1) 'Strong
ties' with Indonesia should mean ending human rights abuses
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/human-rights-indonesia
1) 'Strong ties' with Indonesia should mean ending human rights abuses
Abbott demonstrated an unnerving indifference to the issues raised by West Papuans activists by appearing to conflate exposure of Indonesian human rights violations with separatism
Indonesia is an early test for of the new Australian government's foreign policy. The Australian media largely hailed Abbott’s first foreign visit to Jakarta as a success. The trip focused on trade and cooperation on people smuggling. Instead of any public discussion of human rights concerns in Indonesia, Abbott did his utmost to avoid stepping on any Indonesian toes – which is regarded as success in some quarters of the Australian government.
But Abbott was able to dodge Indonesia’s human rights problems only temporarily. On 6 October, three Papuans crashed the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit party by scaling the Australian Consulate’s fence in Bali and presenting a letter urging APEC leaders to pressure the Indonesian government to open Papua to foreign media and to free Papuan political prisoners.
Abbott’s response to this desperate act by three Papuans was immediate condemnation, rather than any attempt at understanding the concerns the Papuans were raising. Abbott decried “people seeking to grandstand against Indonesia; please don’t look to do it in Australia. You are not welcome.” Abbott also went out of his way to reaffirm “Australia’s absolute respect for the territorial integrity of Indonesia” saying “while I acknowledge the right of people to free expression, I acknowledge the right of people to fair treatment under the law, I should also make the point that the people of West Papua are much better off as part of a strong, dynamic and increasingly prosperous Indonesia.”
The acknowledgment of rights was important, but Abbott’s reference to territorial integrity said more about his politics than about the Papuans. In fact, the Papuans demonstrating at the consulate were not armed, were not separatist supporters, and were not even advocating Papua’s independence. Nor were they seeking asylum in Australia. They were simply making a plea for foreign journalists to be able to visit Papua, and for the release of Papuans imprisoned for nonviolent activities such as raising flags or making controversial speeches. Abbott demonstrated an unnerving indifference to the issues by appearing to conflate exposure of Indonesian human rights violations with separatism. This is precisely the mistake Indonesia keeps making, and, to say the least, it is not helping ease tensions in Papua.
There is a large military presence in the region facing the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM), a small separatist armed group active since the 1960s. Government security forces deployed to Papua have frequently been implicated in abuses including excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrators, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Those who criticise the authorities or investigate human rights abuses are often subjected to surveillance, harassment, and are prone to being labelled separatists.
Two years ago, Human Rights Watch disclosed secret Indonesian military documents that showed how the focus of Indonesian military operations in Papua goes far beyond the OPM rebels and includes surveillance of a broad swathe of Papuan political, traditional, and religious leaders and civil society groups. It is convenient for the Indonesian military to link human rights advocacy and separatism as it enables them to arrest and detain peaceful activists. But the Australian government should know better than to simply repeat such assertions. Doing so puts Papuan activists even further at risk.
Rather than simply seeking to pander to the Indonesian government, Abbott should examine the merits of the arguments raised by the Papuans. Thousands of foreign journalists attended the APEC summit, yet a decades-old restriction effectively prohibits them from visiting this troubled province. On 9 October, the governor of Papua, Lukas Enembe, claimed that the province was now open to journalists and human rights monitors. While this change of heart is welcome, the central government in Jakarta has said that permission is still requiredfrom the department of foreign affairs.
The relationship between Australia and Indonesia is complex, but both countries are democracies and democracies should uphold the right to peaceful expression. Abbott claims that ''the situation in West Papua is getting better, not worse.” If it is better, then why doesn’t Jakarta lift the restriction on foreign journalists and free those who are imprisoned for peacefully expressing their views.
Australia needs to get the message to Indonesia that "maintaining strong ties" means ending human rights abuses in Papua.
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http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=79809
posted at 06:12 on 14 October, 2013 UTC
The New Zealand Green Party says New Zealand should be facilitating peace talks in Indonesia’s Papua region rather than sending police advisors.
The New Zealand foreign minister, Murray McCully, announced last week that New Zealand would resume a community policing programme in eastern Indonesia, including Papua and West Papua.
It would involve New Zealand police providing training, mentoring and encouraging community engagement.
There was a pilot project in the region in 2009/10 but Green MP, Catherine Delahunty, says that that aid did not change the reality in the region where police violence directed at the indigenous population remains commonplace.
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Talking to West Papuans, this is not what they want from New Zealand. What they want New Zealand to do is to be a leader for peace and help broker a peace dialogue between West Papuan leadership and the Indonesian government. The idea of sending more police over there to do what we’d done before with no evidence that changed anything, to me it’s a waste of money. It’s also a real concern because it’s a smoke screen for what’s really going on, which is that there’s a culture of violence in the police force in West Papua and a number of people have been shot, harassed, killed and had their human rights basically abused since New Zealand has been doing community policing. So the Green Party would like to see what evidence is there that these programmes of sending over a couple of officers and a few trainers to a situation where the population is basically under siege from the police and the military is doing anything except whitewashing an untenable political situation for the citizens of West Papua.
