) West Papua: 'doors are open' to foreign journalists and NGOs

1) West Papua: 'doors are open' to  foreign journalists and NGOs
2) Dividing Papua Breeds New Conflict
3) Papua to Welcome Foreign Journalists, NGOs: Governor

4) New hope for Papuan independence

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/west-papua-opened-foreign-journalists

The Guardian

1) West Papua: 'doors are open' to foreign journalists and NGOs
10 Oct 2013: Greens welcome the country's change in position after governor says he will guarantee reporters' safety in the province
West Papua is now open to foreign journalists and NGOs, according to Papuan governor Lukas Enembe, who has promised to allow reporters into the region for the first time in years.

Enembe told the Jakarta Post he would guarantee reporters' safety in the province in a distinct move away from a de facto censorship programmethe Indonesian authorities were accused of upholding in the province.

"There's nothing that needs to be covered up. That would only raise questions. They can see the development we have made and inform others that Papua is a safe place," Enembe said.

"Please, come to Papua. It's open for everyone," he continued.

Enembe was elected as governor to the West Papuan province of Papua in April.

The indication that the region will be opened up to journalists has been welcomed by Australian politicians. Greens senator Richard Di Natale, the party's spokesman on West Papua, said he now planned to lead a delegation to the region and would invite journalists and human rights groups to attend.

Di Natale said he hoped the comments represented a "genuine reflection of the intentions of the Indonesian leadership in Jakarta".

He said: "In the past there has been a de facto ban on foreign journalists travelling to West Papua. This change in position comes on the back of three West Papuans entering the Australian consulate in Bali to request that the international community pressure Indonesia to open up the region to journalists and NGOs."

On Sunday three West Papuans entered the Australian consulate in Bali, calling for political prisoners in the region to be released. The three men left the building within three hours and are understood to have gone into hiding.

One of the men told Guardian Australia that consular staff told the group the Indonesian police and army would be called, but the Australian foreign ministry denied the men were threatened.

Asked about the incident on Monday the prime minister, Tony Abbott, said Australia "would not give people a platform to grandstand against Indonesia", and said the situation in West Papua was "getting better, not worse".

Di Natale said Enembe had "seized the moment, unlike Tony Abbott who categorised the incident as 'grandstanding'".

Some human rights campaigners have expressed scepticism about the announcement. Josef Benedict, Amnesty International's Indonesia and Timor campaigner, said while the group welcomed the comments he was unsure if it signalled a Jakarta-approved policy change.

"The question we're asking is whether this a policy change just for the governor or a policy change for Jakarta, where we know a lot of policies on Papua are decided upon.

"We need to see a bit more evidence here for a change in policy in Jakarta before we take any steps to take access," Benedict told Guardian Australia from Kuala Lumpur.

Guardian Australia has contacted the Indonesian foreign minister's office for a response.


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http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2013/10/10/055520748/Dividing-Papua-Breeds-New-Conflict
2) Dividing Papua Breeds New Conflict
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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - 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.

A new report from the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), Carving Up Papua: More Districts, More Trouble, shows how 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 is exacerbated by unreliable population statistics, inflated voter rolls, and especially in the central highlands, a voting-by-consensus method that invites fraud.

Cillian Nolan, deputy director of IPAC said that 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.

"The problem is that Papua is becoming fractured along clan lines," Nolan said according to a release Tempo received on Oct. 10.

Papua has undergone more administrative expansion than anywhere else in Indonesia.  What in 1999 was once a single province with ten districts has become two provinces with 42 districts, and proposals for 33 more divisions are now awaiting parliamentary 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 report examines the voting practices, collectively called the noken system, used in many parts of the highlands that make 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," said Nolan.  "What's 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. (*)


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http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/papua-clash-leads-to-death-of-tni-soldier/

3) Papua to Welcome Foreign Journalists, NGOs: Governor
By Banjir Ambarita on 8:17 pm October 9, 2013.
Category Law & Order, News
Tags: Indonesia press freedom, Papua, Papua unrest
Jayapura. Papua Governor Lukas Enembe promised to open the region up to foreign journalists and NGOS on Wednesday, guaranteeing their safety as they visit the restive province.

“Why not?” he said after returning from a visit to the United States. “There’s nothing that needs to be covered up. That would only raise questions. They can see the development we have made and inform others that Papua is a safe place.”

The statement is a marked departure from previous policies on foreign reporters operating in the restive province. Accredited journalists working in Indonesia previously had to apply for a travel permit from the Ministry of Home Affairs before officially traveling to the region.

