Wednesday, June 17, 2020

1) Papuan protesters sentenced to less than one year for treason amid calls to drop charges


2) TAPOL Statement on Balikpapan Seven’s Verdict

3) USTJ students arrested by police on campus
4) West Papua and Black Lives Matter 
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1) Papuan protesters sentenced to less than one year for treason amid calls to drop charges 
Budi Sutrisno The Jakarta Post
Jakarta   /   Wed, June 17, 2020   /   04:30 pm
A court in East Kalimantan found seven Papuans guilty of treason in separate trials on Wednesday for their involvement in antiracism protests in Jayapura, Papua, in 2019, despite calls from human rights defenders for authorities to drop all charges against them.
The Balikpapan District Court sentenced Buchtar Tabuni, an executive of pro-Papuan independence group United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), to 11 months of imprisonment.
Meanwhile, Cenderawasih University student union head Ferry Kombo as well as Irwanus Uropmabin and Hengki Hilapok, both students of the University of Science and Technology (USTJ), were sentenced to 10 months in prison.

The punishment handed down by the court was far from the demands of prosecutors, who sought 17 years of imprisonment for Buchtar, 10 years for Ferry and 5 years for both Irwanus and Hengki.
Two other defendants in the case, namely Agus Kossay and Stevanus Itlay from the National Committee of West Papua (KNPB), were sentenced to 11 months of imprisonment after prosecutors had demanded 15 years.
Meanwhile, USTJ student union head Alexander Gobai was sentenced to 10 months in prison. The prosecutors had sought 10 years of imprisonment for him.
“We are given a week to think about whether we will file an appeal or not. We will discuss further with the seven political prisoners and figure out if they can accept [the verdicts],” Emanuel Gobay, one of the defense lawyers, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
The seven students and activists were involved in Jayapura protests in August last year following a racially charged incident targeting Papuan university students living in a dormitory in Surabaya, East Java. The students were physically and verbally attacked by security personnel and members of local mass organizations, who accused them of refusing to celebrate Indonesia’s 74th Independence Day.
Security personnel reportedly banged on the dormitory’s door while shouting insults like “monkeys”, “pigs” and “dogs”.
The protests in Jayapura started out peacefully but later turned violent, resulting in dozens of injuries and several buildings being damaged. The seven activists were arrested in Jayapura and were moved for trials in Balikpapan earlier this year for security reasons.
The trials have been met with outcry from the public and from activists, with many demanding that authorities drop all charges, as they argued that the Papuans involved in the rallies had only been exercising their right to protest racism against them.
Over the past three days prior to the verdicts scheduled for Wednesday, rallies carried out by students and young people demanding the defendants' release took place in various cities across the country.
Human rights activists have lambasted the arrests and charges against the Papuans, saying that acts of treason and reactions against racism were two different things.
They also argued that perpetrators of racism against Papuans, including hoax spreaders and verbal attackers, had been charged with less than a year of imprisonment.
“Despite the leniency, the verdicts still reflect racism under Indonesia’s justice system. No matter what happens, West Papuans ‘must’ be found guilty by Indonesian courts, especially in treason and incitement cases,” Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman said in her Twitter account.
Veronica told the Post that, during the antiracism protests last year, 86 Papuans were arrested and charged with treason. Some were immediately released, leaving 56 to be processed legally.
Some of the 56 Papuans have been sentenced to prison and recently been released, including Surya Anta and Ariana Elopere, who were spotted among the crowd during Monday’s rally in front of the Supreme Court building in Central Jakarta.
“There was no political intervention, because those who are now released have fully served their sentences,” Veronica said, adding that 23 of 36 Papuans still being detained would face their first hearing in Fakfak, West Papua, later this week.
Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid said he deeply regretted the court rulings on Wednesday against the seven Papuans engaging in peaceful protests, arguing that such a decision showed that the state failed to uphold human rights for Papua.
“Although the verdicts were much lighter than the demand of prosecutors, the seven prisoners of conscience should not have been arrested, imprisoned and prosecuted from the start. They should be released will all charges dropped,” Usman said in a statement.
“In the era of president BJ Habibie, East Timorese political prisoners or prisoners of conscience were released. President Jokowi himself even freed five Papuan prisoners of conscience at the beginning of his first term,” he said.
Editor's note: This article has been updated with the verdicts handed down by the court against three other defendants. An earlier version of this article also misspelled the name of Cenderawasih University student union head. He is Ferry Kombo, not Gombo.
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2) TAPOL Statement on Balikpapan Seven’s Verdict

