2) TPNPB-OPM Accuses Indonesian Military of Planting Mine Bombs on Corpses of Its Members
3) Clash in Indonesia's restive Papua region kills 18 rebels and 2 police officers
4) Release four Papuan political activists in Sorong who were arrested on charges of treason
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Duncan Graham
1) Don’t stir Semar – He seeks harmony
May 17, 2025
Ancient Javanese mythology, often inherited from India and adapted to fit local culture, is rich with striking characters in the wayang kulit shadow puppet theatre. The fat-gut wise clown Semar is charged with maintaining stability.
Shadow Puppet of Semar. Contributor: YA/BOT / Alamy Stock Photo Image ID: 2HWMM88
This mirrors Anthony Albanese’s zip-in-and-out visit to Jakarta. The prime minister came with the doctrine, made famous by Paul Keating in 1994, to tell President Prabowo Subianto that “there is no country more important to Australia than Indonesia".
Keating may have thought it true – the electorate knows it’s not.
Albanese is being polite by meeting Prabowo and getting a hotel visit that was “warm”. Government PR has a limited temperature range for such events. There was much flag waving by the hire-a-parade service – but that’s a standard Jakarta welcome for VIPs.
Here’s the cold front that Albanese hasn’t addressed: In 2023 the Lowy Institute asked: Do Australians and Indonesians trust each other?
“Australian attitudes towards Indonesia have been — at best — lukewarm. And at worst, they betray a lurking suspicion.
“Only 12% of Australians nominated Indonesia as Australia’s ‘best friend in Asia’ – fewer than Japan, India and Singapore.”
If Albanese and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have read the Lowy surveys, there’s little sign they’re clearing out the threadbare cliches for an Op Shop. Melbourne Uni Prof Tim Lindsey has written:
“Indonesia and Australia have almost nothing in common other than the accident of geographic proximity. This makes their relationship turbulent, volatile and often unpredictable.”
With this talkfest, all was predictable. Much of the reporting reads as though it’s been assembled using AI – such is the lack of mainstream media expertise in the region.
Security, trade and defence were the leads, though there were few proposals to effect change. The Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement is a bipartisan deal signed in 2020 after 10 years of negotiation.
It was supposed to improve two-way trade. Apart from adding university outposts, it’s failed to meet diversity goals, remaining a dealer in bulk – mainly meat and grains, heading from us to them. Albanese urged Oz Biz to show greater ambition, but the big problem is in Indonesia.
Explained The Jakarta Post: “Indonesia’s ambition to attract world-class investment is being quietly sabotaged, not by interest rates or the threat of US trade tariffs, but by the familiar menace of thuggery and extortion.
“From street-level rackets to entrenched mafia control of parking, freight and food markets, criminal coercion continues to drain business confidence, inflate costs and corrode the very rule of law that investors depend on.”
Now add numbers – 11 of them to one of us. Stir in the Red Threat – phantom Russian bombers scouting for a base in West Papua leading to nuclear strikes on Kirribilli. This beat-up was refuelled at the leaders’ media conference, though the hollow story has long been trashed by Jakarta.
The chance to raise serious issues in the relationship was missed. That was wrong. Likewise, the whitewashing of Prabowo, 73. To be informed world citizens, Australians need to know more of the ruler next door.
He now gets benign labels like “retired general” or “former army general and defence minister”. The full story is that in 1998, he was cashiered, fled into exile in Jordan and banned from the US and Australia for alleged human rights abuses and war crimes.
He denies the charges, which come from putting down dissident movements in East Timor and West Papua, and the kidnapping and disappearance of Jakarta students protesting for democracy in 1998. The BBC described him as “tainted”.
Through his recorded statements, the man comes across as a bombastic autocrat and a bit loony. Like Trump, he inflates nonsense: “In other countries they have made studies where the Republic of Indonesia has been declared no more in 2030.”
The source turned out to be the US Sci Fi novel Ghost Fleet.
Leaders can’t select neighbours. Had Albanese washed his shaken hands, all diplomacy would have gone down the gurgler with the blood.
Our Catholic prime minister would have missed the kiddy flag wavers and dashed for Rome ahead of the inaugural Papal mass.
He reportedly plans to ask the new pontiff to visit Australia in 2028 – an invite not offered to the divorced Prabowo.
DFAT knows he wouldn’t be cheered like his predecessor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. He and his wife Iriana were hosted by Malcolm Turnbull in 2017 and enjoyed jolly blusukan – impromptu public walkabouts.
People-to-people ties are a key – but there’s little chance of that until we stop discriminating against Indonesians.
Malaysians and Singaporeans get free Electronic Travel Authority visas online – a facility not available to Indonesians who have to pay $195 per person and lodge a printed form. That could be changed at the admin level, and be a useful present for Albanese to offer.
