2) The company my father works for sells weapons used in my partner’s homeland
3) Several armed Papuans end resistance: Papua police Chief
1) Indonesia deploys 400 battle-hardened troops to troubled Papua
May 6, 2021 7:10 PM AEST Kate Lamb
Indonesia has deployed 400 more soldiers in the easternmost region of Papua, an army spokesman said on Thursday, as an exiled separatist leader warned that the military looked set to launch its biggest security operation in the area in decades.
Last week, President Joko Widodo ordered a crackdown on separatists after an intelligence chief in Papua was shot dead in an ambush.
The battle-hardened 315/Garuda Battalion, whose soldiers got the nickname 'Satan troops' after taking part in bloody conflicts in East Timor, are being brought in after a breakdown in dialogue with separatists, said army spokesman Brigadier General Prantara Santosa.
"They are only trained infantry troops, not special forces," he said, without specifying where they would be sent and describing their deployment as a routine rotation.
The deployment to the region, where there has been a low-level insurgency for decades, comes after Indonesia recently designated armed Papuan separatists as "terrorists", a move that activists said could boost the security response in the region.
Benny Wenda, a British-based independence leader who has declared he leads an interim government from exile, warned that it appeared Papua was facing the largest military operations since the 1970s.
"The internet is being cut off, hundreds of troops are being deployed, and we are receiving reports that West Papuan civilians are fleeing from their villages,” Wenda said in a statement.
Rights activists say internet services have been disrupted in the provincial capital of Jayapura and nearby Sentani since April 30.
Dedy Permadi, a spokesman for the communications ministry, said on Thursday internet services had been disrupted in Papua due to damage to an underwater communications cable.
The government has previously throttled the internet in Papua during times of heightened political tension, including during mass demonstrations in 2019.
"Jokowi is burning the bridge for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in West Papua, and more displacement will take place," said Indonesian human rights lawyer, Veronica Koman, of the move to send in more troops and using the nickname of the president.
"There are at least 40,000 internally displaced people in Papua due to armed conflict already,” she said.
They make great trucks. That’s what my father says whenever I ask him: “What do they make? Who do they sell them to?” “Only to the good guys,” is his standard answer, and the topic changes quickly. But what he calls “trucks”, most people call “tanks”. And I am always led to wonder, “What kind of ‘good guy’ drives a tank?”
My father works for Thales, one of the richest weapons corporations in the world. Before heading up security for Thales he worked for Asio, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
On a rainy summer’s day in January I learnt that Thales sells weaponised vehicles to Indonesia’s special forces, Kopassus. The same Kopassus that have been accused of terrorising, torturing and murdering the people of West Papua.
My partner is a West Papuan refugee. Half of our children’s family live in West Papua, terrified of Indonesian soldiers, ready to run when Kopassus troops roll into their villages. I was suddenly painfully aware that my father is paid by a company that sells weapons that may be used against his own grandchildren’s family.
I had always suspected that my father’s employer and my partner’s journey might be connected in some way but I had never imagined how horribly entangled their stories were.
Lober, my partner and father of three of my children, landed in Cape York, Australia on 17 January 2006 in an outrigger canoe with 42 other refugees from West Papua. All were detained on Christmas Island before being granted asylum. Indonesia took offence at Australia’s acceptance of them and targeted their families. Lober’s mother was arrested in retribution. Friends and family members of these Papuans in exile have been arrested, tortured and killed. Like most refugees from war zones, the West Papuan 43 carry a burden of trauma that includes survivor guilt: why am I safe when others are dying?
Indonesia invaded then-Dutch West Papua in 1962. In 1969, with the backing of the UN, Indonesia’s dictator Suharto claimed West Papua as a province of Indonesia. Successive Australian administrations, eager to appease Indonesia, have remained silent on human rights abuses in Timor-Leste, Aceh, Maluku, Jakarta and West Papua. The rare exceptions to the policy of appeasement – such as sending peacekeepers to Timor-Leste in 1999 and accepting the 43 West Papuan refugees in 2006 – have resulted in diplomatic standoffs and the cessation of military cooperation.
Australia’s Special Air Service is involved in military training with Kopassus in Perth and the Australian federal police trains Indonesia’s anti-terror squad D88 at an Australian-funded institute called JCLEC (the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation).
Kopassus and D88 are the most feared of all Indonesian security forces and have been implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings across the archipelago. According to Amnesty International, more than 30 Papuans have been murdered by Indonesian forces in the past two years. Amnesty also alleges that between 2010 and 2018, Indonesia’s police and military were responsible for at least 95 unlawful killings in Papua, including targeted slayings of activists , a claim the Indonesian army’s spokesman in Papua province, Col. Muhammad Aidi, rejected as “untrue and baseless.”
