No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.

Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.

The latest UN Human Rights Committee report on Indonesia in March was highly critical and raised concerns about extrajudicial killing, excessive use of force and enforced disappearances involving indigenous Papuans.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua decolonisation reports

Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.

“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.

“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.

“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”

Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.

The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.

Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.

The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.

In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.

In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.

Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”

After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.

A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.

PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.

“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.

He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.

During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.

Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”

Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.

Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.

“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.

“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”

Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.

Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.

Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.

While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.

An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.

Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.

Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.

Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.

“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.

“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”

The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.

The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.

“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with permission of BenarNews.

By Pita Ligaiula in Tokyo

The Pacific Islands Forum hopes to send a high-level delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia to investigate the current political crisis in the French territory before the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga in August.

According to Pacnews, Forum Chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown confirmed this during an interview with journalists in Tokyo after the conclusion of the PALM10 meeting.

He said while it was a work in progress, there had been a request from the territorial government of New Caledonia for a high-level Pacific delegation.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Brown said the next step was to write a letter which would then need support from France.

“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the Government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) has voiced strong objections to France’s handling of the political situation in Kanaky/New Caledonia.

Brown said the Forum shared similar concerns.

“We do have similar concerns. The third referendum was boycotted by the Kanak population because of the impacts of covid-19 and the respect for the mourning period. Therefore, the outcome of that referendum is not valuable,” he said.

The adviser to New Caledonia’s President Charles Wea, who is in Japan for talks on the sidelines of the PALM10 meeting, told RNZ Pacific the high level group would be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.

Fiji’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sitiveni Rabuka announced he would lead the Forum’s fact-finding mission in New Caledonia.

“I have also been asked by many Pacific leaders to lead a group to conduct a fact-finding mission in Nouméa to understand the problems they are facing,” he said during a talanoa session with the Fijian diaspora in Tokyo.

“Additionally, I will accompany Prime Minister James Marape to visit the President of Indonesia to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua.”

New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston said on Friday that the Pacific Islands Forum could serve as a “constructive force” to find a “path forward” in New Caledonia.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ, and Pacnews.

Here is the livestream of Dr David Robie’s keynote address “Frontline Media Faultlines: How Critical Journalism Can Survive Against the Odds” at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference in Suva, Fiji, earlier this month.

The conference was hosted by the University of the South Pacific journalism programme in collaboration with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) on 4-6 July 2024.

Dr Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of the APMN, is introduced by Professor Cherian George of Hong Kong Baptist University.

• READ MORE: A report of the address is here
• Other Pacific Media Conference reports

Dr David Robie’s keynote address on July 4.  Livestream video: The Australia Today

Republished from The Australia Today’s YouTube channel and Café Pacific with permission.

A New Zealand politician and human rights activist with a strong connection to Tonga’s Democracy movement and other Pacific activism has been farewelled after dying last week aged 80.

Keith Locke served as a former Green MP from 1999 to 2011.

While in Parliament, he was a notable critic of New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan and the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, and advocated for refugee rights.

• READ MORE: Other obituaries, reports on Keith Locke

He was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to human rights advocacy in 2021, received NZ Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender award in 2012, and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand’s Harmony Award in 2013.

Locke was often a voice for the Pacific in the New Zealand Parliament.

In 2000, he spoke out on the plight of overstayers who were facing deportation under the National Party government.

As the Green Party’s then immigration spokesperson, he supported calls for a review of the overstayer legislation.

Links to Pohiva
“We are a Polynesian nation, and we increasingly celebrate the Samoan and Tongan part of our national identity,” Locke said at the time.

“How can we claim as our own the Jonah Lomus and Beatrice Faumuinas while we are prepared to toss their relations out of the country at a moment’s notice?”

Locke had links to Tonga through his relationship with Democracy campaigner and later Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva, who died in 2019.

Locke defended Pohiva in 1996 when he was a spokesperson for the Alliance Party. He said he was horrified that Pohiva and two colleagues had been jailed for comments in their pro-democracy newspaper Kele’a.

He criticised the New Zealand government for keeping silent about what he described as a “gross abuse of human rights.”

In 2004, Locke called on the New Zealand government to speak out about what he called the suppression of the press in Tonga.

Locke, who was then the Greens foreign affairs spokesman, said several publications had been denied licences, including an offshoot of the New Zealand-produced Taimi ‘o Tonga newspaper.

Vale #KeithLocke, tireless and fearless campaigner for peace, justice and a sustainable future for a green planet … I’ll also remember him for friendship and commitment to independent truth publishing and OneWorld progressive bookshop. – @DavidRobie, editor, #AsiaPacificReport pic.twitter.com/SC0obJzfOA

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 21, 2024

Tribute by Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie.

‘Speak out as Pacific neighbour’
“We owe it to the Tongan people to support them in their hour of need.  We should speak out as a Pacific neighbour,” he said.

In 2007, ‘Akilisi was again charged with sedition, along with four other pro-democracy MPs, for allegedly being responsible for the rioting that took place following a mass pro-democracy march in Nuku’alofa.

“As the Greens’ foreign affairs spokesperson I went up to Tonga to support ‘Akilisi and his colleagues fight these trumped-up charges. I was shocked to find that the New Zealand government was going along with these sedition charges against five sitting MPs,” Locke said in an interview.

“I was in Tonga not long before the 2010 elections with a cross-party group of New Zealand MPs. We were helping Tongan candidates understand the intricacies of a parliamentary system.

“At the time I remember ‘Akilisi being worried that the block of nine ‘noble’ MPs could frustrate the desires of what were to be 17 directly-elected MPs. And so it turned out.

“Despite winning 12 of the popularly-elected 17 seats in 2010, the pro-democracy MPs were outvoted 14 to 12 when the votes of the nine nobles MPs were put into the equation.

“However, in the two subsequent elections (2014 and 2017) the Democrats predominated and ‘Akilisi took over as Prime Minister. I am not qualified to judge his record on domestic issues, except to say it couldn’t have been an easy job because of the fractious nature of Tongan politics.

“And ‘Akilisi has been in poor health.

‘Admirable stand’
“As Prime Minister he took an admirable stand on some important international issues, such as climate change. At the Pacific Island Forum he criticised those countries which stayed silent on the plight of the West Papuans.”

Locke said that Tonga may not yet be fully democratic, but that great progress had been made under Pohiva’s “humble and self-sacrificing leadership.”

Keith Locke was also an outspoken advocate for democracy and independence causes in Fiji, Kanaky New Caledonia, Palestine, Philippines, Tahiti, Tibet, Timor-Leste and West Papua and in many other countries.

His remembrance service was held with whānau and supporters at a packed Mount Eden War memorial Hall on Tuesday.

Dr Philip Cass is an editorial adviser for Kaniva Tonga. Republished as a collaboration between KT and Asia Pacific Report.

Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths of Plains FM96.9 radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Robie has just been made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM) and Earthwise ask him what this means to him. Why has he campaigned for so long for Pacific issues to receive media attention?

Do Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia really feel like part of the Pacific world? What are the growing concerns about increasing militarisation in the Pacific and spreading Chinese influence?

• LISTEN AT PLAINS FM: The interview with Dr David Robie on Earthwise

And why is decolonisation in Kanaky New Caledonia from France such a pressing issue? Dr Robie also draws parallels between the Kanak, Palestinian and West Papuan struggles.

Dr Robie also talks about next month’s Pacific Media International Conference in Suva, Fiji, on 4-6 July 2024.

Broadcast: Plains Radio FM96.9

Interviewee: Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a semiretired professor of Pacific journalism. He founded the Pacific Media Centre.
Interviewers: Lois and Martin Griffiths, Earthwise programme

Date: 12 June 2024 (28min), broadcast June 17.

Youtube: Café Pacific: https://www.youtube.com/@cafepacific2023

https://plainsfm.org.nz/

Café Pacific: https://davidrobie.nz/

The Earthwise interview with David Robie.                         Video: Plains Radio FM96.9FM

A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963.

In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM (Free Papua Organisation) leader Jeffrey P Bomanak has also claimed that this was the “beginning of genocide” that could only have happened through the failure of the global body to “legally uphold its decolonisation responsibilities in accordance with the UN Charter”.

Bomanak says in the letter dated yesterday that the UN failed to confront the “relentless barbarity of the Indonesian invasion force and expose the lie of the fraudulent 1969 gun-barrel ‘Act of No Choice'”.

• READ MORE: OPM leader’s open letter condemns Australia’s ‘treachery’ over Papua
• West Papua accusations fly at Australia, US
• Other West Papua reports

The open letter follows one released on the eve of Anzac Day last month which strongly criticised the role of Australia and the United States, accusing both countries of “betrayal” in Papuan aspirations for independence.

According to RNZ News today, an Australian statement in response to the earlier OPM letter said the federal government “unreservedly recognises Indonesia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Papua provinces”.

The White House has not responded.

The OPM says it has compiled a “prima facie pictorial ‘integration’ history” of Indonesia’s actions in integrating the Pacific region into an Asian nation. It plans to present this evidence of “six decades of crimes against humanity” to Secretary-General Guterres and new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

The open letter states:

May 1, 2024

Dear Secretary-General Guterres,

I am addressing you in an open letter which I will be releasing to media and governments because I have previously brought to your attention the history of the illegal annexation of West Papua on May 1st, 1963, and the role of your office in the fraudulent UN referendum in 1969, called an Act of Free Choice and I have never received a reply.

After six decades of OPM letters and Papuan appeals to the UN Secretariat, I am providing the transparency and accountability of an “open letter”, so that historians of the future can
investigate the moral and ethical credibility of the UN Secretariat.

May 1st is a day of mourning for Papuans. A day of grief over the illegal annexation of our ancestral Melanesian homeland by a violent occupation force from Southeast Asia.

Indonesia’s annexation of Western New Guinea (Irian Jaya/West Papua) on May 1, 1963, is
commemorated in Indonesia’s Parliament as a day of integration. The photos on these pages on these pages show a different story. The reality these photos portray is, in fact, one of the longest ongoing acts of genocide since the end of the Second World War.

An invasion and an illegal annexation not unlike Nazi Germany’s annexation in 1938 of
its neighbouring country, Austria. The difference for Papuans is that the UN and the USA were co-conspirators in preventing our right to determine a future that was our right to have under the UN decolonisation process: independence and nation-state sovereignty.

A very chilling contradiction — the Allies we fought alongside, nursed back to life, and died with during WWII had joined forces with a mass-murderer not unlike Hitler — the Indonesian president Suharto (see Photo collage #2: Axis of Evil).

Some scholars have called the May 1, 1963 annexation “Indonesia’s Anschluss”. Suharto and the conspirators goal of colonial invasion and conquest had been achieved through
the illegal annexation of my people’s ancestral homeland, my homeland.

General and president-in-waiting Suharto signed a contract in 1967 with American mining giant Freeport, another company associated with David Rockefeller, two years before we were to determine our future through the aforementioned gun-barrel UN referendum project-managed by a brutal occupation force. Our future had already been determined by Suharto, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and Suharto’s friend, UN secretary-General U Thant. U Thant had succeeded Dag Hammarskjöld who had been assassinated for his controversial view that human rights and freedom were absolutely universal and should not be subjected to the criminal whims of either tyrants like Suharto or a resource industry with views on human rights and freedom that resembled Suharto’s.

I do not need to give you a blow-by-blow history for your edification — you already know the entire history and the victim tally — 350,000 adults and 150,000 children and babies. And rising. You are, after all, a man of some principle — Portugal’s former prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, as well as a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party. And presiding as Portuguese prime minster during the final years of Fretilin’s war of liberation in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975 with anywhere up to 250,000 victims of genocide. Please explain to me the difference between the Indonesia’s
invasion and “integration” of East Timor and Indonesia’s invasion and “integration” of my homeland, Western New Guinea (West Papua).

Apart from the oil in the Timor Gap and the gold and copper all over my homeland — the wealth of someone else’s resources promoting the “integration” policies pictured over these pages.

As a member of a socialist party, you might be attending May Day ceremonies today. I will be counselling victims and the families of loved ones who have been “integrated” today. Yes, the freedom-loving Papuans are holding rallies to protest the annexation of our homeland . . .  to protest the failure — your failure — to apply justice and to end this nightmare.

The cost of the UN-approved annexation to Papuans in pain and suffering: massacres, torture, systemic rape by TNI and Polri, mutilation and dismemberment as a signature of your barbarity. Relentless barbarity causing six decades of physical and cultural genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and wave after wave of ethnic cleansing.

The cost to Papuans in the theft and plunder of our natural resources: genocide by starvation and famine.

The cost to Papuans from the foreign resource industry plundering our natural resources: the devastation of pristine environments, whole ecosystems poisoned by the resource industry’s chemical toxicity, called tailings, released into rivers thereby destroying whole riverine catchments along with food sources from fishing and farming — catchment rivers and nearby farming lands contaminated by Freeport, and other’s. A failure to apply any international standards for risk management to prevent the associated birth defects
in villages now living in contaminated catchments.

That we would choose to become part of any nation so brutal defies credibility. That the UN approved integration should have been impossible based on the evidence of the ever-increasing numbers of defence and security forces landing in West Papua and undertaking military campaigns that include ever-increasing victims and internally displaced Papuans, the bombing of central highland villages a current example? Such courage! Why are foreign
media not allowed into my people’s homeland?

Secretary-General Guterres, future historians will judge the efficacy of the United Nations. The integrity. West Papua will feature as a part the UN Secretariat’s legacy. To this endeavour, as the leader of Organisasi Papua Merdeka, I ask, and demand that you comply with your obligations under article 85 part 2 and sundry articles of your Charter of United Nations which requires that you inform the Trusteeship Council about your General Assembly resolution 1752, with which you are subjugating our people and homelands of West New Guinea which we call West Papua.

The agreement which your resolution 1752 is authorising, begins with the words “The Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, having in mind the interests and welfare of the people of the territory of West New Guinea (West Irian)”

Your agreement is clearly a trusteeship agreement written according to your rules of Chapter XII of your Charter of the United Nations.

The West Papuan people have always opposed your use of United Nations military to make our people’s human rights subject to the whim of your two administrators, UNTEA and from 1st May 1963 the Republic of Indonesia that is your current administrator.

We refer to your organisation’s last official record about West Papua which still suffers your ongoing unjust administration managed by UNTEA and Indonesia:

Because you also used article 81 and Chapter XII of your Charter to seize control of our homelands when you created your General Assembly resolution 1752, the Netherlands was excused by article 73(e), “to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply”, from transmitting further reports about our people and the extrajudicial killings that your new administrators began using to silence our demands for our liberty and independence.

We therefore demand your Trusteeship Council begin its unfinished duty of preparing your United Nations reports as articles 85 part 2, 87 and 88 of your Charter requires.

West Papua is entitled to independence, and article 76 requires you assist. It is illegal for Indonesia to invade us and to impede our independence, and to subsequently subject us to six decades of every classification for crimes against humanity listed by the International Criminal Court.

We know this trusteeship agreement was first proposed by the American lawyer John Henderson in 1959, and was discussed with Indonesian officials in 1961 six months before the death of your Dag Hammarskjöld. We think it is shameful that you then elected Indonesia’s friend U Thant as Secretary-General, and we demand that you permit the Secretariat to perform its proper duty of revealing your current annexation of West Papua (Resolution 1752) to your Trusteeship Council.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Jeffrey P Bomanak
Chairman-Commander OPM
Markas Victoria, May 1, 2024

By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist, and Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

As women and children seek hope of a future without tribal fighting, the cycle of killing continues in Papua New Guinea’s remote Highlands.

Tribal warfare dating back generations is being said to show no signs of easing and considered a complicated issue due to PNG’s complex colonial history.

Following the recent massacre of more than 70 people, community leaders in Wabag held mediation talks in an effort to draw up a permanent solution on Tuesday, with formal peace negotiations set down for yesterday between the warring factions.

• READ MORE: Other tribal warfare reports

A woman, who walked 20 hours on foot with seven children to flee the violence in the remote highlands, was at the meeting and told RNZ Pacific she wants the fighting to stop so she can return home.

In 2019, the then police minister said killings of more than two dozen women and children “changed everything”.

But a tribesman, who has asked to remain anonymous, told RNZ Pacific the only thing that had changed was it was easier to get guns.

Multiple sources have told RNZ Pacific the government appears to be powerless in such remote areas, saying police and security forces are sent in by the government when conflict breaks out, there is a temporary pause to the fighting, then the forces leave, and the fighting starts again.

There are also concerns about a lack of political will at the national level to enforce the law using police and military due to tribal and political allegiances of local MPs, as recommendations made decades ago by former PNG Defence Force commander Major-General Jerry Singirok are yet to be fully implemented.

While the government, police and community groups look at peaceful solutions, mercenaries are collecting munitions for the next retaliatory fight, multiple sources on the ground, including a mercenary, told us.

Killing pays
After “Bloody Sunday”, which left dozens dead in revenge killings, the men with guns were out of bullets.

Tribal fighting in Papua New Gunea’s Enga Province reached boiling point on February 18, fuelled by a long-standing feud between different clans, which resulted in a mass massacre.

The tribesman who spoke to RNZ Pacific said they did not want to fight anymore but believed there was no other option when someone from the “enemy” turned up on their land wanting to burn down their village.

“Prime Minister [James Marape] — we want development in our villages,” he said, speaking from a remote area in the Highlands after his village was burnt to the ground.

There is no employment, no infrastructure, no support, he said, adding that those were the things that would keep people busy and away from engaging in tribal conflict.

At the moment killing people paid, he said.

‘Hundreds of lives lost’
“Businessmen, leaders and educated elites are supplying guns, bullets and financing the engagement of gunmen,” Wapenamanda Open MP Miki Kaeok said.

The MP is worried about the influence of money and guns, saying they have taken over people’s lives especially with the increase in engagement of local mercenaries and availability of military issued firearms.

“Hundreds of lives have been lost. Properties worth millions of kina have been ransacked and destroyed. I don’t want this to continue. It must stop now,” Kaeok pleaded.

Meanwhile, men in the Highlands are paid anything between K3000 (NZ$1300) to K10,000 (NZ$4,400) to kill, the tribesman claimed during the interview.

Then, he called over one of the men involved in that fight, an alleged killer, to join the video interview.

“Um this is the hire man,” he introduced him. “If they put K2000 (NZ$880) for him and say go burn down this village — he goes in groups — they clear the village, they give him money and he goes to his village . . . ”

The “hire man”, standing slouched over holding a machete, looked at the camera and claimed 64 people were killed on one side and eight on another pushing the total death toll to more than 70.

Wabag police told RNZ Pacific on Tuesday that 63 bodies had been recovered so far.

“A lot of people died,” an inspector from Wabag told RNZ Pacific.

The killings have not stopped there; a video has been circulating on social media platforms of what appears to be a young boy pleading for his life before he was killed.

The video, seen by RNZ Pacific, shows the child being hit by a machete until he falls to the ground.

The man who allegedly carried out the brutality was introduced to RNZ Pacific by the tribesman via video chat.

“They recognise that this person was an enemy,” the tribesman — translating for the killer, who was standing in a line with other men holding machetes — told RNZ Pacific.

“This small guy (referring to the dead child) came out of the bush to save his life. But he ended up in the hands of enemies.

“And then they chopped him with a bush knife and he was dead.”

“In revenge, he killed that small boy” because the killer’s three family members were killed about five months ago.

Asked whether they were saddened that children have died in the violence, the killer said: “No one can spare their lives because he was included in the fight and he’s coming as a warrior in order to kill people,” our source translated.

Killing people — “that’s the only way”, they said.

He said that while fighting had been going on most of his life, military style weapons had only been in the mix for the last decade or so.

He said getting a gun was relatively easy and all they had to do was wait in the bush for five days near the border with Indonesia.

“We are using high-powered rifle guns that we are getting exported from West Papuans.”

He added the change from tribe-on-tribe to clan-to-clan fighting has exacerbated the issue, with a larger number of people involved in any one incident.

Mediation underway
A Wapenamanda community leader in Enga Province Aquila Kunza said mediation was underway between the warring factions in the remote Highlands to prevent further violence.

“The policemen are facilitating and meditating the peace mediation and they are listening,” Kunza said.

Revenge killings had been ongoing for years and there was no sign of gunmen stopping anytime soon, Kunza said.

“This fight has lasted about four years now and I know it will continue. It occurs intermittently, it comes and goes,” he said.

“When there’s somebody around (such as the military), they go into hiding, when the army is gone because the government cannot support them anymore, the fighting erupts again.”

Kunza has been housing women and children who fled the violence and after years of violence and watching police come and go, he is calling for a community-led approach.

At a large community gathering in Wabag the main town of Enga on Tuesday people voiced their concerns.

“The government must be prepared to give money to every family [impacted] and assist them to resettle back to their villages to make new gardens to build new houses,” Kunza said.

He said formal peace negotiations are taking place today as residents from across the Enga Province are travelling to Wabag today for peace talks between the warring factions.

‘Value life’
Many Engans have lamented that the traditional rules of war have been ignored as children have not been spared in the conflict and societal norms that governed their society have been broken.

A woman who was kidnapped last year in Hela in the Bosavi region — a different area to where the recent massacre took place — and held for ransom said PNG was on the verge of being a failed state.