Another would be the so-called Backpacker (Working Holiday) Visas. There are almost 5000 available to Indonesians but the quota isn’t full, probably because the rules — which include having $5000, a big sum for many applicants — are onerous.
There are no caps on the numbers of British passport holders.
Making it easier for young Indonesians to travel and earn would help lift cultural knowledge – and could be done without recourse to Parliament or arousing the Murdoch media.
Only one politician’s comment moved the dial from discussion to detail. David Shoebridge raised the plight of Hazara refugees stuck in Indonesia when Kevin Rudd struck the 1 July 2013 cut-off date for asylum-seekers.
Said the Greens Senator: “Labor previously opposed this policy because of its unfairness, but did nothing about it during the last Parliament; now is the time.”
The Hazara are not economic refugees and few are failed boat people; they are escapees from Sunni Taliban persecution largely because they are Shi’a Muslims. Many helped Australian troops as interpreters and guides during our 2001-2021 involvement in the war against the Taliban.
Prabowo and most Muslims next door are Sunni. In loose detention, the Shi’a are barely tolerated and unwelcome.
There are about 42,000 Hazara in Australia and about 7600 stranded in Indonesia – a state that hasn’t signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
In the wayang shadow theatre, Semar often takes a more realistic view of the world as opposed to the idealistic. Just the guy to help improve the talks of two leaders from cultures far apart.
Duncan Graham
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press). He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia. Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.
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A google translate.
Original Bahasa link
2) TPNPB-OPM Accuses Indonesian Military of Planting Mine Bombs on Corpses of Its Members
The TNI Headquarters stated that the TPNPB-OPM's accusations were a way to discredit the TNI and seek world sympathy.
May 16, 2025 | 15.55 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The West Papua National Liberation Army of the Free Papua Movement (TPNPB OPM) accused the Indonesian military of planting a landmine bomb on the body of a TPNPB OPM soldier. Previously, the soldier was killed in a shootout between them and Indonesian military forces.
"The victim's body was planted with a landmine bomb by the Indonesian government military, but the TPNPB troops did not know about it," said TPNPB OPM spokesman Sebby Sambom in a written statement on Friday, May 16, 2025.
The mine bomb then exploded right when the evacuation of the bodies was carried out. As a result, two TPNPB OPM members who were helping to evacuate the victims were killed in the incident.
"During the evacuation, the mine bomb that was installed exploded and resulted in two TPNPB members being killed and two other members being injured," said Sebby.
According to Sebby, the three TPNPB OPM soldiers who died were Gus Kogoya, Notopinus Lawiya, and Kanis Kogoya. Meanwhile, those who suffered minor injuries due to bomb fragments included Tinus Wonda and Dnu-Dnu Seperti.
"The injured are currently at the TPNPB headquarters to undergo medical treatment," he said.
Previously, armed contact between the TPNPB OPM and the Indonesian military occurred since around 05.00 in the morning on Tuesday, May 13, 2025. Sebby claimed that the armed contact occurred after the Indonesian military launched an operation and shot civilians in Titigi Village, Ndugusiga Village, Jaindapa Village, Sugapa Lama Village, and Zanamba Village.
The Indonesian National Armed Forces Headquarters has dismissed allegations by the West Papua National Liberation Army-Free Papua Movement (TPNPB-OPM) regarding the use of explosives in an operation in Sugapa District, Intan Jaya Regency, Papua, last Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
Head of the TNI Headquarters Information Center, Major General Kristomei Sianturi, said that soldiers from the Habema Task Force did not use explosives or plant mines during the operation.
"That is OPM propaganda to discredit the TNI and seek world sympathy that the TNI is committing human rights violations in Papua," said Kristomei when contacted on Friday, May 16, 2025. According to him, the TPNPB-OPM's accusations and negative narratives against the TNI are nothing new. This is because this action is often carried out to attract world attention.
Tempo has tried to confirm this with the Head of the Cartenz 2025 Peace Operation Brigadier General Faizal Ramadhani and the Head of Information for the Cendrawasih XVII Military Command Lieutenant Colonel Candra Kurniawan. However, until this news was written, there had been no response.
Andi Adam Faturahman contributed to the writing of this article
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3) Clash in Indonesia's restive Papua region kills 18 rebels and 2 police officers
Friday, 16 May 2025 8:46 PM MYT
JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP): Indonesia's security forces have clashed with separatist rebels in the restive Papua region, leaving at least 18 insurgents and two police officers dead, officials and the rebels said Friday.
The battle erupted Wednesday when dozens of rebels armed with military-grade weapons and arrows attacked troops preparing to offer health and education services to villages in Intan Jaya, a hotbed of the insurgency, said Lt. Col. Iwan Dwi Prihartono, a military spokesperson.