The central government has a de facto ban on foreign reporters in Papua, which held applications to visit the region were in bureaucratic limbo. Those who traveled without written permission faced questioning by Indonesian authorities and possible expulsion.

The Jayapura office of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) has called the practice an unofficial, but purposeful, information blackout.

But Lukas, who was elected in April, promised journalists those days were over.

“Please, come to Papua,” he said. “It’s open for everyone.”

Indonesian security forces have fought a decades-long war with separatist organizations in Papua since it was annexed into Indonesia in 1969 in a vote widely seen as a shame by international monitors.

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http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=913481

New hope for Papuan independence

Updated: 12:54, Wednesday October 9, 2013

West Papuans battling for independence have new hope after recent events propelled their deadly but usually hidden struggle into the global spotlight.
Risky activist ventures undertaken by pro-independence organisations have made headlines in Australia and Indonesia in the past months, especially three young West Papuans who jumped the fence of Australia's Bali consulate as world leaders including Prime Minister Tony Abbott arrived for an APEC meeting.
But it was in New York a week earlier that Papuans and commentators alike say the independence cause made history.
In a United Nations General Assembly speech for which many West Papuans had waited decades, a head of state - Vanuatu's Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil - for the first time called on the UN to reconsider Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua.
Mr Carcasses denounced the 1969 'act of free choice' used by Indonesia to justify taking control of the territory and called for the appointment of a UN special representative to investigate West Papua's political status.
West Papuans have been fighting for independence since the the widely condemned 1969 UN-brokered process.
Mr Carcasses's speech is also seen as further boosting one of the major advances of the West Papuan independence movement in recent years - a decision by the Melanesian Spearhead Group of Pacific nations to consider giving it formal membership.
While some commentators warn independence hopes in West Papua can be dangerous - and have proven so over decades of failure and violence - others say a game change is unfolding.
'West Papua's time has come' is how Canberra-based West Papuan leader Rex Rumakiek puts it, while Peter King, professor of government and international relations at Sydney University, acknowledges 'the whole thing has got to a new international level'.
And hope is rising also on the ground in West Papua, customary leader Yohanis Goram tells AAP from the northern-western West Papuan city of Sorong.
Despite facing treason charges and potentially years in jail after co-organising a prayer meeting in support of the recent Indigenous Freedom Flotilla, Mr Goram says 'not only me but all Papuan people' are very happy at the Carcasses speech and hoping for more international action.
But Australia will not be providing it.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told AAP the government 'notes' Mr Carcasses's address but believes the 'best way to ensure a secure and prosperous future for Papuans is by improved development and governance within the Indonesian state through the full implementation of special autonomy'.
The recent media and political attention on West Papua was kicked off with a secret venture by the Freedom Flotilla sailor-activists into Indonesian waters during August and September.
That focus was prolonged during a row over the treatment of a group of West Papuan activists involved with the flotilla who fled to Australia and were swiftly moved to Papua New Guinea by a new federal government keen to sell its border protection policies to Indonesia.
Then the three Bali-based West Papuans swung the spotlight their way, jumping the fence of Australia's consulate in Bali ahead of APEC. Their departure from the consulate in disputed circumstances - the men claimed staff threatened to call Indonesian police - sparked another controversy.
Three Australian crossbench senators have spoken up for the activists and against the government's treatment of them, with Greens Senator Richard Di Natale claiming the consulate's alleged actions had 'put the lives of these three brave young men in grave danger'.
Just as Mr Abbott was saying West Papuans were better off under Indonesian rule and Australia would not provide a platform to grandstand against Indonesia, new research claimed tens of thousands of West Papuans had been killed under Indonesian rule.
Such violence is one of the reasons some experts warn West Papuan hopes carry the danger of increased suffering.
Deakin University Indonesia expert Damien Kingsbury says the geopolitical lineup is so powerfully on Indonesia's side that a 'critical' event - equivalent to the Aceh tsunami or East Timor's Dili massacre - would be needed to push the international community to act concertedly on West Papua.
'It's going to have to be a pretty major event, and what that probably implies is significant loss of life,' he said.
Sydney University West Papua expert Jim Elmslie doubts West Papuans will stop aspiring to independence, even if hopes can only be 'slender'. Facing genocide and dispossession, he says, West Papuans experience a yearning for independence.

University of NSW international and political studies associate professor Clinton Fernandes says independence activists have exaggerated hopes that hijack attention which should be placed on the poverty, disease and illiteracy in the territory.