1) PNG-Indon border incursions set to
continue says retired General
2) Indonesia and the Act of Forgetting
3) Oscar-Nominated ‘Act of Killing’ Scrapes at
Raw Wound in Indonesia
4) Freeport Says Indonesian Unit May
Have to Declare Force Majeure
5) SHOOT RAW HAPPENS IN VILLAGE ANGKAISERA , YAPEN
6) US Gov: Indonesia Country Reports on
Human Rights Practices for
2013
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) PNG-Indon border incursions set to continue says retired General
Updated 28 February 2014, 11:04 AEST
This follows an incident in which PNG forces captured ten Indonesian fishermen inside PNG territory and sent them back.
There are different stories about the fate of the fishermen, and it's alleged Indonesian troops have twice crossed into Western Province asking local people questions about what happened to them.
General Jerry Singirok, spokesman for the PNG Flag Officers League, which represents all former commanders of the PNG Defence Force, tells Bruce Hill he's been warning for years that more effort must go into building up proper border protection.
SINGIROK: The allegation was that a few weeks ago the fishermen illegally crossed into Papua New Guinea water around the Tarasi(?) area and it was alleged that the PNG soldiers told them to swim ashore, and in the process five of them went missing. I have yet to see a brief on the actual incident itself.
HILL: And as a result it's alleged now that Indonesian soldiers have crossed into PNG territory allegedly looking for these fishermen who made it to shore?
PNG INDON INCURSION
SINGIROK: Yes that is correct, that's the follow-up as a result of that.
HILL: Well the Defence Force Commander Gilbert Toropo has described this as a total disrespect of PNG's sovereignty. Is he correct in this assertion do you think?
SINGIROK: Yes well if it's true that the Indonesian citizens where the security forces, military or navy or civilians coming into PNG border, it's illegal. But I say that this is the price that Papua New Guinea government is paying for lack of paying attention to the capacity and capability of the PNGDF. I have many, many times pointed out that we have a porous border, and unless we have a very, very solid amicable relationship, security relationship with Indonesia, we will experience border skirmishes. And I've been saying this over the past 20 years. What happened now is a direct result of the lack of attention by the PNG authorities; one to establish a good dialogue with a very important partner, a neighbour of ours, Indonesia, and second, to resource the defence force with capabilities, operational platforms so that they can operate, and thirdly, that both the Indonesian military and the PNGDF should work together so that we do not end up in this situation.
HILL: Well the Indonesian government says that their soldiers aren't allowed to cross the border without asking permission from the PNG government. They say that their forces haven't crossed the border. Has there been any confirmation that this has in fact happened?
SINGIROK: Yes and that's where we are, the absence of a report on both sides we cannot speculate. But having said that if there's some truth in what has happened, then this is the time now to be strong diplomatically, politically so that we do not endanger unnecessary lives one, and we make sure that the military on both sides conduct themselves according to the rules of engagement as established by both countries.
HILL: You could see it from the Indonesian army's point of view couldn't you, there are reports, don't know how true they are, that some of these fishermen might have been mistreated or didn't make it to shore. You could perhaps see why understandably they might want to cross the border trying to find out what happened?
SINGIROK: Yes this is what I mean, in the absence of a checkpoint, in the absence of an established physical establishment or some kind of infrastructure where information is exchange to assist, in the absence of that, this sort of incident is likely and bound to happen.
HILL: If these incidents keep occurring how dangerous could that be for Papua New Guinea?
SINGIROK: It's very dangerous, it is natural that border skirmishes will continue and until both governments get together and do some real, real permanent long-term solutions, this can get out of control, it's likely to get out of control.
HILL: What do you mean by get out of control? What's the worst case scenario?
SINGIROK: The border skirmishes I'm talking about. In the absence of government ownership of the border, of the security issues, of the operational capabilities of the PNGDF, we will continue to have incremental deaths, if indeed the incidents are as reported are true. I'm just calling that this is time, this year 2014 is a very important year that both governments must do something constructive so that we prevent this. I've been predicting this for a long time and I realise that yes we can have all these cocktail parties and whatever, but when it comes down to the real crunch of the matter, we really need to set down the platform. And in this case we don't have a consistent platform to work on.
