2) West Papua included in UK Labour Party manifesto
3) Indonesian Lawyer Wanted over Papua Unrest Defiant in Face of Threats
4) Deafening silence as West Papua crisis deepens
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1) Insights on West Papua
by Pacific Institute
Date And Time Thu., 28 November 2019
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm AEDT
Location Hedley Bull Building, Lecture Theatre 2 130 Garran Road Acton, ACT 2601 View Map
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2) West Papua included in UK Labour Party manifesto
NOVEMBER 22, 2019
In a landmark development, the UK Labour Party has included West Papua in its 2019 election manifesto, pledging to address the ongoing struggle as a core element of British foreign policy under a Labour Government.
Support for West Papua’s self-determination has been long standing within the UK Labour Party, with their leader Jeremy Corbyn a founding member of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, and Alex Sobel MP the Chair of the All Parliamentary Group for West Papua and IPWP.
You can read the Labour Party’s full manifesto and reference to West Papua here.
An Indonesian lawyer who is wanted by police in her home country for alleged incitement of violence because she disseminated information via Twitter about recent unrest in Papua says she’s a target of online threats.
During anti-Jakarta protests and violence that convulsed Indonesia’s easternmost region in late August and September, Veronica Koman, through her feed on the social media channel, was a source for regular information about the situation in Papua and West Papua. The neighboring provinces are largely closed off to Western media and information there is tightly controlled by Indonesian authorities.
Koman, a 31-year-old human rights defender and Indonesian of Chinese descent who lives in Australia, says she has been the target of death and rape threats as well as racist and misogynistic abuse via social media. She’s even been called a traitor because of her tweets about the situation in Papua and a crackdown on pro-Papuan independence activists in Surabaya, East Java that sparked weeks of protests.
“I’m not mad or hold grudges. I knew it was coming,” she told BenarNews in a phone interview from Australia.
“I have made it my personal mission to inform other people about the situation in Papua,” she said, adding, “There’s been impunity in Papua because people are not aware of what’s going on. If we could expose more human rights abuses there, the situation would not be this bad.”
Koman takes things in stride and even jokes about her status as a fugitive in the eyes of police in Indonesia. They have charged her with inciting unrest through her messages on Twitter.
“Gonna tell my kids that this was when I was named Citizen of the Year,” she quipped in a tweet Wednesday that featured an image of police displaying a large photograph of Koman at a press conference.
The human rights defender has more than 45,000 followers on Twitter.
A non-Australian citizen, Koman lives Down Under with her foreign husband whose nationality she declined to reveal. During the unrest, she would send out her tweets from Australia after gathering information from her Papuan contacts in the Papua region and elsewhere in Indonesia.
In September, Indonesian police declared Koman a fugitive and said they would seek Interpol’s cooperation to arrest her.
Koman said that she goes about her daily life as usual and is not in hiding. Last week, she attended a rally in Australia to protest against the police killing of an Aboriginal teenager.
“I’m not guilty so I’m not running, but I will not surrender myself either,” she told BenarNews.
“I have never been contacted by Indonesian or Australian authorities,” she said, adding she never got the two summonses that police said they had sent her.
Last month, the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) honored Koman with the Sir Ronald Wilson Human Rights Award. In its citation, it recognized her for documenting and disseminating information about the situation in Papua, exposing rights violations in that region, and providing legal representation for Papuans in trouble with the Indonesian authorities.
“Amid the recent internet blackout and mass demonstrations in West Papua Ms. Koman disseminated information about the escalating situation on social media and functioned as a key source of information to the outside world,” ACFID said in naming her a recipient of the award on Oct. 23.
The award honors Koman for the “courage she has shown to continue to stand up for the human rights of West Papuans … despite intensifying harassment and intimidation,” the council said in a news release.
ACFID also called on the Australian government to provide Koman with protection “to which she is entitled as a human rights defender.”
‘We really hope that she would come’
In Indonesia, authorities have accused Koman of spreading misinformation through her social media posts about police treatment of Papuan student protesters in Surabaya in August.
News about allegations that security forces had treated the Papuan students harshly and hurled racist abuse at them ignited mass protests, some of which descended into violence in Papua and West Papua.
Weeks of unrest in the region left more than 40 people dead. Police have charged six activists with treason for flying the banned Papuan separatist Morning Star flag during a rally demanding a referendum on self-determination in Jakarta in August.
In Jakarta, national police spokesman Argo Yuwono urged Koman to turn herself in.
“We have communicated it with the international relations division [at the national police] to make her available for questioning. We really hope that she would come,” Argo told BenarNews.
“If she refuses to come, well what else can we do? We have to respect rules,” he added.
The provinces of Papua and West Papua make up one-fifth of Indonesia’s land mass. Only 5.9 million of Indonesia’s 250 million people live there.
The region has been the scene of a low-level separatist conflict since it was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969, after a U.N.-administered ballot known as the Act of Free Choice. Many Papuans and rights groups said the vote was a sham because it involved only 1,000 people.
Indonesian forces have been accused of gross human rights violations in its anti-insurgency campaign.