TAPOL regrets Court sentencing of ‘Balikpapan Seven’ political prisoners
(London, 17 June 2020) TAPOL regrets the sentencing of seven West Papuan political prisoners today in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan province. The Seven were arrested in early September 2019 and accused of being the masterminds behind the ‘West Papua Uprising’, mass anti-racism protests in August and September last year. Prosecutors demanded that harsh prison sentences should be handed to the Seven, which has caused a rise in tensions in recent weeks in West Papua. However, judges took a different view and displayed more leniency:
Buchtar Tabuni was sentenced to 11 months in prison after prosecutors demanded 17 years. While prosecutors sought the heaviest sentence for Tabuni, he was in fact not involved at all in the Uprising due to political differences with its organisers.  
Agus Kossay was sentenced to 11 months even though prosecutors had demanded 15 years’ imprisonment. Kossay is Chair of West Papua National Committee (KNPB). During the uprising, he  invited people to join the protest peacefully.
Stevanus Itlay was sentenced to 11 months’ prison time while prosecutors had demanded 15 years. Itlay is Chair of KNPB in the Mimika area, and was not involved in any of the protests that took place in Jayapura. 
Prosecutors demanded 10 years in prison for Ferry Gombo; judges imposed a sentence of 10 months. Gombo is head of Universitas Cenderawasih’s student association and had convened a meeting in order to organise the protest. 
 He also drafted and delivered a letter notifying police of the student association’s intention to protest.
Alexander Gobai was sentenced to 10 months in prison. Prosecutors sought 10 years. Gobai was also head of a university student association, (Universitas Sains dan Teknologi Jayapura (USTJ), and had been chosen as protest coordinator.
Hengky Hillapok was sentenced to 10 months’ prison time while prosecutors demanded 5 years. Hillapok, also a USTJ student, coordinated logistical elements of the protests, namely hiring cars and a sound system. 
Irwanus Uropmabin was sentenced to 10 months in prison despite prosecutors demanding five years. Also a USTJ student, Uropmabin was in charge of monitoring security.

During their trials, prosecutors and judges focused on putting the political beliefs of the Seven on trial, rather than the riots which they were alleged to have masterminded.

The list of goods submitted as evidence by prosecutors has been criticised widely as it included a belt, key chain, calculators, a roll of cable, phone and laptop chargers, a decorative lights cable, and other objects which had 
no demonstrable connection to the accusations levelled by prosecutors.

Furthermore, the Seven were all arrested without warrants, and some were then tortured, blindfolded and subjected to questioning without a lawyer being present. In early October 2019, having been in detention for around 1 month, 
they were transferred to Balikpapan prison, in breach of criminal procedure law, and without notification to their lawyers and their families for unspecified “security reasons”. 

Currently there are 44 West Papuans in prison, charged with treason. There will be more trials in the coming weeks. In light of the trial of the Balikpapan Seven, last week several civil society organisations, including TAPOL and ETAN,
held webinars urging the authorities to release the Seven which also aimed to shed light on discriminatory judicial processes in West Papua. 

The Balikpapan Seven should all have been released unconditionally and immediately following the Covid-19 outbreak. Their arbitrary detention, and that of other Papuan political prisoners, violates the fundamental principle of freedom of
 expression which is protected by both Indonesian and international law.

We urge prosecutors to not appeal the decision as it runs the risk of raising tensions and exacerbating conflict again.


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3) USTJ students arrested by police on campus
Published 19 hours ago on 17 June 202
By pr9c6tr3_juben




Jayapura City Resort Police arrested four administrators of the Student Executive Board (BEM) of the University of Science and Technology Jayapura (USTJ) – Jubi

Jayapura, Jubi – Jayapura City Resort Police arrested four administrators of the Student Executive Board (BEM) of the University of Science and Technology Jayapura (USTJ), Papua on their campus in Padang Bulan, Jayapura City, Papua on Monday (6/15/2020) at around 8 a.m. Papua time.