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The Opinion Pages|Op-Ed Contributor
2) Indonesia and the Act of Forgetting
By ANDREAS HARSONOFEB. 28, 2014
JAKARTA, Indonesia I grew up in the shadow of the Indonesian massacres exposed in Joshua Oppenheimer’s extraordinary documentary, “The Act of Killing,” which has been nominated for an Academy Award.
I was a couple of months old in October 1965, when the Indonesian government gave free rein to a mix of Indonesian soldiers and paramilitaries to kill anyone they considered to be a “communist.” Over the next few months into 1966, at least 500,000 people were killed (the total may be as high as one million). The victims included members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (P.K.I.), ethnic Chinese, as well as trade unionists, teachers, civil society activists and leftist artists.
My father, an ethnic Chinese, recognized early on the threat to our family, and we fled our East Java town of Jember to the relative safety of the port of Surabaya. There we took refuge while Jember was the scene of savage killings of our friends and neighbors.
Years later, my father’s trusted employee, Man Tuka, would walk with me around Jember and tell me stories about the many lives lost during the massacres. When I was eight or nine years old, he described to me a scene that has haunted me ever since.
Man Tuka told me about how the Jompo River that runs through Jember turned red with the blood of victims dumped into it by paramilitary murderers. He spoke of seeing a raft float by: On it was a baby crying with hunger as it tried to suckle its murdered mother.
In the 48 years since these dark months, the Indonesian government has justified the massacres as a necessary defense against the P.K.I. Its narrative holds that the Communists attempted a coup, murdering six army generals on Sept. 30, 1965, as part of their attempt to make Indonesia into a Communist state. Every Sept. 30 since, a state-owned television station has aired a government-sanctioned film luridly depicting the P.K.I.’s “treachery” and the bravery of the Indonesian soldiers and paramilitaries who “exterminated” that peril.
My generation grew up on this propaganda; we had little or no knowledge of what really happened. Only through Man Tuka and some elderly ethnic Chinese residents of my hometown did I start to learn the truth about what occurred during those months of 1965-66.
“The Act of Killing” has now broken the official silence about the massacres. In response to the government’s unwillingness to approve the film for release in Indonesia, Mr. Oppenheimer made it available in Indonesia for free on YouTube. Despite limited Internet access outside of the cities, the film has been a distressing revelation for younger Indonesians. Indeed, it has provoked a public debate about the need for accountability for those crimes.
The past two years have seen tentative steps in that direction. In July 2012, Indonesia’s human rights commission produced a report documenting the mass killings of 1965-66. The panel interviewed hundreds of witnesses to massacres, torture and rape. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono responded by instructing the attorney general to assess the findings and report back.
But some government officials are unhappy about moves toward accountability. In October 2012, Djoko Suyanto, the political, legal and security affairs minister, publicly justified the killings, saying, “This country would not be what it is today” had they not occurred.
Mr. Oppenheimer’s film and the government’s reaction to it are powerful reminders of the culture of impunity and the lack of rule of law that continue to weigh on Indonesia. Impunity expresses itself in a systematic failure to hold accountable members of the security forces and Islamist militants who commit abuses against religious minorities across the country.
The Islamic People’s Forum, the Islamic Defenders Front and other Islamic groups are at the forefront of this intolerance. These groups have attacked the places of worship of Shiite and Ahmadiyah Muslims as well as some Christian churches. Although government officials and security forces have played a passive, or even active, role in such violence, Mr. Yudhoyono’s government has failed to confront those responsible or to obtain any redress for the victims.
The legacy of impunity for the crimes of 1965-66 also extends to a lack of accountability for abuses by security forces operating in Indonesia’s easternmost provinces, Papua and West Papua. Papua is the site of a low-level insurgency by the Free Papua Movement, a small and poorly organized armed group seeking independence. Over the last three years, Human Rights Watch has documented hundreds of cases where the police, soldiers and intelligence officers used unlawful force when dealing with Papuans exercising their right to peaceful assembly. The government’s tight control over the flow of information from Papua complicates efforts by foreign media to expose these abuses.
