In an oral statement to the UN Human Rights Council 55th Session on March 28, CSI’s Joel Veldkamp said this dispossession was “undergirded by a system of racial discrimination.” He was speaking on Agenda item 9, which addressed racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance.
According to CSI’s non-governmental sources in West Papua, indigenous people experience racial discrimination in five key areas, Veldkamp noted. The first of these is the lack of basic services, especially healthcare and education. As one source told CSI, “There are more plantations, more military posts, and fewer clinics in areas where indigenous people live.”
The other four areas are: the appropriation of land and resources, which takes place without the free and informed consent of the indigenous people; the military operations which tend to follow mining and plantation development in indigenous lands; police violence against indigenous Papuans; and political representation.
CSI recalled that in its dialogue with the Human Rights Committee on March 12, the Indonesian delegation stated that, “Papua had its own legislature, with representatives from various local cultural groups.” However, elected representatives from and in West Papua are predominantly non-indigenous.
“We urge the government of Indonesia to implement immediate reforms to ensure autonomy, safety, and equal access to services for the indigenous people of West Papua, in the spirit of the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action,” said Veldkamp.
He concluded, “We also urge the Human Rights Council to increase its engagement and monitoring of this situation. The West Papuans’ 60-year struggle for freedom calls for no less.”
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Christian Solidarity International is an international human rights group campaigning for religious liberty and human dignity.
Joel Veldkamp
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Indonesia’s military regional command in Papua has denied claims made by a pro-independence West Papuan group that abducted New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens more than a year ago that the army had staged a bombing attack, The Jakarta Post reports.
Responding to a claim by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) that aerial bombing had taken place in an area in Nduga regency where Mehrtens had been taken hostage on February 7 last year, the Indonesian Military (TNI) said it had deployed only flyby operations there.
Lieutenant Colonel Candra Kurniawan, a spokesperson for the Cendrawasih Regional Military Command in Papua province, denied that any military operation involving aerial bombs had taken place.
He said soldiers from the Nduga District Military Command 1706 only carried out routine patrols in the region.
“This [patrol] was conducted together with the local community. There has been nothing like an air strike,” Candra told the Bahasa-language Tempo on Saturday.
He also rebuffed TPNPB’s claim that TNI soldiers had engaged in a firefight with members of pro-independence group.
“Many [TNI] members are in the field serving the community, the situation is also conducive,” Colonel Candra said.
On March 30, TPNPB spokesperson Sebby Sambom said in a statement received by Tempo that the military had deployed aerial attacks using “military aircraft, helicopters and drones” and destroyed four of the group’s posts in Nduga.
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