Article: West Papua Advocacy Team

Comments On the U.S. Department of State's Annual Country Report On Human Rights For 2012 Concerning Indonesia/west Papua

By Ed McWilliams (West Papua Advocacy Team) with John M. Miller (ETAN)

The U.S. Department of State annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012 includes a detailed review of Indonesia. As in past years, this portion of the Report devotes significant attention to developments in West Papua. The heavy focus on the region, which comprises only one percent of the Indonesian archipelago's population, underscores the reality that human rights violations and impunity continue at very high levels in West Papua. (Please note we refer throughout to the western half of the island of New Guinea as West Papua. This is how people in the region commonly refer to the area that includes the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua.) 
Problems that afflict West Papua are also evident elsewhere in the archipelago, such as encroachment on indigenous lands, media intimidation, and violations of human rights by the military and police.

While this critique focuses on West Papua, we note that human rights violations continue throughout the archipelago. Problems that afflict West Papua are also evident elsewhere in the archipelago, such as encroachment on indigenous lands, media intimidation, and violations of human rights by the military and police. Issues of restrictions on freedom of assembly also affect religious minorities outside West Papua. (Ongoing attacks on freedom of religion are addressed in a separate Department of State report.)

Efforts to challenge impunity and to establish accountability for past human rights crimes continue to fail. An "ad hoc tribunal to investigate and prosecute the disappearance of human rights activists" in 1997-98 has yet to be established. Prosecutors have so far rejected Komnas HAM findings that the government's anti-Communist purges of 1965 and 1966 "which included killing, extermination, enslavement, eviction or forced removal of the population, the deprivation of personal freedom, torture, rape, and enforced disappearance, constituted a crime against humanity." The truth commission and human rights courts authorized by the 2006 law on Aceh have yet to be established. Accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Indonesian forces in Timor -Leste or West Papua do not appear on either the Indonesian agenda and are not mentioned in the State Department report’s Indonesia chapter.

Fundamental Rights

The report is generally comprehensive and accurate, with some exceptions. However, the report continues to ignore the gravest, most systematic abuse afflicting West Papuans: The failure of the central government to provide essential fundamental health, education and other services to the West Papuan people. This policy of deliberate neglect severely affects Papuans, especially those in rural areas, as reflected in all national and international development indices. Statistics, including those of the Indonesian government, consistently identify West Papua as suffering the worst health , educationand development levels in the archipelago and more generally in all of Southeast Asia. It isIndonesia's poorest region.
 

The Department of State’s failure to acknowledge this fundamental violation of Papuan economic, social and cultural rights renders this annual report incomplete.

The obligation of governments to provide essential services to their populations is clearly set out in international agreements and covenants to which the Government of Indonesia is signatory or otherwise obligated. These include the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (Articles 25 and 26), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Papuans have been systematically marginalized in their own land by this policy of neglect and the "transmigration" policy through which the Indonesia government sponsors and subsidizes migration from elsewhere in the archipelago. The Department of State’s failure to acknowledge this fundamental violation of Papuan economic, social and cultural rights renders this annual report incomplete.

Women face special challenges, and the report says, "Women in many regions of the country, particularly in Papua, complained about differential treatment based on gender."

The report also fails to acknowledge that for five decades, West Papua has not been afforded its right to self-determination. U.S. government was deeply involved in the international community's acquiescence in Indonesia's 1963 takeover of the territory and its 1969 annexation through the fraudulent "Act of Free Choice." The U.S. itself is culpable in the denial of this fundamental right.

The Business of the Security Forces
"The [Indonesian official] claims that the Indonesian Military (TNI) has far more troops in Papua than it is willing to admit to, chiefly to protect and facilitate TNI's interests in illegal logging operations," says one cable.

The report's Executive Summary misleadingly contends that "security forces reported to civilian authority" during 2012. Indonesian security authorities, in particular the Indonesian military, in reality are not fully subordinate to civilian authority. The Indonesian military maintains streams of revenue that enable it to operate outside the government budgetary process. These include legal and illegal businesses directly controlled by the military and its extortion of civilian businesses. This rogue behavior persists despite Indonesian law which required the military to divest itself of its businesses by 2009. Military businesses interests are especially extensive in West Papua where often illegal logging operations and the extortion of domestic and foreign businesses, such as the mining giant Freeport McMoran have continued for years.

