a very serious matter because already more than a month has elapsed without the Freeport management making any response to the statement issued by Tom Beanal, the Torei Negel.

The reason why a statement was made by the Torei Negel himself, said Alomang, speaking before representatives of the Kamoro Tribe and other tribes in Papua as well as representatives of various Indonesian groups in Mimika, is that ever since Freeport has been present here, what has been happening is quite unacceptable to the people who hold customary rights to the land.

The people who were already poor and have become even poorer, and they have seen that there has been not a shred of compassion in the practices towards the local people. This includes murders by unaccountable groups as well as corruption practised by the Freeport management who have never been called to account for all this.

As previously reported by Jubi on 7 December last year, the Torei Negel, Tom Beanal issued a nine-point statement expressing his attitude regarding the ten crucial issues that have been experienced by the Amungme people ever since PT-FI first arrived in Mimika.

Yet, up to this day, there has been no response whatever from the management of Freeport or from McMoran.

But no details are yet available about what these measures might be.

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NEW BOOK: Comprehending West Papua


This new book from the West Papua Project is an edited volume of the collection of papers presented at the February 2011 University of Sydney conference “Comprehending West Papua”. It represents the views of the world’s leading scholars and activists currently working on understanding the conflict in West Papua.

Click to download Comprehending West Papua.

Click to download the Appendix of Images.

Editors’ Introduction
Peter King, Jim Elmslie and Camellia Webb-Gannon


Comprehending West Papua derives from a report that the co-editors wrote for
the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at Sydney University in July
2010 entitled, Get up, stand up; West Papua stands up for its rights.

The coeditors — Peter King, Jim Elmslie and Camellia Webb-Gannon — are coconveners (King and Elmslie) and coordinator (Webb-Gannon) respectively of the West Papua Project at CPACS.  The Project was established in 2000 as an
intellectual meeting place and research centre focused on the profound onflict
that is occurring in West Papua.

The Get up, stand up report covered the mass civil society protests by West Papuans against Indonesian rule in mid-2010 and the background to this  political insurrection. The report received widespread publicity and positive feedback so we decided to capitalise on this by organising a conference at Sydney University in February 2010. We asked those whom we considered the world’s leading authorities on the political impasse in West Papua and its historical roots to present short papers on the theme, Comprehending West Papua, with a view to helping Papuans, Indonesians and the rest of the world conceive new (or reconceive old) ways out of the impasse. We gave invitees the option of sending their papers for proxy presentation if they were unable to attend. The conference was a resounding success, with participants from West Papua, Indonesia, Vanuatu, New Zealand, The Netherlands, England, the United States, Singapore, Japan and Australia. We believe that it is the most significant academic-level conference that has ever been held on the political situation in West Papua.

Another aim of the conference was to map and update the global spread of
opinion on West Papua. Besides academic assessments, the conference also
had important West Papuan speakers and writers representing different diaspora factions pressing for independence or self-determination as well as a few who favour accommodation of the Indonesian government.  Unity amongst the West Papuans (long derided) was also examined, set alongside the dramatic demographic transition caused by organised and “spontaneous” in-migration from the rest of Indonesia, which now makes the Melanesians a light minority in their own homeland.

The year 2010 ushered in a new wave of West Papuan independence politics.
This momentum-gathering wave is characterised by student and youth leadership with a tougher stance on West Papuan self-determination, the vigourous promotion of the cause through social media and greater international attention to Papuan politics through mechanisms such as WikiLeaks and YouTube, both of which have served to reveal often obscured and sometimes horrific conditions in West Papua.

Evidence of this new wave emerged dramatically in June and July 2010, when
civil demonstrations, led by a new NGO, FORDEM (Democratic Forum of the
United Papuan People), amassed up to 20,000 protesters on the streets of
Jayapura. FORDEM comprises the self-proclaimed and widely recognised
provisional government set up by the West Papua National Authority (WPNA)– represented in this volume by chapters from Jacob Rumbiak and Herman
Wainggai–and various civil society organisations drawn from the churches and the student and women’s movements. These demonstrations were triggered in response to Jakarta’s rejection of an MRP (Majelis Rakyat Papua—the all-Papuan upper house of the provincial parliament) decision popularly known as SK14, which ordains that “all candidates for elected office at the sub-provincial level had to be indigenous Papuans.”