“I’ve gone through this,” Cathy Alex told RNZ Pacific.

“People told us who gave them their guns in Hela, people told us who supplied them munitions. People told us the solutions. People told us why tribal fights started, why violence is happening,” Alex shared.

She said they managed to find out that killers got paid K2000 (NZ$880) for killing one person, that was in 2017.

“For a property that’s worth K200/300,000 [up to NZ$130,000] that’s destroyed, the full amount goes to the person who caused the tribal fight,” she said.

“How can you not value the life of a person?”

Government help
With retaliations continuing the “hire man” who claims to have killed more than 20 people from warring tribes, said he is staring down death.

“He would have to die on his land because…when they come they will fight…we have to shoot in order to protect my village,” the tribesman explained.

“He said he’s not scared about it. He is not afraid of dying. He got a gun in order to shoot, they shoot him, and that’s finished.”

“He’s really worried about his village not to burn down.”

The tribesman said that without government committing financial support for infrastructure, jobs and community initiatives the fighting will continue.

He also wants to see a drastic change in police numbers and a more permanent military presence on the ground.

“We don’t have a proper government to protect us from enemies in order to protect ourselves, our houses . . . and to protect assets we have to buy guns in order to protect them.”

Parliament urged to act
Last week, the PNG Parliament discussed the issue of gun violence.

East Sepik Governor Allan Bird, who is on the opposition benches, has called on the government “to respond”.

He said the “terrorists in the upper Highlands” needed their guns to be stripped from them.

“We are a government for goodness sake — let’s act like one,” Bird said.

Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso agreed with Bird’s sentiments and acknowledged that the situation was serious.

He called on the whole of Parliament to unite to fix the issue together.

RNZ Pacific has contacted the PM Marape’s office for comment with no response yet.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

On 1 December each year, in cities across Australia and New Zealand, a small group of West Papuan immigrants and refugees and their supporters raise a flag called the Morning Star in an act that symbolises their struggle for self-determination.

Doing the same thing in their homeland is illegal.

This year is the 62nd anniversary of the flag being raised alongside the Dutch standard in 1961 as The Netherlands prepared their colony for independence.

• READ MORE: Why Indonesia fails to address the West Papua conflict
• Activists call on NZ govt to do more for West Papua

Formerly the colony of Dutch New Guinea, Indonesia controversially took control of West Papua in 1963 and has now divided the Melanesian region into seven provinces.

In the intervening years, brutal civil conflict is thought to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives through combat and deprivation, and Indonesia has been criticised internationally for human rights abuses.

The Morning Star will fly in Ronny Kareni’s adopted hometown of Canberra and will also be raised across the Pacific region and around the world.

“It brings tears of joy to me because many Papuan lives, those who have gone before me, have shed blood or spent time in prison, or died just because of raising the Morning Star flag,” Kareni, the Australian representative of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) in Australia told SBS World News.

‘Our right to self-determination’
“Commemorating the anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination and West Papua to be free from Indonesia’s brutal occupation.”

Indonesia’s diplomats regularly issue statements criticising the act, including when the flag was raised at Sydney’s Leichhardt Town Hall, as “a symbol of separatism” that could be “misinterpreted to represent support from the Australian government”.

“It’s a symbol of an aspiring independent state which would secede from the unitary Indonesian republic, so the flag itself isn’t particularly welcome within official Indonesian political discourse,” says Professor Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesian citizen and director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.

“The raising of the flag is an expression of the grievances they hold against Indonesia for the way that economic and political governance and development has taken place over the last six decades.

“But it’s really part of the job of Indonesian officials to make a counterpoint that West Papua is a legitimate part of the unitary republic.”

The history of the Morning Star
After World War II, a wave of decolonisation swept the globe.

The Netherlands reluctantly relinquished the Dutch East Indies in 1949, which became Indonesia, but held onto Dutch New Guinea, much to the chagrin of President Sukarno, who led the independence struggle.

In 1957, Sukarno began seizing the remaining Dutch assets and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens, many of whom were evacuated to Australia, in large part over The Netherlands’ reluctance to hand over Dutch New Guinea.

The Dutch created the New Guinea Council of predominantly elected Papuan representatives in 1961 and it declared a 10-year roadmap to independence, adopted the Morning Star flag, the national anthem – “Hai Tanahku Papua” or “Oh My Land Papua” – and a coat-of-arms for a future state to be known as “West Papua”.

The West Papua flag was inspired by the red, white and blue of the Dutch but the design can hold different meanings for the traditional landowners.

“The five-pointed star has the cultural connection to the creation story, the seven blue lines represent the seven customary land groupings,” says Kareni.

The red is now often cited as a tribute to the blood spilt fighting for independence.

Attending the 1961 inauguration were Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia — represented by the president of the Senate Sir Alister McMullin in full ceremonial attire — but the United States, after initially accepting an invitation, withdrew.

Cold War in full swing
The Cold War was in full swing and the Western powers were battling the Russians for influence over non-aligned Indonesia.

The Morning Star flag was raised for the first time alongside the Dutch one at a military parade in the capital Hollandia, now called Jayapura, on 1 December.

On 19 December, Sukarno began ordering military incursions into what he called “West Irian”, which saw thousands of soldiers parachute or land by sea ahead of battles they overwhelmingly lost.

Then 20-year-old Dutch soldier Vincent Scheenhouwer, who now lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, was one of the thousands deployed to reinforce the nascent Papua Volunteer Corps, largely armed with WW2 surplus, arriving in June 1962.

“The groups who were on patrol found weapons, so modern it was unbelievable, and plenty of ammunition,” he said of Russian arms supplied to Indonesian troops.

He did not see combat himself but did have contact with the local people, who variously flew the red and white Indonesian or the Dutch flag, depending on who controlled the ground.

“I think whoever was supplying the people food, they belonged to them,” he said.

He did not see the Morning Star flag.

“At that time, nothing, totally nothing. Only when I came out to Australia (in 1970) did I find out more about it,” he said.

Waning international support
With long supply lines on the other side of the world and waning international support, the Dutch sensed their time was up and signed the territory over to UN control in October 1962 under the “New York Agreement”, which abolished the symbols of a future West Papuan state, including the flag.

The UN handed control to Indonesia in May 1963 on condition it prepared the territory for a referendum on self-determination.

“I’m sort of happy it didn’t come to a serious conflict (at the time), on the other hand you must feel for the people, because later on we did hear they have been very badly mistreated,” says Scheenhouwer.

“I think Holland was trying to do the right thing but it’s gone completely now, destroyed by Indonesia.”

The so-called Act Of Free Choice referendum in 1969 saw the Indonesian military round up 1025 Papuan leaders who then voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.

The outcome was accepted by the UN General Assembly, which failed to declare if the referendum complied with the “self-determination” requirements of the New York Agreement, and Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.

“Rightly or wrongly, in the Indonesian imagination, unlike East Timor for example, Papua was always regarded as part of the unitary Indonesian republic because the definition of the latter was based on the borders of colonial Dutch East Indies, whereas East Timor was never part of that, it was a Portuguese colony,” says Professor Hadiz.

“The average Indonesian’s reaction to the flag goes against everything they learned from kindergarten all the way to university.

Knee-jerk reaction
“So their reaction is knee-jerk. They are just not aware of the conditions there and relate to West Papua on the basis of government propaganda, and also the mainstream media which upholds the idea of the Indonesian unitary republic.”

In 1971, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) declared the “republic of West Papua” with the Morning Star as its flag, which has gone on to become a potent binding symbol for the movement.

The basis for Indonesian control of West Papua is rejected by what are today fractured and competing military and political factions of the independence movement, but they do agree on some things.

“The New York Agreement was a treaty signed between the Dutch and Indonesia and didn’t involve the people of West Papua, which led to the so-called referendum in 1969, which was a whitewash,” says Kareni.

“For the people, it was a betrayal and West Papua remains unfinished business of the United Nations.”

Raising the flag also raises the West Papua issue on an international level, especially when it is violently repressed in the two Indonesian provinces where there are reportedly tens of thousands of troops deployed.

“It certainly doesn’t depict Indonesia in very favourable terms,” Professor Vedi says.

“The problem for the West Papua [independence] movement is that there’s not a lot of international support, whereas East Timor at least had a significant measure.

‘Concerns about geopolitical stability’
“Concerns about geopolitical stability and issues such as the Indonesian state, as we know it now, being dismembered to a degree — I think there would be a lot of nervousness in the international community.”

Australia provides significant military training and foreign aid to Indonesia and has recently agreed to further strengthen defence ties.

Australia signed the Lombok Treaty with Indonesia in 2006 recognising its territorial sovereignty.

“It’s important that we are doing it here to call on the Australian government to be vocal on the human rights situation, despite the bilateral relationship with Indonesia,” says Kareni.

“Secondly, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and the leaders have agreed to call for a visit of the UN Human Rights Commissioner to carry out an impartial investigation.”

Events are also planned across West Papua.

“It’s a milestone, 60 years, and we’re still waiting to freely sing the national anthem and freely fly the Morning Star flag so it’s very significant for us,” he says.

“We still continue to fight, to claim our rights and sovereignty of the land and people.”

Stefan Armbruster is Queensland and Pacific correspondent for SBS News. First published by SBS in 2021 and republished by Asia Pacific Report with minor edits and permission.

The Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP) and the Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) have denounced the Rome Agreement of 30 September 1962 as “illegal” during protest speeches marking the 61st anniversary last Saturday.

The groups gathered at several places throughout Indonesia to hold peaceful protests and speeches.

The protesters held a public discussion and protest in Yogyakarta, Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, Ternate, East Java and North Maluku.

• READ MORE: Release of Victor Yeimo from Indonesian prison rekindles West Papuan fight against racism
• Other West Papua reports

Some protesters were met by hardliner groups of Indonesians who claimed they were supported and protected by the Indonesian police.

The Facebook page of AMP reports that peaceful demonstrations were also scheduled for September 30 in Kupan city but were obstructed by Garuda reactionaries, known as ORMAS (Civic Organisation Group) and police officers.

Some conversations were extremely racist, indicating that both the police and state are still maintaining a policy of racism.

Protests such as these are not unusual. Papuan students and their Indonesian supporters do this annually in order to draw attention to Indonesia’s illegal occupation of West Papua, which violates international law and the UN Charters on self-determination and decolonisation.

This time, the protest was over the Rome Agreement.

In 2021, an attempt to stage a protest in front of the US Embassy in central Jakarta was also made, but 17 AMP Papuan students were arrested.

What the protests are against
These protests across Indonesia may be dismissed by mainstream media as insignificant. But for Papuans, they are actually most significant.

The theme is protesting against what Papuans see as the “genesis” of a betrayal with lies, deceit, and manipulation by powerful international actors that sealed Papua’s fate with Indonesia.

This set a stage of gross human rights violations and exploitation of West Papua’s natural resources, which has been going on since these agreements were signed.

They were treaties, agreements, discussions, and decisions concerning West Papua’s future made by state and multinational actors without Papuan input — ultimately leading to West Papua’s “destruction”.

According to the AMP, the agreement between the Netherlands, Indonesia, the United Nations (UN) and the United States was manipulated to gain control over Papua, reports Suara Kalbar.

The AMP Papuan students and their Indonesian solidarity groups stated that the September 1962 Rome Agreement, followed by the signing of the New York Agreement on August 15, 1962, was reached without the involvement of any representatives of the Papuan people.

The protesters’ highlighted these flaws of the Rome Agreement that:

1. The Act of Free Choice to be delayed or cancelled;
2. “Musyawarah” (a form of Indonesian consensus building) be used rather than one-person-one-vote;
3. The UN report to the UNGA be accepted without debate;
4. Indonesia would rule West Papua for 25 years after 1963;
5. The US could exploit natural resources in partnership with Indonesian state companies; and
6. The US would underwrite an Asian Development Bank grant for US$30 million and guarantee World Bank funds for a transmigration programme beginning in 1977.

The agreement signed by Indonesia, the Netherlands and the United States was a very controversial with 29 articles stipulating the New York agreement, which regulates 3 things, where articles 14-21 regulate self-determination based on the international practice of one person one vote; and articles 12 and 13 governing the transfer of the administration from the United Nations Temporary Executive (UNTEA) to Indonesia.

Thus, this agreement allowed Indonesia’s claim to the land of Papua, which had been carried out after the transfer of control of West Papua from Dutch to Indonesia through UNTEA on 1 May 1963.

West Papua ‘conditioned’
The student protesters argued that prior to 1963 Indonesia had already conditioned West Papua by conducting military operations and suppressing the pro-independence movement, reports Koran Kejora.

Ironically, the protesters say, even before the process of self-determination was carried out on 7 April 1967, Freeport, the state-owned “mining company of American imperialism”, had signed its first contract with Indonesia.

This meant that West Papua had already been claimed by Indonesia through Freeport’s first contract two years before the Act of Free Choice was conducted, reports Koran Kehora.

The Act of Free Choice itself “was a sham”, only 1025 out of 809,337 Papuans with the right to vote had been quarantined or voted, and only 175 of them voiced their opinion, protesters said.

Despite its undemocratic nature, terror, intimidation, manipulation, and gross human rights violations, with the implementation of the Act of Free Choice, Indonesia legitimised its illegal claim to West Papua.

Igin Kogoya, a coordinator for AMP and Indonesian supporters in Malang, said in a media release that Indonesia did not carry out the agreement in accordance with the New York Agreement, reports Jubi.

Instead, Indonesia uses a variety of military operations to condition the region and suppress the independence movement of West Papuans.

“Therefore, before the self-determination process was carried out in 1969, Freeport, the imperialist state-owned mining company of the United States, signed its first contract of work with the Indonesian government illegally on 7 April 1967.”

Early Freeport mine deal
Naldo Wasiage of AMP Lombok and Benjos of FRI-WP Lombok claimed colonial Indonesia had made claims to the West Papua region with Freeport’s first contract two years before the Act of Free Choice was passed.

Today, Indonesia’s reform, terror, intimidation, and incarceration, as well as the shootings and murders of Papuans, still occurring.

The human rights of the Papuan people are insignificant and hold no value for Indonesia.

The Military Operation Area was implemented throughout West Papua before and after the illegal Act of Free Choice. This clearly demonstrates that Indonesia’s desire to colonise West Papua until the present.

When asked about the Rome Agreement, Andrew Johnson, an Australian who has been researching international documents and treaties related to West Papua’s “betrayal”, said:

In order to invest billions of dollars in looting West Papua, Freeport would need assurances that Indonesia would be able to deliver access to the region. A Rome Agreement-type document would provide this assurance.

Victor Yeimo: Unveiling the atrocities
After being released from the Indonesian legal system and prison on 23 September 2023, Victor Yeimo addressed thousands of Papuans in Waena Jayapura by saying:

The Papuan people have long suffered under a dehumanising paradigm, which denies our inalienable rights to be human in our own land.

Yeimo said that the Papuan people in West Papua were systematically excluded from any decision-making processes that shaped their own future.

Jakarta’s oppressive control led to arbitrary policies and laws imposed on West Papuans, disregarding their voices and aspirations. This exclusion highlighted the colonisers’ desire to maintain control and dominance, he said.

The ratification of Special Autonomy, Volume II, serves as an example of Jakarta’s deception. The Papuan People’s Council (MRP), entrusted with representing the special autonomy law, was sidelined, rendering their role meaningless.

Jakarta’s military intervention further emphasised the denial of Papuan rights.

The expansion of five new autonomous provinces in West Papua deepens the marginalisation of indigenous Papuans. This move reinforces the grip of Indonesian colonialism, eroding the cultural identity of the Papuan people.

Jakarta’s tactics, supported by state intelligence and collaboration with local elites, legitimised its oppressive control, Yeimo said.

The state intelligence agency (BIN) in Jakarta manipulated conflict between Papuan groups and tribes to perpetuate hostility and division. By sowing seeds of discord, the colonisers sought to weaken the collective strength of the Papuan people and divert their attention away from their own oppressive actions.

Under Indonesian colonial rule, property, wealth and position held little significance for the Papuan people, Yeimo said.

Relying on hollow promises and pseudo-offers from the oppressors would never lead to justice, welfare, or peace. It was time to reject the deceptive allure of colonialism and focus on reclaiming autonomy and dignity, Yeimo told his people.

Embracing nationalistic ideals was crucial in the Papuan struggle for liberation. Indigenous Papuans must question their own participation in Indonesian colonialism.

Working for the colonisers as bureaucratic elites or bourgeois elites does not uphold their humanity or dignity. It is time to reclaim their autonomy and fight for their freedom.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

The Indonesia Art Movement has collaborated with the Monj Hen Wani Community and environmental advocates in Papua to organise the “Arumbay Tonotwiyat” — the Women’s Forest People’s Party.

The event took place beneath the lush canopy of Enggros village’s mangrove forest Abepura District, Jayapura City last weekend.

Arumbay Tonotwiyat was a multifaceted celebration that blended art, culture and environmental conservation.

• READ MORE: Other Papuan environment reports

This gathering was a tribute to nature and the preservation of cultural heritage.

It was also a commitment to fostering harmony between humanity and the natural world.

Rumah Bakau Jayapura, Kampung Dongeng Jayapura, Forum Indonesia Muda Jayapura, Sangga Uniyap, and representatives from Cenderawasih University and ISBI Tanah Papua, and Papua Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) supported the event.

The “forest party” engaged a wide range of participants, including children, teenagers, and adults.

Beach clean-up
The event started with a beach clean-up initiative at Cibery Beach, organised by Petronela.

This cleanup effort was a “demonstration of environmental love”, said the organisers.

It acknowledged the persistent issue of marine debris washing ashore during the rainy season.

Following the cleanup, participants were treated to a tour of Youtefa Bay, where they witnessed a performance by children from Tobati-Enggros village.

This performance depicted the story of a mangrove forest tainted by garbage and waste originating from Nafri Village, Hamadi Beach, and the Acai River.

Subsequently, the participants were guided to the Women’s Forest in Enggros, an area accessible only to women.

Here, women sought food sources to meet their household needs while also sharing their domestic concerns.

Women’s Forest ‘off-limits’
The Women’s Forest is off-limits to men and any breach of this custom incurs penalties, typically in the form of jewelry or other items.

Mama Ani — “Mother Ani” — explained that men were not permitted to enter the forest while women were foraging for food, as women in the forest swam naked.

Within the mangrove forest, women typically gathered clams, crabs, shrimps, and fish as sources of sustenance.

However, men can enter the forest in the absence of women, usually in search of dried mangrove wood for firewood.

Orgenes Meraudje, the former head of Enggros Village and a prominent community leader, said women also visited the Women’s Forest to share their domestic experiences.

However, these stories remained within the forest, not to be brought back home.

For the women of Enggros-Tobati beach, the forest holds sacred significance, and they foraged unclothed for their household necessities.

Protecting Women’s Forest
Yehuda Hamokwarong, a lecturer at Cenderawasih University who attended the event, stressed the importance of protecting the Women’s Forest.

“The forest served as an educational hub, imparting knowledge and survival skills to Enggros-Tobati women, encompassing practical skills, ethics, and morals,” she said.

“The Women’s Forest represented not only the lungs of the world but also a profound emblem of feminine identity.”

In addition to the Women’s Forest, there is a designated area called “para-para”, a sort of hall exclusive for men, and women were prohibited from entering.

Any woman entering this area would face customary fines.

Republished with permission.

Members of Indonesia’s Nduga District Police and the Damai Cartenz Police Task Force have raided a residential house and the local head office of the Papuan Tabernacle Church (Kingmi Papua) in the town of Kenyam, Nduga Regency, Papua Pegunungan Province, reports Human Rights Monitor.

Before raiding the Kingmi Papua office on September 17, the police officers arbitrarily arrested Melince Wandikbo, Indinwiridnak Arabo, and Gira Gwijangge in their home in Kenyam.

They were tortured and forced to reveal the names of people who had attended a recent burial of several members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).

• READ MORE: Police officers raid residential house and Tabernacle Church office – full details, names of victims, photos
• Other West Papua human rights reports

After one of the suspects mentioned the name of Reverend Urbanus Kogeya, the police officers searched the Kingmi Papua Office in Kenyam.

They arrested three other Papuans without showing a warrant. Police officers reportedly beat them during arrest and subsequent detention at the Nduga District police headquarters.

Everybody detained were later released due to lack of evidence.

Local Kingmi Papua church leaders and congregation members slept inside the Kingmi head office that night because they were preparing for a church event.

Around 11:30 pm, the police officers forcefully entered the office, breaking the entrance door.

Excessive force
According to the church leaders, the officers used excessive force against the suspects and the office facilities during the raid. Nine people suffered injuries as a result of police violence during the raid at the Kingmi Papua office — including an 85-year-old man and four women.

As Reverend Nataniel Tabuni asked the officers why they had come at night and broken the entrance door, a police officer approached him and punched him three times in the face.

According to Reverend Tabuni, one of the police officers ssaid: “You are the Church of Satan, the Church of Terrorists! You are supporting Egianus Kogeya [TPNPB Commander in Nduga] under the pretext of praying.”

The acts of torture were witnessed by the head of Nduga Parliament (DPRD), Ikabus Gwijangge.

He reached the Kingmi Papua Office around 11:45 pm after hearing people shouting for help.