“The police arrested the four students because of their initiative to open a solidarity post to support the release of seven Papuan political prisoners in East Kalimantan,” BEM Deputy Chairman Marvin Yobe told Jubi by phone on Monday (15/6/2020).
Yobe confirmed the name of the four students are Marten Pakage, Semi Gobay, Albert Yatipai, and Ones Yalak who took are now taken to the police.
“We ask seeking everyone’s support concerning their arrest,” he said.
He further accused the police of breaking the rules because the arrest occurred on campus.
“We urge the police to release our fellow students because what they have done is trying to silence democracy in this country,” he said.
Yobe added the students had opened the solidarity post on campus since Saturday, 13 June 2020 as a support to seven Papuan political prisoners who are currently on trial in East Kalimantan to be immediately released.
“Because they are victims of racism, not perpetrators nor lawbreakers,” he said
Release the students, say MRP and LBH
Separately, a member of the Papua People’s Assembly (MRP) asked the Jayapura Police to release the USTJ students.
“This is an injustice and discrimination (against the law). The public prosecutor’s indictment upset Papuan people,” said the Rev. Nikolaus Degey who also urged the police to stop interfering students’ activities on campus.
“The university is an academic space, so the police should not arrest students. If they did, it means they interfere with the university authority,” said Degey.
He further underlined that the police should see the free speech forum to express a voice to release the seven Papuan political prisoners in Balikpapan as a part of academic freedom of expression.
According to him, this forum is similar to the online discussion that organised by some Papuan leaders last week because both equally talked about the prosecutor’s indictment over the seven Papuan political prisoners which considered too severe.
Separately, advocate Emmanual Gobay stated the free speech forum at the USTJ campus was not against the law, and the police cannot arrest the students who organised it. Therefore, he asked the police to release the four students.
He then said in his written press statement that the Indonesia Law gives consent to the academic and religious activities to conduct without any prior notice to the police. It includes in the Law No.9/1998 about the freedom of expression in public. Therefore, the police in Papua are obliged to respect and protect the citizens’ rights for democracy.
“So, the police must release these four USTJ students, namely Marthen Pakage, Semi Gobay, Alberth Yatipai and Ones Yalak,” said Gobay. (*)
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4) West Papua and Black Lives Matter 
Published: Jun 17, 2020  Written by SOPHIE CHAO 



We are not monkeys / Twitter

A movement seeking justice, healing, and freedom for Black people has become a powerful rallying call for Indigenous West Papuans

Sophie Chao

The brutal murder of 46-year-old Minneapolis resident George Floyd on 25 May 2020 has triggered an unprecedented spate of protests against racism and police violence across the United States. This event has in turn prompted social uprisings denouncing systemic racial discrimination and state abuse of power in over fifty countries across the Global North and South, including Australia, the United Kingdom, and parts of Africa. In Indonesia, ‘Black Lives Matter‘ – a movement that seeks to bring justice, healing, and freedom for Black people - has become a particularly powerful rallying call for Indigenous West Papuans in the context of their ongoing experiences of marginalisation and oppression. 
Just under a year ago, similar anti-racism demonstrations rippled across West Papua and the Indonesian archipelago, triggered by the physical and verbal abuse of West Papuan students by civil militia and the police in the Javanese city of Surabaya. These protests were attended by thousands of participants, both Papuan and non-Papuan, and attracted widespread attention from national and international media. In several locations, riots broke out, resulting in the destruction of several government buildings, numerous physical injuries, and over fifty casualties, of which West Papuans accounted for the majority.
Over six thousand policemen and soldiers were flown into the region to control the protests. The internet was unlawfully shut down in 54 cities and regencies across Papua and West Papua, and access to foreign nationals banned outright. Dozens of Papuan demonstrators were arrested by the police and reportedly beaten with rods or burnt with cigarettes while in custody. Many among them are awaiting trial on charges of treason and face potential prison sentences of between five and seventeen years.
Resonating with the Black Lives Matter protests in the US and elsewhere, the anti-racism demonstrations of the summer of 2019 were spurred by West Papuans’ deep-seated frustrations with the pervasive racial discrimination they have and continue to face under Indonesian rule. Rapidly, the demonstrations turned into a renewed demand for self-determination in the form of a referendum – a promise that was made to West Papuans over half a century ago yet remains unfulfilled. At the same time, the construction of ‘race’ in West Papua has followed its own distinct historical trajectory – one that long predates the region’s incorporation into Indonesia.

A history of prejudice

In the course of the nineteenth century, the term ‘Papua’ transformed into a biologised category and came to define a racially distinctive area encompassing island Southeast Asia and the western Pacific, variously named ‘Papuanesia’ or ‘Oceanic Negroland.’ While foreign explorers during this period diverged in their classification of racial variation within and across the region, all identified a distinct difference between putatively inferior ‘black’ Papuans and putatively superior ‘brown’ Malays. These early colonial racial classifications – and in particular, the epithet ‘negro’ – transposed upon New Guineans a whole range of prejudiced assumptions about inferior intelligence, productivity, and morality already associated with African peoples in European colonial thinking. The representation of Papuans as chronic and incorrigible warmongers in colonial writings only further enhanced their association with primitivism and barbarism.
After Indonesian independence in 1949, racial differences between Papuans and Malays were repurposed by the Dutch in order to deny Indonesia administrative rights to West New Guinea and to reaffirm their own control over the region. Over the course of the next twenty years and up until the controversial Act of Free Choice of 1969, Papuans were subjected to systemic acculturation in the form of Indonesianisasi (‘Indonesianisation’).

