What Is Indonesia Trying to Hide in West Papua?
What Is Indonesia Trying to Hide in West Papua?
1) What Is Indonesia Trying to Hide in West Papua?
2) View Point: Old (military) habits die
hard
3) WPNA demnstration will call for greater concern
from the government
4) New supermarket in Jayapura
triggers complaints about goods on offer
and price
differentials
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/american-anthropological-association/indonesia-west-papua_b_1652245.html
1) What Is Indonesia Trying to Hide in West Papua?
Posted: 07/11/2012 3:56 pm
/Written by Eben Kirksey/
West Papua is one of the most difficult places to
access on the planet. A man in a penis sheath from West Papua's
highlands (Photograph: Eben The protest was led by Filep Karma, a Papuan
leader who wants Filep
Karma (Photograph by Eben Kirksey) Indonesian officials routinely stymie human rights
research in West Rather
than wait in vain for help from the outside, help which
might Killings in West Papua have lately become more
frequent, mysterious, and Mako Tabuni (Photograph:
Facebook Ambassador
Marciel was not able to immediately reschedule his Spectacular violence by Indonesia's
security forces has long been hidden While travel guides intent on piquing the
imagination of explorers are /Eben
Kirksey ulia
Suryakusuma, Jakarta | Opinion | Wed, July 11 2012, 8:17
AM Paper Edition | Page: 7 “The only
constant thing in life is change,” they say. Really?
Looking When
Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood was sworn in as
president Who can blame
them? After 60 years of authoritarian military rule,
For decades, the Muslim
Brothers led armed attempts to overthrow that
Now,
after being outlawed and systematically repressed for
decades, a Not so fast guys. Yes, Mursi has
been elected president of Egypt. But does he hold the
They also took away the president’s authority
as supreme commander of So Mursi is
the president of nothing much, really. He’s been elected,
What if thousands return to Tahrir
Square to protest? That may not worry Having
been brought up under 32 years of Soeharto’s authoritarian
But is Indonesia now
going to do an Egypt and return to military rule? Like Egypt — and
our regional neighbor Thailand — there is a historical
But if
people believe that democracy is failing, that could create
an Recently, Indonesia made it to
the threshold of the Failed State Index. First, there’s a
leadership crisis. People joke that President Susilo
And
among the current crop of presidential candidates there is
no one Second, the House of Representatives (DPR) is a
disaster because of This means DPR members attack the Corruption
Eradication Commission So they end up
becoming opponents of reform, which is what is happening
When political change takes place, people
assume rapid democratization Indonesia needs to watch
out too. How much of what reformasi achieved I think the saying that’s more appropriate for
Egypt is “plus ca change, /The writer (www.juliasuryakusuma.com) is the author
of Jihad
Julia./ Jayapura:
The aspirations of the Papuan people for Papua to become a
In response to this
situation, the West Papua National Authority (WPNA) 'All of us who feel these concerns should join
together in a peaceful The
co-ordinator of the demonstration Sius Ayemi said that they
would One of the
leaflets says: 'Dont just think about us or our
organisation [Translated by
TAPOL] *4)
New supermarket in Jayapura triggers complaints about goods
on offer [Comment: This report reveals the
continuing tendency to promote Many complaints about price
differentials at newly open supermarket in
Although the supermarket Hypermart Jayapura
has only recently open its One shopper who spoke to
Bintang Papua said that she was charged at the In most cases, the shoppers were able to get
refunds from the store In a subsequent
article, Bintang Papua reported that demands were being
Some people complained that many of the
vegetables and fruit that were The
Indonesian Consumers Association said that there was no need
for [Abridged in translation by
TAPOL] ENDS
Still a steady trickle of
adventurous travelers is being drawn there by
images of
highlanders wearing penis sheaths and birds of paradise. In
the words of /Lonely Planet
place has a mystique that "piques the imagination
of the explorer... The
diversity in lifestyle and
culture of the indigenous people, who speak
more than
250 languages, is matched only by [the area's] biodiversity
and geography." Part of this mystique has been created
by the Indonesian
government. According to the website
embassy in Washington D.C., West Papua is one
of the "regions in
Indonesia that the foreign national
is not allowed to visit without
special written
permission and approval... Visitors who enter these
restricted regions without permission are subject to
arrest, detention,
and will be prosecuted according to
Indonesian law."
