2) Divided and divisive: Tracing the issue of Papuan self-determination
3) Nearly 700 native Papuan students return home
4) Veronica Koman Meets Her Duties, Not Spreading Hoax: Activists
5) Police Name Another Suspect in Papua Riots
6) Police guarantee Papuans' safety, security in West Sulawesi
7) All tribes in Manokwari to issue peace declaration
8) Unidentified individuals toss sacks of snakes into Papuan student dormitory: Students
9) Human Rights Watch calls for Indonesia to investigate Papua killings
10) Indonesia Clarifies 'Distorted Information' About Papua to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
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1) Commentary: Blaming provocateurs ignores voice of Papuans
Evi Mariani
Managing editor at The Jakarta Post
Tue, September 10 2019 / 12:16 am
Indonesians love conspiracy theories. In 1999, I spent two months in Ambon, Maluku, just as a religious conflict between Muslims and Christians flared up. I spent most of the time taking refuge among Christians, but I had the chance to meet Muslims too.
Both communities had similar theories: The conflict was not caused by the people themselves but by agents provocateurs. “We were living in harmony,” one said. “Christians and Muslims here lived side by side in peace for decades, no problem at all,” another one said. “It’s people from outside the community that provoked the conflict, not us,” they said. There was also one theory involving a certain institution and its lust for the region’s mineral resources.
And yet, I heard enough about animosity between the two groups. Granted, I heard more badmouthing of the other side from the Christian community because that was where I spent most of my two months. But in my few visits to the Muslim community, one visit was apparently enough for them to complain about the Christians.
Going home on a Hercules aircraft, on top of a high pile of baggage, I was sure that if they really were living in harmony like they all claimed, the provocateurs, however mighty and politically wired they were, would never have succeeded in creating such bloody conflict. It appeared to me that there was fertile ground there.
A theory involving political actors from outside inciting something is appealing because of the simplicity it offers us. Reality, oftentimes, is much more complex.
Why do some Papuans want a referendum after all that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration has done for them, after all the Special Autonomy Law and the money that has followed it? To answer such a question needs some serious soul searching, admissions of our own culpability and readiness to propose solutions, which has never been easy.
So when the National Police blame Veronica Koman, a lawyer who tweeted about the racial abuse of Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java, many of us embrace that narrative. If not for her, we would like to believe, there would have been no riots in the provinces of Papua and West Papua. It is also the fault of Benny Wenda, the police said. Wenda, who lives in the United Kingdom, is the leader of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua. Just Google “provokator” and “Papua”, and the search engine will give us plenty of news citing Veronica and Wenda.
Did they play a role in what has happened since Aug. 19 in Papua? I believe, along with thousands other people in and outside the provinces, that they did.
But focusing on so-called provocateurs would mean that we neglect the voice of Papuans who took to the streets in peace. Thousands of them rallied for a cause and they deserve to be heard. Believing in outside influence is also condescending, as if we believe Papuans cannot act on their own volition.
They want an end to the racism they have suffered for decades, not just outside Papua, but actually within the provinces. They want the victims and survivors of alleged human rights violations to gain justice. They want to get a fair share of their rich mineral resources so their children will not die of malnutrition. They want Jakarta to stop excluding them from democracy, particularly by lifting the ban on the internet imposed during the height of the conflict and respecting their right to a free flow of information and to allow national and foreign journalists to work freely there.
Many of them combine all this into just one aspiration, something which many Indonesians refuse to pay attention or even simply to listen to: They want the chance to vote in a referendum to determine their own fate.
Should Indonesia give them a referendum? That is a question I personally cannot answer and anyway the government has rejected it, so it is off the table for now. But focusing on a conspiracy theory means refusing to listen to Papuans’ voices and I believe we cannot do both because they contradict each other.
A person cannot really listen to others’ aspirations if he or she believes those people do not have minds of their own, if he or she is convinced that someone else is putting words into their mouths. Refusing to listen means there will never be a solution to the serious problems, and if there is no solution to the problems, there will never be justice in Papua.