Australia’s military support and defence exports to Indonesia directly contribute to the suffering of communities in West Papua, and cause great anguish to the West Papuans who now call Australia home. Every West Papuan-Australian I meet is scarred by the “low-intensity conflict” that has raged over access to Papua’s natural resources since 1962.
Some of the older men who travelled on the canoe with Lober spend their days walking and walking and walking. Sometimes Lober walks all night. Where are they going? What are they looking for? When I ask, the response is always the same: just walking, jalan jalan.
While in West Papua in 2013 I met dozens of activists, students and political prisoners. Their call for peace, justice and freedom from Indonesian rule was unanimous. The women’s stories really hit home: “Why do I have children just to watch them die at the hands of Indonesia?” I heard this question across Papua from mothers who had suffered the worst grief of all: burying their children.
Now three of my own children have West Papuan heritage, and their grandfather is working for the company that sells the weapons to the army that causes so many mothers grief.
If it’s true that change begins at home, I hope my father will be ready. My four kids often spend time with their Australian grandparents. My father is a popular visitor. He is funny and fabulous and impossible to dislike, though I don’t like what the company he works for sells.
One day his grandchildren will understand how implicated the company he works for is in the violence in their father’s land. Will he be ready, I wonder, for the day they understand and the questions they will ask?
"Thank God, many members of the armed groups have conveyed their pledge of allegiance to Indonesia and have reunited with community members in their respective villages," Fakhiri noted in a statement that ANTARA quoted here, Thursday.
However, six armed groups operating in several areas continue to pose security threats to unarmed and innocent civilians as well as security personnel, Fakhiri remarked.
The notorious armed groups are led by Lekagak Telenggen, Egianus Kogoya, and Serbinus Waker, among others, he revealed, adding that regional governments played an important role in persuading them to end their resistance.
District heads, directly appointed by community members through democratic elections, are relatively more emotionally connected with the armed groups’ members than the army and police personnel, he remarked.
In conducting law enforcement operations against armed separatist terrorists, the security personnel attempt to arrest them alive, so that they could uncover their networks, he revealed.
Papua's police has mapped six armed Papuan separatist terrorist groups actively operating in the province's mountainous areas of the sub-districts of Ilaga and Beoga in Puncak District; Sugapa Sub-district in Intan Jaya District; and Nduga District.
Over the past few years, armed Papuan groups have often employed hit-and-run tactics against Indonesian security personnel and mounted acts of terror against civilians in the districts of Intan Jaya, Nduga, and Puncak to trigger a sense of fear among the people.
The recent targets of such acts of terror included construction workers, motorcycle taxi (ojek) drivers, teachers, students, street food vendors, and also civilian aircraft.
On December 2, 2018, a group of armed Papuan rebels brutally killed 31 workers from PT Istaka Karya engaged in the construction of the Trans Papua project in Kali Yigi and Kali Aurak in Yigi Sub-district, Nduga District.
On the same day, armed attackers also killed a soldier, identified as Handoko, and injured two other security personnel, Sugeng and Wahyu.
Such acts of violence have continued this year. On January 6, 2021, at least 10 armed separatist terrorists vandalized and torched a Quest Kodiak aircraft belonging to Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) on the Pagamba village airstrip.
On February 8, 2021, a 32-year-old man was shot at close range in Bilogai Village, Sugapa Sub-district.
The victim, identified by his initials as RNR, sustained gunshot wounds on the face and right shoulder and was taken to the Timika Public Hospital in Mimika District on February 9.
In a separate incident on February 9, six armed Papuans fatally stabbed a motorcycle taxi (ojek) driver.
A motorcycle taxi driver was shot dead by an unknown gunman in Papua.
On April 8, 2021, several armed Papuan rebels opened fire at a kiosk in Julukoma Village, Beoga Sub-district, Puncak District.
The shooting resulted in the death of a Beoga public elementary school teacher, identified as Oktovianus Rayo.
After killing Rayo, the armed attackers torched three classrooms at the Beoga public senior high school.
On April 9, 2021, armed separatists reportedly fatally shot another teacher, Yonatan Randen, on the chest.
Two days later, nine classrooms at the Beoga public junior high school were set ablaze by an armed group.
Barely four days later, Ali Mom, a student of the Ilaga public senior high school in Beoga Sub-district, was brutally killed by armed attackers.
On April 25, 2021, Papuan separatists, operating in Beoga, ambushed State Intelligence Agency (Papua) Chief I Gusti Putu Danny Karya Nugraha and several security personnel during their visit to Dambet Village.
Related news: Muhammadiyah University's student community is mostly native Papuans
Related news: Two slain teachers in Papua's Beoga receive Education Award
EDITED BY INE
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.