Kirksey)
It took me
years of writing letters and making repeat visits to the
Indonesian Embassy in Washington, before my application
to be an
undergraduate exchange student was approved in
1998. Weeks after
receiving a much-coveted visa stamp, I
found myself in the middle of a
peaceful demonstration
on the streets of West Papua. I stumbled upon an
event
that government officials tried to hide. Fourteen years ago
today
-- on July 6th, 1998 -- I was a bystander at a
massacre.
independence from Indonesia. As the
attack started, Karma roused his
followers, all unarmed
civilians, with a hymn. They held hands, sitting
in a
circle, under a water tower where their outlawed banner, the
Morning Star flag, flew. During the initial assault by
Indonesian
police, military, and navy forces, Karma was
shot twice -- once in each
leg -- but he survived the
incident. Many of his followers were not so
fortunate
and were killed instantly. A truck came to cart away the
bodies of the dead and dying. "I counted fifteen people
in the first
load," one eyewitness told me. "The truck
came a second time and I
counted seventeen people
inside. When they opened up the truck bed I
could see
lots of blood, in that small truck there was lots of blood,"
[Quoted from Kirksey,/Freedom in Entangled Worlds
49-50]. Human rights investigators could not determine
what happened to
the dead and wounded people who were
transported in this truck. Filep
Karma, who is now an
Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, told
me
about how to find one mass grave. But, forensic
archaeologists have
not yet visited this site.
At the time I was
hiding in Hotel Irian, a colonial era building, and I
heard gun shots as security forces killed people. From
my hotel window I
saw Navy ships docked out in the
harbor. Survivors of the initial
assault were loaded
onto these ships, taken out to open ocean, and
dumped
overboard to drown. One group investigating the incident
concluded that "one hundred thirty-nine people were
loaded on two
frigates that headed in two directions to
the east and to the west and
these people were dropped
into the sea," [Quoted in Kirksey, /Freedom in
Entangled
Worlds/, 48]. At least 32 decaying bodies later washed
ashore.
Elsham, an indigenous human rights organization,
produced a 69-page
report in Indonesian about the
massacre titled "Names Without Graves,
Graves Without
Names." The report called for an international
investigation, but no one has since followed
up.
Papua. Amnesty International
researchers were expelled from West Papua
in 2002 while
investigating a separate massacre
The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial,
Summary, or
Arbitrary Executions formally asked to visit
West Papua in 1994. This
request was denied. In 2004 the
government also rejected the
Rapporteur's follow-up
request to visit Indonesia
Even the International Committee for the Red Cross
organization that is renowned for negotiating
access to wartorn regions,
has been banned.
never arrive, many Papuans are doing the work of
human rights
themselves. Indigenous activists used the
Internet to circulate a video
in 2010
showed the brutal torture and murder of a highland
villager. Last
November, when thousands of West Papuans
came together to declare
independence in a peaceful
Congress, local human rights researchers used
their cell
phones to give real-time updates and send video footage
abroad
Brave action on the ground by these activists helped
prevent a massacre
on the scale that I witnessed in
1998. Last November, Indonesian
authorities knew that
influential international leaders were watching
from
afar.
arbitrary. In a string of
shootings
has seemed to baffle regional government officials
and investigators, at
least 19 people have been killed
in recent weeks. [Read accounts from
the /Jakarta Post/
on 7/2/12
7/3/12
7/5/12
Many more, including a German tourist
have sustained bullet wounds. One Papuan leader, Mako
Tabuni, held a
press conference on June 13th where he
publicly asked the police to get
to the bottom of the
shootings. "Only one local media outlet,
papuapos.com,
dared to report on this press conference," according to
aFacebook update
Mote, a Senior Human Rights Fellow at Yale
Law School who hails from
West Papua's highlands.
"Probably Mako didn't get a chance to read the
news
story
the Facebook post continues, "because it was published
the same morning
that uniformed police officers came to
his house and killed him."