As Gwijangge saw the police officers beating and kicking suspects, he protested the use of excessive force and called on the officers to follow procedure.

‘I’ll come after you’
A Damai Cartenz officer reportedly pointed his finger at Gwijangge and threatened him, saying: “Stupid parliamentarian. I’ll come after you! Wherever you go, I will find out where you are. I’ll chase you!”

Another police officer pushed Gwijangge outside the building to prevent him from witnessing the police operation. After that, the police officers searched all the office rooms and broke another office door.

The Nduga police chief (Kapolres), Commissioner Vinsensius Jimmy, has apologised to the local church leaders for the misconduct of his men.

The victims demanded that the perpetrators be processed according to the law.

Congregation members in Kenyam carried out a spontaneous peaceful protest against the police raid and violence against four Kingmi Papua pastors.

The Human Rights Monitor (HRM) is an independent, international non-profit project promoting human rights through documentation and evidence-based advocacy. HRM is based in the European Union and active since 2022.

The Free Papua Organisation (Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM) has sent an open letter to the United Nations leadership demanding that “decolonisation” of the former Dutch colony of West New Guinea, the Indonesian-administered region known across the Pacific as West Papua, be initiated under the direction of the UN Trusteeship Council.

The letter accuses the UN of being a “criminal accessory to the plundering of the ancestral lands” of the Papuans, a Melanesian people with affinity and close ties to many Pacific nations.

According to the OPM leader, chairman-commander Jeffrey Bomanak, West Papuans had been living with the expectation for six decades that the UN would “fulfill the obligations regarding the legal decolonisation of West Papua”.

• READ MORE: Author condemns Canberra ‘collusion’ with Jakarta on West Papua atrocities
• OPM’s open letter to the UN
• Other West Papua reports

Alternatively, wrote Bomanak, there had been an expectation that there would be an explanation “to the International Commission of Jurists if there are any legal reasons why these obligations to West Papua cannot be fulfilled”.

The open letter was addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi and Trusteeship Council President Nathalie Estival-Broadhurst.

Bomanak also accused the UN of “gifting” West Papua and Indonesia and the US mining conglomerate Freepost-McMoRan at Grasberg in 1967.

‘Guilty’ over annexation
“The United Nations is guilty of annexing West New Guinea on Sept 21, 1962, as a trust territory which had been concealed by the UN Secretariat from the Trusteeship Council.”

Indonesia has consistently rejected West Papuan demands for self-determination and independence, claiming that its right to sovereignty over the region stems from the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969.

But many West Papuans groups and critics across the Pacific and internationally reject the legitimacy of this controversial vote when 1025 elders selected by the Indonesian military were coerced into voting “unanimously” in favour of Indonesian rule.

A sporadic armed struggle by the armed wing of OPM and peaceful lobbying for self-determination and independence by other groups, such as the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), have continued since then with persistent allegations of human rights violations with the conflict escalating in recent months.

In 2017, the UN’s Decolonisation Committee refused to accept a petition signed by 1.8 million West Papuans calling for independence, saying West Papua’s cause was outside the committee’s mandate.

“The UN is a criminal accessory to the plundering of our ancestral lands and to the armament exports from member nations to our murderers and assassins — the Indonesian government,” claimed Bomanak in his letter.

“West Papua is not a simple humanitarian dilemma. The real dilemma is the perpetual denial of West Papua’s right to freedom and sovereignty.”

Bomanak alleges that the six-decade struggle for independence has cost more than 500,000 lives.

West Papua case ‘unique’
In a supporting media release by Australian author and human rights advocate Jim Aubrey, he said that the open letter should be read “by anyone who supports international laws and governance and justice that are applied fairly to all people”.

“West Papua’s case for the UN to honour the process of decolonisation is a unique one,” he said.

“Former Secretary General U Thant concealed West Papua’s rights as a UN trust territory for political reasons that benefited the Republic of Indonesia and the American mining company Freeport-McMoRan.

“West Papua was invaded and recolonised by Indonesia. The mining giant Freeport-McMoRan signed their contract to build the Mt Grasberg mine with the mass murderer Suharto in 1967.

“The vote of self-determination in 1969 was, for Suharto and his commercial allies, already a foregone conclusion in 1967.”

Aubrey said that West Papuans were still being “jailed, tortured, raped, assassinated [and] bombed in one of the longest ongoing acts of genocide since the end of the Second World War”.

Western countries accused
He accused Australia, European Union, UK, USA as well as the UN of being “accessories to Indonesia’s illegal invasion and landgrab”.

About Australia’s alleged role, Aubrey said he had called for a Royal Commission to investigate but had not received a reply from Governor-General David Hurley or from Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.

PRESS RELEASE

OFFICIAL OPM Press Release 14 September 2023
OPM LEADER ACCUSES UN OF GIFTING WEST PAPUA TO INDONESIA & US MINER FREEPORT-MCMORAN – DEMANDS DECOLONIZATION

Jeffrey P Bomanak accuses United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, General Assembly President Csaba… pic.twitter.com/gggZl3wLyc

— Lewis Prai : West Papuan Diplomat (@PapuaWeb) September 14, 2023

Melanesian prime ministers have have signed off two declarations addressing the pressing issues of climate crisis and national security.

The ceremonial signing took place at the Havannah Resort in North Efate yesterday, marking the culmination of the 22nd Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) Leaders’ Summit Retreat.

The signatories included host Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau of Vanuatu, Manasseh Sogavare of Solomon Islands, James Marape of Papua New Guinea, Sitiveni Rabuka of Fiji and Victor Tutugoro, spokesperson of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of Kanaky New Caledonia.

• READ MORE: ‘The world is watching’ – it’s a test for Melanesian leaders over West Papua, says Wenda
• Other MSG reports

The history of these agreements commenced with the inaugural accord inked in Lakatoro, Malekula, in 1994.

Subsequent gatherings saw the signing of a second pact in Port Vila in 1998, followed by the third document signed during a Leaders’ Summit held in the Solomon Islands.

Prime Minister Kalsakau expressed satisfaction with the summit’s proceedings, highlighting the successful collaboration that yielded two comprehensive documents. He noted that these papers were both “content-rich and orderly” in outlining MSG’s strategic course on matters of importance to the region’s people.

Kalsakau acknowledged the impact of strong and visionary leadership, which served to refine the direction and purpose of Melanesia, ensuring it remained steadfastly on the right course.

‘Safeguarding’ Melanesia
He said he was content with the summit’s conclusion, characterising it as a “joyous occasion”.

“To ensure the safeguarding of Melanesia’s wellbeing and to achieve the highest levels of contentment among its people on the horizon, we have united as a collective whole,”  Kalsakau remarked.

Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders have signed off on two declaration for the first time. The first on climate and and the second one of security in North Efate a while ago. A presser will be held in Port Vila. West Papua issue likely to be referred to Pacific Islands Forum. pic.twitter.com/IJuzBnbjmE

— Kelvin Anthony (@kelvinfiji) August 24, 2023

He expressed gratitude to his colleagues for their contributions in shaping the final outcomes.

Concluding his address, Kalsakau invoked blessings upon the people of Melanesia and expressed his profound gratitude for the presence of all attendees.

This unity and collaboration, he affirmed, was the cornerstone of progress for the entire region.

The leaders shared in a tradition deeply rooted in Vanuatu culture — sharing a shell of kava to conclude the regional diplomatic dialogue.

• Pacific Media Watch reports that there was no mention of West Papua or the long awaited full membership issues and a promised media conference had not eventuated.

Doddy Morris is a Vanuatu Daily Post reporter. Republished with permission.

The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) is like a big house or boat, says Reverend Dr Ambirek G. Socratez Yoman, owned by the people and the nation of West Papua.

Upon this big boat rests prayers, hopes, longings, struggles, dreams, and ideals with a profound sense of justice, peace, and dignity.

According to Reverend Dr Yoman, the ULMWP is a symbol of unity among the Papuan people. It is a representation of their collective desires and relentless pursuit of justice.

• READ MORE: Benny Wenda says dream of MSG full membership ‘will happen’ in Port Vila
• Dukung ULMWP jadi anggota penuh MSG, demonstran kenakan simbol Bintang Kejora — Tabloid Jubi
• Other Yamin Kogoya reports

Therefore, West Papuans living in the Land of West Papua, including those living abroad, all pray, hope, and support ULMWP. It is the responsibility of the nation of West Papua and its people to safeguard, maintain, care for, and protect ULMWP as their common home.

Because ULMWP provides a collective shelter for many tears, blood droplets, bones, and the suffering of West Papua.

Reverend Dr Yoman says in his message to me that I have translated that the ULMWP carries the spirits of our ancestors, fallen heroes, and comrades. The ULMWP is the home of their spirits, and he wrote some of their names as follows:

1. Johan Ariks
2. Lodewijk Mandacan
3. Barens Mandacan
4. Ferry Awom
5. Permenas Awom
6. Aser Demotekay
7. Bernandus Tanggahma
8. Seth Jafet Rumkorem
9. Jacob Prai
10. Herman Womsiwor
11. Markus Kaisiepo
12. Eliezer Bonay
13. Nicolaas Jouwe
14. F. Torrey,
15. Nicolass Tanggahma
16. Dick Kereway
17. Melky Solossa
18. Samuel Asmuruf
19. Mapia Mote
20. James Nyaro
21. Lambert Wakur
22. S.B. Hindom,
23. Louis Wajoi
24. Tadius Yogi
25. Martin Tabu
26. Arnold Clemens Ap
27. Eduard Mofu
28. Willem Onde
29. Moses Weror
30. Clemens Runaweri
31. Andy Ayamiseba
32. John Octo Ondowame
33. Thomas Wapay Wanggai
34. Wim Zonggonauw
35. Yawan Wayeni
36. Kelly Kwalik
37. Justin Morip
38. Beatrix Watofa
39. Agus Alue Alua
40. Frans Wospakrik
41. Theodorus Hiyo Eluay
42. Aristotle Masoka
43. Tom Beanal
44. Neles Tebay
45. Mako Tabuni
46. Leoni Tanggahma
47. Samuel Filep Karma
48. Prisila Jakadewa
49. Babarina Ikari
50. Vonny Jakadewa
51. Mery Yarona and Reny Jakadewa (the courageous female spirits who raised the Morning Star flag at the Governor’s Office on August 4, 1980).
52. Also, the spirit of Josephin Gewab/Rumawak, the tailor who created the Morning Star flag.

In honour of these fallen Papuan heroes and leaders, Reverend Yoman says:

“It is you, the young generation, who carry forward the baton left by the names and spirits of these fighters, as well as the hundreds and thousands of others who have not been named.

“If there is someone who fights and opposes the political platform of the ULMWP, that individual is questionable and is damaging the big house and the big boat, which contains the tears, blood, bones, and suffering of the People and Nation of Papua as well as the spirits of our ancestors and leaders.

“The eyes and faces of the LORD, the spirits of our ancestors, and the spirits of our leaders who have passed on always guard, protect, and nurture the honest, humble, and respectful members of the ULMWP.”

By this message, he urges the ULMWP to never forget these names and stand bravely with courage on their shoulders.

Indonesian delegation walks out of MSG leaders summit before West Papuan leader Benny Wenda’s speech. pic.twitter.com/qW0YMxnrVk

— Ben Bohane (@ben_bohane) August 23, 2023

Reverend Yoman’s letter: a brief comment
Indigenous people view life as a system of interconnected relationships between beings, spirits, deities, humans, animals, plants, and the celestial heavens.

Their holistic cosmology is held together by this interconnectedness — a sacred passageway to multidimensional realities. Although Indigenous cosmologies differ, most, if not all, subscribe to the tenet of interconnectedness.

Having a strong connection to one’s ancestors’ roots is an integral part of being Indigenous.

During times of need, rituals, and grief, ancestral and fallen heroes are mentioned and invoked. A specific ancestor’s name may be mentioned in response to a specific situation, such as grief, conflict, sacred ceremonies, or rituals.

This helps to connect modern generations to the ancestral spirits, providing a source of strength and guidance while honouring the legacy of those who have gone before.

Those who adhere to original cultural values understand why Reverend Dr Yoman mentioned some of these Papuans.

In the chronicle of Papuans’ liberation story, these names are mentioned.

There were some who suffered martyrdom, some who became traitors, who died of old age, and others who died from disease. However, they all have stories connected to West Papua’s Liberation.

Mentioning these names is intended to invoke a specific energy within the consciousness of West Papua’s independence leaders. Inviting the new generation of fighters to take up the cause of their fallen comrades.

It is important to encourage Papuans to see the greater picture of a nation’s liberation struggle — which spans generations. Calling on them to revive their minds, spirits, and bodies through the spirit of fallen Papuans and the spirit of Divine during times of turmoil.

Who is Rev Dr Yoman and why did he mention these names?
Most people are familiar with Reverend Dr Yoman. He is everywhere — on television, on the news, known in churches, involved in human rights activism, mentioned in public speeches, appears in seminars, and lectures and so on.

He is well known, or at least heard of, by the Papuan and Indonesian communities, as well as the broader community.

Reverend Dr Socratez Sofyan Yoman is a public figure, leader, academic, church leader, prolific writer, and media commentator. He is a descendant of the Lani people of Papua.

He is one of the seeds of the civilisation project launched by Christian missionaries in the Highlands between the 1930s and 1960s. His life has been shaped by four significant events in his homeland — the teachings of his elders, the arrival of Christianity, Indonesian invasions, and the resistance of the Papuans.

He rose to become an exceptionally accomplished thinker, speaker, writer, and critic of injustice, oppression, and upholds humanity’s values as taught by the Judeo-Christian worldview within these collusions of worlds.

Growing up among Lani village elders taught him many sacred teachings of the original ways — centred around Wone’s teachings. This is one of the most important aspects of his story.

Wone is the cornerstone of life for the Lani people. Wone is the principle of life and the foundation for analysing, interpreting, evaluating, debating, understanding, and exchanging life.

As with many other Lani, Papuan, Melanesian, and Indigenous leaders, Wone is the reason for his birth, survival, and leadership. He has thus a deep sense of duty and responsibility to serve and fight for his people, as well as other marginalised and oppressed members of society.

Reverend Dr Yoman stands firmly in his beliefs in the face of grief, tragedies, and death in his ancestral homeland. His commitment is unwavering, as he continually strives to stand up for and protect the rights of those who are most vulnerable and in need of a voice.

Wone has inspired him to lead a life of purpose and integrity, making him a pillar of strength and an example to others. In a dying forest, he becomes the voice of the falling leaves.

Among his greatest contributions to West Papua, Indonesia, and the world, will be his writings. Generations to come will remember his research and writings regarding history and the fate of his people.

West Papua will be high on the agenda at the Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ Summit in Vanuatu this week.

West Papua’s United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) is also present in Vanuatu. Other factions have arrived and are on their way to witness MSG’s decision on West Papua’s fate as well as their own leaders’ summit.

A feeling of anxiety pervades Reverend Dr Yoman as he prays — prompting him to write this letter as he recognises the many challenges ULMWP faces and warns them that they cannot afford even the slightest misstep.

This is the time inspiring Papuans and the ULWMP leadership must remember their fallen comrades, heroes and ancestors.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

By Duncan Graham in Malang, East Java

There were ten stories in a Google Alert media feed last week for “Indonesia-Australia”.

One covered illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific claiming economic losses of more than US$6 billion a year — important indeed.

Another was an update on the plight of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens, held hostage since February 7 by the Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat (TPNPB-West Papua National Liberation Army).

• READ MORE: Indonesia refuses international aid to free NZ pilot
• Two countries, two kidnappings – Port Moresby shows Jakarta how it’s done with 3 PNG hostages freed – David Robie
• Other NZ pilot reports

This is the armed wing of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka, (OPM Free Papua Organisation) that has been pushing its cause since the 1970s.

A major story by any measure. The Indonesian military’s inability to find and safely secure the New Zealander has the potential to cause serious diplomatic rifts and great harm to all parties.

There have been unverified reports of bombs dropped from helicopters on jungle camps where the pilot may have been held with uninvolved civilians.

The other eight stories were about Queenslander Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones who had been arrested in April for allegedly going on a nude drunken rampage and bashing a local in Indonesian Aceh.

Stupidities commonplace
Had the 23-year-old surfer been a fool in his home country the yarn would have been a yawn. Such stupidities are commonplace.

But because he chose to be a slob in the strictly Muslim province of Aceh and facing  up to five years jail plus a public flogging, his plight opened the issue of cultural differences and tourist arrogance.  Small news, but legitimate.

He has now reportedly done a $25,000 deal to buy his way out of charges and pay restitution to his victim. This shows a flexible social and legal system displaying tolerance — which is how Christians are supposed to behave.

All noteworthy, easy to grasp. But more important than the threatened execution of an innocent victim of circumstances caught in a complex dispute that needs detailed explanations to understand?

Mehrtens landed a commercial company’s plane as part of his job for Susi Air flying people and goods into isolated airstrips when he was grabbed by armed men desperate to get Jakarta to pay attention to their grievances.

Ironically, Aceh where Risby-Jones got himself into strife, had also fought for independence and won. Like West Papua, it’s resource-rich so essential for the central government’s economy.

A vicious on-off war between the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, (GAM-Free Aceh Movement) and the Indonesian military started in 1976 and reportedly took up to 30,000 lives across the following three decades.

Tsunami revived peace talks
It only ended when the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami killed 160,000  people and  former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was elected president and  revived peace talks. Other countries became involved, including the European Union and Finland where the Helsinki Agreement was signed.

Both sides bowed to a compromise. GAM leaders abandoned their demands for independence, settling for “self-government” within the Indonesian state, while soldiers were withdrawn. The bombings have stopped but at the cost of personal freedoms and angering human rights advocates.

Freed from Jakarta’s control, the province passed strict Shariah laws. These include public floggings for homosexual acts, drinking booze and being close to an opposite sex person who is not a relative. Morality Police patrols prowl shady spots, alert to any signs of affection.

Australian academic and former journalist Dr Damien Kingsbury was also instrumental in getting GAM and Jakarta to talk. He was involved with the West Papua standoff earlier this year but New Zealand is now using its own to negotiate.

Dr Kingsbury told the ABC the situation in West Papua is at a stalemate with neither Wellington nor Jakarta willing to make concessions. The Indonesian electorate has no truck for “separatists” so wants a bang-bang fix. NZ urges a softly-slowly approach.

A TPNPB spokesperson told the BBC: “The Indonesian government has to be bold and sit with us at a negotiation table and not [deploy] military and police to search for the pilot.”

The 2005 Aceh resolution means the Papua fighters have a strong model of what is possible when other countries intervene. So far it seems none have dared, fearing the wrath of nationalists who believe Western states, and particularly Australia, are trying to “Balkanise”  the “unitary state” and plunder its riches.

Theory given energy
This theory was given energy when Australia supported the 1999 East Timor referendum which led to the province splitting from Indonesia and becoming a separate nation.

Should Australia try to act as a go-between in the Papua conflict, we would be dragged into the upcoming Presidential election campaign with outraged candidates thumping lecterns claiming outside interference. That is something no one wants but sitting on hands won’t help Mehrtens.

In the meantime, Risby-Jones, whose boorish behaviour has confirmed Indonesian prejudices about Australian oafs, is expected to be deported.

Mehrtens will only get to tell his tale if the Indonesian government shows the forbearance displayed by the family of Edi Ron.  The Aceh fisherman needed 50 stitches and copped broken bones and an infected foot from his Aussie encounter, but he still shook hands.

After weeks in a cell the surfer has shown contrition and apologised. Australian ‘”proceedings of crime” laws should prevent him earning from his ordeal.

If the Kiwi pilot does get out alive, he deserves the media attention lavished on the Australian. This might shift international interest from a zonked twit to the issue of West Papua’s independence and remind diplomats that if Jakarta could bend in the far west of the archipelago,  why not in the far east?

Lest Indonesians forget:  Around 100,000 revolutionaries died during the four-year war against the returning colonial Dutch after Soekarno proclaimed independence in 1975. The Dutch only retreated after external pressure from the US and Australia.

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) and winner of the Walkley Award and Human Rights awards. He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia. This article was first published in Pearls & Irritations on 30 May 2023 and is republished with permission.

Free Papua Organisation (OPM) leader Jeffrey Bomanak has appealed for Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape to become a “neutral intermediary” to negotiate between the Indonesian government and the West Papuan rebels holding a New Zealand pilot hostage for his release.

He has called in a statement today for the safe transfer of 37-year-old Philip Mehrtens, a flight captain working for Indonesia’s Susi Air who was seized at a remote airstrip in the central highlands on February 7, to a “secure location in Papua New Guinea”.

If Prime Minister Marape could not “come to the assistance of Captain Mehrtens”, Bomanak requested another PNG politician instead “because we are both Melanesian people”.

• READ MORE: Author-poet condemns Papuan rebel threat to shoot NZ hostage pilot if denied talks
• Two countries, two kidnappings – Port Moresby shows Jakarta how it’s done with 3 PNG hostages freed
• Other West Papua reports

“We would be very comfortable with [MPs] Belden Namah, Lhuter Wengge, Gary Juffa, or Powes Parkop. We trust them.”

In February, the PNG government successfully resolved a hostage crisis by negotiating freedom for three captives, including a NZ professor living in Australia.