"The situation changed when an armed group ambushed dozens of government soldiers,” Prihartono said in a video statement. "So at that moment we carried out a measured and professional action operation.”
Security forces seized one assault rifle, a homemade rifle, several arrows, rounds of ammunition and a "morning star” flag - a separatist symbol - after the clash, Prihartono said, adding there were no casualties on the government side.
Rebels in Papua have been fighting a low-level insurgency since the early 1960s, when Indonesia annexed the region, a former Dutch colony. Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969, after a U.N.-sponsored ballot that was widely seen as a sham.
Sebby Sambom, a spokesman for the rebel West Papua Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, said only three of the group's fighters were killed. He claimed that the rest of the dead were "innocent residents” shot by the troops.
Sambom said the rebels killed two police Friday in the neighboring regency of Puncak Jaya in retaliation for the death of Bumiwalo Enumbi, a key member of the group.
Rebel attacks have spiked in recent years, with dozens of rebels, security forces and civilians killed. Last month, the rebels said
they attacked a gold panning camp in the Yahukimo regency,
killing 17 people, and said the victims were members of Indonesia’s army disguised as gold miners, a claim that was denied by authorities.
-- Karmini reported from Jakarta, Indonesia, AP
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A google translate.
Original Bahasa link
Mei 15, 2025
4) Release four Papuan political activists in Sorong who were arrested on charges of treason
Responding to the arrest and determination of suspects in a treason case against four political activists who are members of the Federal Republic of West Papua (NFRPB) by the Police in Sorong City and the loss of civilian lives in armed violence in Intan Jaya, Deputy Director of Amnesty International Indonesia, Wirya Adiwena, said:
“The criminalization of the four Papuan political activists shows that the state continues to repress the rights to freedom of expression, opinion and assembly of indigenous Papuans. They were arrested only for peacefully conveying their political aspirations by visiting the West Papua government offices without using violence.
Peaceful expression is guaranteed by the Constitution and is not a criminal act. Peaceful political aspirations are also not hate speech as alleged by the police. Law enforcement officers are also again using accusations of treason to silence the political expression of Papuans, even though they should understand that such expression is part of human rights protected by Article 28E of the 1945 Constitution.
The police in Sorong City must immediately release the four people unconditionally. Every citizen, including indigenous Papuans, must not be criminalized just for expressing opinions or making legitimate political demands, including voicing disappointment with the state regarding the conflict in their region.
Not only that, we also condemn the loss of life and injuries to civilians, as well as hundreds of people displaced, after the operation carried out by security forces in Intan Jaya on May 13, 2025. There must be a thorough investigation into the loss of civilian lives in the incident. Likewise, there must be a sharp reflection on the placement of security forces in Papua which has so far resulted in casualties, both indigenous Papuans, non-Papuans, including the security forces themselves.”
Background
The Chief of the Sorong City Police, Southwest Papua, on May 5 announced the arrest and determination of suspects in a treason case against four people with the initials AGG, PR, MS, and NM. They are known as administrators of the Federal State of the Republic of West Papua (NFRPB).
Media reports said the suspects allegedly visited the Sorong Mayor's Office, the West Papua Governor's Office, the West Papua Papua People's Assembly (MRP) Office, the West Papua Police's Water Police Directorate, and the Sorong City Police on April 14 to deliver a letter from the NRFPB president regarding an invitation to peace talks. During the visit, they also allegedly called for 'Papua independence.'
The police have also questioned five witnesses and secured 18 documents related to the NFRPB organization, including uniforms resembling police and military attributes, as well as the organization's membership identification.
The four suspects were charged with treason and hate speech articles, namely Article 106 of the Criminal Code in conjunction with Article 187 of the Criminal Code in conjunction with Article 53 paragraph (1) of the Criminal Code and/or Article 45 Letter A paragraph (2) in conjunction with Article 28 paragraph (2) of Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 1 of 2024 concerning the Second Amendment to Law Number 11 of 2024 concerning Information and Electronic Transactions in conjunction with Article 55 paragraph (1) to 1 and/or in conjunction with Article 56 paragraph (1) to 1 of the Criminal Code. For these articles, the suspects face a sentence of 20 years in prison or even life imprisonment.
Meanwhile, regarding the latest violence in Papua, the Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) received a report from the Kemah Injil Church that a military operation had taken place in the early hours of Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in three villages in Intan Jaya Regency, Central Papua. The military operation is said to have targeted civilian settlements and resulted in fatalities and injuries among residents.
At least three civilians were reported to have died. In addition, a seven-year-old child and an adult woman suffered injuries from shrapnel. Then as many as 950 congregation members from 13 churches were reported to have fled shortly after the shooting.
Amnesty International does not take any position on the political status of any province in Indonesia, including their calls for independence. However, in our opinion, freedom of expression includes the right to peacefully express one's political views or solutions.
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