"The
killing of Mr. Tabuni is a clear violation of international
human
rights law principles," wrote Franciscans
International in a formal
allegation to the United
Nations last month. "This is a clear example of
a
targeted killing." As international organizations call
attention to
ongoing abuses, access to the region has
become even more difficult. The
Indonesian government
recently requested that Scott Marciel, the
Ambassador of
the United States, reschedule a planned trip to West
Papua. In response to my query about this aborted trip a
U.S. State
Department Spokesperson said:
visit... [and] is committed to rescheduling his travel to
Papua as
soon as feasible. Limitations on access to
Papua by foreign
government officials, NGO personnel
and journalists feed suspicions
in the international
community about government actions in those
areas. We
encourage the Indonesian government to take this into
consideration when reviewing travel requests. The U.S.
government
condemns the recent violence in Papua and
urges the Indonesian
government to conduct full and
transparent investigations into the
incidents and
allegations of excessive force on the part of the
security forces.
in West Papua. But,
the old tactics of terror are no longer working.
Smartphones and social media are allowing savvy
indigenous leaders to
reach out to allies abroad and to
spread audacious hopes amongst their
countrymen at
home.
still painting pictures of
Papuans with an exotic brush, indigenous
activists are
quietly formulating their own imaginative dreams. Papuans
are picturing sweeping changes on future horizons. They
are imagining an
end to the current military occupation,
a new era of justice and
freedom. Watching recent
developments from afar, I have started to
expect the
unexpected. Intrepid travelers who are willing to put up
with
months of bureaucratic tedium, or who dare to defy
unjust visa policies,
certainly stand a chance of
learning about surprising indigenous visions.
Ph.D. from the University of California-Santa
Cruz and is currently a
Mellon Fellow at the CUNY
Graduate Center in New York City. His first
book,
Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture
of
Global Power, was published in April 2012 by Duke
University Press/.
*Follow American Anthropological
Association on
Twitter:www.twitter.com/AmericanAnthro
----------------------------
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/07/11/view-point-old-military-habits-die-hard.html
2) View Point: Old (military) habits die hard
A- A A+
at the so-called “Arab Spring” and recent
events in Egypt, you could
have fooled me.
in June, thousands flocked to Tahrir Square to
celebrate. Waving
Egyptian flags, they chanted “God is
great” and “Down with military rule”.
anybody would be ready for a change. Since Egypt became
a republic in
1953, it’s been a struggle between the
Muslim Brotherhood and a secular,
nationalist
military-backed government.
government. They tried to assassinate president Nasser,
killed president
Anwar Sadat in 1981 and had a go at
Mubarak too, but it didn’t get them
anywhere.
Muslim Brotherhood man is voted in, fair and
square. Yippee, time to
sing Kool and the Gang’s
“Celebration” song!
reins of power? The Egyptians elected a new legislature,
but the
Constitutional Court declared it invalid and the
Supreme Council of the
Armed Forces (SCAF) stepped in
instead.
the armed forces. This means
that Mursi can’t pass laws unless the army
agrees and
he can’t instruct the army to do anything.
sure — sworn in too — but what power does he have?
And if things go
wrong, he will be the fall guy. Very
convenient — for the military that
is. Mursi or no
Mursi, for all intents and purposes Egypt is not much
more than a military junta — unless Mursi confronts
them by recalling
the legislature, as he is now
threatening to do.
the generals too
much. They know history has made the Muslim Brotherhood
very cautious. It will be reluctant to tackle the army
head-on, because
that would provide the soldiers with an
excuse to marginalize or even
annihilate them. Sans
Mubarak, the old patterns are basically intact.
military rule (1966-1998), I couldn’t help making
comparisons with
Indonesia. Here it took 12 years for
democratization to slow to a stop
(and stop it did, two
years ago). In Egypt, it happened in the blink of
an eye
– almost as soon as it started.
Well,
Prabowo Subianto is ahead in the polls for the 2014
presidential
election. As the former Special Forces
commander, he was a prominent
figure in the Indonesian
Military. He is also a self-confessed human
rights
offender who was denied a visa to the US for contravening
the UN
Convention against Torture.
pattern of military intervention in this country. Yes,
Indonesia has
become more complex now, and an army
probably couldn’t manage it easily
any more.
opening — think about Germany after World War I,
when president Paul von
Hindenburg appointed Nazi leader
Adolf Hitler as chancellor.
