2) Court rejects judicial review of Papua referendum
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1) Indonesian army wields internet 'news' as a weapon in Papua
Tom Allard, Jack Stubbs 8 MIN READ
JAKARTA/LONDON (Reuters) - As Indonesia celebrated its National Heroes’ Day last year, official military social media accounts lavished praise on Corporal Yunanto Nugroho for the “myriad awards he has won in the field of IT.
It was unusual acclaim for a low-ranking army computer operator. But Yunanto’s work is not confined to the usual mundane tasks of an information technology specialist.
Yunanto co-ordinates a network of websites facilitated and funded by the military that publishes pro-government propaganda under the guise of independent news, according to web registration records and Reuters interviews with website editors and a special forces intelligence officer.
The sites publish content that supports the conduct of the military and police in quashing a separatist uprising in the Indonesian provinces in Papua, a fight that has long been led by the country’s elite special forces, Kopassus.
Colonel Muhammad Aidi, an intelligence adviser to a Kopassus commander who bestowed an award on Yunanto in November, told Reuters the army computer operator had helped create and sustain many news websites as part of “military efforts” in partnership with civilian volunteers that included youths and media veterans who had approached the military to help.
Other armed forces personnel also helped the sites and the military financially supported the news portals, he added.
“The official armed forces websites cannot publish everything we do, so there are several media outlets that have been supporting us by publishing positive news as well as countering negative or hoax websites,” Aidi told Reuters in an interview.
Indonesia, an emerging democracy of nearly 270 million people with one of the world’s highest rates of internet use, is grappling with persistent covert online disinformation campaigns - both for the government and against it - that have disrupted elections and stoked sectarian tensions.
President Joko Widodo has railed against “hoaxes, false news and slander” but his military is also engaging in disinformation tactics, an examination of the website network by Reuters shows.
A spokesman for Widodo did not respond to requests for comment. Ali Mochtar Ngabalin, a presidential expert staff member, said the military was prohibited from working with non-state actors. “I do not believe the military is involved in funding online media to spread hoaxes,” he told Reuters.
Using software from DomainTools, a platform used by cybersecurity researchers to review historical web records, Reuters identified 10 websites presenting themselves as independent news outlets that were registered to a mobile phone number that was listed on Yunanto’s LinkedIn profile.
When Reuters contacted that number, Yunanto said it belonged to him and that he was in the military. After this short phone call and an exchange of text messages, Yunanto declined to respond to detailed questions sent to an email address he provided.
The 10 websites, some of which have been operating since mid-2017, are in the Indonesian language and carry names such as berita-indonesia.co.id (News-Indonesia), koranprogresif.co.id (Progressive Newspaper) and viralreporter5.com. They do not disclose their links to the military, and in recent months most of them have made their domain information private.
The websites publish uniformly positive coverage of government, military and police alongside articles that demonize government critics and human rights investigators. The subjects of some stories told Reuters the websites attributed invented quotes to them and published other falsehoods.
Lieutenant Colonel Zulhardie, the head of the army’s Jakarta-based information unit, of which Yunanto is a part, referred Reuters questions to the Indonesian military spokesman Sisriadi who did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
‘OUR PAPUAN PEOPLE’S NEWS’
With a name that translates as “Our Papuan People’s News” and claiming 80,000 views per month, kitorangpapuanews.com is one of three of the military-sponsored websites that registered its address as the Media Center at Kodam Jayakarta, the army’s regional command headquarters based in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.
Yunanto works for the Kodam Jayakarta information unit that runs the Media Center where military personnel push out press releases and manage military web pages and social media accounts, according to articles on the headquarters’ website.
Kitorangpapuanews.com is devoted to pro-government news about Papua, where many of the region’s ethnic Melanesian population have agitated for independence for decades. Mass demonstrations have resulted in at least 40 deaths there this year.
In response to the recent unrest, the government has periodically shut down the internet in Papua and forbidden foreign journalists and some diplomats from visiting the area.
Papuan movie actor Benyamin Lagowan told Reuters he was falsely quoted in a 2017 kitorangpapuanews.com article that reported he made “scathing” remarks about Papuan journalist and advocate Victor Mambor. He never spoke to the news outlet and admired Mambor, he said.
Theo Hesegem, a human rights investigator in Papua, was denounced by kitorangpapuanews.com in a 2017 article that was accompanied by a photomontage framing him alongside a devil with fiery eyes. The story accused him of fabricating a report for the human rights group Tapol that found five civilians were shot during clashes between the military and armed Papuan separatists.
After the article appeared, Hesegem said he was approached by a police officer saying he was under investigation for producing fake news, a crime that carries a penalty of up to four years.
“I interviewed the victims and saw their bullet wounds,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. The police investigation petered out after the rights investigator demanded police serve him with a formal summons, Hesegem said.
Reuters could not independently verify Hesegem’s account. A police spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
Kitorangpapuanews.com does not identify its editorial team. It did not respond to Reuters questions. Aidi said he did not know who was behind the site.
