1) Survivor of fatal shooting in Puncak, Papua, evacuated to Timika

2) Indonesia: Release Victor Yeimo And Hold Perpetrators Of Human Rights Violations In Papua Accountable

3) Separatist Fighters Kill 8 Telecom Technicians in Papua Province

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https://en.antaranews.com/news/218421/survivor-of-fatal-shooting-in-puncak-papua-evacuated-to-timika

1) Survivor of fatal shooting in Puncak, Papua, evacuated to Timika  

9 hours ago

Timika, Papua (ANTARA) - The 2022 Cartenz Peace Operations Task Force Team, Saturday morning, evacuated Palapa Timur Telematika (PTT) employee Nelson Sarira to Timika, Mimika, Papua, after a separatist terror group shot dead eight PTT workers in Beoga, Puncak.

A helicopter was deployed for the evacuation led by Head of the 2022 Cartenz Peace Operations Senior Commissioner Muhamad Firman.

On receiving information on the location of the survivor, the joint police-military team headed promptly to the site to evacuate him. The evacuation process for Sarira took about two hours.

Upon arriving in Timika, Sarira was immediately taken to the Mimika Police Headquarters for further medical treatment.

The condition of the victim is reported to be quite stable, though he still needs to recover further in order to face questioning regarding the whereabouts of his colleagues, who were reported to have fallen victims to the fatal shooting on Wednesday (Mar 2).

The eight civilians, the employees of PTT, were shot dead by the armed separatist terror group while working on the construction of the Based Transceiver System (BTS) tower for the East Palapa Ring project in Papua.

Their bodies are yet to be retrieved since the attempt was hindered by bad weather and difficult terrain.

The civilians slain in the attack were identified as B, R, BN, BT, J, E, S, and PD.

Related news: Workers in Papua trapped in vicious cycle of armed violence

When the incident occurred, Sarira was not present along with his colleagues at their camp for repairing the tower. He found them dead after returning to the camp.

He later called for help through the closed-circuit television (CCTV) installed at the BTS tower 3.

Meanwhile, Communication and Informatics Minister Johnny Gerard Plate has condoled the deaths of the eight workers of the state-owned telecommunications company.

"We offer our deepest condolences to the families of PT Palapa Timur Telematika (PT PTT) workers, who have become victims of the attack," Plate noted in a press release issued on Friday.

The company is an implementing business entity (BUP) appointed by the ministry as the developer of the East Palapa Ring Project, a strategic national telecommunications infrastructure project for the provinces of Papua, West Papua, East Nusa Tenggara, and Maluku.

Plate expects authorities to conduct proper law enforcement against the perpetrators as well as restore security without further ado.
Related news: Police probe killings of eight civilians in Puncak District's Beoga  

Reporter: Evarianus Supar, Fardah
Editor: Suharto

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https://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2022/03/indonesia-release-victor-yeimo-and-hold-perpetrators-of-human-rights-violations-in-papua-accountable/

2) Indonesia: Release Victor Yeimo And Hold Perpetrators Of Human Rights Violations In Papua Accountable

March 5, 2022

Press Release – Civicus

4 March 2022 CIVICUS, a global civil society alliance, and Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) are gravely concerned by the ongoing prosecution of human rights defender Victor Yeimo. He has been arbitrarily detained for speaking up against the serious …

4 March 2022

CIVICUS, a global civil society alliance, and Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) are gravely concerned by the ongoing prosecution of human rights defender Victor Yeimo. He has been arbitrarily detained for speaking up against the serious human rights violations perpetrated by the Indonesian security forces against Papuans and must be released immediately.

Victor Yeimo, a pro-independence activist and international spokesperson of the West Papua National Committee (Komite Nasional Papua Barat or KNPB) was arrested on 9 May 2021 and has been charged with treason under Articles 106 and 110 of the Indonesian Criminal Code. Human rights groups believe the charges stemmed from his peaceful involvement in anti-racism protests in 2019 and his participation at a UN Human Rights Council session the same year. On the day of his arrest, he was denied access to legal assistance and to his family.

“We call for the immediate and unconditional release of Victor Yeimo and all other political prisoners in Papua. The government of Indonesia should not criminalise activists who speaking up against human rights violations in Papua and instead listen and address their grievances,” said Josef Benedict, Asia-Pacific Civic Space Researcher of CIVICUS.

Since his arrest, he has been suffering from severe health conditions. Yeimo has been diagnosed with empyema of the gallbladder, tuberculosis, hypocalcemia and leukocytosis. He also has a history of gastric and lung disease. His trial has had to be postponed several times due to this. During the last hearing at the Jayapura District Court on 21 February 2022, he was formally indicted on charges of treason for calling for the independence of West Papua. His trial is ongoing.

