2) Amnesty International to Report 5 Major Issues in Papua to UN
3) Speakers in ‘#PapuanLivesMatter’ discussion hit by spam calls, Zoombombed in live event
4) Papuan internet lawsuit intended to push for good governance: Civil groups
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1) Mysterious Phone Calls Terrorize Speakers of Discussion on Papua
Members of the Indonesian People's Front for West Papua (FRI-WP) stage a demonstration in front of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Kuningan, Thursday, March 12, 2020. TEMPO/Sintia Nurmiza
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Multiple mysterious phone calls have terrorized an Amnesty International discussion touching on rights violations in Papua and West Papua held on Friday, June 5, 2020.
The mysterious phone calls were received by the speakers of the discussion on the Amnesty International’s latest reports for the United Nations (UN) titled “Civil and Political Rights’ Violations in Papua and West Papua".
Amnesty International director Usman Hamid, who was among the speakers, was also terrorized by the phone calls during his presentation. Usman said some mysterious numbers tried to reach him repeatedly after he rejected the first one.
“They [the phone calls] just would not stop, constant,” he said during the event.
Besides Usman, Yuliana S. Yabansabra from Elsham Papua, also a speaker, received similar calls via her cell phone, which forced her to defer her presentation and switch to a laptop as she was using her cell phone for the teleconference.
Usman said she was curious about the calls as the numbers did not hail from Indonesia and kept on changing. Usman said the situation was similar to the hacking of the cell phone belonging to public policy analyst Ravio Patra.
“The numbers kept changing, from a state in Canada, a state in America. This is similar to Rovio’s case,” Usman said.
Another speaker, Tigor G. Hutapea, also received similar calls. “I also received similar calls from different numbers, please give me some time to switch to a laptop,” he said.
EGI ADYATAMA
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2) Amnesty International to Report 5 Major Issues in Papua to UN
5 June 2020 18:36 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Amnesty International executive director Usman Hamid said he would lodge the latest report of his organization on Papuan issues titled “Civil and Political Rights Violations in Papua and West Papua” to the United Nations (UN).
Usman said the report, which is specifically addressed to the UN Committee on Civil and Political Rights, highlighted at least five lingering major issues in Papua.
“This is a periodical report that is usually included on the list of issues canvassed in their sessions, particularly this session, which is session 29, which will last from June-July 2020,” Usman said in a teleconference on Friday, June 5, 2020.
Usman said Amnesty International underscored in its report, among others, the ongoing rights violations in the form of murders and reckless arrests.
The second issue is the shackling of freedom in Papua, particularly freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and socialize, and freedom of expression, particularly on issues relative to racial discrimination.
Third, Amnesty International also touches on political prisoners or prisoners of conscience, who are mostly deprived of their right to a fair trial.
The Amnesty report also underlines the limited press freedom in Papua, including governmental censorship and the internet blackout during the deadly 2019 rioting.
The last issue is the fate of some 5,000 refugees in Nduga regency, who according to Amnesty International have been left in limbo to date.
“Until now, the refugees in Nduga are in need of serious attention, such as water access, health, houses and legal protection,” Usman said.
EGI ADYATAMA
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3) Speakers in ‘#PapuanLivesMatter’ discussion hit by spam calls, Zoombombed in live event
Ghina Ghaliya The Jakarta Post
Jakarta / Fri, June 5, 2020 / 07:57 pm
A virtual discussion about human rights issues and the repression against Papuans' freedom of expression held by rights group Amnesty International Indonesia on Friday was bombarded by spammers, in the latest show of disturbance against Indonesian activists recently.
The video conference that started at around 1 p.m. was disturbed by unwanted intrusions, ranging from incoming spam calls to some of the speakers’ mobile phones from foreign numbers to "zoombombing", a type of cyberattack in which unknown users drop in on Zoom sessions, often uninvited, to disturb meetings.
At the beginning, the discussion went smoothly when the first and second speakers, Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid and Norman Voss of German-based International Coalition for Papua (ICP), respectively, explained briefly about human rights issues in the country's easternmost region and racism against native Papuans.