DON WISEMAN: I imagine the minister would claim that something like this is the beginning of this process of improving the quality of the policing.
CH: Well, the minister has claimed that, and since the programme that finished in 2010 allegedly improved things, but from what I’ve seen the detail of those programmes there appeared to be no proper monitoring and no actual evidence that anything had improved. And you only have to look at the statistics of the killings, the state-sanctioned killings, and the way in which citizens in West Papua have no right to protest and the fact that there has been up till now no access to independent media to verify what’s going on. So this is a very unhealthy situation, and rather than sending police over to make it look better, we should actually be calling on the Indonesian government to engage in a proper dialogue.
DW: Would you like New Zealand to be providing aid of any sort to Papua?
CH: At this point in time the most useful thing we can do is to provide political leadership for peace. So aid in a situation where the political situation is very, very contaminated, so it’s difficult to provide aid that won’t be used as a justification for the continuation of the human rights abuses and the blocks to self-determination. I know that there are some good NGOs who are trying to projects on the ground - we wouldn’t block those. But we think that the government’s role in this situation is to be calling for and offering to broker or mediate a genuine solution to the situation in West Papua in terms of dialogue and peace between those citizens and their leadership group and the Indonesian government. Sending some community policemen over, no matter how well-intentioned they are, is not going to work, because so many West Papuan citizens have witnessed police violence and killings of family members by the police force and they have seen the state refuse to act to deal with those issues. So we really don’t think that New Zealand is playing the rightful role of creating a better situation. Not at all.
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http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=79807
Posted at 06:11 on 14 October, 2013 UTC
Six West Papuans who had sought asylum in Australia, but were secretly moved to Papua New Guinea by Australian authorities, have now been moved to a remote part of Western Province, near the Indonesian border.
The six, who were human rights activists, say they had fled Indonesia when security officials began searching for them after their involvement with the Freedom Flotilla from Australia.
They are being moved tomorrow to the East Awin camp about 50 kilometres from Kiunga.
A spokesperson for the Freedom Flotilla, Ruben Blake, told DW that the camp at East Awin is long established and the people already there are in a desperate state.
RUBEN BLAKE: The situations for the thousands of refugees that already live there is basically they’re being told it’s a place for them to be self-sufficient, which seems to be another word for left to fend for themselves there, really. The people living there are in very desperate conditions, they’ve got a terrible rate of malaria in that camp. There’s no UNHDR support there any longer. And the people that live there are basically not free to leave and travel around other places in PNG, and it’s an incredibly remote area of PNG where they don’t have access to basic services.
DON WISEMAN: They’re not behind barbed wire, but they’re confined to the town.
RB: That’s right. There’s no barbed wire there, but there’s really the problem of the tyranny of distance. Even to get into the Kiunga town is often impossible. They often have to walk for days to get there. And PNG is also, in its treatment of refugees there, they’ve withheld the freedom of movement that is one of the causes of the refugee convention. So they are restricted in their movement. And the people there, their best hope to get out of there is to be granted a permissive residency permit, which would allow them to travel around and live in other places in PNG. However, that’s not granting West Papuans the same rights as they would have as eventually becoming a citizen of PNG.
DW: How real is the threat of Indonesian security crossing the border and sorting people out?
RB: Well, we know from the past that there have been cross-border operations.
DW: Cause I know this was a major concern while these guys were holed up in their hotel in Port Moresby, the fear that they would be threatened by Indonesia, being so close to the border.
RB: Yeah, absolutely. And I guess people there that have lived there in the past have told me that they feel very concerned for their safety and don’t feel they have the security of a home. And, yeah, we do know that there are boats from Indonesian incursions, but also at times there’s been a threat from the PNG military itself.
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http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=79794
Posted at 03:49 on 14 October, 2013 UTC
Six West Papuans who had sought asylum in Australia but were moved from Queensland to Papua New Guinea by Australian authorities, have now been taken to a remote part of Western Province, near the Indonesian border.
The six, who were human rights activists, say they had fled Indonesia when security officials began searching for them after their involvement with the Freedom Flotilla from Australia.
They are being moved tomorrow to the East Awin camp about 50 kilometres from Kiunga.
A spokesperson for the Freedom Flotilla, Ruben Blake, says the camp at East Awin is long established and the people already there are in a desperate state.
“Got a terrible rate of malaria in that camp. There is no UNHCR support there any longer and the people that live there are basically not free to leave and travel around other parts of PNG, and it is an incredibily remote area of PNG.”
Ruben Blake says one of the West Papuan group has been allowed to stay in Port Moresby because she was born in PNG.
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http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=79799
Posted at 06:47 on 14 October, 2013 UTC
The Indonesian government appears to have quashed expectations that heavy restrictions on media access to the Papua are about to be lifted.
Last week the governor of Papua, Lukas Enembe, said he wanted to welcome reporters and non-governmental organisations to the area.
But the Age newspaper reports this was quickly dismissed by the central government in Jakarta, which still requires journalists to apply for special permits to go to the region, and to take secret police officers with them if they are approved.
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