We all know
Indonesia isn’t really a failed state — the economy is
growing and the state system is intact. So what created
this perception
of failure?
Bambang Yudhoyono’s initials, SBY, now stand for suka
bengong ya (going
blank). Because he leads a minority
government, he’s often politically
paralyzed.
the people really like — even Prabowo only has
support from less than 11
percent of voters, with the
other candidates way behind him (see “Mega,
Prabowo,
Bakrie all bottom out in new survey”, The Jakarta Post,
July 9).
rampant corruption, which points to
a failure of the system. It brings
people into power
indebted by campaign costs, and puts at their disposal
the means to get money, waiting for bribes to pass
laws.
(KPK) and other reform
organizations because they feel threatened.
to SBY’s imploding Democratic Party (PD) too. In fact,
the PD is a good
metaphor for the legislature as a whole
– both are beset by corruption
and have lost public
confidence.
will follow. In fact, it is
very difficult to do well and harder to keep
intact. In
the Philippines, it unraveled after Cory Aquino (1986-1992),
while in Thailand it fell apart with Thaksin Shinawatra
(2001-2006). And
Egypt? Well, it hasn’t even got past
“Go” in its reform process.
will hold?
Egypt is a lesson for Indonesia that democracy is fragile,
very vulnerable and liable to vanish when your back is
turned.
plus c’est la meme
chose” (the more things change, the more they stay
the
same). Let’s hope that doesn’t apply to Indonesia as
well.
------------------------------
from
Tapol
*3) WPNA demnstration will call for greater concern
from the government*
Tabloid JUBI, 9July 2012
zone of peace are becoming increasingly difficult to
achieve.Imprisonment, killings, corruption, terror and
acts of
intimidation against the civilian population are
now occurring in Papua
but no one knows who will take
responsibility for all these things.
and
other pro peace and anti violence organisations decided to
organise
a peaceful demonstration on Tuesday this week,
calling on the Indonesian
government and the Papuan
people to spare no efforts in resolving the
conflict in
Papua and to seek a solution as quickly as possible in the
interests of peace, justice and order for the Papuan
people and the
Indonesian people now living in the Land
of Papua.
demonstration to mourn he current
situation. When will there be pease in
Papua,' said one
leaflet that has been distributed widely in Jayapura.
organise the demonstration under the slogan:
'Papua Mourns'.on Tuesday,
10 July from 9am until late
in the afternoon.They will not allow people
in the
demonstration to bring alcohol or sharp implements which
could
lead to anarchy. and disorder.
but ask yourselves when will there be
peace in Papua?'
--------------------------------------------
and price differentials*
Bintang Papua, 9
and 10 July 2012
businesses from outside
Papua while failing to advance the interests of
local
Papuan producers. TAPOL]
Jayapura
doors to the general public,
many people who have purchased goods have
complained
that there has been a huge differential between the prices
marked on the shelves and the prices of the goods when
they reach the
cashier to pay for their purchases. As a
result people who have been
shopping at the new store
are being advised to take care about their
purchases to
avoid losing a lot of money.
cashier
for something costing Rp 91,000 although she hadn't even
purchased the product. Other shoppers made similar
complaints. In once
instance, the shopper was charged
Rp. 105,000 for cooking oil while
the oil normally
costs only Rp. 29,000. Other shoppers complained of
striking differences in the prices they were
charged.
after complaining. A store
manager said that they would give refunds to
anyone
complaining about price differentials.
made by many people for the supermarket's licence to
trade to be
revoked, because the terms of the licence
which had been agreed in
Jakarta with the business had
been violated.
offered for sale had been
imported from outside West Papua or even from
abroad.
Indigenous Papuans who were able to produce these products
in
large quantities had not been able to compete with
the many products on
offer at the store. Another
complaint was that the store was selling alcohol
foodstuffs to be imported from outside Papua or from
abroad because they
were readily available in the Land
of Papua and would enable local
producers to compete in
the local market. Taking supplies from local
producers
would also help to improve the level of welfare of the
Papuan
people