This was one of three points cited in the OPM statement needed to “end the hostage crisis peacefully”.

“However, more miracles will be required for Indonesia to cease the genocide of my people, the destruction of our land and homes, and the plunder of our spectacular natural resources,” Bomanak added.

Two other conditions
The other two OPM conditions for a peaceful resolution are:

• The Indonesian government must “open up” and talk to the OPM as the official political body of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB); and
• Cease air and ground bombing and combat operations, and withdraw all Indonesian defence and security forces from all conflict areas.

Clarifying a TPNPB video released yesterday that purported to show Mehrtens saying that if negotiations on independence for West Papua did not start within two months he was at risk of being shot by the rebels seeking independence for the Melanesian region, Bomanak blamed the Indonesian authorities over the impasse.

“If the Indonesian government continues to carry out military operations and the New Zealand government does not take persuasive steps, the OPM will not be held responsible when something happens to the life of Captain pilot Philip Mehrtens as a result of the ongoing air and ground combat operations by Indonesia’s defence forces.”

Bomanak called on the Jakarta government to have compassion, adding: “Unfortunately, when there are six decades of Indonesia’s crimes against my people, to think Jakarta can act in any way compassionate is almost [an] impossible expectation. It would be a miracle!”

The OPM fighters have been struggling in a low-level insurgency for independence from Indonesia since 1969.

However, the struggle has gained a new intensity in the past five years with more sophisticated weapons and strategies. This has coincided with mounting peaceful civil resistance to Indonesian rule.

Free Papua Organisation (OPM) leader Jeffrey Bomanak has appealed to US President Joe Biden for a “proactive role” in ending Indonesia’s “unlawful military occupation and annexation” of West Papua.

He claims this illegal occupation led to the subsequent US “foreign policy failure” in protecting six decades of crimes against humanity.

Bomanak made this appeal in an open letter to the President — a harrowing 22-page document citing a litany of alleged human rights violations against Papuan men, women and children by Indonesian security forces — days before Biden’s arrival in the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby next week for a vital summit with Pacific leaders.

• READ MORE: Mass arrests and forced dispersals in West Papua on Human Rights Day
• Amnesty calls on Jakarta to free West Papuan activist Victor Yeimo
• Other West Papua reports

“Six decades of callous betrayal and abandonment – my people enslaved, imprisoned, assaulted, tortured, raped, murdered, massacred, poisoned, impoverished, and starved and forcefully relocated; villages bombed . . . every day of every week,” wrote Bomanak in the letter dated May 17.

He said that when West Papua was part of the Dutch colonial empire for 500 years, “we were never abused and mistreated . . . we were never subjected to crimes against humanity”.

However, under Indonesia’s colonial empire, “we have lived in a slaughterhouse with hundreds of thousands of victims — men, women, and children.

‘Gateway to hell’
“The New York Agreement, written and sponsored by your government on 15 August 1962 without any inclusion or representation of a single West Papuan, paved the road for this slaughterhouse.

“My people call this agreement ‘The Gateway to Hell’.”

Bomanak accused the US, along with Australia and New Zealand – “our Second World War allies” – of having treated the West Papuan people as “collateral damage” for “geopolitical convenience” when dealing with Jakarta.

“Unfortunately, these democratic Christian governments who we supported during the life-and-death cataclysm of the Second World War, abandoned both their duty to support international decolonisation laws and their duty of care to stop Indonesia’s barbarism against indigenous West Papuans — the rightful landowners of our ancestral lands,” he said.

Bomanak’s open letter cited horrendous case after case with gruesome photographic documentation.

“I would like to introduce you to some of these crimes against humanity and some of our victims,” he began.

“I have restricted the prima facie photographic evidence to not visually include the worst of the worst. Although, how this can be defined is a subjective detail beyond my assessment – they are all my suffering grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters.

“Every crime is personal. Every victim is family.

Mutilation and dismemberment
“Dismemberment is one of Indonesia’s defence and security forces specialties to instill terror and fear into village populations,” Bomanak said.

“This practice has been used from the beginning of the Indonesian military occupation and is still being used.”

Bomanak provided documentation of a 35-year-old woman, Tarina Murib, who was allegedly beheaded by Indonesian security forces on 4 March 2023. – International Mother’s Day.

“Murdered and mutilated by the Indonesian military in Puncak Regency; villages and churches have been emptied as thousands more soldiers have been deployed in the area.”

Bomanak also cited the killing and mutilation on 22 August 2022 of four Papuan civilians by Indonesian special forces — Irian Nirigi, Arnold Lokbere, Atis Tini and Kelemanus Nirigi.

“[They] were beheaded and their legs were cut off before their bodies were placed in sacks and tossed into the Pigapu river.”

He raised cases of assaults on village elders and children.

“Using terror to make us fear to stand up for our right to freedom . . . our right to defend our ancestral lands from a hostile and barbaric invader.”

Infanticide
“It is estimated that 150,000 children have been victims of Indonesian crimes against humanity. This is the equivalent of a Holocaust,” said Bomanak.

“An evil forced upon West Papua for Cold War politics and to satisfy American mining company Freeport-McMoRan’s quest to be the beneficiary of West Papua’s spectacular mineral reserves rather than the Dutch, which would have been the case if West Papua had been decolonised in accordance with international law and if the rights of West Papua’s people to freedom and nation-state sovereignty had been respected,” he said.

Bomanak cited the case of nine-year-old Kris Tabuni, who died on 18 October 2022. His death is still unexplained.

Truth ‘distortion’
Bomanak condemned politicians and diplomats who “cannot envisage Indonesia leaving West Papua”.

“It is a step that is difficult for them to take. They respond to the injustice of the invasion and military occupation of our ancestral land with hand-wringing apologies while stating that the world is an unfair place.

“This is their personal maxim for hardship and crimes against humanity, and then they join in the plunder.

The historical truth is that West Papua — the western half of the island of New Guinea — has never been a part of Indonesia.

“Various legal, political and military arguments stating otherwise are all contrary to the norms of international laws and to justice.

“The Papuan nation is not part of the Indonesian Colonial State. The process of annexation on 1 May 1963, was forced onto my people.”

NZ hostage pilot
Bomanak also wrote about the hostage crisis involving 37-year-old New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens who was captured by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the OPM, on February 7.

Addressing President Biden, Bomanak said: “A war of liberation has been undertaken by my people since the fraudulent 1969 referendum.

“We have issued hundreds of warnings to both Indonesians and foreigners not to be in our land.

“Unlike, Indonesia, we will care for Philip Mehrtens, the same way we care for our brothers and sisters. He is safe with us, but he is at great risk from Indonesian air and ground combat operations.

“The Indonesian defence force has already suffered significant battle fatalities. We request a peaceful solution with the aim of Indonesia leaving West Papua.

“Perhaps you can appoint Ambassador Caroline Kennedy [Ambassador to Australia] to this role?”

Bomanak’s letter also tracks the many West Papuan peaceful political leaders who have been the victims of extrajudicial executions in an effort to “terrorise the independence movement”. They include the following:

“Arnold Ap was assassinated in 1984. Tom Wanggai died in mysterious circumstances while in prison which we believe was another extrajudicial execution in1989.

“Tribal leader Theys Hiyo Eluay was assassinated in November 2001. Filep Karma also died in mysterious circumstances which we believe was another extrajudicial execution in November 2022 at the same beach where Arnold Ap was executed.”

“President Biden, I could have easily filled 10,000 more pages with victims of this miscarriage of international justice, but I understand your time is limited with important matters of state and of international affairs.

“Sir, there is no honour in helping Indonesia maintain their lie, their deception, their treachery, and the six decades of crimes against humanity that many academics call ‘West Papua’s slow genocide’.

“The fraudulent annexation of my country is as much a story of dishonourable and deceitful Western governance.”

Concluding the open letter, Bomanak told President Biden that if Ukraine could have an investigation for crimes against humanity, then “after six decades of Indonesia’s crimes against humanity, West Papuans are entitled to justice through the very same measures of accountability and due process.”

The OPM has waged an armed resistance against the Indonesian military since 1969. The West Papuans argue that they should regain independence on the grounds that, unlike Muslim-majority Indonesia, they are predominantly Christian and Melanesian from the Pacific. Pro-independence views among Papuans are also motivated by Indonesia’s repressive rule in the Melanesian provinces.

• OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak’s open letter full text

In his recently published article “Sea of many flags”, the head of the ANU National Security College Rory Medcalf makes the case for why Pacific Island states should regard the deep regional involvement of a Western coalition of powers, “quietly” led by Australia, as an effective and attractive “Pacific way to dilute China’s influence”.

Although presented as a new proposal, the increased regional engagement of this Western coalition is already well advanced, in the form of proposed new military bases and joint-use facilities, new security treaties, increased aid programmes, new embassies, as well as a new regional institution, Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP).

Medcalf’s main task is not to persuade Canberra of the merits of this approach, but rather to demonstrate to a sceptical Pacific audience that this Western coalition’s Indo-Pacific strategy is compatible with the Blue Pacific strategy of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

• READ MORE: Other China in the Pacific reports

Medcalf argues that an Indo-Pacific strategy of containing China supports the broad concept of human security embraced by Pacific Island leaders in their 2018 Boe Declaration, which includes the key demand for climate change action.

He also argues that the strategy would support the Blue Pacific emphasis on Pacific Island sovereignty by countering Chinese attempts to dominate the region. Thus he moves beyond the argument (made for example by Sandra Tarte) that there are some meeting points between these two world views and posits their complete compatibility.

His purpose is to counter the position of Pacific insiders, like former Secretary-General of PIF Dame Meg Taylor, and Professor Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, who argue that these security narratives are antithetical.

Medcalf proposes a model of security governance dominated by a Western coalition of interests operating through institutions like the Quad, AUKUS and PBP, where Pacific Islander influence is marginal or non-existent. Australia is seen as the “hub” for Western alliance management of the Pacific, acting as a “guide and informal coordinator”, ensuring that investments are organised efficiently and “in line with what Pacific communities want”.

PBP aid projects deployed
PBP aid projects would be deployed in support of the objectives outlined in the Boe Declaration as well as PIF’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

The problem here is that, at best, this security model operates on behalf of Pacific interests, but not under the control of Pacific governments or regional institutions created for that purpose.

The argument for compatibility between the Indo-Pacific and Blue Pacific strategies does not consider key aspects of the Pacific vision for the future, such as urgent climate action, where there are clear discrepancies, especially regarding limiting emissions. Asking Island leaders to curtail China’s regional role requires them to compromise their long-standing foreign policy ethos of “friends to all and enemies to none”.

Nor is it clear that Medcalf’s approach would support Island sovereignty, when the major threats seem to come from Western actors, including increased military activity in Micronesia, the undermining of regional institutions by external initiatives such as PBP, continuing colonial rule in French Polynesia and New Caledonia, and ongoing American control (and deepening militarisation) of Guam.

[Pacific Media Watch adds that this includes continuing colonial rule by Indonesia in the expanded five provinces that make up the West Papua region].

Australian military plans to allow US stationing and storage of nuclear weapons in north Australia appear to violate the terms of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, and Japan’s proposal to release into the ocean nuclear waste from the Fukushima power plant meltdown is causing considerable consternation in the region.

Medcalf’s argument that adoption of the Indo-Pacific mental map could bring together Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean islands to discuss common challenges misses the 30-year history of such collaboration within the Alliance of Small Island States.

Unhelpful characterisation of China
Another problem with this analysis is its frankly unhelpful characterisation of China’s Pacific engagement. According to Medcalf, China “has a rightful place in the Pacific, just not a right to dominate”.

However, he provides no evidence that China does in fact seek regional hegemony, and cites no examples where its behaviour in the Pacific Islands might be regarded as “bullying” or “coercive”.

The 10 island countries that recognise Beijing have signed up to participate in the much-maligned Belt and Road Initiative without any apparent coercion.

Nor does Medcalf provide Pacific examples of the debt-for-equity argument often levelled at China’s lending practices in the Global South. When Tonga had difficulty servicing Chinese loans, Beijing agreed to extend their terms. Even the claim that China seeks to establish a military base in the region, a central plank in Western narratives, remains unsubstantiated.

Recent studies by the RAND Corporation (funded by the US military) provide some useful perspective by ranking Fiji and Papua New Guinea of “medium desirability” but “low feasibility” for Chinese military initiatives. Other Pacific locations, including Solomon Islands and Kiribati, are not seen as feasible.

To describe Beijing’s engagement as “neocolonial” is to invite comparisons with the activities of the Western coalition, key members of which retain actual colonies in the region. Nor is Australia in a strong position to accuse others of manipulative behaviour.

For example, Canberra’s efforts to protect its coal industry by working to weaken PIF statements about climate change mitigation are well documented, date back to the beginning of the COP negotiations, and continue today.

Self-determination issue at heart
Ultimately Medcalf’s central argument falls because it does not consider the issue of self-determination which is at the heart of the Blue Pacific strategy. Although Medcalf calls for “a premium on self-awareness, inclusion, and genuine diplomacy”, his proposal effectively devalues Pacific agency and marginalises Pacific decision makers.

“Sea of many flags” claims to promote strategic equilibrium in the Pacific, yet it really aims to create the conditions for continuing Western hegemony. It claims to counter geopolitical competition and militarisation while shoring up and expanding Western military domination.

It claims to act in the interests of Pacific peoples, yet seems designed to moderate opposition to recent anti-China initiatives established under the auspices of the Indo-Pacific strategy and without meaningful consultation.

By allowing some role for China, albeit a limited one, Medcalf is advocating a softer form of strategic denial than that imposed by Western powers during the Cold War. But his warnings to island states about the dangers of economic engagement with Beijing seem hollow indeed, given Australia’s massive trade dependence on China.

In advocating “a Pacific kind of leadership”, the author (perhaps inadvertently) evokes the principles guiding Pacific leaders in the early days of independence. But it is worth remembering that the essence of the Pacific Way advanced by Ratu Mara and others was Pacific control and regional self-determination.

In contrast, what Rory Medcalf is advocating would subsume all of this under the control of the Western alliance, led quietly (or not so quietly) by Australia.

An armed group has taken an Australian professor and three colleagues hostage in a remote region of Papua New Guinea, reports ABC Pacific.

The ABC’s Port Moresby correspondent Natalie Whiting reported that the professor and colleagues were in the Highlands region doing field study when they were taken hostage.

As well as the Australian academic, the group included a Papua New Guinean programme coordinator and two University of PNG graduates.

• READ MORE: Further details from ABC News
• NZ pilot held hostage in neighbouring Papua

PNG Prime Minister James Marape told reporters in Port Moresby today there were “running conversations” between PNG authorities and the kidnappers, the ABC report said.

“I just want to inform the families of those taken hostage that we have been at work and contact has been made with people in the bush,” he said, according to the ABC report.

“We’ve got police and military on stand-by to assist. But, in the first instance, we want those criminals to release those who are held in captivity.

“We have been keeping this under close wraps because of the sensitivity and the need for us to get our friends [who were] captured, get them alive and safe.”

The ABC reported that it had chosen not to name the kidnapped Australian at this stage and had asked Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for comment.

Meanwhile, UPNG Vice-Chancellor Professor Frank Griffin has denied any knowledge of reports of the abduction of four UPNG students in Southern Highlands over the weekend.

Sources from within UPNG’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences also confirmed they were still trying to find out the identity of a student who was allegedly among the hostages in Southern Highlands.

NZ hostage pilot
Earlier this month, in a separate incident across the border a group of West Papuan rebels fighting for independence in the western half of Papua New Guinea island seized a New Zealand pilot as a hostage on February 7.

They also set fire to his Susi Air plane at the remote highlands airstrip of Paro near Nduga.

Indonesian authorities have sent a negotiation team to make contact with the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) group led by Egianus Kogoya group to seek the release of the 37-year-old pilot Philip Mehrtens.

The rebels were demanding negotiations with the Indonesian government for independence for the Melanesian region.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has analysed thousands of suspicious tweets posted in 2021 relating to the Indonesian region of West Papua and assessed that they are inauthentic and were crafted to promote the policies and activities of the Indonesian government while condemning opponents such as Papuan pro-independence activists.

This work continues ASPI’s research collaboration with Twitter focusing on information manipulation in the Indo-Pacific to encourage transparency around these activities and norms of behaviour that are conducive to open democracies in the region.

It follows our August 24 analysis of a dataset made up of thousands of tweets relating to developments in Indonesia in late 2020, which Twitter had removed for breaching its platform manipulation and spam policies.

• READ MORE: West Papua atrocity – a warning to Jakarta for impartial investigation
• Other West Papua reports

This report on Papua focuses on similar Twitter activity from late February to late July 2021 that relates to developments in and about Indonesia’s easternmost region.

This four-month period was noteworthy for several serious security incidents as well as an array of state-supported activities and events in the Papua region, then made up of the provinces of West Papua and Papua.

These incidents were among many related to the long-running pro-independence conflict in the region.

A report from Indonesia’s Human Rights Commission detailed 53 violent incidents in 2021 across the Papua region in which 24 people were killed at the hands of both security forces and the armed wing of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) separatist movement, the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).

‘Armed criminal group’
Jakarta normally referred to this group by the acronym “KKB”, which stands for “armed criminal group”.

This upsurge in violence followed earlier cases involving multiple deaths. The most notorious took place in December 2018, when TPNPB insurgents reportedly murdered a soldier and at least 16 construction workers working on a part of the Trans-Papua Highway in the Nduga regency of Papua province (official Indonesian sources have put the death toll as high as 31).

The Indonesian government responded by conducting Operation Nemangkawi, a major national police (POLRI) security operation by a taskforce comprising police and military units, including additional troops brought in from outside the province.

The security operation led to bloody clashes, allegations of human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings, and the internal displacement of many thousands of Papuans, hundreds of whom, according to Amnesty International Indonesia, later died of hunger or illness.

Besides anti-insurgency actions, an important component of the operation was the establishment of Binmas Noken Polri, a community policing initiative designed to conduct “humanitarian police missions or operations” and assist “community empowerment” through programmes covering education, agriculture and tourism development.

“Noken” refers to a traditional Papuan bag that indigenous Papuans regard as a symbol of “dignity, civilisation and life”. Binmas Noken Polri was initiated by the then national police chief, Tito Karnavian, the same person who created the recently disbanded, shadowy Red and White Special Task Force highlighted in our August 24 report.

A key development occurred in April 2021 when pro-independence militants killed the regional chief of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) in an ambush. Coming on the back of other murders by independence fighters (including of two teachers alleged to be police spies earlier that month), this prompted the government to declare the KKB in Papua—that is, the TPNPB “and its affiliated organisations”—”terrorists” and President Joko Widodo to order a crackdown on the group.

9 insurgents killed
Nine alleged insurgents were killed shortly afterwards.

In May 2021, hundreds of additional troops from outside Papua deployed to the province, some of which were part of an elite battalion nicknamed “Satan’s forces” that had earned notoriety in earlier conflicts in Indonesia’s Aceh province and Timir-Leste.

During the same month, there were large-scale protests in Papua and elsewhere over the government’s moves to renew and revise the special autonomy law, under which the region had enjoyed particular rights and benefits since 2001.

The protests included demonstrations staged by Papuan activists and students in Jakarta and the Javanese cities of Bandung and Yogyakarta from May 21-24. The revised law was ushered in by Karnavian, who was then (and is still) Indonesia’s Home Affairs Minister.

The period also saw ongoing preparations for the staging of the National Sports Week (PON) in Papua. Delayed by one year because of the covid-19 pandemic, the event eventually was held in October at several specially built venues across the province.

The dataset we analysed represents a diverse collection of thousands of tweets put out under such hashtags as #BinmasNokenPolri, #MenolakLupa (Refuse to forget), #TumpasKKBPapua (Annihilate the Papuan armed criminal group), #PapuaNKRI (Papua unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia), #Papua and #BongkarBiangRusuh (Take apart the culprits of the riots).

Most were overtly political, either associating the Indonesian state with success and public benefits for Papuans or condemning the state’s opponents as criminals, and sometimes doing both in the same tweet.

Papuan Games tweets
Among several tweets under #Papua proclaiming that the province was ready to host the forthcoming PON thanks to Jakarta’s investment in facilities and security, 18 dispatched on June 25 proclaimed: “PAPUA IS READY TO IMPLEMENT PON 2020!!! Papua is safe, peaceful and already prepared to implement PON 2020. So there’s no need to be afraid. Shootings by the KKB … are far from the PON cluster [the various sports facilities] … Therefore everyone #ponpapua #papua”.

Many tweets were clearly aimed at shaping public perceptions of the pro-independence militia and others challenging the state.

Under #MenolakLupa in particular, numerous tweets related to past and contemporary acts of violence by the pro-independence militants. Two sets of tweets from March 22 and 24 that recall the 2018 attack at Nduga are especially noteworthy, in that both injected the term “terrorist” into the armed criminal group moniker that the state had been using hitherto, making it “KKTB”. This was a month before the formal designation of the OPM as a “terrorist” organisation.

As if to stress the OPM’s terrorist nature, subsequent tweets under #MenolakLupa carried through with this loaded terminology. For example, tweets on June 15 stated that in 2017 “KKTB committed sexual violence” against as many as 12 women in two villages in Papua.