The Home Affairs Ministry rejection of SK14 was considered to blatantly undermine the spirit of the Special Autonomy Law of 2001 which specifies that the provincial governors, vice governors and district (regency) chiefs (bupatis) in West Papua must be indigenous Papuans.

Thus, as discussed in Jacob Rumbiak’s chapter in this volume, the biggest demonstrations in West Papua’s history were launched against Special
Autonomy and for a referendum on West Papua’s political status. (These demands were two of the MRP’s 11 bold “recommendations” to the Papua
provincial government).

Papuan politics experienced a positive shift in the surrounding Pacific region as well during this time. Vanuatu’s parliament passed the Wantok Blong Yumi Bill which committed the Vanuatu parliament to work towards independence for West Papua through avenues such as the UN General Assembly and Decolonization Committee and the International Court of Justice. Vanuatu’s long term support of West Papuan independence is discussed in this volume in chapters by Rex Rumakiek and John Otto Ondawame, the latter making an impassioned plea for the success of the Papua Road Map. The Road Map constitutes a push for effective dialogue between Papua and Jakarta coming from Muridan Widjojo and the Indonesian Institute of Science in Jakarta and Neles Tebay and the Papua Peace Network in Jayapura. Father Neles has blessed the umbrella group established in Vanuatu in 2008, the West Papuan National Coalition for Liberation (with John Otto as Vice Chairman and Rex as Secretary General), as pivotal for bringing Papuans to the dialogue table.

Nick Chesterfield’s chapter shows the ways in which technology and social media have also been used to West Papuan political advantage by Papuans (who use Facebook prolifically to publicise their cause) and, inadvertently, by Indonesian troops. For example, the trend of capturing “incidents” on mobile phones has recently backfired on Indonesian military and police torturers in West Papua in a string of high profile cases that elicited deep international concern. In August 2009, West Papuan Yawan Wayeni was disembowelled  with a bayonet and taunted by Brimob (Indonesian mobile police) as he lay dying. This was captured on camera by one of the torturers and subsequently  leaked online. The public nature of torture in West Papua is discussed in Budi Hernawan’s chapter on this topic. In October 2010 another couple of horrific  videos taken by Indonesian troops emerged. The soldiers hogtied, suffocated with a plastic bag and burned the genitals of one West Papuan man; held a knife to another’s neck, and kicked yet others in the head as they sat helpless on the ground.  These videos were also leaked via YouTube, causing an international sensation.   As political leaders from other countries responded to these videos by pressing the Indonesian government to investigate and punish the offenders, whistleblowers leaking other files, including Kopassus (army special forces) blacklists and diplomatic cables, brought further humiliation upon the Indonesian government for its attitude towards West Papua. In November 2010 US journalist Alan Nairn published a leaked Kopassus list of enemies of  the state in Papua, all of whom were civilians. (At the top of the list is the  Reverend Socrates Sofyan Yoman, who also contributes a chapter here.)  Then,  in December 2010, a series of WikiLeaks sourced US embassy cables from  Jakarta was published in the Melbourne Age newspaper, revealing the extent to which politicians in Jakarta (and internationally) were and are aware of what has become the military fiefdom of West Papua, and the degree of natural resource exploitation, financial and political corruption and human rights abuse that prevails as a result. That these leaks and others published in The Sydney Morning Herald concerning the alleged corruption of the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his family, caused the Indonesian government considerable humiliation is evident from the ensuing Indonesian lawsuit against the Australian newspapers for publishing the cables.

All of these events and trends were converging with a momentum that we would have been remiss not to follow up.  The West Papua Project decided it was timely to invite a cadre of international experts on West Papua to a  conference at the University of Sydney who would try to comprehend, as a group with diverse experiences and perspectives, this new wave in West Papuan politics and its likely future trajectory.

