Nethy Dharma Somba, The Jakarta Post, Jayapura | Archipelago | Sun, March 17 2013, 4:57 PM
Three siblings were found dead and another individual sustained injuries after being buried in a house in the Immanuel APO church complex in Jayapura Utara, Jayapura, Papua, following a landslide caused by heavy rain on Saturday.
The three siblings are Agustina Soisa, a 17-year-old female student from senior high school SMU Mandala Jayapura; Ardelia Saimina, a 23-year-old female teacher; and Jean Melinda, a 26-year-old female teacher. Hans Loen, a 40-year-old male teacher, also sustained injuries. Some of the house’s occupants were still sleeping when the landslide destroyed the house.
Maradona, 32, the elder brother of the three siblings, said that he was sitting on the terrace of the house when he saw the retaining wall, which surrounded their house, begin to crack. He ran outside of the house shortly before the landslide began, burying the house with his younger sisters still sleeping inside.
Maradona then sought assistance from neighbors as he tried to save his sisters, but found difficulties evacuating the victims due to uninterrupted heavy rain.
Around 12:00 p.m. local time, police officers from Jayapura City Police arrived at the location and started to evacuate the victims. Only one victim had survived by the time the police had succeeded in evacuating four victims from the house’s ruins at 1:35 a.m. local time on Sunday.
“The victims were brought to the Dok II Jayapura Hospital for an examination and at around 3:00 a.m. local time, early on Sunday, they were returned to their family’s house at the APO Jayapura for a burial procession,” said the Papua Police spokesperson Sr.Comr.I Gede Sumerta Jaya.
Flooding has cut road access connecting Jayapura City and Abepura. Flood waters inundated roads in the Papua Trade Centre (PTC) complex in Entrop, with vehicles unable to pass through the area.
“We had to stay overnight in Jayapura because our vehicle could not pass through PTC Entrop due to flooding,” said Hesty, a local resident of Abepura.
Flooding also inundated Youtefa, the biggest traditional market in Jayapura City. As a result, vendors had to move their trade activities to areas along the roads.
Previously, four-year-old Kotje Hitjaubessi was killed after being buried in her home in Dok IX Jayapura Utara, Jayapura City, following a landslide on Jan.24. (ebf)
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3) The plight of West Papua
The ‘dirty secret’ of the region
By Jason Brown
Benny Wenda plinks away at the strings of his ukulele, painted in muted colours not unlike an Obama poster. Soft, early evening light filters through the wooden blinds as Wenda continues tuning his instrument, taking a breath from an endless tour by now two decade old.
Wenda is in Auckland, New Zealand, where news has just come through that the Speaker of Parliament is banning him from speaking about West Papua.
Banning Wenda had the opposite effect to that intended—limiting exposure for his message as a “freedom fighter” towards independence of West Papua, from Indonesia.
Across the room, his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, greets early arrivals. Later, she tells Radio New Zealand International: “Unfortunately for Indonesia, it’s counter-productive for them to cut off information.”
Instead of silence, local media pounced on the drama du jour, eagerly highlighting the fact that the new speaker had yet to have his first day on the job.
Notoriously parochial, the New Zealand media had until last month largely ignored the plight of West Papua, despite estimates of as many as half a million Melanesians, mainly Christians, killed by security forces from Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation.
Protestors outside the Pacific Islands Forum in 2011, for example, barely got a glimpse on national television news.
“This is an issue which basically is the dirty secret of the Pacific, that no one wants to talk about,” said Green MP Catherine Delahunty.
In Parliament, during Thursday question time, Delahunty challenged Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully to outline what advice he got and gave over the Wenda visit.
Said McCully: “What I was asked about was whether I thought it was a good fit with the policies of this government for National members to co-sponsor a meeting at which Wenda would be the guest speaker, and I expressed the view that it would not.”
McCully said he had been advised of Wenda’s visit by the New Zealand embassy in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia. He went on to claim that “good progress” had been made on human rights issues in Indonesia, including West Papua.
Delahunty questioned what “confidence can the public have that he as Minister of Foreign Affairs will raise human rights issues in his dealings with Indonesia when he is willing to suppress the right of Papuans to speak in our Parliament?”
Probably not much.
West Papua is a deeply sensitive and murky issue for western powers, including Australia and New Zealand, who nervous about their northern neighbour.
Indonesia has vast reserves for its military, planning to spend US$1.5 billion to upgrade its weaponry, including US$280 million for new tanks, possibly Leopards from Germany.
Western powers originally embraced Indonesia as an Asian bulwark against the spread of communism from China.
Now the role appears ready for reprisal with announcements from the US of a “pivot” back towards the Pacific in response to an increasingly influential presence by China across the Pacific Islands region.
Against this geopolitical background, Wenda recounts his early memories as a child, including the rape of an aunt by a member of the Indonesian military forces and the torture of an uncle, hanging him from his wrists and beating him.
“They told him that since he was a Christian, he would be hung up like a Christian,” says Wenda.
Arrested, tried and convicted in 2001 for a crime committed while he was out of the country, Wenda managed to escape from Indonesian forces.
Lawyer Robinson was in West Papua at the time of the trial as an exchange student and witnessed the legal team for Wenda walk out in protest at the rigged proceedings. Over a decade later, Robinson is still by his side, including helping him have an Interpol “red” alert lifted after Indonesia called for his arrest as a terrorist.
“Frankly it’s…”, she pauses to consider the right words …“outrageous that the ban has been put in place in a country with freely and democratically elected representatives.”
New Zealand, however, is not alone in shutting out the people of West Papua.
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Posted at 00:46 on 18 March, 2013 UTC
The Vanuatu opposition leader, Edward Natapei, has called on the government to reverse its stance on West Papua ahead of the July summit of the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
This comes after a Papuan activist, Benny Wenda, visited Port Vila on a regional tour from his exile in Britain.
Two years ago, Vanuatu’s prime minister, Sato Kilman, backed Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Solomon Islands in admitting Jakarta as an MSG observer.
Mr Natapei says he wants Mr Kilman to reverse his stance.
“I called on the government to review that decision with a view to admitting West Papua as the member of the MSG and to actually terminate the observer status of the government of Indonesia.”
Vanuatu opposition leader, Edward Natapei, says the change should be made during the MSG summit in New Caledonia in July.
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Posted at 00:50 on 18 March, 2013 UTC
Vanuatu says it is one of the sponsors of the resolution, seeking to re-inscribe French Polynsia on the UN decolonisation list.
A government public relations officer, Jeff Patunvanu, made the statement after Vanuatu’s representative to the Pacific Council of Churches, Bishop James Ligo, said only Tuvalu and Nauru supported the resolution by the Solomon Islands prime minister.
Mr Patunvanu says Vanuatu is well respected in the region for its traditional stand to see all remaining territories gain self-determination.
A vote on revised resolution is expected in the UN General Assembly this month.
France removed the territory from the list in 1947 but is opposed to return it.
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