2) Why Indonesia’s military and police can’t get along
3) Budget regulation causes delay on Papuan scholarship scheme
4) Secretariat occupied, KNPB files a summons against the police
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1) Polish man accused of treason in Indonesia refuses trial
Dpa/Jakarta
January 08 2019 11:57 AM
A Polish National Who Was Due To Stand Trial On Tuesday On Charges Of Treason For Allegedly Aiding Separatist Rebels In Indonesia's Restive Papua Province Refused To Sit In The Dock, His Lawyer Said.
Jakub Fabian Skrzypski, 39, is the first foreigner ever to be charged with treason in Indonesia and could face a maximum 20-year jail sentence if found guilty, his lawyer Latifah Anum Siregar said.
Skrzypski has refused to eat since he was moved to a police detention centre in Wamena district for his trial and insisted that he be tried in the provincial capital Jayapura.
"He's depressed and is refusing to stand trial," Siregar said. "He complained about the lack of basic facilities including clean water."
The trial was adjourned until January 14.
Skrzypski has refused to eat since he was moved to a police detention centre in Wamena district for his trial and insisted that he be tried in the provincial capital Jayapura.
"He's depressed and is refusing to stand trial," Siregar said. "He complained about the lack of basic facilities including clean water."
The trial was adjourned until January 14.
Siregar said her client insisted that he was innocent.
"We reject accusations that he engaged in treasonous acts and that he was involved in the separatist group," she said.
Siregar said her client was an avid traveller who had visited several conflict-ridden areas around the world to learn about their histories.
Skrzypski entered Indonesia on a tourist visa in July and was arrested along with three Papuans in Wamena in late August, police said.
Police earlier said that the Pole had been given free access to Papuan rebels' activities to expose human rights violations allegedly committed by Indonesian forces.
They also alleged that he had promised to supply weapons to the rebels.
A low-level separatist conflict has been taking place in Papua since the 1960s. Security forces have been accused of human rights abuses while conducting counter-insurgency operations.
"We reject accusations that he engaged in treasonous acts and that he was involved in the separatist group," she said.
Siregar said her client was an avid traveller who had visited several conflict-ridden areas around the world to learn about their histories.
Skrzypski entered Indonesia on a tourist visa in July and was arrested along with three Papuans in Wamena in late August, police said.
Police earlier said that the Pole had been given free access to Papuan rebels' activities to expose human rights violations allegedly committed by Indonesian forces.
They also alleged that he had promised to supply weapons to the rebels.
A low-level separatist conflict has been taking place in Papua since the 1960s. Security forces have been accused of human rights abuses while conducting counter-insurgency operations.
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2) Why Indonesia’s military and police can’t get along
Inter-service rivalry often explodes into spasms of violence, incendiary tensions that have diminished the quality of the nation's two-decade old democracy
JAKARTA, JANUARY 8, 2019 4:57 PM (UTC+8)
When Indonesian police dragged their feet investigating an assault on uniformed Marine Captain Agus Komaruddin by thugs running a carpark protection racket in South Jakarta last month, they were taught a lesson they won’t likely soon forget. Within hours, several hundred servicemen from the nearby 1st Marine Division, the Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus) and Halim airbase descended on the nearby Ciracas sub-district police station, blowing up vehicles, ransacking offices and leaving the building in flames.
Apart from spokesmen making the usual statements about looking into the December 10 incident, national police chief General Tito Karnavian and Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) commander Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto remained strangely silent.
Sources who talked to some of the participants say no serious disciplinary action was taken in what has become an all too familiar embarrassment across many parts of the country where the police and the military often work in close proximity.
Twenty years after the police were separated from the TNI chain of command, little seems to have been achieved in tamping down tensions between the two forces, which stem at ground level from turf battles over the illegal activities that supplement the incomes of poorly paid lower ranking officers.
On a higher plane, the inter-service rivalry revolves around conceptions of national security and what role, if any, the army should play outside of external defense when the police are specifically charged with maintaining domestic order.
None of that, however, was the issue on the early morning of December 12 when Komarrudin, 47, and his young daughter were accosted by parking attendants after the captain complained about them moving his motorcycle. While several policemen were injured in the ensuing riot, the Jakarta Post relegated the story to an inside page, a telling indication of how much Indonesians have come to accept such a lapse in discipline and professionalism. Kompas daily pointedly ran a picture of a poster on prominent display along many of Jakarta’s main thoroughfares showing Tjahjanto and Karnavian, clasping hands in a show of apparent solidarity ahead of the 2019 national elections.