The conference unfolded at International House, Sydney University, over two
days, February 23-24, 2011. It attracted an audience of 80 people to hear 22
papers presented–three of them in absentia and one by virtual presence.
Participants were invited to pay or find donors to pay their fares and
accommodation, and the conference conveners-cum-editors can recommend this as a simplifying and surprisingly successful ploy for underfunded NGOs, even university-based ones.  However the School of Social and Political Sciences and the Arts Faculty at Sydney University must be thanked for their prompt and generous response to last-minute requests for subsidy of conference venue hire, function costs and book publication.

Paper presenters included three women, five Papuans (all in exile) and two non Papuan Indonesians, as well as non-Papuan/non-Indonesian scholars, activists
and scholar-activists from Europe, North America, South East Asia and Australasia, as mentioned above.

Discussion did focus mainly on how to interpret and react to the new youth-led
turn towards mass mobilisation around independence, a referendum on self-determination and rejection of Special Autonomy in Papua since mid-2010.  Apart from papers already mentioned above, Bilveer Singh’s presentation laid out political options for Papua in fine forensic detail; Jason McLeod, leading expert on non-violent resistance, perceived growing synergy between local and international mobilisation for the Papuans, and editor King chimed in that the deoccupation of Papua could yield large benefits in military reform, corruption reform and democratic reform for Jakarta and Indonesia.

Akihisa Matsuno persuaded large numbers of participants that the rising trend of “self determination as conflict resolution” (Kosovo, South Sudan, East  Timor) and the “unsustainability” of Indonesian occupation have created a momentous opportunity for Papua, while Richard Chauvel was also persuasive with his distinction between the politics of independence and the politics of pork (elected Papuans’ massive looting of Special Autonomy funding)– and in dubbing Papua the Achilles heel of a still ostensibly reforming post-Suharto Indonesia. These two speakers led media coverage of the conference.

Editor Webb-Gannon, expert on West Papuan diaspora personalities and
perspectives, explored the cultural underpinnings, ancient and novel, of the
Papuan planetary resistance to conclude that independence was still a viable
option. Absentee cultural anthropologist Eben Kirksey meditated on the
extraordinary congressional hearing on Crimes against Humanity in Papua which was held in Washington DC during September 2010 (which he did much to organise), and concluded that the “messianic multiple”—a future with multiple messianic political options — could work even for a Papua “off the radar” in Washington.

Absentee editor Jim Elmslie (as presented by co-editor King) continued his
alarming and influential investigations into the demographic threat to West
Papuan identity and survival from unconstrained Indonesian settler arrivals in
Papua and called for an international fact-finding mission on the issue of  “slowmotion genocide”.

John Saltford, in absentia in London (and spoken for by editor Webb-Gannon),
the world’s leading authority on the Act Of Free Choice which sealed Papua’s
fate under occupation in 1969, called for negotiations without preconditions
between Jakarta and Jayapura, while Paul Barber of TAPOL and Rosa Moiwend,
also absent and similarly represented in Sydney, outlined the emerging threat of giant, largely foreign-funded food estates to Papuan forests, subsistence and
survival.

Like Saltford, Maire Leadbeater, New Zealand’s leading pro-Papuan campaigner, commended the peace process which resolved Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville crisis in 1998, specifically, New Zealand’s mediation  which did so much to calm and clarify that other bloody conflict caused by a heedless giant mining company, while Kylie McKenna and John Braithwaite also identified giant resource companies as a threat to peace–in occupied as well as independent Melanesia–but gave a passing grade (so far) to BP’s giant Bintuni Bay LNG mining operation for its contribution to conflict avoidance in Papua.

And, finally, Pieter Drooglever, who wrote a 700 page commissioned study of the Papua conflict for the Dutch government (which was rejected by the then government on publication in 2007!), reminded us in his introductory presentation how much was lost in the sorry history of 1962-69.

* * *
The ambience of the conference was special. Two inter-Papuan conflicts were
seen as liable to surface and had caused mild apprehension among the
conveners.  One was between the partisans of the two leading umbrella
organisations of the Papuan resistance as it exists and evolves internally and externally—the Coalition (WPNCL) and the Authority (WPNA).  However, photographs on these pages show factional partisans not only chatting amicably, dancing and singing together but hugging each other indeed.