A fortnight later, another set of tweets said that in 2018 the “armed terrorist criminal group” had held 14 teachers hostage and had taken turns in raping one of them, causing her “trauma”. Others claimed former pro-independence militants had converted to the cause of the Indonesian unitary state and therefore recognised its sovereignty over Papua.

Some tweets relate directly to specific contemporary events. Examples are flurries of tweets posted on July 24-25 in response to the protests against the special autonomy law’s renewal that highlight the alleged irresponsibility of demonstrations during the pandemic, such as: “Let’s reject the invitation to demo and don’t be easily provoked by irresponsible [malign] people. Stay home and stay healthy always.”

Others are tweets put out under #TumpasKKBPapua after the shooting of the two teachers, such as: “Any religion in the world surely opposes murder or any other such offence, let alone of this teacher. Secure the land of the Bird of Paradise.”

Warning over ‘hoax’ allegations
Other tweets warn Papuans not to succumb to “hoax” allegations about the security forces’ behaviour or other claims by overseas-based spokespeople such as United Liberation Movement of West Papua’s Benny Wenda and Amnesty International human rights lawyer Veronica Koman.

Tweets on April 1 under #PapuaNKRI, for example, warned recipients not to “believe the KKB’s Media Propaganda, let’s be smart and wise in using the media lest we be swayed by fake news.”

Many of the tweets in the dataset are strikingly mundane, with content that state agencies already were, or would have been, publicising openly. A tweet on February 27 under #Papua, for example, announced that the Transport Minister would prioritise the construction of transport infrastructure in the two provinces.

Those under #BinmasNokenPolri often echoed advice that receivers of the tweet could just as easily see on other media, such as POLRI’s official Binmas Noken website.

Some were public announcements about market conditions and community policing events where, for example, people could receive government assistance such as rice, basic items and other support.

Most reflected Binmas Noken’s community engagement purpose, ranging from a series on May 20 promoting a child’s “trauma healing” session with Binmas Noken personnel to another tweeted out on June 20 advising of a badminton contest involving villages and police arranged under the Nemangkawi Task Force.

‘Healthy body, strong spirit’
A further 34 tweets on June 20 advised that “inside a healthy body is a strong spirit”, of which the first nine began with the same broad sentiment expressed in the Latin motto derived from the Roman poet Juvenal, “Mens sana in corpore sano.” (Presumably, after this first group of tweets it dawned on the sender that his or her classical erudition was likely to be lost on indigenous Papuan residents.)

As with the tweets analysed in our August 24 report, based on behavioural patterns within the data, we judge that these tweets are likely to be inauthentic—that is, they were the result of coordinated and covert activity intended to influence public opinion rather than organic expressions by genuine users on the platform.

Without conclusively identifying the actors responsible, we assess that the tweets mirror the Widodo government’s general position on the Papuan region as being an inalienable part of the Indonesian state, as well as the government’s security policies and development agenda in the region.

The vast majority are purposive: by promoting the government’s policies and activities and condemning opponents of those policies (whether pro-independence militia or protesters), the tweets are clearly designed to persuade recipients that the state is providing vital public goods such as security, development and basic support in the face of malignant, hostile forces, and hence that being Indonesian is in their interests.

Dr David Engel is senior analyst on Indonesia in ASPI’s Defence and Strategy Programme. Albert Zhang is an analyst with ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre. His research interests include information and influence operations, and disinformation. Dr Jake Wallis is the Head of Programme, Information Operations and Disinformation with ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre. This article is republished from The Strategist with permission.

A West Papuan leader has praised the “bravery and spirit” of Ukrainians defending their country against the Russian invasion while condemning the hypocrisy of a self-styled “peaceful” Indonesia that attacks “innocent civilians” in Papua.

Responding to the global condemnation of the brutal war on Ukraine, now into its second week, United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda highlighted a statement by United Nation experts that has condemned “shocking abuses” against Papuans, including “child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people”.

Wenda also stressed that the same day that Indonesia’s permanent representative to the UN said that the military attack on Ukraine was unacceptable and called for peace, reports emerged of seven young schoolboys being arrested, beaten and tortured so “horrifically” by the Indonesian military that one had died from his injuries.

• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: ‘Double standards’ claims as world reacts to Ukraine crisis, ignores Papua
• UN report calls for independent probe into ‘shocking’ rights abuses in Papua
• Other West Papua reports at Asia Pacific Report

“The eyes of the world are watching in horror [at] the invasion of Ukraine,” said Wenda in a statement.

“We feel their terror, we feel their pain and our solidarity is with these men, women and children. We see their suffering and we weep at the loss of innocent lives, the killing of children, the bombing of their homes, and for the trauma of refugees who are forced to flee their communities.”

Wenda said the world had spoken up to condemn the actions of President Vladimir Putin and his regime.

“The world also applauds the bravery and spirit of Ukrainians in their resistance as they defend their families, their homes, their communities, and their national identity.”

Russian attack unacceptable
Wenda said Indonesia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Arrmanatha Nasir, had stated that that Russian attack on Ukraine was unacceptable and called for peace. He had said innocent civilians “will ultimately bear the brunt of this ongoing situation”.

“But what about innocent civilians in West Papua? asked Wenda.

“At the UN, Indonesia speaks of itself as ‘a peaceful nation’ committed to a world ‘based on peace and social justice’.

“This, on the very same day that reports came in of seven young boys, elementary school children, being arrested, beaten and tortured so horrifically by the Indonesian military that one of the boys, Makilon Tabuni, died from his injuries.

“The other boys were taken to hospital, seriously wounded.”

Wenda said the Indonesian military was deliberately targeting “the young, the next generation. This, to crush our spirit and extinguish hope.

“These are our children that [Indonesian forces are] torturing and killing, with impunity. Are they not ‘innocent civilians’, or are their lives just worth less?”

A leading West Papuan activist is comparing the plight of his region to that of the crisis in Ukraine. https://t.co/K3qsMtXXWI

— RNZ Pacific (@RNZPacific) March 4, 2022

Urgent humanitarian access
Wenda said that this was during the same week that UN special rapporteurs had called for urgent humanitarian access and spoken of “shocking abuses against our people”, including “child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people”.

This was an acknowledgement from the UN that Papuan people had been “crying out for”.

Wenda said 60-100,00 people were currently displaced, without any support or aid. This was a humanitarian crisis.

“Women forced to give birth in the bush, without medical assistance. Children are malnourished and starving. And still, Indonesia does not allow international access,” he said.

“Our people have been suffering this, without the eyes of the world watching, for nearly 60 years.”

In response, the Indonesian Ambassador to the UN had continued with “total denial, with shameless lies and hypocrisy”.

“If there’s nothing to hide, then where is the access?”

International community ‘waking up’
Wenda said the international community was “waking up” and Indonesia could not continue to “hide your shameful secret any longer”.

“Like the Ukrainian people, you will not crush our spirit, you will not steal our hope and we will not give up our struggle for freedom,” Wenda said.

The ULMWP demanded that Indonesia:

• Allow access for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and for humanitarian aid to our displaced people and to international journalists;
• Withdraw the military;
• Release political prisoners, including Victor Yeimo and the “Abepura Eight”; and
• Accept the Papuan right to self-determination and end the illegal occupation of Papua.

One of the key characteristics of Melanesian politics is its ability to remain formless and chaotic right up until the point where, after a strange and often obscure catalysing moment, it abruptly transforms itself.

More than a few people will attribute Solomon Islands’ recent tragic political confrontation to Manasseh Sogavare, his decision to end diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and his intolerance in the face of Malaitan grievance.

Sogavare has a reputation for intransigence. He can be downright pugnacious when confronted. More than a few people have laid at least part of the blame for the 2000 coup at his feet.

• READ MORE: Protests rock Solomon Islands: Here’s what’s behind the unrest
• Solomon Islands riots push nation into slippery slide of self-implosion
• Other Solomon Islands crisis reports

But that misunderstands who he is, and how he’s managed to remain one of the most enduring characters on the Solomon Islands political scene.

Sogavare began his career as a tea boy smartly saluting the White-socked British administrators. He is extremely proud to have become the one they salute.

The diplomatic switch
Those who insist on seeing the current crisis in geopolitical terms misunderstand his role in the diplomatic switch, and his approach to politics.

Sogavare is two things:

• He is headstrong. His rise to power is punctuated by confrontation and inflexibility. He entered politics because the PM of the day sacked him from his role as Permanent Secretary of Finance. His first term as Prime Minister was fraught with violence and hatred.
• He is a technocrat. He will seek pragmatic solutions that are conspicuously absent of ideology, or even consistency, when circumstances dictate.

When Solomon Islands held the chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group in 2015, he played a decisive role in brokering the awkward compromise that saw the MSG simultaneously elevate Indonesia’s status in the organisation and welcome the United Liberation Movement for West Papua, or ULMWP, into the fold.

If he had allowed it, the matter of membership would have gone to a vote, and the vote would have split the organisation irrevocably. Instead he found a consensus solution, albeit one that defies an intellectually consistent explanation.

This is precisely the pitfall that, if backchannel accounts are accurate, Australia led the Pacific Islands Forum into when they called for the selection of the next secretary-general to be put to a vote.

Always an outsider
Born in Papua New Guinea to missionary parents from Choiseul province, he’s always been an outsider and an individualist. His lack of constituency has become his stock in trade. It’s precisely because he’s not burdened by party or policy that he continually bobs to the top of the Solomon Islands political elite.

If you had asked anyone about his stance toward China in the lead-up to the diplomatic split from Taiwan, you would likely have heard that he opposed recognition of China. But that didn’t stop him from unreservedly attacking Taiwan for its failure to address his country’s development needs.

The critique wasn’t unmerited. For decades, Taiwan elevated its ties to the political elite over its role as a development partner. The much-maligned Constituency Development Funds that have gained outsized influence over national politics were seeded by Taiwan.

CDFs are one of the key drivers of electoral corruption in the country. A close observer of Solomon Islands politics recently told me that to get elected in Solomon Islands now, you have to be either rich, or an MP.

Incumbency rates increased markedly since the CDFs were made a core component in the budget process.

It took Taiwan years to begin unhitching itself from this albatross. When they did, they left an opening for China to fill. And, in spite of their own reluctance to become stuck in the same corruption and mire that Taiwan had only just emerged from, the prize was too big to forego.

Claiming that Sogavare drove this process ignores the power of Parliament. He knew which way they were going, and he knew what he had to do if he was going to keep his hand on the wheel.

And that’s why he did what he did.

Distrust of Malaitan politicians
His distrust of senior Malaitan politicians, and his apparent willingness to use dirty tricks to remove them, are well known. It’s hard to defend many of the decisions he’s made along the way.

But it is possible to understand and explain them.

Manasseh Sogavare is a party of one. He retains his hold on the highest office not in spite of this, but because of it. He presents no ideological or policy threat to any of the other MPs.

It’s precisely because of his mechanistic, arguably amoral approach to politics that he remains one of the most enduring faces on the Solomon Islands political scene.

That hardly raises him above criticism. But it should serve as a caution to anyone who naively thinks that removing him will solve the nation’s problems — or that the nation’s political problems can be solved by a policy, a party or a single man.

The question is not who can salve this wound afflicting Solomons society, but how these peoples can heal themselves.

The divisions that have fuelled this most recent rupture are deep. They span decades. To think that a bit of parliamentary musical chairs will be sufficient to fix it is folly. To think that some other smart, independent man of deep conviction is going to be able to put things to rights is to ignore the evidence right in front of our eyes.

How will history judge Sogavare? I’ll leave the last words to him. When I asked him back in 2015 about the prospect for continued violence and unrest, he said:

“We’ve been through this three times now. And if I haven’t learned anything from 2006, then… I have myself to blame.”

Dan McGarry was previously media director at Vanuatu Daily Post/Buzz FM96. The Village Explainer is his semi-regular newsletter containing analysis and insight focusing on under-reported aspects of Pacific societies, politics and economics. His articles are republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Four fresh indigenous Papuan students have graduated with degrees from Aotearoa New Zealand universities in the past few weeks to fulfil the dreams of Papuan provincial government leaders Lukas Enembe and Dominggus Mandacan.

The two governors of both Indonesian-Melanesian provinces, Enembe (Papua) province and Mandacan (West Papua) made a bold and enterprising decision to send Papuan students to pursue their higher education overseas, especially to English-speaking countries.

The four Papuan students, recipients of scholarships from the provincial governments, have graduated with masters and bachelor degrees in a variety of disciplines.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua education articles

This article uses the term Papuans to refer to the indigenous people of both provinces which are generally collectively known in Australia and New Zealand as West Papua. Indigenous Papuans are of Melanesian ethnic background and non-Papuans are of other ethnic backgrounds who are living in the Melanesian land of Papua.

Nathan Sonyap (a scholarship recipient of Papua province) has graduated with a Master of International Tourism Management Studies from Waikato University and Yan Wenda (also  Papua) has gained a Bachelor of Commerce in Management degree from Otago University.

Gebriella Thenau (a West Papua provincial scholarship recipient) has graduated with a Bachelor of Environmental Management from Lincoln University and Yuliktus Korain (also West Papua) with a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing also at Lincoln.

All four told Asia Pacific Report they were grateful to study and graduate from universities in New Zealand. They dedicated their achievement to their families and the indigenous people of Papua.

Facing cultural barriers
Coming from the Melanesian and Pacific region, they said Papuans sometimes faced a lot of cultural barriers and even racial attacks. This put Papuan students under considerable pressure while studying.

However, in New Zealand they found that the “kindness and generosity of Kiwis” at the universities or in the social environment made them feel “safer and peaceful”. They expressed gratitude towards everyone who had helped them on their life and study journey.

The four graduates said that some of the challenges that they encountered included  language — as English was a second or even third language for them — weather, the academic system, and culture, and other things.

Gebriella Thenau — “Gebi” as she is known — said that having an opportunity to study in New Zealand had not been even in her dreams, given that it was very expensive. She was so grateful to the government of West Papua province for awarding her the scholarship.

She said her parents always reminded her to study seriously because the government used Papuan people’s money, which her parents called “Blood Money”. She said when she received inquiries from them about when she was going to finish study, she always felt under pressure.

“My parents always reminded me to study seriously. My dad always says remember that you are using indigenous Papuan’s money,” she said.

“Despite having pressure from my family and study, I always believe that having a qualification from one of the top universities in NZ will pay off … And finally, I made it and my parents and family are proud of that,” said Thenau.

Crying for better education
Thenau, who completed her elementary to high school studies in Sorong, one of the cities that predominantly hosts non-Papuans from other parts of Indonesia, said that having supportive parents on her journey was very important.

“This is a great opportunity as our parents didn’t have an opportunity like us to study overseas — our mothers are sweating and crying on the street for their kids to get a better education, and women don’t have many opportunities in the public space,” said Thenau.

“So, I hope our success stories will wipe away their tears and sweat.”

Nathan Sonyap, the first student from his tribe and church, said he was extremely grateful to Governor Enembe and the late Vice-Governor Klemen Tinal for the opportunity to study in New Zealand.

“It is truly an honour and privilege for me to study here,” he said.

Sonyap, who did his elementary to high school in Papua and bachelor’s degree in the city of Makasar-Indonesia, said he had learned so many things during his stay in New Zealand.

“Honestly, it wasn’t that easy,” he said.

Many challenges
Yuliktus Korain — “Yulko” as he is known — is an exceptional student. He was orphaned but plans to “bring light to his people”. Korain told Asia Pacific Report that in order for him to reach the level where he was now, he had gone through many challenges.

One of the challenges was because he and his younger brother lost their parents when they were still at a very young age.

“Man…it was extremely hard for me and my younger brother to face the reality when my mom passed away in 2003, just when I started my elementary school and later in 2008 my dad passed away when I was in grade 4.

“I completely lost hope. I decided to stop going to school because of financial difficulties and losing my parents. For one year, I just stayed at home and played with other kids in the village,” he said.

Korain said that he was lucky as his uncle — “an angel of the Lord” as he describes him — offered him study. He stayed with his uncle while completing his grade 4, and during grade 5 and 6, he stayed with an aunt.

Korain continued his middle school to high school while staying in a seminary. He said his groceries, stationery and other needs were looked after by the seminary.

Never celebrated birthdays
Yan Piterson Wenda, who is also the president of Papuan Student Association in Oceania, said that celebration of his graduation was something that he would always remember because he had never even celebrated his birthday previously.

“I pay my tribute firstly to my mom because I was raised by a single mother. She is a great person in my life.

“I wish my mom could have witnessed personally the results of her prayers and hard work of selling cassava, peanuts, and other garden products. But unfortunately, it wasn’t the reality.

“My parents and family couldn’t watch the live graduation on Facebook … because the internet is still blocked in Papua,” said Wenda.

While paying tribute to the Papua provincial government, Wenda said his presence in New Zealand was the result of an enlightened “crazy programme” based on social justice to give underprivileged students a chance to study.

“I am academically not so good, but as you can see, I am granted this opportunity because the government of Papua province wants to give us an equal chance for those who come from underprivileged families and affluent families,” said Wenda.

Wenda who is now preparing himself to continue his Masters in International Business at Otago University said he followed three guiding principles — believing in God, having a firm motivation for being in NZ, and having supportive people around him.

All four Papuan graduates said they hoped the programme would continue as it would help raise the dignity of indigenous Papuans who have struggled through painful moments.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan Masters in Communication Studies student at Auckland University of Technology who has been studying journalism. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

The Pacific Media Centre has protested to Facebook over censorship of a West Papuan media freedom news item in what its director, Professor David Robie, has described as an Orwellian example of the “tyranny of algorithms”.

The news item, published by the International Federation of Journalists on its Asia-Pacific website, reported the content of the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review, saying that it “highlights the growing need to address media freedom in the region, particularly in Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and West Papua”.

IFJ added a rider saying it was “concerned about the ongoing media repression and urges governments across the region to uphold journalist rights”.

READ MORE: The Ben Bohane photo that Facebook censored on an article about Indonesia

Dr Robie attempted to share this item with several Facebook media groups, including The Pacific Newsroom with about 9000 followers, but each time immediately received a blocking message from Facebook declaring:

“Your post goes against our community standards on nudity or sexual activity.

“Only people who manage Pacific Media Centre can see this post. We have standards because some audiences are sensitive to different things when it comes to nudity.”

The algorithm-dictated objection to “nudity” apparently was because IFJ had published a photo from last year’s “Papua Uprising” in the Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua in response to a racist attack on students in the central Java city of Surabaya. Two of the male protesters were partly naked according to Papuan highlands tradition.

Orwellian action
In a message to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders media freedom advocacy watchdog, Dr Robie said the Facebook action was Orwellian and an example of the random “tyranny of algorithms”.

“Anybody with common sense would see that the photograph in question was not ’nudity’ in the community standards sense of Facebook’s guidelines.

“This was a media freedom item and the news agency picture shows a student protest against racism in Jayapura on August 19, 2019. Two apparently naked men are wearing traditional koteka (penis gourds) as normally worn in the Papuan highlands.

“It is a strong cultural protest against Indonesian repression and crackdowns on media. Clearly the Facebook algorithms are arbitrary and lacking in cultural balance.”

Dr Robie attempted three times to file a challenge over this “arbitrary” decision on August 7, but received no reply and his Facebook page still carries a standards breach “warning” that will remain in force “for a year”.

“This is absurd. The challenge process is a farce – merely a button with no field to enter specific reasons,” he told Pacific Media Watch.

“All I got was an automated message saying that ‘we usually offer the chance to request a review, and follow up if we got decisions wrong’. However, it added that ‘we have fewer reviewers available right now because of the coronavirus (covid-19) outbreak’.”

It was bizarre in that the original IFJ item on Facebook was apparently not blocked, just the PMC shared versions, he said.

https://www.facebook.com/IFJAsiaPacific/posts/3588004707899482

Another censored photo
In April 2018, Facebook censored a West Papua photo by Vanuatu-based photographer Ben Bohane that also showed traditional koteka.

In response to this latest example of “community” censorship, Bohane wrote on social media: “Facebook happily keeps taking Indonesian money for disinformation ads on West Papua, so no surprises they try to block legitimate news and photos from there…”

Nick Chesterfield of West Papua Media said this incident came just months after Facebook was “skull dragged into removing thousands of Indonesian intelligence agency bot accounts that were used for trolling, harassing and threatening journalists and human rights defenders, and posting fake news”.

He accused the Facebook team of “once again using their opaque, toxic and racist ‘community standards’ censorship machine” to support the Indonesian occupation of West Papua.

The Pacific Media Centre has protested to the Facebook policy director for Australia and New Zealand, Mia Garlick, but at the time of publication had yet to receive a reply.

• Facebook takes down hundreds of Indonesian accounts linked to fake news syndicate

Pacific diplomats, academics and youth leaders will gather in Auckland, New Zealand, this week to discuss security, economic development and other pressing issues shaping the region’s future.

Pacific Futures will be held on October 18 and will feature speakers from across the region, including Samoa’s Deputy Prime Minister Afioga Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, New Zealand Minister of Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio and New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who will be giving the keynote speech.

New Zealand Institute of International Affairs executive director Melanie Thornton said the conference would be “focussed squarely on the Pacific” with more than 80 percent of speakers from the Pacific or of Pacific heritage.