The spam calls started coming in when speaker Yuliana S. Yabansabra of rights organization Elsham Papua was about to give her statement.
"I am suddenly receiving phone calls from foreign numbers. They keep bothering me, "Yuliana said during the discussion, which was attended by The Jakarta Post.
Usman then said he was also receiving some calls from unknown numbers with the United States country code 1 as he showed the meeting participants the screen of his phone that kept ringing.
"This has not stopped. I think Uli [Yuliana] and I have been harassed by calls from the US. The numbers are different but they are constant," he said.
He told the Post he had received dozens of phone calls, even until the discussion ended at around 3 p.m.
In a number of screenshots sent to the Post, he showed the locations from which the calls were made. Among them are cities in several areas in the US, such as Cordova, Dubuque, Blackstone and Lansing as well as Whistler in Canada.
“I’ve been receiving these calls from the beginning of the discussion until now."
While saying that he had experienced "worse situations", Usman said the repeated spam calls were very disturbing. "This is similar to Ravio's case."
Usman referred to a case of harassment against independent researcher and government critic Ravio Patra, who was detained and accused of inciting riots through a WhatsApp message following an alleged hacking of his account in April.
Another speaker, Tigor G. Hutapea of Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat, also received spam calls during the session.
In addition to spam calls, the discussion, which used the hashtag #PapuanLivesMatter was also disturbed by Zoombombers as a number of uninvited attendees intruded the event by making noises.
“This has actually happened in the last few months to some people. Many Papuans as well as activists and scholars have been harassed. They have been terrorized through technology," Usman said, "I think it means that what we are doing is right. We must continue to defend human rights for Papuans."
In the event, Amnesty International Indonesia reported its latest study for the United Nations titled "Civil and Political Rights Violations in Papua and West Papua".
The organization also discussed some cases of human rights violations against Papuans, including the government-imposed internet blackout during weeks of protests in the restive regions last year, which has been declared unlawful by the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN).
Cyber terrors have apparently become a common practice of what many have called “terror against government critics” lately, apart from a number of arrests allegedly carried out without proper procedure.
In a recent case, students and professors at Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University (UGM) and the Indonesian Islamic University (UII) had their social media and WhatsApp accounts hacked after planning to organize an online discussion about the constitutional mechanism for removing a president from office. They also received death threats and other forms of intimidation
Tempo newspaper editor-in-chief Budi Setyarso said on Sunday that he also had his Instagram and Facebook accounts “hacked” while he was moderating an online discussion with Ravio and the dean of the UGM School of Law.
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Black Lives Matter rallies Papuan activists in Indonesia
05 Jun 2020 07:51PM (Updated: 05 Jun 2020 08:22PM)
JAKARTA: Thousands of miles from the protests that have swept the United States, Black Lives Matter has become a rallying cry for pro-Papuan activists in Indonesia, provoking questions about accusations of deep-seated racism.
Indonesian social media users have adopted the hashtag #PapuanLivesMatter alongside #BlackLivesMatter and prominent writers and artists have promoted it, a sign that the issue resonates beyond Papuans in an archipelago of 270 million.
Accusations of discrimination have endured for decades in the resource rich and remote provinces of Papua and West Papua, whose indigenous people are of dark-skinned Melanesian origin in contrast with most in the world's fourth most populous nation.
"I think the BLM movement is useful in that it forces Indonesians to reflect on how Papuans have been treated by the police," Ligia Judith Giay, a Papuan postgraduate student at Australia's Murdoch University, told Reuters.
Parallels have been drawn between the death of African-American man George Floyd in Minnesota that unleashed the mass protests and the treatment of a Papuan man, Obby Kogoya, who was pinned down during his arrest in 2016 before he was jailed.
A website, "We need to talk about Papua", has been set up, while an Instagram post about the site attracted more than 12,000 likes.
Representatives of the Indonesian president’s office and the foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment about the online movement or accusations of racism against Papuans.
In recent days, Black Lives Matter has also been a rallying cry for black people complaining of discrimination in Australia, Brazil and elsewhere.
Papua and West Papua came under Indonesian control after a United Nations sanctioned vote in 1969 that Papuan activists say was held under duress. A low-level insurgency has persisted for decades.
