Australia West Papua Association (Sydney)
PO Box 28, Spit
Junction, NSW 208
Hon
Malcolm Turnbull
Prime
Minister
House
of Representatives
PO
Box 6022
Parliament
House
Canberra ACT
2600
10
November 2015
Dear
Prime Minister,
I
am writing to you on behalf of the Australia West Papua Association in Sydney
concerning the issue of West Papua. We will not go into great detail concerning
the human rights abuses committed by the Indonesian security forces in West
Papua as we recently wrote to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop concerning this
matter.
However,
we point out as recently as the
8 October, 18 peaceful activists (6 who were priests) were arrested for holding
a peaceful rally in front of a Catholic Church in Abepura, Jayapura.
The Rally was organised by SKP-HAM (Solidarity with
Victims of Human Rights Violations Papua). The purpose of the rally was to
bring attention to the Indonesian authorities that so far nobody has been held
accountable for the killing of four students in Paniai on the 8 December 2014
by the security forces. As the rally progressed a police truck arrived
with sirens blaring driving into the demonstrators nearly hitting a number of
them. A large number of police jumped of the truck breaking up the rally
and arresting 18 demonstrators.
A number of
journalists who were reporting on the rally were intimidated by police and
banned from taking photographs. One journalist had his camera stolen (at
gunpoint) and the entire contents of photos and videos were deleted.
Although the demonstrators were eventually released, during the arrests
the Police acted in a brutal and heavy-handed way. The heavy-handed action
by the police was condemned by NGOs and church groups from around the world.
Other incidents include the shooting of two high school students by the
Indonesian security forces in Timika on Monday the 28 September.
Caleb Bagau,
aged 18, died while his friend Efrando Sabarofek, aged 17, was wounded in the
chest and legs. Also on Monday 28th September the police arrested
and tortured Levi Gebze a 16-year-old West Papuan in Merauke.
We
understand that Indonesian has made great progress towards democracy in recent
years however, the recent banning of any talks at the Ubud writers festival in
relation to the tragic massacres of 1965 indicate Indonesian has a long way to
go in allowing freedom of speech, particularly in West Papua.
An
editorial in the Jakarta Post (“Back to dark days”, October 26 2015) also raised concerns about censorship in relationship to the
writers’ festival and of the military’s increasing (again) role in civilian
affairs.
Extract from
editorial
“Then
ahead of next week’s annual Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) in Bali,
organizers announced the cancelation of sessions related to 1965 — rather than
have police cancel the entire festival — leading to widespread outcry and
international embarrassment. Together with the “civilian defense program”
launched on Thursday and the proposed presidential draft allowing the military to
play an increased role in civilian affairs, we will likely see more examples of
an increasingly bold old guard”.
On
your coming trip to Indonesia we urge you to raise our concerns about the grave
human rights situation in West Papua with the Indonesian President, the
crackdown on peaceful civil society groups, the intimidation of journalists
simply doing their job and the tragic killing of civilians including school
children by the security forces.
We
also ask you to support the request from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)
leaders to Jakarta to allow a PIF fact-finding mission to West Papua and urge
you to encourage the Indonesian Government to allow such a fact-finding mission
to investigate the human rights situation in the territory to take place.
Yours
sincerely
Joe
Collins
AWPA
(Sydney)
CC. Various human
rights organisations
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