‘THANK YOU’ PAYMENTS
As well as being promoted by popular military and government social media accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, kitorangpapuanews.com material is heavily shared by a network of 20 Facebook and Twitter accounts. The accounts retweet each other’s posts and use profile photos or cartoons made to look like Papuan residents.
Some accounts describe themselves as “free Papua” activists but criticize advocates for Papuan self-determination, including prominent lawyer Veronica Koman.
The use of these social media accounts was a deliberate strategy to “confuse Papuan people,” said Koman. “In fact, it’s just propaganda.”
Top editors from two of the other sites in the network - Jesayas Simarmata from berita-indonesia.co.id and M. Ridhwan from koranprogressif.co.id - described how the military paid for advertising and for journalists to attend military events. Ridhwan said his website was paid by army bases across Indonesia.
The editors said further that Yunanto, who put their sites on a server and had access to them as the web administrator, uploaded articles to their sites, including content from kitorangpapuanews.com. One of those articles, which lambasted Koman, was published on nine other websites in November.
Simarmata said kitorangpapuanews.com was operated by the army’s Jakarta command headquarters.
Aidi from Kopassus said there was no need for the websites to disclose their ties to the armed forces. The military just gave money to the websites as informal “thank you” payments, he said.
Reporting by Tom Allard in JAKARTA and Jack Stubbs in LONDON; Additional reporting by Reuters Jakarta bureau; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Bill Rigby
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2) Court rejects judicial review of Papua referendum
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta / Wed, January 8 2020 / 12:46 am
The Constitutional Court rejected on Monday a petition for a judicial review of several articles of Law No. 12/1969 on the establishment of the West Irian autonomous province and autonomous regencies in West Irian province.
West Irian was the former name of the Indonesian part of Papua Island. The 1969 Law is the legal basis of Papua’s integration with Indonesia after the end of Dutch colonial rule.
The judicial review was filed by dozens of lawyers, academics, Papuan leaders, churches and women’s organizations under the Coalition of Advocates for Truth and Justice in Papua.
They challenged the articles in the law that stipulate the 1969 Act of Free Choice (Pepera) as the manifestation of the people's aspirations made with full awareness. The coalition asserted that only 1,025 of 800,000 Papuans voted in the referendum under Indonesian military pressure.
Reading out its ruling in a hearing presided over by Chief Justice Anwar Usman, the court said the judicial review application was “illogical” as it attempted to review the Act of Free Choice, which was acknowledged by the United Nations General Assembly under Resolution No. 2504 (XXIV).
“To postulate any violation of constitutional rights under the 1969 Papuan referendum is equal to forcing the Constitutional Court to question the legitimacy of the United Nations,” Anwar said, reading the ruling.
Yan Pieter Yarangga, the head of the Papua Customary Council and one of the petitioners, said that the coalition had expected the rejection. He said that the judicial review application was part of the coalition’s larger effort to uncover the history of Papua and raise public awareness on the issue.
“There was a violation against freedom of expression during the 1969 Act of Free Choice,” he said after the court hearing.
He also regretted that any efforts made by Papuans to scrutinize their history and voice their concerns had been labeled by authorities as an act of treason.
“When Papuans express their concern regarding the history of Papua’s integration, the government stigmatizes them with allegations of treason,” he added.
Yan referred to six Papuan activists who are standing trial for treason after they staged a protest in front of the State Palace on Aug. 28, 2019, condemning racist attacks and alleged excessive use of force by security personnel against Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java.
London-based human rights NGO, TAPOL, reported that 84 Papuans were arrested by the Jakarta Police and charged with treason between Aug. 30 and Dec. 3, 2019.
“That [the treason charges] undermines citizens’ constitutional rights. That’s what people need to know,” Yan said.
The Coalition of Advocates for Truth and Justice in Papua filed the judicial review application on Apr. 12, 2019. They believed that the stipulation on the referendum in the 1969 law contradicted Article 281 of the 1945 Constitution, which protects citizens from torture and guarantees freedom to express one's thoughts and to follow one’s conscience.
The 1962 New York Agreement, which became the basis for the 1969 Papua referendum, said all adults in Papua had the right to self-determination and the referendum had to be conducted under international principles of practice.
The coalition believes that the fact that only 1,025 Papuans voted in the referendum contravened the New York Agreement. According to the coalition, Indonesian military operations carried out before the referendum had compelled Papuans to opt to integrate with Indonesia.
Following the court’s decision, the coalition plans to bring the case to international tribunals.
Separately, University of Indonesia international law expert Hikmahanto Juwana was skeptical about the coalition’s plan, saying that the case did not meet any requirements of any international judicial institution.
“The ICJ [International Court of Justice] only settles disputes between states and the ICC [International Criminal Court] charges individuals for international crimes. Meanwhile, the PCA [Permanent Court of Arbitration] facilitates arbitration and disputes between states. So, there is no place, even through international mechanisms,” he told The Jakarta Post.
He further stressed that the coalition needed to have a clear procedure on how to voice its aspirations, otherwise it would meet another dead end.
“It’s good that they have their aspirations and want to educate society about the issue. However, speaking about law enforcement, comprehensive procedures are also needed. Glorifying the substance of the issue is not enough,” he said. (trn)
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