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2) Divided and divisive: Tracing the issue of Papuan self-determination
Dian Septiari The Jakarta Post
Jakarta / Mon, September 9, 2019 / 03:41 pm
The recent unrest and rioting in Indonesia’s easternmost provinces of Papua and West Papua have sparked renewed debate on whether Papuans deserve the right to self-determination, just like the people of former East Timor (present-day Timor Leste) did 20 years ago during the independence referendum on Aug. 30, 1999.
However, international law experts have warned about conflating independence and separatism in comparing Papua and Timor Leste today.
Legal status
Papua and West Papua do not have the same rights as the Indonesian province of East Timor did in 1999, when the independence referendum was held.
“This is an uninformed view that fails to understand international law [and does] not distinguish [between] the statuses of Papua and East Timor under the legal system,” said Eddy Pratomo, a professor of international law at Diponegoro University and a former diplomat whose portfolio included Timor Leste.
A referendum for self-determination could only be carried out in the context of colonialism, he stressed. Formerly called West Irian (or West New Guinea by the Dutch), present-day Papua was included with all other territories when Indonesia declared independence on Aug. 17, 1945.
In contrast, East Timor was registered as a Non-Self-Governing Territory with the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, and was thus entitled to self-determination.
Papua was never registered with the UN Special Committee on Decolonization, despite several attempts by the Dutch to administer it, because the region had exercised its right to self-determination with Indonesia, said Eddy.
"If Papua were given the [right to] self-determination, it would be as though she was born twice," he said.
Furthermore, Eddy said that the demands some groups had made for an independence referendum for Papua constituted separatism, not self-determination.
"Unfortunately, international law does not recognize the right to [secession] for [an area that is] part of a sovereign territory," said Eddy, citing territorial integrity as a principle of international law.
Regarding the principle of territorial integrity, former Constitutional Court chief justice Mahfud MD said that the Constitution did not recognize calls for independence from areas that were part of Indonesian territory.
"Indonesian law does not recognize a referendum for self-determination for regions that already belong to the Republic of Indonesia," Mahfud said as quoted by tribunnews.com.
He also cited the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which stipulated a country's legal authority over its territories and the use of any measures, including military measures, to defend it.
Indonesia has ratified the ICCPR under Law No. 12/2005.
Separate histories
The Papuan secessionist movement might argue that West Irian had never participated in Indonesia’s independence struggle, but international law challenges this claim.
Eddy said that demands for a referendum went against the legal principles of territorial integrity and uti possidetis juris ("as you possess under law"), with the latter providing that newly decolonized states should retain the borders they had before independence.
Papua, along with the other regions that make up modern-day Indonesia, formed the Dutch East Indies that came under Japanese imperial rule during World War II, at the height of the Indonesian independence movement. Following Japan's defeat in 1945, the Netherlands attempted to restore control over its former colony.
The Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference of 1949 recognized Indonesian sovereignty, with West New Guinea/West Irian set aside as a pending matter to be settled later. The Netherlands and Indonesia eventually signed the New York Agreement on Aug. 15, 1962 that determined West Irian to be an Indonesian administrative territory.
Indonesia consolidated its sovereignty of West Irian in 1969, when selected representatives of the local population voted unanimously for Indonesian rule in the controversial but legitimate Act of Free Choice – or Pepera in Indonesian – which was monitored by UN observers and US diplomats.
In contrast, East Timor was a Portuguese colony from 1702 until 1975, when Indonesia occupied the region. An overwhelming majority of the Timorese people voted against Indonesian integration during the UN-led referendum in 1999, paving the way to independence and the establishment of Timor Leste in 2002.
Sovereign duty
However, even though the repeated calls for Papuan self-determination cannot be recognized under international law, Jakarta is still bound by duty to address the root causes of the prolonged conflict in Papua.
Papua and West Papua have been rocked by protests and rioting since Aug. 19 over claims that authorities and local mass organizations perpetuated racial discrimination against Papuans. The government responded by sending the Indonesian Military to maintain public order and imposed a temporary internet blackout across the region.
Long considered a backwater region that was exploited for its wealth of mineral resources, Papua and West Papua have been a development focus under President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, whose administration has spent up to Rp 92 trillion (US$6.5 billion) on building roads and other basic infrastructure.