Human rights violations in Papua have come under increasing scrutiny by the United Nations and the international community in recent years. In 2019, mass anti-racism protests took place in Papua and various provinces in Indonesia – one of which Victor Yeimo was peacefully involved – following the arrest of 43 students in Surabaya, East Java, for allegedly disrespecting the Indonesian flag. The protests were met with excessive and lethal force from security forces as well as an internet blackout in Papua. In 2021, there were further protests after the central government revised and renewed the Special Autonomy Law further stripping critical aspects of decentralisation and autonomy for the region. There are at last 15 other activists who are also facing charges of treason for their peaceful activism in Papua.

More recently, the UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights Defenders in a statement raised concerns about the deteriorating situation in Papua and West Papua provinces, with a significant number of cases of displacement of indigenous peoples, extrajudicial killings, disappearance, and torture. Among the victims include Papuan children. The UN expert called on the Government of Indonesia to conduct an independent investigation into the violations and urges humanitarian access to the province.

“The work of Victor Yeimo and other activists in Papua, who have been bravely voicing out about the massive human rights violations committed by security forces in Papua, are essential to holding the government of Indonesia accountable and bring to justice to victims and their families. Instead of criminalising them, the government should create a safe and enabling environment for activists and others to voice their concerns.” said Basil Fernando, Director, Policy and Programme at the Asian Human Rights Commission.

Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
Original url

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https://thediplomat.com/2022/03/separatist-fighters-kill-8-telecom-technicians-in-papua-province/

3) Separatist Fighters Kill 8 Telecom Technicians in Papua Province

The attack came on the same day that a group of U.N. experts called out Indonesia’s “shocking abuses” in the eastern province.

By Sebastian Strangio March 04, 2022

Yesterday, I wrote a short article about the continuing unrest in Indonesia’s eastern Papua region, after three United Nations experts issued a statement condemning the government’s “shocking abuses” in its campaign to quell a long-running separatist insurgency.

As if to underscore the statement’s conclusions about the deteriorating security situation in Papua, the Indonesian authorities reported yesterday that attackers believed to be West Papuan separatist rebels killed eight technicians repairing a telecommunications tower in a remote part of region.

According to a report from the Associated Press, which quoted Papua military spokesperson Col. Aqsha Erlangga, the technicians were killed the day before when a group of fighters stormed a Telkomsel cellphone tower while the workers were fixing its transceiver in a rugged tract of Puncak district. One technician managed to escape the attack and flee from the scene.

Aqsha said that the authorities believe the attackers belong to the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB in its Indonesian-language acronym), the military wing of the Free Papua Organization (or OPM), which has been waging a struggle for independence since the 1960s. “This is an extraordinary crime by the armed separatist criminal group amid the government’s efforts to bring economic development,” Erlangga said in a statement quoted by the AP.

Assuming that the information is accurate – and according to some reports, the TPNPB has claimed responsibility for the killings – the attack is the latest incident in a spiral of reaction and counter-reaction between the OPM and the Indonesian state. In their statement this week, U.N. experts claimed that an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people had been internally displaced in Papua since December 2018, separatist fighters killed 16 laborers working on the Trans-Papua highway, which runs through densely forested regions of highland Papua.

Following the killings of the highway workers, Indonesia deployed more troops  in the region – more than 21,000 by March 2021, according to one estimate – resulting in deaths on both sides, dozens of arrests, and the mass displacement of Papuan villagers caught in the middle of the conflict. The situation has worsened further since April, when a high-ranking Indonesian military intelligence officer was ambushed and killed, prompting a further round of crackdowns.

In this week’s statement, the U.N. experts said that in the seven months following the assassination, they had received credible information about instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearances, torture, and the enforced displacement of at least 5,000 Papuans. (The Indonesian government unsurprisingly denied the claims made by the U.N.)

As yesterday’s violent attack suggests, Papuan rebels are responding in kind with attacks not just on Indonesian security forces but also on those building the infrastructure that is extending into remote parts of highland Papua, binding them more closely to the rest of Indonesia. Of particular contention is the Trans-Papua highway, a gargantuan project that has become a flashpoint for a number of long-running concerns, from environmental destruction and the exploitation of by foreign mining companies to the presence of Indonesian troops and the arrival of migrants from other parts of Indonesia.

Based on past iterations of the cycle of conflict in Papua, this latest attack will only harden further the attitude of the Indonesian government, speeding the cycle further downward. As Victoria Koman, an exiled human rights lawyer who works on Papua, wrote on Twitter in the aftermath of the attack, “Retaliatory raids by Indonesian forces leading to more displacement are expected.”

STAFF AUTHOR Sebastian Strangio Sebastian Strangio is Southeast Asia Editor at The Diplomat. 

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