1) Indonesian
military pursuing me, says West Papuan who occupied consulate
2) Papua’s Fragmentation Risks
Unrest: Report
3) Tony Abbott's claim West Papua 'getting better' rejected by experts
4) West Papuans
who occupied consulate will not be detained, Indonesia says
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Indonesian military pursuing me, says West Papuan who occupied consulate
Rofinus Yanggam, one of three Australian consulate protesters, does not believe diplomatic assurances given to Greens senator
One of the three men who occupied the Australian consulate in Bali on Sunday says he is being pursued by the Indonesian military and does not believe Indonesia’s assurances that he will not be arrested or detained.
On Tuesday the Greens senator Richard di Natale sought a guarantee from the Indonesian embassy in Australia that the trio would be safe, and said he was "encouraged" by an assurance from Indonesian diplomats that they would not be detained by Indonesian authorities.
But Rofinus Yanggam, phoning from an undisclosed location in Indonesia on Wednesday afternoon, told Guardian Australia that he was being followed by Indonesian military intelligence and did not believe the diplomats' assurances.
Asked for his response to the news, Yanggam said: “My response is it is not true, because [military intelligence officers] are still looking for us.
“Yesterday we came to our friend’s house and two intelligence officers came past the front of our house [and looked in]. They came back in the night-time.
“We don’t feel safe at this moment.”
The three men occupied the consulate on Sunday to highlight the treatment of Papuans and called on the Australian government to apply pressure to Indonesia to release all Papuan political prisoners and to open up the secretive province to foreign journalists.
West Papua has been closed to foreign journalists since Indonesia acquired the province under controversial circumstances in the 1960s. Dozens of Papuans are in jail for expressing political opinions. The crime of “treason” carries a long jail term in Indonesia.
In an open letter to the Australian people, handed to consulate staff, the three protesters said they wanted their message to be delivered to leaders at the Apec meeting in Bali including the US State Secretary, John Kerry, and the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott.
They claimed consular staff threatened to call the Indonesian police and military to have them ejected. This has been denied by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) which said: "The consul general did not make threats. He explained to the individuals that they were free to leave voluntarily."
Yanggam, who has been in hiding since he left the Australian consulate before 7am on Sunday morning in fear for his safety, explained what happened after the trio fled.
“When we go from Australian consulate, the special forces, the army forces from Indonesia, they are looking for us," he said. "That’s why I did not feel comfortable to be there in Bali.”
He said the trio had gone to stay with some friends in a dormitory but that military intelligence officers had arrived there asking about their whereabouts.
The group decided to leave Bali by bus. However, when they were on board two military officers stopped the bus and asked questions of the driver, he said.
“They stopped the bus and asked many questions. They asked to the driver, ‘Those Papuan people, where do they want to go?’
“The driver told them where the bus was going, but he also talked to them. He said what are you looking for, and they told [him] that they are trying to check for bus fees, that this is the reason that they pulled [the bus over].
“But the real reason they are looking for us is because we went into the consulate,” Yanggam said.
He said the group then decided it was unsafe to continue on their journey. They got off the bus and caught a later one to a different location.
They are now planning to go to a second undisclosed location. “It is not safe to say where,” Yanggam said.
Di Natale said, in response to Yanggam's account: "I'm extremely concerned at the reports that the Indonesian authorities appear to be following the three West Papuan activists. It's vital that the Indonesians honour the commitment they made to me, which is that these three men will be safe."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Papua’s Fragmentation Risks Unrest: Report
The rapid proliferation of new districts in Papua is strengthening the political influence of highlanders at the expense of the traditionally dominant coast, but it is also producing new conflicts and complicating the search for peace, the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) said on Wednesday.
In its latest report, “Carving Up Papua: More Districts, More Trouble,” IPAC said that the creation of many of these new districts is driven by clan and sub-clan competition that can erupt into violence around local elections.
The problem, it added, is exacerbated by unreliable population statistics, inflated voter rolls, and especially in the central highlands, a voting-by-consensus method that invites fraud.
“The carving up of Papua used to be seen as a useful divide-and-rule tactic by Jakarta but now it is driven overwhelmingly by local elites looking for status and spoils,” said Cillian Nolan, deputy director of IPAC. “The problem is that Papua is becoming fractured along clan lines.”
Papua has undergone more administrative expansion than anywhere else in Indonesia. From having 10 districts and mayoralties in 1999, Papua now has been split into two provinces with 42 districts, while 33 more divisions are awaiting legislative consideration.
Much of the expansion has been in the central highlands, the poorest and most remote region of Papua, where the creation of new districts helped build a political base for Lukas Enembe, elected in January 2013 as the first-ever highland governor.
His victory has strengthened support for separate provinces along the north and south coasts, although neither is likely to come into being anytime soon.
The IPAC report examines the voting practices, collectively called the noken system, used in many parts of the highlands that makes accurate vote-counting impossible and that produced a wide range of implausible results in the governor’s election, including several places with a 100 per cent voter turnout.
It also looks at two recently created districts, Puncak and Nduga, where election disputes resulted in deadly violence, the first between clans, the second between sub-clans and even extended families.
In both, the district governments ended up paying astounding sums in compensation to victims, funds that could otherwise have been used for social services.
“The solution to local election violence in Papua is not to scrap direct elections, as some top officials have suggested,” Nolan said. “What is needed is stricter enforcement of the criteria for creating new districts — and a reduction in the financial incentives that make it so attractive.”
Administrative fragmentation may be a way of giving previously unrepresented ethnic groups a stake in the political process but it may not make relations with Jakarta any easier.
It has, however, produced a group of over 1,000 elected Papuan officials whose views on Papua’s future will have to be taken seriously, the report said.
