Jakarta – The director of the Bali Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), Ni Kadek Vany Primaliraning, has been reported to the Bali regional police for treason for allegedly facilitating a mass action by Papuan activists.
The report was confirmed by Vany when contacted by CNN Indonesia on the evening of Tuesday August 3. Vany sent CNN Indonesia a photograph of the official receipt of the public complaint, which was registered with the Bali regional police and dated Monday August 2, via a message application.
Vany has yet to explain in detail about the report but she suspects that it is related to legal assistance that they gave to Papuan activists conducting a protest. "Assistance for Papua comrades holding a protest actions", said Vany via an SMS message.
The receipt of the reports shows that it is a public complaint registered as Bali regional police report Number Dumas/539/VIII/2021/SPKT.
In the document it states that the person submitting the report is Rico Ardika Panjaitan SH, whose is an assistant advocate that resides in Datuk Bandar Timor sub-district in North Sumatra. The person being reported is Ni Kadek Vany Primaliraning as the director of LBH Bali.
The brief description of the report concerns an act of alleged makar (treason, subversion, rebellion) and conspiracy to commit makar. The report cites the victim in the case as being the "Constitution of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia" (NKRI).
Vany then explained about the action by activists from the Bali Papua Social Concern Front (FORMALIPA) Bali which resulted in her being reported to the Balinese police.
"The comrades asked for legal aid (assistance) related to a freedom of expression action. On the day of the action the comrades coordinated with us to leave their motorcycles at the LBH for safekeeping then marched to the Bali regional police to hold the action", she said.
During the march however there was an ormas (mass or social organisation) which blocked and assaulted the protesters. As a result they sought refuge on the grounds of the LBH Bali.
"Those assisting the action (LBH Bali) coordinated with police to protect the protesters, bearing in mind that the comrades had already sent a notification [of the action to police]. And, the action was an action to convey an opinion in public, even though the police still asked them to disband", said Vany.
"After a protracted debate, in the end the comrades were allowed to convey their views in front of the LBH Bali", she said.
In response to the report against Vany, which is suspected to be related to her providing legal assistance, Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) Chairperson Asfinawati that it would be inappropriate for police to pursues the report.
"The LBH Bali was acting in accordance with its capacity. This is fabricated, if it's followed up then the police will be endangering all lawyers or people at LBH", she said when contacted on Tuesday evening.
Asfinawati – known as Asfin by her friends – emphasised that the LBH's activities are in accordance with legislation as regulated under Law Number 16/2011 on Legal Aid.
When contacted separately, Rico Ardika Panjaitan, who submitted the police report, claimed that he reported Vany over a mass action by Papuan activists on May 31 this year.
At the time, he said, the Papuan demonstrators gave speeches in front of the LBH offices, one of which contained the statement, "That the red-and-white [national flag] is not Papua, Papua is the Morning Star [flag]".
It was this that made him report the LBH Bali for allegedly violating Article 106 of the Criminal Code (KUHP).
"According to my understanding, in legal terms, under Article 106 of the KUHP it is written, right, or it means one thing, meaning that when a part of the Indonesian territory wants to be given independence this is included in the category of makar. This means that in the case of the AMP [Papua Student Alliance] it fulfilled [the stipulations of] that article, right", he said when contacted on Tuesday evening.
In the case of LBH Bali meanwhile, he is accusing them of facilitating the Papuan mass action and therefore violating Article 110 of the KUHP.
"They (LBH) can be indicted under Article 110", said Panjaitan, who claimed to have made the report in an individual capacity although he received support from the group Patriot Garuda Nusantara of which he is a member.
CNN Indonesia has attempted to confirm the report with Balinese regional police public relations division chief Senior Commissioner Syamsi but as of this report being published has not received a response. (dis/kid)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Direktur LBH Bali Dipolisikan Dugaan Makar Bantu Massa Papua".]
In August 2005, I visited Carmel Budiardjo, then an 80-year-old human rights campaigner, in her London townhouse. We talked on the second floor, which was also the office for Tapol, the human rights organization that she helped set up in 1973 (in Indonesian, the word “tapol” stands for tahanan politik – political prisoner).
In the 1970s, Tapol led a global campaign to release the approximately 30,000 political prisoners held by the then-dictator, Soeharto. It prompted US President Jimmy Carter in 1978 to call for the prisoners’ release. Soeharto released almost all of them, keeping several dozen jailed in Jakarta. Tapol later became a leading voice on rights issues in Indonesia, particularly in the troubled areas of Aceh, East Timor and West Papua.