State Department reports made available through Wikileaks demonstrate its full awareness of the military's role in illegal logging: "The [Indonesian official] claims that the Indonesian Military (TNI) has far more troops in Papua than it is willing to admit to, chiefly to protect and facilitate TNI's interests in illegal logging operations," says one cable. Other cables report Freeport officials acknowledging that they "make payments directly to the commanding officers responsible for security at the mine."

Impunity

More importantly, the Indonesian military, particularly the Indonesia Special Forces (Kopassus) and the U.S.-funded and trained Detachment 88, continue to enjoy broad impunity for criminal behavior, notably violations of human rights. Military personnel are not subject to civil criminal prosecution or civilian courts for their abuse of civilians. Rather, in those cases which draw public attention, low- and mid-level military personnel may be subjected to military investigation and prosecution in military court. Invariably, the defendants are either absolve the accused or render light sentences.

This reality is particularly apparent in West Papua which suffers under a very large military presence and where human rights violations, as noted in the State Department Report, are extensive. As a consequence of this broad impunity for security force abuse of human rights and other criminality, the criminal justice system fails to inhibit continuing abuses. While the State Department report acknowledges civil society criticisms of "the short length of prison sentences imposed by military courts." The U.S. government should speak out more forcefully for a change in jurisdiction.

Political Prisoners

The Executive Summary highlights the Indonesian government's application of "treason and blasphemy laws to limit freedom of expression." However, in the body of the report (in the section on Freedom of Speech and Press) the Report avoids direct criticism of the government, referring only to allegations by NGOs and others that "government application of treason laws in cases of peaceful calls for separatism in Papua limited the rights of individuals to engage in speech deemed to be proseparatist."

The report, citing NGO reports, says that "between June and September, authorities arrested more than 60 people in Papua for flag-related offenses." Most were briefly detained before their release. Several Papuans continue to serve long prison terms for raising the banned morning star flag. Political prisoners from the Malukus continued to serve long sentences for raising a banned flag.
 

U.S. security assistance must be curtailed, absent an end to such egregious human rights violations and credible prosecution and sentencing of the perpetrators of these crimes among Indonesia's military, police, and "anti-terror" forces.

Access

The report clear acknowledges that the "government continued to restrict foreign media, NGOs, and government personnel from traveling to the provinces of Papua and West Papua by requiring them to request permission to travel through the Foreign Ministry or an Indonesian embassy. The government approved some requests and denied others ostensibly for reasons regarding the safety of foreign visitors." This should have been highlighted at the top in the Executive Summary. These restrictions clearly affect the ability of the U.S. government to verify and follow up on reports of human rights violations in the territory. The restrictions have been the subject of criticism by the U.S. Congress, to whom the report is directed.

Torture and Killing

The Executive Summary does highlight "killings by security forces, abuse of prisoners and detainees, harsh prison conditions," problems that are especially common in West Papua. The body of the report, while including details of security force operations in rural areas of West Papua, does not acknowledge the extraordinary abuse associated with ongoing assaults on rural communities by security forces conducting "sweeping operations." These operations are inherently abusive of human rights. Civilians are frequently forced to flee into surrounding mountains and forests where many become ill and die due to a lack of access to food and medical care.

The report commendably details specific examples of harsh prison conditions and extrajudicial killings such as that of Mako Tabuni. The report usefully includes the June military assault on a neighborhood in Wamena during which 767th battalion soldiers burned 87 Papuan homes. "[A]uthorities had not arrested or disciplined any members" by the end of the year, the report says.

Under the heading of "Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" the report notes that the Indonesian government failed to assure full accountability of security officials for torture, which remains "commonplace in police detention." The NGO Commission on the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Kontras) has reported that 98 of 243 victims of torture between July 2011 and June 2012 were in West Papua.

The State Department also reports that Indonesian authorities required "jailed Papuan independence activist Filep Karma to raise the money" for his own medical care. And that during 2012 other such activists such as Forkorus Yaboisembut receive prison terms for peaceful protest.