This government-endorsed process aimed to strengthen national unity by incorporating West Papuans into the Indonesian state through formal education, national media, economic development, and transmigration. To this end, Papuans had to relinquish their superstitious beliefs and embrace enlightenment and progress in the form of adherence to formal religion. They had to abandon the primitive practices of hunting and shifting cultivation in favour of intensive market gardening, eat rice rather than forest-derived foods, and wear modern clothes rather than penis-sheaths. In this process, Papuans would be gradually transformed from ignorant and backward tribes to educated and civilised members of the Indonesian nation.

Structural racism

Following West Papua’s incorporation into the Republic of Indonesia in 1969, colonial and pre-colonial representations of Papuans as primordial, bestial, and infantile ‘Stone Age‘ peoples became firmly institutionalised in the practices of successive governance structures. These representations continue to be deployed to justify the denial of West Papuans’ most fundamental rights and remain widespread among Indonesian reporters, officials, and the broader public. They undergird government policies of ‘development’ (pembangunan) that purport to salvage Papuans from their backward ways yet that also frame Papuans as inherently inept in the face of modernity, globalisation, and technology.
In structural terms, racism manifests in institutional processes and practices that prioritise non-Papuan settlers over Papuans in terms of employment and education opportunities, political positions, and financial income. The growing influx of migrants, and Papuans’ own concomitant minoritisation, are often described by Papuans as part of a systemic attempt by the Indonesian state to eliminate them through population dilution, natural resource extraction, cultural assimilation, and land dispossession.
In everyday life, too, racism is a recurring motif for many Papuans across rural and urban environments. In the Papuan district of Merauke, where I undertook long-term ethnographic fieldwork between 2013 and 2019, military forces frequently intimidated Papuan children with their batons and guns, calling them ‘monkeys’ and taunted them for their ‘dark skin and curly hair.’ Parents spoke of their children being derided by non-Papuan students for foraging in the forest ‘like animals.’ Children who missed school to participate in customary rituals, sago expeditions, and other cultural practices were often reprimanded publicly by their teachers and called stupid, naïve, lazy, and dirty.
Alongside cognitive inferiority, Papuan bodies are frequently represented as polluted, dangerous, and uncontrolled in state and popular discourse and practices. Many of my friends in Merauke, for instance, spoke of being looked down upon by Javanese settlers because of their skin colour and curly hair. Several villagers reported being refused entrance to shops and public transport because their bodies ‘smelled bad.’ The supposedly primitive mores and sexual promiscuity of Papuans are also frequently invoked by medical practitioners in explaining the prevalence of HIVAIDS in West Papua – the highest rates in the country – which conversely hampers the effectiveness of health campaigns.

Pejorative epithets directed towards West Papuans, such as pig, dog, and monkey, further entrench the conjoined logic of racialisation and animalisation at play in the framing of Papuan peoples as inferior and savage. Of particular symbolic significance here is the figure of the monkey – a species that, alongside pigs and dogs, is routinely deployed in Indonesian popular and official discourse to characterise Papuans as primitive, wild, and uncivilised.

Black Lives Matter

Against this historical backdrop, the Black Lives Matter movement matters for West Papuans because West Papuans continue to be treated, in the words of activist Filep Karma, ‘like half-animals.’ In and beyond the region, West Papuans are routinely subjected to discriminatory treatment that renders them sub-human, killable, and disposable before the law. It comes as little surprise that endemic racial oppression has become a critical denominator in the formation of Papuan’s sense of collective identity, or what Papuans call memoria passionis. Memoria passionis, or ‘passionate remembrance,’ conveys Papuans’ common history of suffering under Indonesian rule – their ongoing and systemic dispossession of lands and freedoms, their subjection to physical and psychological violence, and their as-of-yet unfulfilled demands for self-determined futures.
Addressing and overcoming every day and systemic forms of racism faced by West Papuans today will require attending to the particular historical trajectories, cultural landscapes, and ethnic differences at play in the region. It calls first and foremost for a shared recognition and understanding of what racism means and does as a concept and practice in the West Papuan context. This includes its manifestations in institutional and individual behaviours, its social and psychological consequences for Indigenous West Papuans, and its detrimental impacts on social justice, equity, and harmony.
In this struggle, West Papuans have found valuable allies among Indonesian activists in and across the archipelago who are increasingly joining voices and forces to denounce racial discrimination at the national and global levels. Indeed, raising international awareness of the relevance of Black Lives Matter in West Papua constitutes a critical step towards achieving racial equality in the region – an equality that does not seek to erase cultural or ethnic difference, but rather that finds in that difference the promise of justice across diversity. 
Sophie Chao (sophie.chao@sydney.edu.au) is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney, whose research explores the intersections of Indigeneity, ecology, and capitalism in West Papua. For more information, please visit www.morethanhumanworlds.com.
Inside Indonesia 140: Apr-Jun 2020
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