The government needs to provide accountability for the 1965-66 massacres as a crucial step toward justice for families who lost loved ones, and to work to dismantle the toxic culture of impunity that victimizes Indonesians to this day.
On Sunday, I will watch the Academy Awards ceremony to see if “The Act of Killing” wins an Oscar and remember Man Tuka and the victims of Jember.
Andreas Harsono is an Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 1, 2014, in The International New York Times
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3) Oscar-Nominated ‘Act of Killing’ Scrapes at Raw Wound in Indonesia
Jakarta/Madiun. A chilling documentary about one of the worst massacres since World War Two is up for an Academy Award this weekend. If it does win, don’t expect the Indonesian co-director to go on stage to receive an Oscar: he’s worried for his life.
The nearly three-hour “The Act of Killing” centers on one of the killers in Indonesia’s bloody purge of what was then the biggest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union, as he re-enacts for the camera, with no apparent sign of remorse, the way nearly 50 years earlier he had dispatched his victims by strangling them with a loop of wire.
It touches on the darkest period of Indonesia’s already violent early years as an independent state and which even after almost half a century is so raw a memory that it remains largely brushed from mainstream debate. The version in school textbooks still adhere to the line propagated by the autocratic leader Suharto who initiated the purge and who was forced to step down 15 years ago.
At least 500,000 people are thought to have died in the rampaging violence that started in late 1965 after then-general Suharto and the military took power following an abortive communist coup. A million or more people were jailed.
“It’s a tragedy and we, just like anybody else, despise those in the movie and the reenactment of the atrocities. These people don’t belong in Indonesia today,” said presidential spokesman Teuku Faizasyah.
He added: “It requires a lot of revisiting but … I don’t think we are mature enough [yet] as a nation.”
In a sign of how sensitive the topic remains, the Indonesian co-producer of the documentary and the other Indonesian members of the film crew say they do not want their names to be made public.
“Maybe we are too paranoid, but we discussed with various activists groups about the risk, the possibility of going from a threat to a real attack on our lives, and we really don’t know what would happen if we revealed our names,” the co-director told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Triggered in the midst of the Cold War when the West feared that communism was sweeping through decolonizing Asia, much of the slaughter was in the populous main island of Java and the now-resort destination of Bali.
Initially, it was the military that led efforts to crush the communist party. The operation was headed by a general, Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, the father of the country’s current first lady, and whose son is thought to have an eye on the presidency.
‘Still divisive’
The campaign mushroomed into an orgy of killing that saw the country’s biggest Muslim group, landowners, paramilitary organizations and those simply with a grudge against a neighbor, go after communist party members and their supposed sympathizers.
“To this second, I don’t know what I did wrong, why I was held, why I was beaten every night for six years, why they tore out my nails and … electrocuted me,” Parmoen Soedjarwo told Reuters, sitting in his simple, red-roofed house in Madiun in the agricultural heartland of East Java where much of the violence occurred.
“The military asked me if I belonged to the PKI [Communist Party of Indonesia]. Whatever they asked me, I just said ‘yes, yes, yes’ to everything, even though I didn’t understand what they were asking. I would have said anything to survive and be freed quickly.”
Soedjarwo, who served in the military before he was detained, was finally released in 1978.
Like many other victims and their families, he found himself shut out of the system. He was unable to get a job in the public sector or secure a bank loan to start a business.
He said he got by for years on handouts from his community. Now 70, he has saved enough to start a small fish farm.
For decades, children of alleged communists were kept at arm’s length by the government. One of Suharto’s closest advisers at the time even sent his daughter abroad after she developed a relationship with the son of a supposed communist.
Some observers worry the film does little to show the political context of the period and the tension at the grassroots level between religious groups and landowners and the communists which was already seething before the attempted coup.