Indigenous Rights and Land

In one of its strongest critiques, the report speaks plainly about the systematic denial of rights to Papuans:

During the year indigenous persons, most notably in Papua, remained subject to widespread discrimination, and there was little improvement in respect for their traditional land rights. Mining and logging activities, many of them illegal, posed significant social, economic, and logistical problems to indigenous communities.

"During the year indigenous persons, most notably in Papua, remained subject to widespread discrimination, and there was little improvement in respect for their traditional land rights. Mining and logging activities, many of them illegal, posed significant social, economic, and logistical problems to indigenous communities. The government failed to prevent companies, often in collusion with the local military and police, from encroaching on indigenous peoples land. In Papua and West Papua, tensions continued between indigenous Papuans and migrants from other provinces, leading to several killings of migrants in the restive provinces."

The Report similarly offered a detailed critique of government policies targeting the land rights of indigenous people. We note that Papuans are among the principal victims in this regard:

As the government did not recognize indigenous people, it also did not recognize indigenous lands. The government did recognize some communal ownership rights. However, access to ancestral lands continued to be a major source of conflict throughout the country. Large corporations and government regulations displaced people from their ancestral lands. Some land-rights NGOs asserted that ineffective demarcation of land led to denying individuals access to their own land. Central and local government officials reportedly extracted kickbacks from mining and palm oil companies in exchange for land access at the expense of the local populace. Land-rights advocates reported receiving threats from government and private parties after publicizing these issues. The government program of transferring migrants from the crowded islands of Java and Madura diminished greatly in recent years. However, communal conflicts often occurred along ethnic lines in areas with sizeable transmigrant populations.

see also

Rights Protection in Papua – Is Australia a Reluctant Neighbour?

May 17, 2013 

West Papuan students being held in Timika Police Custody after the 1 May incident

By Budi Hernawan

The recent fatal shootings in Papua by the Indonesian authorities are not novel. Rather, they are the latest in an ongoing pattern of human rights abuse. The gravity of the crackdown in the context of which the shootings occurred has been emphasised  not only by local human rights groups but also by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. In a public statement released just two days after the shootings, she said she was disappointed to see ‘violence and abuses continuing in Papua’, and she described the latest incidents  as ‘unfortunate examples of the ongoing suppression of freedom of expression and excessive use of force in Papua.’  Such a prompt response from the highest UN official dealing with human rights sends a clear signal that the violence in Papua is by no means a low priority on the UN’s human rights agenda.

In claiming that ‘[i]nternational human rights law requires the Government of Indonesia to conduct thorough, prompt and impartial investigations into the incidents of killings and torture and [to] bring the perpetrators to justice’, Pillay invokes the fundamental responsibility of all states to protect their own citizens.  No longer conceived as absolute immunity from external scrutiny, the concept of state sovereignty has been reconceptualised in terms of rights protection. The doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P)  recognises that ‘the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself’, but it also assumes that the international community has a responsibility to protect populations which are suffering serious harm either at the hands of the state itself, or where the state is ‘unwilling or unable to halt or avert’ the harm. In upholding its responsibility to protect, the international community recognises not only the possibility of taking collective action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, but has also committed itself (A/RES/60/1, para. 138-140) ‘to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means…to help to protect populations’, and to ‘helping States build capacity to protect their populations’.

The unpunished crimes against humanity in Papua in the last half a century indicate complete impunity of the Indonesian state. This pattern reflects Indonesia’s failure to fulfill its responsibility to protect its own people. Given this, the international community, including Australia, has a responsibility to act, pursuing a range of forms and levels of engagement with Indonesia. Otherwise, Australia ignores the warning of the former special adviser to the UN Secretary General on Genocide Prevention, Juan Mendez, when he cited indigenous Papuans as ‘at risk of extinction’.

An open letter to Bob Carr, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, signed recently by 37 Australian academics, was written in the spirit of the responsibility to protect. Geographically, Australia is Papua’s closest neighbour. As the ongoing impunity remains unresolved, it is Australia’s responsibility to provide international assistance and capacity building to ensure Indonesia’s capacity to fulfill its responsibility to protect Papuans. Two major points raised in the petition to Bob Carr are the need to ensure the accountability of Indonesia’s security sector, and the need for conflict resolution through peace talks between Papua and Jakarta. Both of these goals must be actively and honestly pursued by Australia if it is to uphold its claim to be a committed member of the international community of rights recognising states.