Only last June, the long-standing enmity between the two forces erupted in two off-duty brawls in South Jakarta, in which a soldier was stabbed to death. But that pales in comparison with a string of previous altercations, many of which have gone unreported. In March 2013, 100 soldiers from an artillery battalion attacked and burned down a rural police station in the Komering Ulu district of South Sumatra after a policeman shot dead an army private in an argument over a minor traffic violation. Two weeks later, in a case that shook the military establishment, eleven Kopassus operators raided the Cebongan prison north of Jogjakarta and summarily executed four men facing trial for the nightclub murder of a fellow soldier. Central Java regional chief Major General Hardiono Saroso lost his job, but Kopassus Group 2 commander Colonel Maruli Simanjuntak, son-in-law of chief maritime minister Luhut Panjaitan, escaped censure because he had only assumed his post that night. Now the newly-minted commander of the Presidential Security Force, Simanjuntak had previously taken part in Indonesia’s longest-range military operation to rescue the crew of the bulk carrier Sinar Kudus, taken by pirates off the Somalia coast in March 2011.
A year after the prison raid, in November 2014, soldiers laid siege to the Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) barracks on the island of Batam, south of Singapore, this time after police arrested soldiers allegedly providing protection to fuel smugglers. The incident did nothing to harm the career of local military commander Brigadier General Eko Margiono, 51, who earlier this year was transferred from his previous job as governor of Indonesia’s military academy to become Kopassus commander. When the police assumed responsibility for internal security in 1999, it also took over many of the shady businesses formerly under military control, one of the main reasons for the friction that persists among the lower ranks in particular. But while the police have the greatest impact on public life – and its generals have resisted efforts by the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) to investigate their suspiciously-inflated bank accounts — it is the TNI which retains the latent power.
Last year, tensions came to the boil again after the military impounded weapons imported by the police, claiming that one in particular, a 40 mm grenade launcher, could fire lethal ammunition as well as rubber bullets, teargas and smoke. Australian military analyst Bob Lowry, a former Jakarta-based army attache, has suggested the confiscation of the ammunition was a sign that the TNI wants to limit the capabilities of the police and thus lower the threshold for military intervention. While the military has now been given a limited role in counterterrorism planning, Kopassus and other specialized units will only be called on if an operation is deemed beyond the capabilities of Detachment 88, the police strike force.
Military analysts blame the latest escalation in tensions on TNI commanders General Moeldoko, President Joko Widodo’s current chief of staff, and General Gatot Nurmantyo, who pushed for a more autonomous role over internal security during their terms between 2013 and early 2017. Both also expressed presidential ambitions after their retirement in an old-school belief that the electorate was craving for a return to Indonesia’s authoritarian past when the security apparatus ruled the roost under Suharto’s New Order regime. Moeldoko has come the closest but only as Widodo’s right-hand man at the palace. Nurmantyo overreached, unilaterally severing military ties with Australia, and then cozying up to Islamists in the campaign to unseat Jakarta governor Basuki Purnama, a Widodo ally.
Tjahjanto, a Widodo loyalist like Karnavian, has also called for a wider military role, proposing in a letter to Parliament last February that terrorism should be changed from a law enforcement to a state security issue in the revised 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law. Calling terrorism a “threat to national sovereignty,” he said the existing law only provided for prohibited acts carrying criminal liability for the perpetrators and was not applicable until after a terrorist attack had actually been carried out. Panjaitan, a close Widodo adviser and the first commander of Kopassus’ elite Detachment 81 unit, says Indonesia is merely seeking to model itself along the lines of Western countries in trying to strike an equilibrium between the armed forces and police. But Lowry contends the key to any lasting solution lies in an objective and comprehensive review of national security that clarifies the role, functions and tasks of the two services, as well as laying out a clear command and control structure.
On the ground, the only answer may be to return to the days when military and police recruits spent their first year together at the military academy, one of the reasons why Karnavian counts 1986 classmate and former Papua regional commander Lieutenant General Hinsa Siburian as one of his closest friends. Until that happens, Indonesian and foreign analysts alike see the continuing tensions as a troubling part of the declining quality of Indonesian democracy nearly two decades after it was born.
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3) Budget regulation causes delay on Papuan scholarship scheme
Published 19 hours ago on 8 January 2019 By pr9c6tr3_juben
Jayapura, Jubi – Anthony Mirin, the Head of Papua Human Resources Development Department of Special Autonomy Bureau of Papua Provincial Secretariat, finally responded to the rumours of deportation of several Papuan students from the United States.