READ MORE: Tagata Pasifika: Youth lead indigenous storytelling at Moana Loloto

“This conference will be vital for understanding the new dynamics in the Pacific and what these mean for the diplomatic community, the business community, and for Pasifika and New Zealand communities everywhere,” she said.

The public is also invited to attend the conference to gain an understanding of regional challenges and the positive work that is taking place in difference Pacific countries and organisations, she said.

Pacific security will likely be at the forefront of the conference, which will take place as China galvanises support and increases its foothold in the region.

Last month, both Kiribati and the Solomon Islands switched diplomatic ties from long-time ally Taiwan to China, prompting claims that the world’s second largest economy was attempting to “buy” diplomacy in the Pacific.

However, senior lecturer of security studies at Massey University Dr Anna Powles, who will be presenting at the conference, said talks on China’s role in the Pacific would not dominate the agenda as it had done in other regional meetings in recent years.

“The conference has deliberately shifted the framing of geopolitics in the Pacific in terms of what are Pacific perspectives on security issues.”

While she said the Kiribati and Solomon’s islands developments were likely to come up, she expected a far more “nuanced conservation” where the bilateral agency of Pacific nations are acknowledged.

Another key issue which is certain to be raised is the unrest in West Papua, which has seen over 30 people killed and many thousands displaced as the Indonesia military clashed with protesters.

Dr Powles said it was important that West Papua is discussed at the conference as it is very much a regional security issue.

“What is happening in Papua is a human security issue and because it is a human security issue, it is a regional security issue for New Zealand and a number of Pacific island countries.”

“New Zealand is a signatory to the Boe Declaration which provides an expanded concept of security inclusive of human security.”

“There is a potential role for New Zealand, similar to the honest broker role New Zealand played in respect to brokering peace in Bougainville, where New Zealand can offer ‘good offices’ to support dialogue between the key actors in Papua and Indonesia.”

Vanuatu Foreign Minister’s Minister Ralph Regenvanu who will also be speaking at the conference told Pacific Media Watch he intended to raise the West Papua issue personally.

An outspoken advocate of West Papuan independence, Regenvanu commended the New Zealand government’s leadership on issues like climate change, which was robustly debated at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu in August.

“New Zealand is a model for what a developed country should be committing in terms of climate change,” he said.

Pacific Futures will also focus heavily on the growing influence of young people in Pacific developments with many representatives of youth organisations speaking.

Founder and CEO of Tonga Youth Leaders and Pacific Regional Representative for Commonwealth Youth Council Elizabeth V Kite said the conference will give a much-needed voice to the younger generations which are frequently excluded from decision making.

“Youth are leading the way in terms of highlighting issues such as climate change, but we are still not afforded equal say at decision making tables about our environment and future, which must change,” she said.

“If we are the ones to live out the future that is being planned today, we as young people must have a say in that and must be engaged with when these discussions and decisions are being made.”

Pacific Futures will take place at the Novotel Auckland Airport from 8am to 5pm on Friday October 18.

Young Pasifika performers and artists came together last week for Moana Loloto, a night of indigenous storytelling to explore four pressing issues the Pacific and its people are facing.

Held at the Mangere Arts Centre in South Auckland, young people of Te Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa used dance, art and stories to discuss West Papua, the land occupations at Ihumātao and Mauna Kea and climate change, with a specific focus on Kiribati.

Tagata Pasifika spoke to some of the young “Pacific influencers” who were helping to bring these issues into the spotlight.

READ MORE: UN Security-General tells youth be ‘noisy as possible’ on climate change

Mission 2 Zero’s Emily Muli said Moana Loloto was a space to nurture stories and tell them the Pacific way.

“We just wanted to give space to people to talk about that in our ways so that’s through talanoa and creative arts.”

She said there has been a lot more engagement with issues like climate change over the past two years and this could be seen in the number of events that are being held.

Also speaking was Pelenise Alofa of the Kiribati Climate Action Network who told Tagata Pasifika that her work to help build resilience on Kiribati was made harder by a lack of political will in developed countries.

“My government and my people are trying their best, we try to adapt but we need more support from the developed countries to help us.”

• This video was republished through Pacific Media Centre’s partnership with Tagata Pasifika

Protests are spreading in Indonesia-ruled West Papua in response to harassment of Papuans during explosive incidents in Javanese cities last week.

Indonesia’s president has urged calm after some of the protests turned violent, but he’s been criticised for not directly addressing a festering racism problem.

The unrest was triggered when dozens of Papuan university students in Surabaya were assaulted by a mob on Saturday and later arrested.

LISTEN: Indonesia’s president criticised for failing to address racism – Dateline Pacific

READ MORE: 250 inmates escape from West Papuan prison during protests

One of the students had allegedly trashed an Indonesian flag on the country’s independence day anniversary.

The angry scene was echoed in an incident in the city of Semarang where a Papuan student dormitory was surrounded by civilian groups demanding the students fly the Indonesian flag.

Nationalist sentiment was running high at the weekend, as it always does on independence day.

Anti-Papua sentiment
An Indonesian researcher with Human Rights Watch, Andreas Harsono, said anti-Papuan sentiment was also on the rise in the country.

“Military-related militias are starting to increase their campaign against Papua by showing that the Papuans (are) refusing to raise the Indonesian flag, hoping that it will exasperate the situation on the island of Java, Indonesia’s most important island,” Harsono said.

The students were repeatedly called “monkeys” and other racist slurs, sparking thousands to march in the streets back in Papua.

In Manokwari, videos posted to social media showed the parliament building on fire and roads blocked by burning tires.

The unrest prompted Indonesia’s President, Joko Widodo, to appeal for calm.

“I know that there are hurt feelings but as fellow citizens the best thing is to forgive each other,” Widodo told a media conference.

Widodo urges forgiveness
“It is okay to be emotional but forgiving is better. Being patient is also better. And be confident that the government will continue to safeguard your dignity and prosperity.”

Indonesia’s police chief, Tito Karnavian, has focussed blame for the destruction in Manokwari on the people who posted about the Surabaya incident on social media. He described it as hoax news.

But US-based Papuan independence leader Octo Mote said this response, along with that of the president’s, was disappointing.

“Now the Indonesian President, he ignored what’s going on. Then he said, ‘ok guys just apologise to each other’. So West Papuans should apologise for what? He doesn’t condemn the racism. He doesn’t say racism is not right.”

According to Mote, harassment of Papuans is a long running problem in Indonesia.

“From the beginning, this is an Asian [people] who invade Melanesian land, seeing us as sub-human beings with black and curly hair.”

He said the allegation about Papuans disrespecting the Indonesian flag in Surabaya was simply used as a trigger by the mob, who laid siege to the students’ dorm.

Everyday racism
“Because of that hatred, they try to find a way. That’s what happens not only there but that same incident happens in so many cities outside of Papua. As a journalist who worked there so many years, we experienced this in our daily lives under Indonesian colonialism, the discrimination and racism we experience in everyday life,” Mote said.

Monday’s peaceful protest in Jayapura was the biggest in Papua in years. There have been surprisingly few arrests, even where the protests turned violent such as in Manokwari.

On Tuesday a local resident, Ucu Sawaki, said the city’s streets had quickly returned to normal calm.

“Police is still everywhere and the security is also good this morning but still people are still afraid to go out from the house. So just couples, motorcycles and cars but it’s not like in the past.”

Indonesia’s government said it had restricted internet access to Papua and West Papua provinces as the protests took place.

In a statement, the Ministry of Communication and Information said it had acted to throttle access in several areas because of the potential for disinformation to create social disorder.

‘Throttling social media’
“We can say that the purpose of throttling is to prevent the wide spread of hoax (fake news) that trigger action,” the ministry said.

But it is unlikely that such measures will stop Papuans protesting this week. Indeed, the monkey slurs directed at their students have provided a new impetus.

Yesterday, large mobilisations took place in other Papuan cities, including Merauke, Biak and Nabire. However in Sorong, as Papuans took to the streets, 250 prisoners escaped from the local jail amid the chaos. A manhunt by local police is underway.

Also, in signs of an impending crackdown, Indonesia has deployed more military forces to Papua to quell the unrest.

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand

Silas Papare Air Force base in Sentani, Jayapura, has reported that an Mi-17 helicopter belonging to the Indonesian Army lost contact after departing from Oksibil airport in Pegunungan Bintang regency, Papua, yesterday afternoon.

The helicopter took off from Oksibil, where it had stopped to refuel, at 11:44 a.m. local time and was scheduled to arrive at Sentani airport, Jayapura, at 1:11 p.m.

The Silas Papare tower officer reported that at 11:49 a.m., five minutes after it took off from Oksibil, the helicopter lost contact.

It had 12 members on board, with seven crew members and five members of the Infantry Battalion 725/Waroagi task force who were being transferred to another post.

Cendrawasih Military Command spokesperson Colonel Muhammad Aidi said a joint search and rescue team comprising military personnel and members of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) was deployed on Friday afternoon to search for the missing helicopter.

“At 9:00 p.m. we decided to stop the search because it was raining really hard in the area. We will continue the search tomorrow morning,” Aida said.

Aidi said the helicopter was in good condition when it departed from Oksibil. The weather that day was forecast as foggy but with clear visibility at around 6 to 7 km.

However, Aidi said, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) later informed that the weather at several points along the flight route was changing drastically.

“We still cannot say what really happened but, when it comes to mountains in Papua, we often see extreme and drastic weather changes,” he said.

The Mi-17 helicopter started its trip on Friday morning, bringing food and supplies from Sentani to the border security post at Okibab district in Pegunungan Bintang.

Aidi said the trip happened monthly because the post could only be reached by air.

Gemma Holliani Cahya is a reporter with the Jakarta Post.

• More Indonesian stories
• More West Papua stories

During a recent trip to Port Vila, Tess Newton Cain caught up with Ralph Regenvanu, Minister for Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and External Trade in the Vanuatu government.

Regenvanu describes himself as a Port Vila citizen. He has lived for most of his life in the capital of Vanuatu, other than for a period of time when he was studying in Australia (he holds an honours degree in anthropology and development studies from the Australian National University (ANU).

He spent more than a decade as director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, prior to a return to university in 2007, this time to study law at the University of the South Pacific. Then his political career took off:

Halfway through my degree, I stood for election, and I got in at the end of 2008 as an independent candidate. And myself and the others who were with me in the political journey set up the Graon mo Jastis Pati in 2010.

This is Minister Regenvanu’s third term in Parliament and he has held a number of portfolios since 2008. He took over as Minister for Foreign Affairs in December 2017.

So, what are Vanuatu’s foreign policy priorities and what would he like to see his ministry achieve during his tenure as its leader? Significantly, the minister points to internal matters as being more significant than external issues:

The biggest issues of this ministry are not so much external issues. The biggest issues of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are the internal coordination of the government so that we can strategically approach our international relations and diplomacy. So, at the moment, it is quite difficult to effectively strategise about how Vanuatu places itself in the world, especially the most important thing for us on the horizon is the LDC graduation in 2020.

More opportunities
The minister explained that he thinks there are more opportunities for Vanuatu to work strategically bilaterally, regionally and globally. This is what will be required as the impacts of Least Developed Country (LDC) graduation take effect after 2020.

Therefore, he is focused on getting the internal infrastructure right between his ministry, the Prime Minister’s Office (which is responsible for aid coordination), the Ministry of Finance and Economic Management, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry, Fisheries and Biosecurity (which has carriage of the EDF11 program).

Politics in Vanuatu and voter behaviour tends to focus on the hyper-local issues so how can the work of the Foreign Minister and his Ministry be translated into messages that resonate with the urban voters of Port Vila, which is where Minister Regenvanu’s constituency sits?

…the best way to really make people appreciate our foreign relations is, of course, all the aid projects, right? And being able to show that they are well chosen, have high impact on the lives of people, that they’re conducted in a manner which is transparent, and they’re done efficiently. And that brings me back to what I originally said about being very strategic in how we organise ourselves internally to get projects, attract the right kind of projects and the right kind of conditions that we want.

The second aspect of foreign affairs that the minister believes resonates with voters is one that is essentially part of the DNA of Vanuatu:

There is, of course, the very popular issue in Vanuatu of West Papua, and that’s also something which governments need to take heed of, in terms of the very, very popular support for the independence of West Papua in Vanuatu, which is translated into one of our foreign affairs objectives.

A third, emerging, narrative is around the growing awareness of the impacts of climate change in Vanuatu. On that note, we discussed recent statements the minister had made regarding climate finance and, in particular, the issue of compensation for loss and damage.

Frustration over key issues
He expressed a certain amount of frustration with the actions (or lack thereof) of developed countries in relation to some key issues:

You’ve got to play the game that you yourself agreed to. So, when it comes to the Green Climate Fund, for example,… it’s a very poor effort by the developed countries who’ve said that they would contribute. Let alone, talking about loss and damage, which has absolutely no contributions, even though that was also an agreement made by all the countries…

I reminded the minister he had previously expressed to me a degree of scepticism about the value of regional organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum and the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). What are his current views on this?

I think the Pacific Islands Forum is definitely useful, especially in terms of articulating common positions and being a conduit for development finance, accessing larger facilities and so on… I can’t say the same about the MSG [Melanesian Spearhead Group]. I think the MSG is… it’s disappointing, to say the least and there’s a question of its relevance.

The minister accepts that Vanuatu has a particular interest in the MSG, but says that ongoing support depends on management decisions made in the next little while. While the decision on the membership application of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) is top of that list, there are other concerns around management of the organisation as well. As for the PIDF?

We’re currently not a member. And we’re just — I suppose we’re just watching it to see — we’re really more invested in the Forum at this stage.

Last, but not least, we turned to the issue of increased participation of women in political decision-making. This is an issue on which Minister Regenvanu has long been very vocal. Further to his contribution to getting temporary special measures included in municipal elections in Port Vila and Luganville, what is next in this space?

Gender political space
…the next step is going for political party legislation, which is what we’re working on now, to get a new bill through Parliament, which provides for the regulation of political parties. At the moment, we have nothing like that in Vanuatu. So, just a very simple law that says you have to register a political party according to certain criteria… And then in that legislation, I think, is room to create measures… by which women can get more representation.

Minister Regenvanu continues to be a prominent and influential member of the Vanuatu Parliament and government. We will be watching his political progress with interest.

Dr Tess Newton Cain is the principal of TNC Pacific Consulting and is a visiting fellow at the Development Policy Centre in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. She is a citizen of Vanuatu where she lived for almost 20 years and is now based in Brisbane.

A plane crashed in the mountainous Gunung Menuk area in Pegunungan Bintang regency of Indonesia’s Papua province on Saturday, killing eight people on board, including the pilot and co-pilot  – but a 12-year-old boy survived.

Rescuers who reached the aircraft at dawn said they found the boy alive among the wreckage.

The crash was near Oksibil close to the border with Papua New Guinea.

“The survivor, identified as J, 12, has been evacuated from the crash site and taken to a hospital in Oksibil district to receive treatment for his broken right hand,” Pegunungan Bintang police chief Adjunct Commander Michael Mumbunan said yesterday.

He said the victim’s bodies were also being transported to Oksibil.

The Swiss-built plane, operated by PT Martha Buana Abadi, was found on Sunday at 6.15 am local time, according to Jayapura Search and Rescue Agency spokesman Yadianto.

The plane departed from Tanah Merah airport in Boven Digul on Saturday at 1.42 pm and was scheduled to arrive at Oksibil airport at 2.20 pm.

“It took eight hours for search and rescue personnel to reach the crash site – comprising a two-hour drive and a six-hour trek through Kampung Okatem to Gunung Menuk,” Yadianto said.

In 2015, a Trigana Air twin turboprop plane crashed near Oksibil, killing all 54 on board.

Nethy Dharma Somba is a Jayapura-based reporter of the English-language Jakarta Post.

An alarming number of “targeted” journalists being killed and West Papua media for independence were just some of the topics covered in a wide-ranging seminar by the director of the Pacific Media Centre last night.

Professor David Robie called for the media, universities and journalism schools to take their Pacific “backyard” more seriously and not just wait for crises to happen.

The seminar was in marking May 3 – World Press Freedom Day. This year’s conference is in Accra, Ghana.

READ MORE: Free media week killings underscore crimes of impunity against journalists

Dr Robie cited the number of journalists killed while working in 2017 and called journalism an increasingly “dangerous occupation”.

“Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) [Reporters Without Borders] statistics showed 65 journalists were killed worldwide in 2017,” Dr Robie said. Of the 65 journalists killed, 7 of these people were so-called citizen journalists.

This number of casualties varied between media freedom monitoring agencies depending on the definitions of journalists and media workers counted in the statistics, he said.

Although this statistic showed a drop from the previous year, the growth of “hatred” for media and targeting of journalists was a worsening problem.

“This is a dire situation that is getting worse.” 

On top of the killings, the Paris-based statistics showed that 326 journalists were detained in prison and a further 54 were being held hostage. 

Dr Robie said use of the term “citizen journalist” was problematic, as it gave an impression of untrained journalists working without an ethical basis. In fact, many professional journalists were becoming “citizen” journalists tactically and using social media to defeat mainstream media “gags” such as relating to the Melanesian region West Papua inside Indonesia.

“There are more and more independent journalists that are disillusioned” and publishing untold stories on their own blogs.

One such journalist is Papua New Guinea’s Scott Waide, with whom Pacific Media Centre is collaborating with, published many articles by independent journalists and civil society people on his blog My Land, My Country.

Dr Robie also talked about the latest RSF Press Freedom Index and its findings on the Asia-Pacific region.

A Filipino radio journalist, Edmond Sestoso, was shot last Monday – three days before Press Freedom Day – and died the next day. He was murdered in a drive-by scenario by a gunman on a motorcycle. According to Dr Robie, it is a “very common way of doing it” in the Philippines.

World Press Freedom Day 2017
In 2017, Dr Robie was invited to go to the week-long UNESCO World Press Freedom Day media conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.

He was one of just two New Zealanders at the conference out of the 1500 people attending the WPFD conference. He spoke at a journalist safety academic conference at WPFD but was also a guest keynote speaker at an alternative “Free Press in West Papua” conference organised by Indonesia’s Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI).

Dr Robie said it was “astonishing” that there were not more people from New Zealand present at WPFD and said it showed how “appalling” New Zealand’s interest in international affairs was with an information gap in coverage of Asia-Pacific issues. The other New Zealander present was Mary Major, executive director of the New Zealand Media Council.

Dr Robie described the week as “challenging” and “inspiring”.

“I was representing AUT university and also entering a fraught situation.”

Independent Indonesian journalists were planning to protest against the treatment of West Papua and make a showcase stand before the world’s press, said Dr Robie.

At the WPFD, there was a tight military and police security cordon which kept out West Papua protesters and prevented conference participants from joining the protests in solidarity.

While en route to Jakarta, Dr Robie was also invited to speak at a conference hosted by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, the last investigative journalism unit at an Australian university. This was closing under protest after 25 years on the “frontline”.

He was able to address West Papua issues there too.

“I’m an educator and a journalist … I have a responsibility to share my knowledge with as many people as I can about issues,” said Dr Robie, who is author of Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, mayhem and human rights in the Pacific.

West Papua plight ‘censored’

Dr Robie discussed Facebook recently wrongly “censoring” a 1995 photo of an armed West Papuan OPM guerilla and fellow tribespeople in traditional nambas (penis sheaths), pointing to the Pacific Media Centre coverage that sparked an RNZ Mediawatch story on the issue.

Photojournalist Ben Bohane, who has extensively covered conflict issues in the Asia-Pacific region, wrote a two-page article in the Vanuatu Daily Post in response to a piece about China and Vanuatu by The Sydney Morning Herald that had speculated about a “naval base” plan for a wharf aid project at Luganville, Espiritu Santo. Dr Robie said the Australian article was  “scaremongering.”

“Ben Bohane’s article argued China was not the real concern,” he said. “The real threat in terms of stability and security is Indonesia, for which New Zealand media have a blindspot.”

When the PMC republished the Bohane article on its current affairs website Asia Pacific Report, Facebook links were removed. “I got a message saying the picture breached Facebook’s community standards.” While the Facebook “block” did not affect the actual article itself, Dr Robie said it limited the reach of an important article.

Dr Robie said he believed the photo censorship had more to do with “politics” rather than “nudity” and was undoubtedly an attempt by Indonesian sources to curb the debate regarding West Papua.

“It is not the picture that is the real issue,” said Dr Robie. He quoted from Ben Bohane’s latest message saying the censorship was ongoing in spite of Facebook saying it had lifted the block.

It is not the first time Facebook has censored an iconic photo that illustrates dire situations in the Asia-Pacific region. Dr Robie pointed to how Mediawatch raised the issue of how the social media platform in 2016 censored images of the “napalm girl” taken during the Vietnam War in 1973. This caused an international storm of protest.

WPFD in Indonesia – an irony
Dr Robie pointed out the irony over Jakarta hosting the WPFD 2017 conference in light of censorship and repressive activities by security forces in West Papua.

According to Dr Robie, Indonesia has a vibrant “plurality” of voices but forces were seeking to radicalise people, along with targeting journalists.