“The issue is still divisive in society and nobody has ever really tried to reconcile,” said Agus Widjojo, a retired army lieutenant-general who heads a think-tank on policy and strategic issues. ”Indonesian society is not brave enough to start the endeavor to face the truth of the past … But it’s the only way we can learn lessons about what we have done wrong and to correct it so that we can assure future generations of Indonesia that those mistakes will not be repeated.”
For the film’s Indonesian crew, the anonymity will not end any time soon, according to the co-director.
“Revealing our identities would need a genuine structural change in Indonesia … and that genuine reconciliation will take a long time, but the time to start that is now,” the co-director said.
Reuters
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4) Freeport Says Indonesian Unit May Have to Declare Force Majeure
Jakarta. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold said its Indonesian unit may need to declare force majeure on copper concentrate sales if a dispute with the government over export taxes drags on for a prolonged period.
Freeport and fellow US miner Newmont Mining have refused to pay a progressive export tax introduced last month as part of package of new mining rules aimed at forcing
miners to build smelters and process raw materials in Indonesia.
Freeport has reduced copper production at the world’s fifth-biggest copper mine in Papua, and its nearby mill was operating at half its normal capacity.
“In the event that PT-FI [Freeport Indonesia] is unable to resume normal operations for an extended period, we plan to consider further actions, including constraining operating
costs, deferring capital expenditures and implementing workforce reductions,” the firm said in a filing dated Feb. 27.
“PT-FI may also be required to declare force majeure under its concentrate sales agreements.”
Executives from Freeport and Newmont, which together produce virtually all of Indonesia’s copper, have been in talks with the government for weeks over the tax and the building of smelters.
The first major breakthrough between the two sides seemed to have been reached on Monday, with Indonesia’s industry minister saying that Freeport had agreed to obey all the new regulations and concentrate exports would soon resume.
The energy and mines ministry said the government would ease or even eliminate the export tax for companies that prove they are serious in building smelters in Indonesia.
Freeport Indonesia CEO Rozik Sutjipto has said the company would build a copper smelter. But company officials have declined to elaborate.
Reuters
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A google translate of article in Jubi. Be aware google translate can be a bit erratic.
Original bahasa link at
5) SHOOT RAW HAPPENS IN VILLAGE ANGKAISERA , YAPEN
Author : Indrayadi TH on February 28 , 2014 at 21:21:38 WP
Editor : Syam Terrajana
All the work that was published in tabloidjubi well as text , images and sound as well as all forms of graphics ( other than those coded IST ) be copyright tabloidjubi.com
Jayapura 28/2 ( Jubi ) - Action shootout occurred in Kampung Angkaisera , Yapen . From the information received tabloidjubi.com , there were no casualties in the incident .
Papua Police Public Relations Head , Sr. ( Pol ) Sulistyo Pudjo Hartono confirmed that this afternoon around police Angkaisera at 12.00 Papua time , shots were heard .
" From the information , the group of RO are doing shots , " said Pudjo through cell phone short message , Friday ( 28/2 ) .
Still from short message Pudjo , when shots were heard , police chief Police Chief Yapen Angkaisera direct contact via cell phone and reported it .
" When carried out patrols in the area Kontinaen , Angkaisera , entourage Brigade ( Brimob ) get a shot of the group leaders and Brimob RO did return fire , no casualties , " he said .
Meanwhile, the district military commander Yapen Waropen 1709 , when Lt. Col. Inf Iswanto Smith confirmed via cell phone to say that if he could not provide details because he was in Jayapura .
" It's nothing like that , members of the military were not there at the time . But actually I can not answer that yes , because it is not my realm , "said Smith .
Previously , it was reported by a resident through a website report http://tabloidjubi.com/hotspot residents , the situation in Serui , Yapen Islands is quite gripping .
"People who berdomisi around 5 villages in Serui have fled to the forest due to the brutal sweep by a combined military and police forces . Reportedly there are additional forces that army / police to gunfire would degan TPN OPM . " The report said residents .
Rapporteur also reported more fear and people are starving in the woods ( place of refuge ) . Many children drop out of school . ( Jubi / Indrayadi TH )
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6) US Gov: Indonesia Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for
2013
2013
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