Jokowi also officially ended decades of “transmigrasi”, a state migration policy on distributing people from Java and other Indonesian islands to Papua. Some experts claim the policy sowed mistrust of the government among the Papuan people.
The Papuan people are ethnically Melanesian, a characteristic that informs Indonesia's foreign policy in the island nations of the South Pacific, where the majority of people have Melanesian ancestry. Nations including Vanuatu have previously attempted to internationalize the Papuan issue at the UN, irking Jakarta.
Eddy said the people of Papua could not legally demand another referendum based on alleged violations of human rights or their political, economic and social rights, because Indonesia had already guaranteed these rights in the 2001 Special Autonomy Law, which gave the people of Papua and West Papua the authority to manage the two provinces.
West Papua human rights lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy said the law took special care to recognize Papua's unique history.
“What that particular history is, in my legal interpretation, is the Act of Free Choice,” said Christian, while also noting that the law stipulated the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission to address unresolved human rights issues.
Controversial election
Indonesia's nationalist narrative on Papua, however, has not been without controversy, with Christian stressing that the tensions in Papua were deeply rooted in the Act of Free Choice.
Under Article XVIII of the New York Agreement, Indonesia is obliged to “make arrangements [...] to give the people of the territory an opportunity to exercise freedom of choice”.
Point (a) of the article stipulates that consultations (“musjawarah”) should be held with local representative councils on the procedures and appropriate methods to be followed “for ascertaining the freely-expressed will of the people”.
However, point (d) of the same article specifically mentions that all adults, male and female, who are not foreign nationals, are eligible to participate in the act of self-determination – that is, the 1969 Pepera election.
“The agreement says that all [eligible] adults must [vote], but this did not happen. If [the election] was handled well, surely no waves of protest would have ensued from the people of Papua feeling cheated,” he said.
Out of the 800,000 Papuan population recorded at the time, only 1,205 people voted in the Pepera, which caused protests to erupt in major cities across the mountainous, forested region.
Critics have decried the 1969 election as a sham, while Jakarta has insisted that those who voted still represented the will of the Papuan people, based on its agreed-upon consultations with local tribal councils.
The international community accepted the results of the Pepera under UN General Assembly Resolution 2504 (XXIV), which reaffirmed as legal fact that West Irian had always been a part of Indonesia. (tjs)
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3) Nearly 700 native Papuan students return home
4 hours ago
Jayapura, Papua (ANTARA) - Some 700 native Papuan students studying at various universities outside Papua Province have returned home in the aftermath of the Surabaya incident although they have received safety and security guarantees from all regional police chiefs.
The national police chief had ordered all regional police chiefs to guarantee the safety of the students to help them focus on completing their studies, Papua Police Chief Inspector General Rudolf Rodja said while deploring the returnees' decision. Speaking to journalists after meeting with rectors of the University of Cenderawasih (Uncen) and Jayapura University of Science and Technology (USTJ) here Monday, Rodja said a majority of the returnees were previously studying in Manado, North Sulawesi Province.
He deplored their decisions to return home before completing their studies because it would affect their future. Instead, the returnees should have prevented themselves from falling victim to the elites or certain vested interests.
After returning home, they would find it difficult to continue their studies at local universities. For their colleagues who are still focusing on their studies in various Indonesian cities, he suggested that they continue with their studies.
They need not fear their routine activities because their safety and security has been guaranteed by all regional police chiefs, he said.
Related news: Police guarantee Papuans' safety, security in West Sulawesi
Meanwhile, West Sulawesi Police Chief Brig. Gen. Baharuddin Djafar held a dialog with Papuan residents Monday.
All Papuan residents in West Sulawesi Province are safe following the recent violent protests in Papua and West Papua and their security is guaranteed, he affirmed.
"All Papuans residing in West Sulawesi Province are safe," West Sulawesi Police Chief Brig. Gen. Baharuddin Djafar informed journalists after holding a dialog with residents of Mamuju.
In fact, the situation was brought under control in the two easternmost provinces, though tensions later rode high after the locals were incited by fake news and groundless information disseminated in the aftermath of the Surabaya incident.