Koman, who supports a vote on self-determination for Papua, said she had in the past two years received threats from “state and non-state actors” for her work exposing abuses by security forces and defending pro-independence activists in the region.
The Indonesian government has restricted access to Papua for foreign journalists, citing concerns for their security.
Koman said she was not always into activism and was once an ultranationalist herself.
“I used to have the belief that the integrity of Indonesia was not negotiable,” she said. “But then I read a lot of papers, including those by academics from foreign universities, and I was shocked to find how bad the situation was.”
“Since I found out that many Papuans feel that they are being colonized by Indonesia, I started to question my nationalism. To date I have never found a Papuan who doesn’t want independence,” she said.
Koman said she hoped that someday she could return to her home country to be reunited with her family and resume her work as lawyer.
“I’m sad because my family, my friends and my work are there. Now I can’t practice law and do advocacy work on the ground,” she said.
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4) Deafening silence as West Papua crisis deepens
West Papuans and their supporters around the world traditionally raise the Morning Star flag — the symbol of an independent Papua — on DeWest Papuans and their supporters around the world traditionally raise the Morning Star flag — the symbol of an independent Papua — on December 1. This is an act of defiance, as flying the flag is outlawed by the occupying Indonesian government.cember 1. This is an act of defiance, as flying the flag is outlawed by the occupying Indonesian government.
New Zealand-based West Papua solidarity activist and author Maire Leadbeater looks the new uprising in West Papua and the repression being carried out by Indonesian security forces while governments, including NZ’s, remain silent.
Since August 17, Indonesia's national day, West Papua has been in the grip of an unparalleled uprising.
Conflict has been relentless since 1963, when Indonesia took control of the territory, but this time Indonesia's repressive response is backed by a renewed determination to exclude the rest of the world.
New Zealand's political leaders refuse to raise their voices, and a mild statement of concern from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was a pathetic token gesture.
Events were set in motion by attacks on Papuan students in East Java's Surabaya following unsubstantiated accusations that the young people had disrespected the Indonesian flag. Security forces and vigilante-type nationalists besieged the students as they hunkered down in their dormitory. The students were tear-gassed and 42 were taken into detention, but it was the racist taunts used by the attackers — "pigs", "dogs" and "monkeys" — that triggered the wave of outrage and solidarity demonstrations across West Papua and in many Indonesian cities.
Within days, Indonesia announced new troop deployments and imposed an internet ban, but the news of demonstrating students killed by gunshots leaked out. Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman, currently living in Australia, used her social media accounts to disseminate videos. In September, the Indonesian authorities threatened her with an Interpol "red" notice if she did not turn herself in to the Indonesian Embassy. However, in October, Veronica received a prestigious Australian human rights accolade: the Sir Ronald Wilson award. Australian authorities are urged to provide this brave young human rights defender with protection.
Wamena, in the West Papuan Highlands, saw the worst violence on September 23, when 43 people were killed as buildings and vehicles were torched. More than half of the victims were non-Papuan migrants and many residents, both Papuan and non-Papuan, fled the area. Jakarta capitalised on the suffering of the migrants, offering them trauma counselling and flights home. Journalists were banned and the internet closed off, but some recent witness accounts suggest provocateurs may have been involved.
I was alarmed to note Jakarta's decision to exclude western diplomats from visiting West Papua, even though diplomats such as ours are well versed in playing by the rules. The newly inaugurated defence minister is retired General Prabowo Subianto. He was banned from entering the United States in 2000 because of his complicity in the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in the dying days of the Suharto regime. President Joko Widodo seems to have given Subianto a blank cheque, saying he would not give him instructions because "he knows more than I do".
Indonesia's draconian treason law, a relic of Dutch colonial times, gives the state power to impose penalties up to life imprisonment. In a new surge, some 22 people (by Amnesty International estimates) have been arrested under these laws for exercising the right to free expression and dissent.
High-profile cases include the "Jakarta Six", who were hunted down after they participated in a peaceful demonstration in front of the State Palace. The group includes non-Papuan Surya Anta Ginting, a leader in the Indonesian People's Front for West Papua (FRI-WP). The lawyers for the Six say they have only limited access to their clients and are very worried about detention conditions, especially isolation, which has caused physical and mental health issues for the detainees.
Another group of seven people were arrested in West Papua and include leaders of the pro-independence National Committee for West Papua (KNPB). KNPB's modus operandi is "parliament of the street", so its activists are used to constant surveillance and harassment, but the charges against these leaders represent a grave escalation. The seven have been transferred away from family and lawyers to a prison in Kalimantan.
Beyond an ever-tighter security crackdown, and showcase visits to the territory, Widodo has no realistic solution to the crisis. Talk of infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, is no salve. Papuans know from experience that means more resource exploitation, more deforestation and more palm oil plantations.
After nearly 20 years of campaigning for West Papuan human rights, I should be used to meeting a brick wall from the New Zealand government. We are put to shame by the dedication of Vanuatu, which champions West Papuan rights at every international opportunity. And by the courage of West Papuan activists and their Indonesian supporters who risk all for the sake of freedom.
[Maire Leadbeater is an organiser with West Papua Action Auckland. This article first appeared in the NZ Herald.]
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