While personality conflicts may persist, the marginal policy disagreements between the factions were overshadowed by good fellowship and fruitful dialogue on the occasion of the conference.

The other conflict that threatened to haunt the conference was between the  proJakarta or at least pro-collaboration ex-diaspora faction led by Franzalbert Joku (and including Nic Messet who actually represented the Indonesian government point of view at the congressional hearing of September 2010 mentioned above) and the mainstream of Papuan independentists–Coalition, Authority and Other.

However in fact there were revelations at the conference of counter-intuitive
collaboration between the apparent enemies. It transpired that Jacob Rumbiak’s semi-clandestine visit to Jakarta in late 2010 (his first since 1999 when he departed Cipinang prison), during which he presented political conditions to be met in the context of a possible dialogue with Jakarta about a peace settlement for Papua, and engaged in talks with ministers up to and including SBY himself, had been arranged and facilitated by none other than Franzalbert Joku.

In conference socialising and his own presentations Franzalbert argued that
Papua’s way ahead lay in a cooperative division of labour between Papuan
independence seekers able to highlight the deficiencies of Special Autonomy and military occupation and Papuan insiders like himself able to not only call for dialogue with Jakarta but actually arrange it.  Whether many of the mainstream would really welcome long-term cooperation with business-oriented Papuans widely thought to be agents of BIN, the murderous Indonesian national intelligence agency, remains to be seen, but the value of the conference dialogue across factional boundaries seems to have been indisputable.

They could also be seen and heard dancing and singing a la Papouenne together.

The editors hope the chapters which follow will yield invaluable insights into the current situation in West Papua, which is well covered in updated chapters by Chauvel and King, since the conflict has important ramifications for many
countries in the immediate region, not least Indonesia, Australia and Papua New Guinea.  Our authors suggest that the conflict is not receding, but rather
intensifying and complexifying, generating opportunities for conflict resolution and peacemaking which need to be urgently acted upon.

Please note: for all footnotes, please download ebook here:

Click to download Comprehending West Papua.

Click to download the Appendix of Images.

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TPN/OPM letter:’We will never surrender’

JUBI, 7 January 2012

 John Magai Yogi and this troops

 

General John Magai Yogi, the leader of the TPN/OPM Makodam Pemka IV Division in Paniai, declared in a letter that they will not withdraw a single step in their operations against the Indonesian army and police which have been under way since August, 2011. He said that their struggle was a continuation of the struggle of their predecessors to achieve the aspirations of the people of West Papua.

‘We, the TPN/OPM throughout the Land of Papua, will never surrender and will continue to resist the forces of Indonesia  to the very last drop of blood,’ he wrote in the letter dated 5 January.’The only weapons we hold in our hands are Ukaa Mapega, bows and arrows, but we have pledged to God Almighty that we are ready to confront the Brimob troops of the Indonesian police and Densus 88, the elite forces of Indonesia, who are equipped with modern weapons and are at present in control of the district of Paniai’

He made two other points in his letter. The first is: The United Nations, the USA and the Netherlands  will soon be called to account for the mistakes they made in the past which sacrificed the Papuan people. And the second is:  The UN and the USA must speedily resolve the Papuan problem because this problem will never be resolved by means of bargains and Indonesian development activities in Papua.

‘We will never surrender. People living in the kampungs and near the  forests  are always deemed to be part of the TNP/OPM, even though they are just ordinary people. They [the military] are now chasing the TPN/OPM and we are not  free from military pressure in the forests of Paniai because the chief of  police has ordered a large number of  Brimob troops from Kalimantan and Densus 88 to come here and encircle our headquarters. They are threatening our lives. The troops that have been sent here are disrupting our tranquillity and are trying to destroy us, the TPN/OPM,’ he said in the letter.

He went on to write that since the encirclement and attack against their Eduda headquarters on 13 December 2011, members of the TPN/OPM division have held on to their position in the forests of Paniai. ‘This does not mean that we have surrendered.’

The letter concludes with the following words: ‘All people and groups have basic rights which must be respected by everyone, including the right to self-determination. This is the right  which we Papuan people demand from the UN who never listened when our rights were  trampled upon by the forces of Indonesia and the USA.’

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