Carmel, who passed away in London on July 10 at 96, is among the very few people whose work in the region has been recognized in both conservative Muslim areas, like Aceh, and predominantly Christian areas, like East Timor and West Papua. Her efforts to release and then help political prisoners were immeasurable. In 1995, she received the Right Livelihood Award in Sweden. In August 2009, East Timorese President José Ramos-Horta, who had helped campaign for East Timor’s independence from Indonesia, presented her with the Order of Timor Leste. She also received awards from independent groups in Aceh and West Papua. She is probably the only person to receive such wide recognition from so many diverse groups in this archipelago.
In 2005, she and I talked about why many people living in Java, Indonesia’s most populous island and home to the capital, were oblivious to the disparities between Java, as Indonesia’s “core”, and the “outer islands” (which the Dutch colonists called the Buitengewesten, or Outer Territories). “It also applied to me when I lived in Jakarta in the 1950s,” she told me. “Only when I left Indonesia in 1971, I began to understand the problem. I was caught up by the concept of the liberation of West Papua in the 1960s. I had to be outside Indonesia to begin to think about the reality of Indonesia. West Papua is not necessarily a legitimate part of Indonesia.”
Carmel also spoke about the underlying causes of human rights abuses in Indonesia. The notions of a nation-state and a sense of equal citizenship are very thin in Indonesia. Many dominant identities, whether as Muslims or ethnic Javanese, are often used to discriminate against and repress minorities, which frequently led to violence. “I am not an advocate of breaking apart Indonesia,” she told me. “But in West Papua and Aceh, there are strong feelings of injustice and their own nationalisms. West Papua was an international issue. The Act of Free Choice in 1969 was an absolute fraud.”
Carmel was born in London in 1925, between the two world wars, into a Jewish family, whose anti-fascist views influenced her left-wing politics. In 1947, she met Suwondo Budiardjo, a young Indonesian official, in Prague. They married and moved to Jakarta in 1952. She worked as a translator and later wrote economic analyses and speeches for both President Sukarno and the Indonesian Communist Party. When General Soeharto toppled Sukarno in 1965, her husband was jailed for “political offenses” and spent 12 years in prison without trial. Carmel herself spent three years in detention, also without trial, before her deportation in 1971. She wrote about these years in her heartbreaking memoir, Surviving Indonesia’s Gulag.
When she returned to London, her townhouse became a gathering place for activists from all backgrounds. Over Chinese food, she told me about the need for raising awareness about nation building and the stories of political prisoners, as well as about her hopes for Timor Leste, a new nation that ended Indonesia’s occupation and had no political prisoners.
Though much time passed since we last spoke, all of our conversations are still relevant to the challenges Indonesians and others face today. Carmel was a towering figure. As James Ross, a longtime Human Rights Watch colleague, wrote after hearing of her passing, “If there were a human rights movement Hall of Fame, Carmel would have been one of the first inductees.”
4) AWPA calls on PM to urge Jakarta to allow a PIF fact-finding mission to West Papua
Statement -West Papua and the PIF
It has been reported that the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders are meeting virtually on the 6 August.
The Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum and Prime Minister of Tuvalu, the Honourable Kausea Natano, reaffirmed the importance of open and constructive dialogue on the human rights situation in West Papua (Papua).
"In line with the Forum Leaders decisions in Tuvalu in 2019, the Forum Chair has this week written to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Her Excellency Michelle Bachelet, requesting an update on the consultations with the Government of Indonesia concerning the invitation for a mission to West Papua (Papua). The Forum Chair further reaffirmed the Forum Leaders call for all parties to protect and uphold the human rights of all residents and to work to address the root causes of the conflict by peaceful means”.
Joe Collins of AWPA said, "West Papua is one of our nearest neighbours and the situation in the territory continues to deteriorate with ongoing clashes between the security forces and the OPM (the Free Papua Movement). The West Papuan people continue to be arrested intimated and killed by the security forces. A number of military operations have also taken place in the past few years. During these operations house are burned, livestock killed, leaving local people traumatised and in fear for the lives. These operations have also lead to large numbers of internal referees fleeing to other regencies creating a humanitarian crisis.
If Australia wants to keep or win friends in the region it should start by listening to what the Forum leaders and the people of the Pacific are concerned about.
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