While President Joko Widodo had changed policy in 2015 to “allow foreign journalists into” West Papua after he was elected in 2014, not much had really changed. Arrests and deportations were continuing.

“It’s very tightly controlled by the bureaucracy and security authorities,” said Dr Robie.

He highlighted the message from critics and researchers of a “secret genocide” in West Papua.

“The state of mainstream international media is a big part of how West Papua is ignored. There is a big difference when you watch some news media that take a more independent stance, such as Al Jazeera.”

He praised Al Jazeera’s Dutch journalist in Jakarta, Step Vaessen, for her coverage.

The penalties for showing support for West Papuan independence is severe – a 15-year prison sentence if you raise the banned Morning Star independence flag – even wearing a t-shirt like I am wearing tonight with the flag on can get you into trouble,” Dr Robie said.

“It is a very serious situation for West Papuans.”

“They believe their independence was declared in 1962 and despite that, Indonesian forces invaded.

“Western countries have become persuaded that West Papua has become part of Indonesia, making the situation a wrong that has never been righted.”

NZ media coverage
While the situation is still dire, there has been some sporadic New Zealand coverage of the West Papua situation, said Dr Robie.

New Zealander Karen Abplanalp, who researched journalist access into West Papua for her masters degree, assisted Māori Television in a reporting mission with Adrian Stevanon to West Papua in 2015. The crew had to “dress” up the assignment bid with the authorities by saying it was a cultural showcase and had a nice side report about a kumara aid project in the Highlands.

Johnny Blades and Koroi Hawkins from RNZ also visited West Papua that year and did a rare interview with Lukas Enembe, the governor of Papua.

Dr Robie said New Zealand media covered disasters, coups and cyclones, while ignoring many of the social justice and development stories that were “crying out to be covered” in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Universities have responsibilities to shed light through research,” concluded Dr Robie.

He called for Indonesia to genuinely “open the door” to journalists and non-government agencies to visit West Papua, and for a “real” UN referendum on self-determination for the Papuans.

Peace and human rights activist Maire Leadbeater said the presentation was enlightening and covered many topics.

“It was great, I really enjoyed it. Dr Robie covered a lot of bases,” Leadbeater said.

Leadbeater is due to have a book published next month about the issue, See No Evil: New Zealand’s betrayal of the people of West Papua.

“The book will be a probe into New Zealand’s diplomacy that hasn’t been done before.”

• Charges of ‘censorship’ at UNESCO WPFD event 2018

Facebook has been under fire for some time for distributing misinformation and fake news to a potential audience of around two billion users. Only now is it making a concerted effort to filter it out.

But Facebook has also faced criticism for the ways in which it has filtered the news in the past.

Back in September 2016, it censored a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the Vietnam war.

LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH

A Norwegian writer posted Nick Ut’s famous picture of severely burned nine year-old Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack in 1972.  It was part of an online discussion about photographs that had changed history.

Facebook quickly deleted his post and suspended his account, claiming he had violated Facebook’s content standards which prohibit most forms of nudity.

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten then wrote about this on its own Facebook page – and that was summarily deleted by Facebook too.

Norway’s Prime Minister posted the image on her own official Facebook account. Facebook deleted that as well.

An American technology company had censored a foreign head of state, and struck out a sovereign government’s communications.

‘This is serious’
Under the headline “Listen, Mark, this is serious” Aftenposten’s editor-in-chief called out Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg on the newspaper’s front page and online.

Eventually Facebook took the photograph off its blacklist and said: “We’ll keep working to make Facebook an open platform for all ideas.”

Last weekend the Vanuatu Daily Post newspaper published a two-page spread on the growing influence of Indonesia and China in the Melanesian region. It was written by journalist and photographer Ben Bohane who lives in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila and runs picture agency Wakaphoto.

Ben illustrated his story with one of his own pictures taken in 1995. It shows fighters from the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and several other men wearing traditional protective penis sheaths – called nambas.

The article was subsequently republished by  the Pacific Media Centre on its Pacific Media Watch freedom feed and on Asia Pacific Report – which also raised the West Papua political connection – at the Auckland University of Technology on Monday.

Facebook alerts on the newsfeeds of Ben Bohane, Vanuatu Daily Post, the Pacific Media Centre and its director Professor David Robie were all removed by Facebook, which said that the featured image had breached its “community standards” policy.

On Tuesday, Ben Bohane posted his picture featuring the men in the nambas again and was immediately notified that the content has been removed again. He was blocked from posting anything on Facebook for 24 hours.

‘Memo to Facebook’
“Memo to Facebook – this is how Papuans live! Your ‘Community Standards’ obviously don’t include Melanesian culture,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Meanwhile, the Vanuatu Daily Post re-edited Ben Bohane’s story image online to avoid falling foul of Facebook’s policy.

The image is still there but a black box appears over the top where the nambas could once be seen, with these words in white:

THIS IMAGE was censored by FACEBOOK’s COMMUNITY STANDARDS

And off to the side:

Happy now, Facebook?

The problem is millions of Facebook’s users are unhappy with Facebook for episodes like this.

This article has been republished as part of the content sharing agreement between Radio New Zealand and the AUT Pacific Media Centre.

First Brigadier Berry Pramana Putra, a member of the National Police’s Mobile Brigade stationed in Timika, Papua, has been killed in an exchange of fire with unidentified gunmen on Utikini bridge, Tembagapura, Mimika regency.

The Jakarta Post reports that Berry died yesterday during a pursuit of armed assailants who were allegedly behind a shooting incident in the mining area of US-based PT Freeport Indonesia at Mile 60 to 67, Papua police Chief Inspector General Boy Rafli Amar said today.

“The victim died on the scene while Mobile Brigade members were in an exchange of fire with an armed criminal group on Utikini bridge, a day after the group shot at two patrol vehicles owned by PT Freeport,” he said in Jayapura.

He alleged the group was behind security disturbances in Freeport’s mining area. He also suspected it was the same group who seized two Steyr assault rifles and ammunition from members of the Mobile Brigade two years ago, as the same weapons were believed to have been used in the shooting that killed Berry.

The allegations arose from the bullet casings found at the scene.

‘Group identified’
“We have identified the group, although we will not yet publish the name of the group,” Chief Inspector Boy added.

No additional security personnel would be added despite the incidents, he said, adding that police would handle the issue in accordance with law enforcement procedures to end the security disturbances in Papua.

The Papua police delivered the body of First Brigadier Berry to his hometown in Bengkulu in a release ceremony led by Boy. As Berry had died on duty, the police also granted him a posthumous promotion to one level above his rank.

Nethy Dharma Somba is a reporter for The Jakarta Post.

• More West Papua stories

Reports about the shooting of an indigenous Papuan by police officers early this month in Deiyai district, Papua, have renewed focus on how human rights abuses by security officials in the region remain unaddressed by the government of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

Accounts of what triggered the incident differ, although most suggest it began when workers at a construction company refused to take a near-drowned villager to the hospital. The villager’s relatives and other local residents protested and a scuffle broke out. Police and military officials arrived and, according to an eyewitness, opened fire on the crowd without firing any warning shots. This left one man, Yulianus Pigai, dead, and 16 other Papuans wounded, including children.

Local police claimed Mobile Brigade (Brimob) personnel only used rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. But a relative of one of the injured residents has posted photos on social media of real bullet casings, allegedly used by police.

Despite government pledges to change the approach to the region, violence against indigenous Papuans at the hands of security forces has continued unabated. Hundreds of thousands of military and police officials have been deployed to the region. The government justifies this security presence for three main reasons: The first is to secure so-called national assets, such as the massive Freeport McMoran mine. The second is to respond to the Free Papua Movement (OPM), and other small-scale organisations agitating for independence. The third is to prevent and address horizontal conflict between non-indigenous and indigenous Papuans, and among Papuan tribes.

The shooting has also highlighted the lack of policy coherence of the Jokowi administration. Since Jokowi took over from Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2014, the government has initiated several economic policies, including establishing massive infrastructure projects, and implementing a one-fuel price policy, which aim, among other things, to improve economic development in Papua.

On the political front, Jokowi granted clemency to five Papuan political prisoners in 2015. Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono recently reported Jokowi has been quietly releasing dozens more over the past year. In his first nearly three years in power, he has visited the two Papuan provinces far more often than his predecessors. Yet none of these efforts have had much of an impact on the central problem in Papua, which is one of human rights.

Jokowi does not appear to have any clear design for addressing violations of human rights in Papua, or across the country more broadly. About the same time as the shooting, for example, police officers dispersed a workshop convened by the Indonesian People’s Tribunal on the 1965 violence – a reminder of how quickly Jokowi’s plans for reconciliation for past human rights abuses have unravelled.

Lack of justice
Scholars argue ethno-nationalist protests can gather steam when the government is resistant to holding human rights violators – particularly state security officials – to account through the courts. This lack of justice results in deep trauma for victims’ families and increases public mistrust of the central government. This, in turn, enables political actors to mobilise the people to express aspirations for independence, as has happened in Papua.

There are two basic problems within the government approach to human rights in Papua. First, institutions and approaches are poorly coordinated. This is an old and unresolved problem that the Indonesian government has faced since it initiated structural reforms in the early 2000s. For years, government institutions, in particular, the Coordinating Ministry for Legal, Political, and Security Affairs, the Home Affairs Ministry, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the National Police (Polri) and the Indonesian Military (TNI), have promoted different and sometimes inconsistent policies to deal with problems in Papua.

Luhut Panjaitan, former coordinating minister for legal, political, and security affairs, formed an integrated working group to find a solution to three of the most concerning human rights cases: the 2014 Paniai shootings, the 2001 Wamena incident, and the 2003 Wasior incident. However, when former General Wiranto succeeded Luhut in 2016, the team was dismissed, and there have been no follow-up activities to address these crucial issues. Wiranto recently claimed the shooting in Deiyai was not a human rights violation.

Further evidence of this inconsistent approach is Jokowi’s 2015 promise to lift restrictions on foreign journalists reporting from Papua. There have still not been any specific policies introduced to implement this directive. Any foreign journalist who wishes to go to Papua must still undertake a complicated application process and follow strict requirements, particularly from security-related agencies and, occasionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A comprehensive human rights policy – not an economic policy – should be the priority for resolving the issues in Papua. Economic policy has been the prescription favoured by every Indonesian president to address problems in Papua. They seem to believe aspirations for independence are simply a function of the poor quality of life of many indigenous Papuans, and improving welfare will lead to these demands fading.

In reality, the situation is far more complex. Papuans’ trust issues with the central government do not stem from poverty. Rather, they result from the insecurity of living with the threat of violence from the security officers who surround them, a massive presence that in itself contributes to trauma. In addition, the stagnation of internal reforms in the police and TNI which might make them better able to deal with low-level conflicts and protests in Papua without violence has made a bad situation worse.

Indigenous Papuans will continue to be killed as long as the central government lacks the political will or capacity to better coordinate national institutions and prioritise human rights issues in Papua.

Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge is a researcher at the Marthinus Academy in Jakarta. His current research focuses on democratisation in developing countries, particularly the role of crucial actors such as the military during democratic transition and consolidation. He has conducted fieldwork in West Papua on the role of Papuan youth in political and cultural identity during the special autonomy era. This article is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission. 

• More West Papua stories

Like apartheid South Africa, I kept hearing. For a long time, the horrors behind the curtain thrown up by South Africa’s racist government weren’t widely known in this country. It wasn’t until the 1981 Springboks tour that the small band of activists, who had all the time been committed to the cause, were able to turn that affair into a nation-splitting episode—and to put increased international pressure on the regime.

West Papua hasn’t had its Springbok tour yet; it is often called the world’s forgotten occupation.

Indonesia has held formal control over West Papua since 1962’s New York Agreement granted the South East Asian superpower the former Dutch colony, with the promise of a fair vote on self-determination by 1969. That never arrived: 1969’s Act of Free Choice, in which just 0.2 percent of the population voted—under extreme duress—determined that West Papua was to remain part of Indonesia, a country with which it had no linguistic, cultural, or racial links.

Ever since, the repression of the indigenous population has been ruthless. The figure of 100,000 people killed by Indonesian security forces is commonly cited, but estimates run as high as 500,000. Mass killings of Papuans in the tribal highlands in the 1970s met the criteria for genocide, the Asia Human Rights Commission reported.

And the brutality continues: a 2016 report conducted by the Archdiocese of Brisbane titled We Will Lose Everything contains reports of atrocities committed throughout 2015, including extrajudicial executions, torture, and firing on peaceful protestors. Methods of torture, another report claims, include rape, slashing with bayonets, and electrification.

Clearly, something horrific is happening—and has been for a long time—in the South Pacific. New Zealand’s response? Successive governments, perhaps wary of aggravating an important trading partner, have refused to dispute Indonesia’s territorial borders. The media hasn’t done much better—VICE NZ was one of just a handful of outlets (including the Pacific Media Centre) to cover a visit to New Zealand by Benny Wenda, the leader-in-exile of the West Papuan independence movement and a man twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, earlier this year.

He’s a man with a fascinating tale to tell—a childhood spent on the run in the bush, horrors witnessed, arrest, escape, a life-long commitment to the cause of his people. And it’s a story that is percolating at some political level, with 11 New Zealand MPs across four parties now signatories of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua declaration.

Where in the media?
Where, then, I wondered, were the profiles in the Saturday newspapers, the coverage on Sunday-night current-affairs shows?

Dr Pala Molisa, of Victoria University’s School of Accounting and Commercial Law, is a long-time supporter of West Papuan independence. Addressing why the New Zealand media is reluctant to take on the story of the subjugation of an entire people, happening so close to home, he says, means confronting an “uncomfortable thing”.

“It shouldn’t be too controversial [to say] today that black and brown lives, when you look at the patterns—socioeconomic, police shootings, mass-incarceration—are devalued when compared to white lives.”

Molisa is from Vanuatu, a country that also had to fight for its independence from colonial rule. He bemoans how dependent Pākehā awareness is upon coverage in established media: “Most of our educated Pākehā population is highly reliant on mainstream media. As long as [West Papua is] kept out, that’ll affect the amount of participation.”

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of the Asia Pacific Report, has, as a journalist, been reporting on West Papua since the early 1980s, and finds the lack of interest “puzzling”. A veteran journalist (“I think I’ve got a reasonable handle on what is international news”), he wonders why the majority of the press has for so long largely ignored West Papua.

“It has so many elements that have resonance with New Zealand—indigenous issues, land issues, development issues. And in the past we’ve had an affinity with the people of the Pacific, going right back to the nuclear-free policies, which were very intertwined in Polynesia with indigenous self-determination.”

Momentum gathering
In the wider Pacific, at least, there is some momentum gathering. In March this year, seven nations—Vanuatu, Tonga, Tuvalu, Palau, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, and the Solomon Islands—addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, raising concerns about human rights abuses in West Papua.

“Within their suffering we see our own.”

Māori, too, have been vocal about West Papua. When Wenda visited Auckland, he was welcomed onto Ōrākei Marae by Ngāti Whātua. Wayne Pihema, a Ngāti Whātua Board Trust member who helped organise the hui, says shared experiences of colonialism motivated the invitation to Wenda to speak.

“We’ve got somewhere in our genetic history a memory of that kind of experience… We can relate to people in West Papua as being part of the Pacific and being indigenous Pacific people like us. Within their suffering we see our own.”

Oceania Interrupted is an Auckland-based group of Pacific and Māori women who use visual and performance art to raise awareness of the suffering of West Papuans. The group, which has included women from as many as 13 different Pacific ethnicities or nations, has staged 10 of the 15 “artistic interventions” it plans to hold—15 years being the mandatory prison sentence for raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag within the Indonesian-occupied territory.

In a similar fashion to Pihema, spokesperson Leilani Salesa calls the group’s duty to West Papua an “ideological commitment”, one borne of a sense of Pacific solidarity. “The ocean is what binds us together, the ocean is our sea of islands… the ocean is what our ancestors conquered.”

Salesa, though, highlights the role that Pākehā activists have played in raising awareness, singling out veteran campaigner and writer Maire Leadbeater: “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t know who I know and what I know.”

Māori, Pacific groups taking the lead
I put it to Leadbeater that Māori and Pacific groups within New Zealand are now taking the lead, something she said was “amazing”.

“I see it in the context that the interest in West Papua has extended so much through the Pacific recently. Communities here are linking up with really strong movements in the Solomons and Fiji, and to some extent in Tonga and Samoa, and so on. It’s really important people here are getting engaged because they are in touch with their families in those countries, and it’s those countries that are actually taking action at the moment—it’s not New Zealand, unfortunately.”

While it’s great, Leadbeater says, that impetus comes from Māori and Pacific communities, it’s important there is wider—and whiter—support. “Look at the tino rangatiritanga movement in this country: it’s always had strong allies in the Pākehā community, hasn’t it? And that’s always been important to the success of campaigns.”

“The anti-apartheid activists would’ve felt like they were just spitting into a cyclone…you just need to keep having faith.”

She remains upbeat about the effect protest and public opinion have on government action, citing her previous research that, she says, proves the government is attuned to public opinion on Indonesian activity, especially as it has related to atrocities committed in East Timor and, to a lesser extent, in West Papua. “You think the government is not taking any notice, but they do have to take account of public opinion and the stronger it gets the more they have to take notice. [But] you can’t expect people to identify with an issue they’ve hardly ever heard of.”

Molisa, too, is optimistic. “What gives me faith, to put it in that historical perspective, is that this is in the early stages, and the anti-apartheid activists would’ve felt like they were just spitting into a cyclone. If you look at the long arch of history, that tells you that you just need to keep having faith because these sorts of things have a way of building in ways you can’t expect.”

James Borrowdale is an Auckland-based writer for VICE. This article is republished with the permission of VICE NZ and the author.

• Other West Papua stories

Ronald K Warsal, Minister of Justice and Community Development, speaking on behalf of a coalition of seven Pacific countries – Palau, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu – made the criticisms in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday.

He spoke of Indonesian state violence, including reports of extrajudicial executions of activists, arrests, beatings and fatal shootings of peaceful demonstrators, and persistent violence against Papuan women.

Warsal called on the council to request the High Commissioner to produce a consolidated report on the situation in West Papua.

Indonesia, speaking in a right of reply, denied the allegations, saying that they did not reflect the situation in Papua.

As a democracy based on the rule of law, Indonesia said, it always investigated allegations of human rights violations and delivered justice, and it promoted the rights of its people in Papua.

Vanuatu should not politicise the issue of Papua for its domestic political purposes, Indonesia said

The full statement by Ronald K Warsal, MP and Minister of Justice and Community Development, Republic of Vanuatu

34th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
Geneva, Switzerland, 1 March 2017

Mr President

Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates Ladies and Gentlemen.

The Republic of Vanuatu is very pleased to address this meeting.

Today, I am speaking on behalf of both Vanuatu and six other nations of our Pacific region: Tonga, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and the Solomon Islands

Mr President, we seven have come together today and in a separate written joint statement in order to draw the attention of the distinguished members of the UN Human Rights Council to the grave situation in West Papua.

Mr President, specifically, we focus your attention on a number of recent pronouncements by mandate holders of this Council about serious Indonesian violations of the human rights of indigenous Papuans:

The recent joint letter issued by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples; the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; and the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

We also draw attention to other accounts of Indonesian state violence in West Papua, including: communications from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, referring to killings and arrests of Papuans; numerous well-documented reports of extrajudicial executions of activists and the arrests, beatings and fatal shootings of peaceful demonstrators, including high school students; and reports of persistent violence against Papuan women.

We note that in the last 15 years the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights has collected evidence of gross human rights violations by Indonesian security forces in three principal areas of West Papua: Wasior, Wamena, and Paniai. The Commission has described the sets of cases in the first two places as crimes against humanity, which are punishable under Indonesian and international laws.

We want further to highlight another broad aspect of human rights violations the Indonesian government policy over many decades and continuing until today of the migration of non-indigenous Papuans to West Papua, leading to a dramatic decline in the percentage of the indigenous Papuan population.

Mr President, to date, the government of Indonesia has, however, not been able to curtail or halt these various and widespread violations. Neither has that government been able to deliver justice for the victims. Nor has there been any noticeable action to address these violations by the Indonesian government, which has, of course, immediate responsibility and primary accountability.

Furthermore, the Indonesian government has consistently been unable to submit the required periodic human right reports and reviews, which are an essential international norm by which the United Nations secretariat and member states monitor human rights around the world. These written assessments are critical to identifying and eradicating torture, racial discrimination and human rights violations generally.

Mr President, in light of these violations and the Indonesian government’s inaction, we call on the UN Human Rights Council to request the High Commissioner for Human Rights to produce a consolidated report on the actual situation in West Papua.

The High Commissioner’s report needs to take account of the information in existing Treaties, Special Procedures, and the Universal Periodic Review, as well as reports from other international and regional organizations and non-governmental organisations.

The report should also detail the various rights under the International Bill of Human Rights and the related conventions, including the right to self-determination.

And the report must make recommendations for immediate action to halt the pattern of human rights violations as attested to by the numerous Special Procedures and other bodies noted earlier.

Finally, we ask for full and unreserved cooperation with the High Commissioner in the fulfilment of this mandate, including provision by Indonesian authorities of complete access to any persons in West Papua deemed appropriate to meet in the compilation of this report.

