2) Indonesia’s democracy faces a quiet return of military power ----------------------------------Green Left
1) Indonesian military massacres West Papuans in latest round of violence
Indonesian security forces have killed at least six people, including two children, in
Dogiyai regency in
West Papua, allegedly in retaliation for the killing of a police officer by an unknown assailant
on March 31.
After arriving at the scene of the police officer’s death, on the morning of March 31, police
and military
fired indiscriminately into nearby markets and public spaces. They expanded their killing
spree to nearby
villages until April 2, while maintaining military patrols to restrict people’s movements.
An elderly woman with a disability, a high school student and an 11-year-old boy were among
those killed.
At least two people, including a 12-year-old, were critically injured by the police shootings.
Joe Collins, spokesperson for the Australia West Papua Association, said that civilian deaths
in West Papua
by the Indonesian military “is not unusual”.
“The security forces can act with impunity in the [occupied] territory,” Collins said. “During military
operations, people flee in fear for their lives to the jungle and other regencies.”
Human Rights Monitor’s latest report found that, as of late March, more than 100,000 people were
internally displaced due to military operations and armed conflict.
Indonesia has occupied and controlled West Papua since 1963, after Papuans declared independence
from the Netherlands.
Indonesia has brutally repressed West Papuan anti-colonial resistance, while systematically
destroying and displacing Papuan communities.
It has been described as a “slow-motion genocide”. “The human rights situation in West Papua
continues
to seriously deteriorate,” Collins said. “The territory is a colony of Jakarta, with ongoing human rights
abuses being committed against Papuans by the security forces and the massive exploitation of the
territories’ natural resources, including the destruction of forests for palm oil and sugarcane
plantations, particularly in the Merauke region.”
Merauke is the site of what has been described as the “world’s largest deforestation program” — a
massive agro-industrial estate in occupied West Papua, which has been established by violently
displacing people and enforcing a brutal military occupation.
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Duncan Graham
2) Indonesia’s democracy faces a quiet return of military power
April 10, 2026
Signs of renewed military involvement in civilian life are raising concerns that Indonesia may be drifting back
towards the authoritarian practices of its past.
Imagine you’ve seen a street skirmish and call the police. A brief chat reveals the brawlers are off-duty soldiers.
They continue to throw punches and rocks. The cops drive away.
The policy was dwifungsi (an adopted loanword), and it ran throughout Indonesia during the 32-year
authoritarian rule of the second president, Soeharto, a former general.
At the top was the army – at the bottom the police.
Dwifungsi was dismantled during the Reformation in 2000 by the fourth President, Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur),
now deceased.
A liberal Islamic scholar, he understood the importance of restricting the military to defence and separating it f
rom the police role of domestic peacekeeping.
It hasn’t been an easy transition. Turf wars, access to power and rivalries continue.
Khairul Fahmi, a military analyst at the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies_,_ attributed the recurring
clashes between the two forces to “institutional arrogance, a culture of superiority, sectoral egotism, and
festering jealousies, dynamics that have grown unchecked.
“Much of the rivalry stems from competition for ‘fertile grounds’ of influence across civil society, bureaucracy, and
even parliament.”
Stories of inter-service punch-ups had become ho-hum till a street acid-attack last month in Jakarta on prominent
human rights activist Andrie Yunus as he left a legal aid office.
He was badly burned on his face, hands, and chest, covering 24 per cent of his body. He’s been in intensive care,
and his family is in protection.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said he was “deeply concerned” with the attack.
Four soldiers from an intelligence unit have allegedly been detained, according to military police commander
Yusri Nuryanto.
A decade earlier, a former policeman turned corruption investigator, Novel Baswedan, was walking home from
his local mosque in North Jakarta when two men threw acid at his face. He lost an eye.
After more than two years of investigation and a presidential order to find the assailants, he was reported as saying
the police were “not really serious in handling his case.”
Two active police officers were convicted and jailed for a year. Novel’s supporters said they were scapegoats
and the Mr Big had escaped identification.
Inquiries into the March attack on Andrie suggested the two assailants on a motorbike were soldiers and ordered to
send a warning to civilian critics of the return of dwifungsi.
According to the nation’s leading daily, Kompas, “the shadow of the military’s return to dominance in civilian
governance is now increasingly apparent. A total of 2,500 active TNI (Military) personnel have quietly taken up
civilian positions, a figure that exceeds the limits set by law.
“If the revision of the TNI Law currently being discussed by the DPR (Parliament) is passed, the last barrier to
military involvement in civilian bureaucracy will collapse.
“Not only that, but soldiers will also be given the opportunity to engage in business activities, blurring the clear
line that has long separated the military from economic and political interests.”
The California-based Asia Sentinel magazine is warning of “the Darkening Face of Indonesia’s Democracy.
“Reports of intimidation and terror directed at activists, legislative initiatives widely seen as constraining press
freedom, and, perhaps most strikingly, the reactivation of military command structures at the regional level.
“… these developments evoke the territorial military influence that defined Indonesia’s authoritarian past, raising
urgent questions about whether the country is gradually retreating from the democratic gains achieved since 1998.”
The present President Prabowo Subianto is the former son-in-law of the late Soeharto. He’s known to want
the military in civil affairs, as soldiers are trained to follow orders and not challenge.
Personal loyalty is critical in the armed forces; fine in a firefight, though not in professional administrations
demanding impartiality.
After the acid splash, Prabowo told some selected journos (not this one) that the attack on Andrie Yunus
was a “barbaric act of terrorism” that demands a comprehensive investigation into its masterminds.
“This is terrorism. This is a barbaric act. We must pursue it. We must investigate it! We must find out who
ordered it, who paid for it.”
He explicitly guaranteed that no “impunity” would be granted if security personnel are found complicit, vowing
that legal proceedings will be conducted strictly and impartially.
Sounds like the right response, except this is Indonesia. The two previous incumbents of the Presidential Palace
said much the same thing about the most blatant assassination since the Reformation.
In 2004, lawyer Munir Said Thalib, founder of KontraS, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence,
was poisoned on a Garuda flight while heading to Utrecht University to study for a master’s degree in international
law and human rights.
A post-mortem found he died from arsenic in an orange drink. He perished before landing. Then President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (another former general) promised Munir’s widow, Suciwati, that the assassination
would be thoroughly investigated. It wasn’t.
KontraS is struggling to reopen the case, but there’s no political commitment. This is not a time for Indonesian
activists to move about unprotected. Correction: It never has been.
The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
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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