In response to this, the National Police have made all-out efforts to prevent the unrest from resurfacing, he stated, affirming that all Papuans residing in West Sulawesi Province are safe.
"We are all brothers and sisters without being restricted by racial, cultural, and ethnical backgrounds. Most importantly, we all have equal rights to have a sense of security," Djafar said.
Papuans in West Sulawesi are expected to keep their relatives in the loop about their safety, he emphasized.
Violence erupted in several parts of Papua and West Papua in the aftermath of the Surabaya incident that had triggered public ire among native Papuans.
Over the past weeks, native Papuans in several parts of the provinces of Papua and West Papua held demonstrations protesting alleged racist slurs against the Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java, August 16.
On August 29, indigenous residents of Jayapura again staged protests, venting their anger over the alleged racist behavior against their compatriots in Surabaya, but their rally then turned violent.
The brutal demonstrators went on a rampage, setting ablaze several government buildings. The office of ANTARA, Indonesia's national news agency, in the city was also intentionally damaged by the demonstrators.
On August 28, violence also broke out in Deiyai District, some 500 kilometers away from Jayapura, resulting in the deaths of an army soldier and two civilians.
Related news: Photographer loses camera, lenses during Jayapura riots
Related news: NGO in Papua facilitates victims of violence to report incidents
The national police chief had ordered all regional police chiefs to guarantee the safety of the students to help them focus on completing their studies, Papua Police Chief Inspector General Rudolf Rodja said while deploring the returnees' decision. Speaking to journalists after meeting with rectors of the University of Cenderawasih (Uncen) and Jayapura University of Science and Technology (USTJ) here Monday, Rodja said a majority of the returnees were previously studying in Manado, North Sulawesi Province.
He deplored their decisions to return home before completing their studies because it would affect their future. Instead, the returnees should have prevented themselves from falling victim to the elites or certain vested interests.
After returning home, they would find it difficult to continue their studies at local universities. For their colleagues who are still focusing on their studies in various Indonesian cities, he suggested that they continue with their studies.
They need not fear their routine activities because their safety and security has been guaranteed by all regional police chiefs, he said.
Related news: Police guarantee Papuans' safety, security in West Sulawesi
Meanwhile, West Sulawesi Police Chief Brig. Gen. Baharuddin Djafar held a dialog with Papuan residents Monday.
All Papuan residents in West Sulawesi Province are safe following the recent violent protests in Papua and West Papua and their security is guaranteed, he affirmed.
"All Papuans residing in West Sulawesi Province are safe," West Sulawesi Police Chief Brig. Gen. Baharuddin Djafar informed journalists after holding a dialog with residents of Mamuju.
In fact, the situation was brought under control in the two easternmost provinces, though tensions later rode high after the locals were incited by fake news and groundless information disseminated in the aftermath of the Surabaya incident.
In response to this, the National Police have made all-out efforts to prevent the unrest from resurfacing, he stated, affirming that all Papuans residing in West Sulawesi Province are safe.
"We are all brothers and sisters without being restricted by racial, cultural, and ethnical backgrounds. Most importantly, we all have equal rights to have a sense of security," Djafar said.
Papuans in West Sulawesi are expected to keep their relatives in the loop about their safety, he emphasized.
Violence erupted in several parts of Papua and West Papua in the aftermath of the Surabaya incident that had triggered public ire among native Papuans.
Over the past weeks, native Papuans in several parts of the provinces of Papua and West Papua held demonstrations protesting alleged racist slurs against the Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java, August 16.
On August 29, indigenous residents of Jayapura again staged protests, venting their anger over the alleged racist behavior against their compatriots in Surabaya, but their rally then turned violent.
The brutal demonstrators went on a rampage, setting ablaze several government buildings. The office of ANTARA, Indonesia's national news agency, in the city was also intentionally damaged by the demonstrators.
On August 28, violence also broke out in Deiyai District, some 500 kilometers away from Jayapura, resulting in the deaths of an army soldier and two civilians.
Related news: Photographer loses camera, lenses during Jayapura riots
Related news: NGO in Papua facilitates victims of violence to report incidents
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