Mr President, as I close, we believe that challenges of West Papua must be brought back to the agenda of the United Nations.

Thank you once again for the opportunity to express my views in this forum. Long God Yumi Stanap. In God we stand. Thank you.

Freeport Indonesia director Chappy Hakim has denied assaulting a lawmaker after a hearing with the House of Representatives’ Commission VII in Jakarta.

According to reports, the former Air Force chief-of-staff had assaulted Commission VII member Mukhtar Tompo after a hearing with several representatives of mining companies, including Freeport, which operates the giant Grasberg copper and gold mine in Papua, to discuss the government’s mining policies.

“There was no beating, unlike what has been reported in the media. Mukhtar also said I never assaulted him,” Chappy said in a written statement.

The first screening was held on October 30 at the Deptford Cinema, London, a community cinema with a longstanding following.

People were inspired at learning about the forgotten struggle in West Papua and were eager to learn how they could help.

Another screening of the film was held last week at St Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green.

The event brought together scores of people, including from the UK’s Pacific Islands community who were inspired to learn of the West Papuan struggle firsthand after watching the film.

A Q and A session followed with Benny Wenda afterwards.

West Papuan band The Lani Singers also played West Papuan songs of freedom and a Free West Papua stall was held.

Copies of The Road To Home can be ordered through the Free West Papua website here and copies of the award-winning West Papua documentary Forgotten Bird of Paradise (by the same filmmaker) can also be ordered here. 

Condemning Attorney-General George Brandis for visiting Papua last week alongside “tour guide” former Indonesian general Wiranto, who was indicted by the United Nations for alleged crimes against humanity during Timor-Leste’s bloody 1999 vote for independence, the newspaper said:

“Attorney-General George Brandis went to the Indonesian province of Papua last week, boasting his trip was a first by an Australian minister. He may have intended to signal Australia’s willingness to help tackle what he called ‘social and economic challenges’ in the troubled province, but any symbolism intended was regrettably hijacked by his choice of travel companion.

“Senator Brandis was accompanied by Wiranto, the former Indonesian general indicted for alleged crimes against humanity committed during East Timor’s bloody 1999 vote for independence. The former general was recently appointed chief security minister by Joko Widodo, in the latest in a series of disappointing decisions by the Indonesian President.

“Mr Wiranto was commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces at a time the United Nations estimated a military-sponsored rampage cost the lives of 1400 East Timorese, yet has never faced the charges.

“It may be a pragmatic need that guides Australia to engage with Mr Wiranto, given his new position. Australia and Indonesia must co-operate against common threats of Islamist extremism and broader regional problems.

“But it sends a callous message to allow a man such as Mr Wiranto to play tour guide in what has long been seen as Indonesia’s restive frontier.

Flawed UN process
“The [two] provinces once known as West Papua have campaigned and fought for independence since a flawed UN process in the 1960s saw the territory incorporated into Indonesia. There have been military crackdowns and human rights abuses, and while some claims are difficult to verify, there is ample reason for concern.

“Australia has always insisted Indonesia has sovereignty over the territory, and Senator Brandis was at pains to emphasise this ‘longstanding and bipartisan policy’ during his trip. Despite such assurances, an almost paranoid suspicion has persisted among some circles in Jakarta’s elite, perversely blaming Australia for East Timor’s independence and believing Canberra wishes to see Papua go the same way.

“The government should not feel obliged to assuage Indonesia’s unwarranted fears by sweeping aside human rights concerns in Papua. If Senator Brandis felt it was appropriate to see conditions in the province firsthand, so be it. But inadvertently or not, by choosing to accompany Mr Wiranto on the trip, he also signalled Australia was willing to forget past sins – and that was the wrong message.

“It was during the Howard years that Australia granted refugee status to 42 Papuans who fled the province. Unfortunately, Australia has since hopelessly compromised its moral standing on human rights questions with the wrong-headed insistence on offshore processing and the practice of turning back asylum seeker boats.

“Australia finds itself regularly at odds with Indonesia in large part due to proximity, shown by controversy over espionage, cruelty in the live cattle trade, and recent executions. It became a regular cocktail party joke during the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to observe that unlike ties with Australia, Indonesia and Iceland had a perfect relationship because the two countries are so far apart they have nothing in common and nothing to argue about.

“The difficulty between Indonesia and Australia was underlined this week in the results of an opinion poll by the Australia-Indonesia Centre, based at Monash University. It found almost half of Australians held an unfavourable view of Indonesia, compared with overwhelmingly positive views of Australia by Indonesians.

“Perhaps more than anything, such results reflect mutual ignorance. Leaders can talk about closeness, but true warmth will only be felt when neighbours speak frankly.”

The Age editorial, 15 August 2016

The Indonesian government’s mining ministry is said to have recommended the granting of a new short-term export permit to Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg mine in West Papua.

Freeport’s local subsidiary is required to apply for renewal of export permits at six-month intervals.

In February 2016, an export permit was renewed by the trade ministry through August 8, 2016.

Reuters cited Bambang Gatot, Director-General of Coal and Minerals, within the mining ministry, as saying the latest renewal would run for less than six months until January 11, but did not explain why.

The company is still in discussions with government to obtain an extension of its long-term rights under its original contract-of-work agreement as it looks to extend operations beyond 2021.

It has agreed to construct new smelter capacity in Indonesia and to divest an additional 20.64 percent interest in PT Freeport Indonesia at fair market value.

The Indonesian government continues to impose a 5 percent export duty while it reviews the company’s smelter plans.

In the six months to end-June, Grasberg produced 169,000 tonnes of copper and 336,000 ounces of gold at a copper cash cost of US$1.22 per pound after gold and silver credits.

Indonesian Church officials and activists have accused police in Yogyakarta of racism and using excessive force after six Papuan students were arrested for singing Papuan songs in their college dormitory.

“Police officers must be fair. They must protect Papuan people too,” Father Paulus Christian Siswantoko, executive secretary of the Indonesian bishops’ Commission for Justice, Peace and Pastoral for Migrant-Itinerant People, said.

“The government has the task to protect all citizens and disregard their ethnic background,” he said.

Police say they surrounded the dormitory belonging to Yogyakarta’s College of Community Development on July 15 to prevent a number of Papuan students from attending a banned rally organised by the People’s Union for West Papua Freedom.

The rally was aimed at supporting a bid by the Papuan nationalist group, the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

The group is an intergovernmental organisation comprising Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, as well as the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front, a political party from New Caledonia. The ULMWP currently has observer status.

The Papuan students said they initially planned to hold the rally in the city center, but decided instead to sing some Papauan songs at the dormitory after organisers failed to obtain a rally permit from local police.

Tear gas
Police allegedly used tear gas on the students before arresting them.

During the arrest it is alleged officers manhandled and racially abused the students, who were also subjected to racial taunts by local pro-Jakarta activists who had gathered to support the police as the drama unfolded.

All the students were later released on July 17 following questioning.

“Police officers must not let racial abuse happen,” said Father Siswantoko.

He said the students had the right to express their views.

“They didn’t even stage a rally, but their voices were silenced anyway,” he said, adding that there is deep-seated prejudice by locals against Papuans.

Risky Hadur, a Catholic student activist also denounced the police action.

Left traumatised
“We express our deep condolences to the death of humanity and brotherhood in this nation.”

The students were left traumatised by the incident, according to Jefry Wenda, coordinator of a Papuan students’ group covering Java and Bali.

“Police officers and other people shouted at them and called them ‘pigs’ and ‘monkeys,'” he said, calling on the government to put a stop to abuses against the Papuan people.

National Commission on Human Rights official Natalius Pigai said the incident would be investigated.

“We must not let such racial discrimination happen,” he said. “We will send a team next week to Yogyakarta to investigate.

Ryan Dagur is a contributor to the Union of Catholic Asian News service.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, Maina Kiai, has highlighted the issue of Papua in his report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

In the 32nd session of the UN Human Rights Council Plenary, he reported what was happening in Papua was a phenomenon which had a connection with cultural fundamentalism and nationalism.

He spoke of the domination of a particular culture, a particular language and even a particular tradition which was claimed to be superior than others.

He also mentioned the significant rise of fundamentalism in the last few years, as seen in the rising popularity of many right-wing political parties, in particular in Austria, Denmark, Hungary and Switzerland.

“The fundamentalism cases initially may look different, but [they have] the same interest. In each case, the superiority has triggered the process of dehumanization or delegitimising of particular groups. Gradually, these groups would lose their humanity and rights. This process can lead to devastating consequences, because history has proved it many times,” said Kiai in his report.

In addition to the report of the UN Special Rapporteur, the civil society groups which are concerned about the Papua issue also reported about the restriction of freedom of expression in Papua.

Arbitrary arrests
Franciscans International, VIVAT International, International Coalition for West Papua, West Papua Nezwerk, Tapol, Minority Rights Groups International, Geneva for Human Rights and the World Council of Churches urged the UN Human Rights Council to ask the government of Indonesia to conduct an investigation into the arbitrary arrests in Papua and other places.

The Indonesian government was asked to guarantee the rights of freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly and association for Papuans.

“We also ask the UN Human Rights Council to urge the government of Indonesia to open the access on Papua for the international community and set a date for the UN Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Expression an allow other mandate holders to visit Papua,” said Budi Cahyono, the coordinator for Asia Pacific Franciscans International Programme in Geneva to Jubi through email.

Victor Mambor is chief editor of Tabloid Jubi.

Explore the grit of “Exposing human rights abuses through (citizen) media” with Professor Steven Livingston (The George Washington University, The Brookings Institution and Carr Center for Human Rights Policy), Professor David Robie (Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology) and Jaya Mangalam Gibson (Quad Cowork and other things).

• Speak Up Korerotia on Facebook

The first event of the 4th World Journalism Education Congress conference 2016 got under way at the JERAA and Pacific preconference last night with an inspirational korero from Oceania Interrupted about “Free West Papua”.

Sharing the issue of “freedom” for West Papua, which has remained under conflict for more than 50 years, the all-women Pacific cultural activist group facilitated by Leilani Salesa of Samoa gave a challenge for community groups and citizen media.

Speaking to media educators and journalists from Australia and the Pacific at Auckland University of Technology, the group outlined the “kaupapa” of the stunning actions they have been taking to make people aware of the atrocities faced by indigenous people of the region.

Oceania Interrupted began on December 1, 2013, to raise awareness about the Morning Star flag-raising issue – the traditional flag of liberation is banned in Indonesia — among the people of New Zealand and across the Pacific.

Salesa said Oceania Interrupted was seen as having a key role in bringing West Papua to the Pacific community and many of their actions were achievements because they got support at grassroots level.

Oceania Interrupted plans to take up other actions in future.

Leilani’s brother, Toeolesulusulu Associate Professor Damon Salesa, director of the NZ Institute of Pacific Research, will open the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) and the Pacific at AUT today.

The WJEC participants will be welcomed at a powhiri this evening.

Te Rito Peyroux of the Cook Islands described how art and solidarity campaigns were communicating to ordinary people.

Downplayed in mainstream
The group criticised how the New Zealand government had downplayed the issue with mainstream media because of trade ties with the Indonesian government.

They also spoke about a petition that has been launched in New Zealand in support of the Papuans.

“Empowering collective action is important and all of us play a part in this freedom for West Papua,” said Salesa.

“Sharing the message for us is the key part of what we do within our own communities.

“West Papuans are Pacific people and are our brothers and sisters. We try to use art forms to share the message and we stand in solidarity for the people.

Kalisiana Buliruarua, of Fiji, said: “A lot of us have committed a big part of our lives to this cause because we believe that one day the people of West Papua would become free.

“It takes the efforts of all of us to do this but we are all dedicated towards this,”she said.

Anua Henry recited a poem about the issue.

The Oceania Interrupted group then joined the media educators and journalists at AUT’s Pacific Media Centre for a traditional Fiji lovo, or Filipino lechon welcome meal.

Husain Malvi is an international communication student from Unitec. He, Kendall Hutt, Ami Dhabuwala and TJ Aumua of AUT are covering WJEC16 for Asia Pacific Report.

• Oceania Interrupted
• West Papua petition launched

Duituturaga said the call made by the WCC for a solidarity visit to be organised as soon as possible, is timely given that the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) will be meeting next week in Honiara, Solomon Islands:

“WCC has called for this visit to demonstrate the ecumenical movement’s accompaniment of the churches in the region, to hear the voices of the victims of violence and human rights violations, and to pursue the pilgrimage of justice and peace.

“WCC joins the many voices from around the world that have been calling for justice and peace in West Papua and it’s a call that should weigh heavily on the hearts and minds of our leaders who will meet in Honiara next week.”

Duituturaga said the Christian churches through WCC is a prophetic voice that must be given due consideration by the region’s leaders.

“WCC has called on its member churches to pray and act in support of the witness of the churches — especially the Evangelical Christian Church in Tanah Papua, and through the Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI), the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), and the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) — for justice and peace in the region,” Duituturaga said.

“And rightfully so. The churches can no longer stand by and watch the genocide of indigenous Papuans. They have spoken about the need to protect human dignity.

Brutal rule
“As a regional platform, PIANGO stands with WCC’s representative in the region, the Pacific Conference of Churches as they pray and act in support of Papuans suffering under the brutal rule of Indonesia.”

PIANGO is also collaborating with other regional NGOs to remind the MSG of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua’s application for full membership.

“ULMWP are Pacific Islanders, they are Melanesians and Indonesia’s continued denial of the genocide happening right at our doorstep of their people, our wantoks, warrants their full membership of the MSG.”

She said that with ULMWP’s full membership, Melanesian leaders can fully deliberate on the multifaceted nature of Indonesia’s brutality and its impact on Pacific people.

NZ Greens urge NZ PM to raise human rights concerns
The New Zealand Green Party says Prime Minister John Key must address human rights in West Papua when he meets with Indonesia’s Joko Widodo later this month, reports Radio NZ International.

Key intended to discuss trade and economic links, but a Greens MP, Catherine Delahunty, said there was no mention of discussions on the political situation in West Papua.

She said the complete absence of human rights from Key’s agenda was particularly damning given a schoolboy was shot by military police in West Papua only last week.

• MSG, ACP and the (almost) forgotten case of West Papua independence
• NZ media ‘ignores’ West Papua story

The student executive leader of the University of Cendewasih, Elius Wenda, has criticised the recruitment of students in the Institute of Public Administration (IPDN), saying none of the Papuan candidates from Jayawijaya Regency passed the selection exams.

“When they did the test at the provincial level, they didn’t pass. We deeply regret this situation and it should be changed,” Wenda told Tabloid Jubi in Jayapura.

“The provincial government is responsible for the implementation of education at any levels in the province.”

He suspected there were “particular culprits” stirring the situation to prevent candidates from Jayawijaya passing the test.

“What kind of recruitment system was applied? Is there such a quota for certain people or bribery system or purely qualified?

“We must clean up the system for rejecting indigenous Papuans,” said Wenda.

According to Wenda, Law No. 21/2001 on Special Autonomy for Papua Province has clearly regulated affirmative action for indigenous Papuans.

Prioritise Papuans
“We ask all related stakeholders, whether in provincial, municipal or regional governments and councils, to pay attention to indigenous Papuans.

“So that in the recruitment of IPDN students, there is equal prioritisation. Do not always prioritise those who are able to pay more. Poor children can also study well,” he said.

The deputy chairman of Commission V of the Papua Legislative Council for Education Affairs, Nioulen Kotouki, said there should be a special policy to prioritise indigenous Papuans in the recruitment of students for IPDN Papua.

He said the governor and regents as well as mayors in Papua needed to fight for the  prioritising of indigenous Papuans when recruiting IPDN students in Papua.

“All the time we observed that in the recruitment of IPDN students for Papua, the quota for indigenous Papuans is still limited. Sometime the indigenous candidates were ignored,” said Kotouki.

Earlier, the Head of the National Civil Service Agency of Papua Province, Nicolaus Wenda, said that in 2016 as many as 977 indigenous Papuans took the Basic Competency Test (BCT) on Computers as a base for the recruitment of IPDN students.

“The BCT would be conducted into three phases, which as the first phase would have 300 participants, and 400 participants for the second phase and 277 participants for the third phase,” he said.

According to Nicolaus Wenda, the quota for Papua Province was lower than the previous year, 53 students compared to the previous figure of 54.

“So these 977 candidates would compete for 53 seats for Papua Province,” he said.

Abeth You is a Tabloid Jubi reporter.

West Papuans who have been living in Papua New Guinea for many decades will be granted citizenship soon.

The PNG Immigration and Citizenship Authority will also embark on registering all West Papuan refugees who have crossed over from Indonesia to seek refugee status in Papua New Guinea.

“So far we have over 10,000 refugees from West Papua who have lived with us for a very long time, and we have commenced registration of them with the view to finally granting them legal status,” said Deputy Chief Migration officer for Refugee Division, Esther Gaegaming.

“We’re pleased to announce that for more than 1000 of them, their applications have been finalised and they will be going before the Citizenship Advisory Committee very soon for issuance of their citizenships.

“This Friday, a team from our office will commence registration in Vanimo, another one of the biggest refugee settlement areas for West Papuan refugees. We will follow onto Wewak after that and then to Lae.

“So by the end of this year, we hope to have over 85 percent of West Papuans registered.

“I am proud to say that PNG is fulfilling its obligations as a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on the status of refugees. PNG now has a vibrant legal and procedural framework for the processing of refugee claims under the Migration Act and Regulations,” Gaegaming said.

“We also have a system in place for the registration and naturalisation of refugees from West Papua who have lived in Papua New Guinea for decades.

“We also have a national refugee policy that is clear on refugee matters, including guidance on the resettlement of refugees in Papua New Guinea and most of all, we have a dedicated team in the PNG Immigration and Citizenship Authority that is set up especially to manage this,” she said.

Charles Yapumi is a reporter for Loop PNG.

Since President Widodo’s inauguration on 20 October 2014, there were considerable expectations for improvement in Indonesia’s human rights situation, particularly in Papua and West Papua.

President Widodo was believed to have a strong commitment to addressing the various human rights violations in Papua, providing remedies for victims and families, and evaluating the presence of security forces in the province.

Over a year of his presidency however, has neither resolved any of the past human rights violations, nor seen any adequate remedy and guarantee for non recurrence given to the victims.

Law No. 21 of 2001 on special autonomy for Papua and West Papua province has yet to bring benefits to local indigenous Papuans. Similarly, government development of public infrastructure has an economic and business orientation rather than benefits for the local community.

The government’s attempts to boost international investment to Papua and West Papua will likely see an increase in migration to the provinces from elsewhere in Indonesia, further fuelling local discontent.

Police involved
Furthermore, criminal justice institutions in the provinces do not function to address human rights problems.

The police are frequently involved in various human rights violations in the two provinces, and the accountability mechanism has failed to address this problem.

The Paniai case of 8 December 2014, where four indigenous Papuan children were shot to death, two adults seriously injured, and 17 others injured (AHRC-UAC-089-2015) is an indicative example of the brutality faced by Papuans, as well as the lack of any effective investigation or remedies.

Other cases that have also not been investigated and prosecuted under President Widodo’s administration include the case of a member of the Air Force heavily maltreating 22-year-old Amsal Marandof (AHRC-UAC-143-2015), the case of arbitrary arrest and torture of three indigenous Papuans on 27 August 2015 (AHRC-UAC-003-2016), and the case of the shooting and brutal attack on 10 indigenous Papuan youth conducted by police officers of Tigi Police Sector (AHRC-UAC-090-2015).

The AHRC has also observed the Indonesian government’s lack of willingness to deal with past human rights abuses in Papua and West Papua provinces.

The investigation report of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) on the gross violations in Wasior Wamena Papua (2001 and 2003), for instance, has been sitting with the Attorney General for the past eight years, without any action taken by that office.

In the allegations of genocide in the Central High Lands of Papua from 1977-1978 as well, although the AHRC submitted a report to Komnas HAM, as of yet there is no progress in the investigation.

While Komnas HAM initiated establishing a team in November 2015 to audit human rights violations beginning from the integration of Papua to the Republic of Indonesia until the case of Tolikara (AHRC-UAC-106-2015, AHRC-UAU-002-2016), since then there has been no clear information on the team’s existence or work.

Recently, a government initiative under the Coordinator Minister of Politic and Security (Menkopolhukam), Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, was announced, to establish a special team dealing with human rights violations in Papua and West Papua provinces.

Initiative rejected
Local human rights groups however, have largely rejected the initiative, saying that representative indigenous Papuans in the team are not genuinely representing indigenous Papuans on the ground.

In fact, the initiative is typical of the government process to suddenly establish a team without proper consultation and discussion with Papuans on the ground.

The government tends to simplify the problems in Papua, and its economic and infrastructure perspective on Papua does not seriously take into consideration the history of human rights violations occurring from the time of integration to the present.

The AHRC therefore calls for President Joko Widodo and his administration to take serious and comprehensive steps to deal with the various human rights problems facing Papua and West Papua provinces.

The government should stop seeking political benefits in dealing with the provinces, and focus on improving the situation of the local communities.

In particular, the government must guarantee protection of local indigenous Papuans, local human rights defenders and journalists, and consistently open Papua and West Papua to international monitors to ensure the progress of resolution.

• Asian Human Rights Commission