Empat aktivis Papua yang ditangkap aparat keamanan adalah Ketua Umum Komite Nasional Papua Barat (KNPB), Viktor Yeimo, Sekertaris West Papua National Authorithy (WPNA), Marthen Manggaprou,  Yongky Ulimpa (23), Mahasiswa Universitas Cenderawasih, dan Elly Kobak (17), Mahasiswa Universitas Cenderawasih. 

Keempat aktivis tersebut ditangkap tepat di depan pintu Gerbang Kampus Universitas Cenderawasih (Uncen) baru, Perumnas III, Waena, Papua, pada Senin (13/5/2013), sekitar pukul 10.30 Waktu Papua. 

Rocky Wim Medlama, Juru Bicara (Jubir) KNPB menjelaskan, “Awalnya, sekitar pukul 09.30 Waktu Papua, kami bersama dengan kawan-kawan dari Badan Eksekutif Mahasiswa  Uncen melakukan pemalangan kampus, dan melakukan orasi-orasi Politik di depan pintu Gerbang kampus.”

Aparat Kepolisian Resort Kota Jayapura, yang dipimpin langsung oleh Kapolresta Jayapura, AKBP Alfred Papare, kemudian mendatangi lokasi mahasiswa menyampaikan orasi-orasi Politik.

“Termasuk ada aparat Brimob dari Polda Papua, yang dibantu oleh aparat Pengendali Masyarakat (Dalmas). Mereka turun dengan kekuatan penuh, kemudian memblokade jalan dengan mobil Polisi, truck, hingga motor-motor milik aparat kepolisian,” cerita Medlama.

Kemudian, Medlama bersama beberapa pimpinan aksi melakukan negosiasi dengan Kapolresta Jayapura agar mereka dapat diijinkan melaksanakan aksi long march, dengan jaminan keamanan akan dijaga oleh massa aksi.

“Kapolresta tidak mengijinkan demo, sehingga massa diangkut dengan dua truck menuju Kantor Majelis Rakyat Papua (MRP) untuk menyampaikan sikap dan tuntutan di Kantor MRP. Mobil komando juga ikut dalam rombongan terebut,” cerita Medlama.

Dalam negosiasi, aparat juga meminta agar motor tidak mendahului mobil komando, namun berada di belakang. “Kami jalan sesuai dengan kesepakatan, walau kami rasa ini benar-benar suatu ancaman untuk kami,” kata Medlama.

Namun, dalam dalam perjalanan, sekitar pukul 10.30 Waktu Papua, beberapa massa aksi yang tidak ikut saat dilangsungkan negosiasi berjalan mendahului mobil komanda, ‘Saat itulah aparat bertindak membubarkan massa aksi, menabrak beberapa motor, termasuk menangkap empat aktivis Papua termasuk Ketua Umum KNPB,” ujar Medlama.

“Mereka yang ditangkap dipukul, ditampar, dan diangkut naik ke mobil, kami semua yang ada disitu melihat perlakukan aparat keamanan terhadap keempat rekan kami,” kata Wim.

Beberapa truck Dalmas dan Brimob yang berada dibelakang mobil komando kemudian melaju kedepan, menabrak  beberapa motor, dan beberapa massa aksi juga jatuh, dan saat itu aparat turun dan melakukan pemukulan, penangkapan, hingga melakukan tindakan brutal lainnya.

“Ada satu massa aksi yang tangan patah, yakni Markus Giban, mahasiswa Uncen, saat ini sedang dirawat di Rumah Sakit Abepura, dan beberapa lagi menderita luka parah karena dipukul,” ujar Medlama.

Hingga berita ini diturunkan, keempat aktivis itu masih ditahan oleh Kepolisian Daerah Papua.

“Tiga aktivis Papua, yakni, Marthen Manggaprou,  Yongky Ulimpa, dan Elly Kobak ditahan di Polda Papua. Sementara ketua KNPB sudah dibawah ke Lembaga Pemasyarkatan Abepura, sekitar pukul 18.30 Wakut Papua,” ujar Medlama.

ARNOLD BELAU - Suara Papua

 Photo Kronologis Penangkapan (knpb photo)