“I already made sure no one deported. There are those who deliberately take advantage of this issue. The world ‘deportation’ is exaggerating,” said Mirin in a release on Saturday (5/1/2019).
Earlier seven Papuan students studying at George Mason University in Virginia, USA reportedly would be deported due to the late payment of their tuition fee of 2019 by the provincial government of Papua. It also said that the government still not pay some allowances including the housing cost for 2019, health insurance funds for 2018 and 2019 and living cost from October to December 2018.
Regarding the financial allowances, Mirin said the government already transferred the latest living cost allowance for the students in 2018. “Meanwhile, the living cost allowance from January to April 2019 will process on Monday due to the public holidays. People return to the office after Christmas and New Year break,” he said.
He also suggested the students to not worry about the tuition fees because the provincial government has managed it. To avoid misunderstanding, he encouraged the students who have not received clear information about this to further communicate with the bureau.
However, he said he much appreciated all feedbacks, but asked people to take away their negative thoughts and work together to improve Papua and Indonesia.
“Since 2017, we started with new management by building and improving the scholarships management system as well as the distribution of living cost or stipend for students. We then decided not to involve the third parties or agents or consultants as before. We removed that part by issuing an official letter. Soon the Special Autonomy Bureau tackled this program directly so that we can identify many problems faced by the students who are studying in country or abroad,” he explained.
Currently, the Special Autonomy Bureau has developed a student database system and improved the payment system to ensure the distribution of payment run correctly. However, he said their current problem is the budget regulation which not allowed them to use the budget from the end year, while the budget for the beginning year is not available yet.
As a solution, Mirin said he had conveyed this issue to the governor so that they can discuss it and establish a Special Governor Regulation on the budget for the end and beginning of the year to finance the overseas student fees.
“Because without a clear regulation, this incident will keep happening from time to time, no matter who the governor or the bureau head is,” he said.
Previously, a Facebook account posted a letter to the Chairman of Papua Parliament Yunus Wonda sent by a parent of Papuan students studying in the United States. In his letter, the parent stated that until the second week of January 2019, the provincial government of Papua did not fulfil their obligation to seven Papuan students, namely Yvette Helene Papare, Lucia Deda, Kezia Nunaki, Ade Olua, Evelien Hamadi, Julio Kbarek, and Prishella Pandori. They are reported to be deported by the United States government.
“Currently they (the students) are very anxious about their situation and plan to fly to Washington D.C. to find the Indonesian Embassy to submit their complaints and try to figure out the solution,” said the parent Yves Pierre Papare. (*)
Reporter: Yance Wenda
Editor: Pipit Maizier
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4) Secretariat occupied, KNPB files a summons against the police
Published 20 hours ago on 8 January 2019
By pr9c6tr3_juben
Jayapura, Jubi – General Chairman of West Papua National Committee (KNPB) Agus Kossay filed a summons against Mimika Police Chief for invading the secretariat of KNPB in Timika.
“The police entered their secretariat without legal permission and refused to leave immediately when KNPB members requested them to do so. It’s against the law, in particular, the Criminal Code article 167 verse 1,” said Kossay’s attorney Veronica Koman who sit with her partner Gustaf Kawer from Papua Human Rights Lawyers Association (PAHAM) on Thursday (3/1/2019).
In the summons copy received by Jubi editorial office, it confirmed that KNPB also charged Mimika Regional Police for breaking the procedure regarding the detention of some KNPB activists for more than 24 hours. The activists Yanto Awerkion, Ruben Kogoya, Yohana Kobogau, Elius Wenda, Eman Dogopia, and Vincent Gobay have arrested at 8:30 am and just released by the police at around 16:00 pm the next day.
Their detention was a result of the raid and occupation of their secretariat in Timika by the police, which the police said it would become a post of the joint forces, the Indonesian National Army and Police.
In the summons, KNPB also asked the Police for apologies regarding the invasion of their secretariat and to the local people who affected by their acts of violating the operational procedure, constitution and crime and civilian code of conduct during the occupation since 31 December 2018.
“If within three days, the authority does not leave the KNPB secretariat as requested, we’ll take legal action in accordance with the Indonesian laws and regulations,” said Koman. (*)
Reporter: Victor Mambor
Editor: Pipit Maizier
Editor: Pipit Maizier
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