A poorly armed and coordinated resistance has fought for West Papuan independence since the 1960s.
The resistance initially fought for independence from the Dutch, and later against the Indonesian government, which took control of the resource-rich province in 1969 following a self-determination ballot held under the auspices of the United Nations, which many called a sham.
Pro-independence sentiments in the poor province have been on the rise in recent years, fueled by discontent that Papua’s riches are being siphoned off by the central government, leaving little for Papuans, as well as alleged human-rights violations by security forces there.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
3) Tony Abbott's claim West Papua 'getting better' rejected by experts
Prime Minister Tony Abbott's claim that the situation in West Papua is “getting better”, in response to a protest by three Papuan activists in the Australian consulate in Bali, has been rejected by experts.
A recent report by Dr Jim Elmslie, Co-ordinator at the West Papuan Project, said genocide, the forcible removal of children and other human right abuses are taking place in Indonesian-controlled West Papua.
“Since [1962] many ten of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people have perished directly as a result of conditions that have been enforced upon them … this is why we characterise what is going on there as a genocide or a potential genocide,” Dr Elmslie told Fairfax Media's Breaking Politics.
Advertisement
On Monday, Mr Abbott made it clear that he would not allow activists to “grandstand” against Indonesia after the activists entered the consulate by scaling a wall and asked for Australia to aid 55 political prisoners jailed in Indonesia.
“Australia will not give people a platform to grandstand against Indonesia. We have a very strong relationship with Indonesia.
"People seeking to grandstand against Indonesia, please, don't look to do it in Australia, you are not welcome. The second point is the situation in West Papua is getting better, not worse,” he said.
Reports have also emerged that an Australian in the consulate forced the protesters to leave by threatening to call Indonesian police.
In rejecting Mr Abbott's claim, Dr Elmslie said that West Papuans ranked very poorly on measures of health and had the lowest socio-economic standing of the Indonesian population, with high rates of AIDS, and the lowest level of education.
“[Indonesian] soldiers have taken trophy videos of them torturing and killing West Papuan people … I was surprised to hear Prime Minister Abbott's comments.
“To me, the situation is not getting better it's getting worse.”
Dr Elmslie conceded that getting accurate information from West Papua is difficult.
Elaine Pearson, Australian Director of Human Rights Watch, said: “I don't think the situation is getting better; you'd only say that if you were blind and deaf to the situation.”
She said it is difficult to know the true story, but said it is clear the Indonesian government is trying “to stamp out any call for independence”.
“I don't think we have enough information to … characterise this as a genocide.
“Indonesia is a democracy … people should have the right to protest,” Ms Pearson said.
Comment has been sought from the Prime Minister's office.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
4) West Papuans who occupied consulate will not be detained, Indonesia says
Diplomats assure Greens senator of the safety of three student activists who entered the Australian consulate in Bali
Indonesian diplomats have provided assurances that three West Papuans who occupied the Australian consulate in Bali on Sunday will not be arrested or detained.
The Greens senator Richard Di Natale on Tuesday spoke to the first secretary at the Indonesian embassy in Australia, Mulyana Esa, in an effort to obtain assurances about the safety of the West Papuan activists.
An Indonesian diplomatic official, Supri Suwito, came back to senator Di Natale on Wednesday morning. “I’m encouraged by the assurances given by Mr Suwito that the three West Papuans will not be arrested or detained by the Indonesian authorities,” Di Natale told Guardian Australia.
“Given that in the recent past West Papuans have been imprisoned and tortured for exercising basic democratic freedoms, I hope this represents a change in attitude by Indonesia on West Papua rather than simply trying to distract international attention from the issue.”
The Greens senator has flagged that he will move a motion in the Senate requesting documents relating to Sunday's occupation if the government fails to clear up conflicting reports about whether Australian officials in Bali threatened to call the police or the military to remove the activists from the compound.
Two other kingmakers in the Senate – the Democratic Labor party senator John Madigan, and the South Australian independent Nick Xenophon – have expressed concern about the wellbeing of the West Papuan activists, given concerns about human rights abuses in the troubled Indonesian-controlled province.
Madigan has suggested the activists should be granted asylum in Australia, given the vexed history of West Papua.
"Given that the lives of three West Papuans were potentially put at risk by the actions of the Australian consulate over the weekend, it's crucial that we get to the bottom of conflicting reports about what actually took place," Di Natale said on Tuesday.
"One of the West Papuans has claimed on ABC radio that the consulate threatened to call in the Indonesian authorities, an action that would likely have resulted in his imprisonment and possible torture," he said.
"This claim has been supported by Dr Clinton Fernandes, a respected academic and expert on the region, and by sources in Indonesia who claim to have overheard what happened over an open phone line."
Guardian Australia spoke to one of the three West Papuans, Rofinus Yanggam, shortly after he left the consulate, when he said the consul general told the group the Indonesian police and army would be called.
The Abbott government says the activists left the Australian consulate voluntarily. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has denied that the Australian consul general threatened to call in the Indonesian military and police.
The prime minister, Tony Abbott, has also been implicitly critical of the West Papuan protest.
"Australia will not give people a platform to grandstand against Indonesia," Abbott told reporters covering the Apec summit in Bali on Monday.
"We have a very strong relationship with Indonesia. We are not going to give people a platform to grandstand against Indonesia. I want that to be absolutely crystal clear."
In a clear rebuff to any separatist sentiment, Abbott also said: "The people of West Papua are much better off as part of a strong, dynamic and increasingly prosperous Indonesia."
The newly elected prime minister has been looking to mend diplomatic fences in Jakarta after tensions between the two governments over the Coalition's policies on boat turn-backs and people smuggling
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.