Anger boiled over last year in protests that killed dozens, after Papuan students in Java were allegedly taunted with racist slurs, such as "monkeys".
Despite the online momentum, Indonesian political analyst Yohanes Sulaiman said local attitudes were unlikely to be swayed.
"There's not much awareness from regular Indonesians that there's racism towards Papuans," he said. "Most Indonesians consider Papua a problem of separatism. That’s how the government has framed the issue for decades."
But in the same way that Floyd's death has catalysed a discussion of history and race in America, Black Lives Matter had inspired young people to ask questions, said Indonesian human rights activist Veronica Koman.
"There has been a huge rise in awareness among Indonesians outside our usual activist circle that I did not even see during the West Papua uprising last year," she said.
READ: Australian officials move to block Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney over COVID-19 risk
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4) Papuan internet lawsuit intended to push for good governance: Civil groups
Alya Nurbaiti The Jakarta Post
Jakarta / Fri, June 5, 2020 / 04:27 pm
The lawsuit against President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s decision to cut off the internet in Papua and West Papua during antiracism protests in the two provinces last year was meant to be a call for better policies in the future, the suit’s plaintiffs have said.
The plaintiffs, which include the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet), the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) and the Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers), said they hoped the government would respect the court’s ruling.
The Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) ruled on Wednesday that the government had unlawfully shut down the internet in the two provinces during heightened security tensions caused by waves of protests in August and September of last year.
“We don’t want to attack the government nor disrupt the nation. We want good governance. The government should listen to us and obey the court’s ruling,” Muhammad Isnur of YLBHI said during a press briefing on Thursday.
He suggested the government apologize to the public, even though the plaintiffs’ demands for such a public apology had been dropped from the lawsuit.
“[Apologizing] is an ethical matter. We dropped the demand from the lawsuit because the judges said it was not within their authority to grant it,” Isnur added.
The court found that the government had violated the 1959 State Emergency Law by imposing the internet blackout after it failed to prove during a court hearing that the country was in a state of emergency. Proving such a situation would have enabled the government to shut down the internet legally.
The petitioners said the lawsuit was their last resort after the government ignored several letters and petitions to cancel the blackout.
The government initially argued that the internet shutdown was imposed to prevent the spread of hoaxes and other false information during the antiracism protests.
“The policy, however, only disadvantaged the public as their access to information was limited. It is a violation of human rights,” Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) deputy director Andi Muttaqien said.
He added that the shutdown had hit several areas, including education and the economy, as journalists were unable to work without access to communication technology.
Papuans were also unaware that the government had punished some of the people who had harassed and assaulted Papuan students during an incident in Surabaya, East Java, in August 2019. These acts had prompted the protests, and therefore, the shutdown had likely exacerbated tensions.
Activists argued that the government’s justification of the shutdown as an attempt to prevent the spread of hoaxes could not be verified because it had never reported the number of hoaxes that had spread during the protests.
Although the court’s decision did not carry legal sanctions, Abdul Manan of the AJI said the ruling declaring that the government had violated the law was a serious admonition not to repeat the mistake.
Authorities introduced internet restrictions for the first time as a security measure during postelection riots in Jakarta in May of last year.
“Nobody sued the government at that time and such a policy of blocking the internet recurred in August,” Abdul said. “If the government commits such unlawful acts again in the future, it means they are publicly declaring their violation of the Constitution, even though they are sworn to obey and follow it.”
Read also: The internet shutdown in Papua threatens Indonesia's democracy and its people's right to free speech
Isnur said the ruling would serve as a good precedent that would hopefully encourage the public to bring the government to the PTUN for any unlawful acts, as stipulated in a 2019 Supreme Court Regulation on unlawful government acts.
The plaintiffs lauded the court for considering access to the internet a human right.
“This is an extraordinary achievement and gives us hope about the fate of human rights in the country,” said Isnur.
Presidential spokesperson for legal affairs Dini Purwono said on Wednesday that the government respected the court’s ruling. She added that the government would consult with the state legal team about whether to appeal the ruling.
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