Video art about the devil Richard K. Adkerson and the Freeport-McMoran mining company. Freeport-McMoran owns the Grasberg mine in Timika, West Papua, the scene of a recent tunnel collapse killing 28 miners.
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The German government has approved the sale to Indonesia of about 100 used Leopard 2 tanks and 50 armored personnel carriers but has put off a decision on a tank sale to Saudi Arabia, a defense source said on Friday.
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Indonesian police in Jayapura have violently dispersed a pro-independence rally being held by the West Papua National Committee (KNPB). KNPB leader Victor Yeimo was arrested along with media worker Marthen Manggaprouw and two KNPB activists.
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Benny Wenda is the face of self-determination and human rights in West Papua. This is the story of him and his people as told by his lawyer and friend, Jennifer Robinson.
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Violence has again broken out in Indonesia’s troubled province of West Papua, with the Australian-supported counter-terrorism police squad Densus 88 leading the attack.
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New support for the West Papuan movement becoming member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and the New Caledonian Kanak nationalist coalition FLNKS (already an MSG member) are the strongest backers. There is also more openness to such a move in Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
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A new report by UK-based NGO, TAPOL, forcefully challenges the Indonesian government’s repeated assertion that the country has ‘no political prisoners.’ There were at least 210 political arrests in West Papua during 2012, a significant number of whom were women. The true number is likely to be higher as a number of arrests go unreported. Paul Barber, Coordinator of TAPOL, said, “Papua’s political prisoners are not mythical characters – they are real men and women whose existence must be recognised. If the government wants peace in West Papua, it should be talking to political leaders, not locking them up.”
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The Papuans Behind Bars website, which is supported by a range of human rights NGOs internationally as well as in Jakarta, displays the images and profiles of several of the at least 40 political detainees being held in Papuan jails today. The website is intended to support advocacy for the rights of the political prisoners. According to several human rights organisations, these prisoners have been subject to torture, denied access to lawyers, been forced to confess as well as other human rights violations. Pacific Media Watch's media-freedom project editor Daniel Drageset interviewed Paul Mambrasar, one of the websites founders...
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The military presence in West Papua is almost always accompanied by human rights violations such as killings, arbitrary arrests, rape and torture. Papuan leaders have voiced their concern at plans for more than a thousand Indonesian soldiers to build 1,500 km of new roads in the next two years to accelerate ‘development’ in West Papua.
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Put in a broader context of the politics of torture in Papua, the cases of Gobay and Klembiap are not uncommon or isolated. Rather, they reveal a glimpse of the ways the Indonesian state has governed Papua for the last fifty years. In this context, torture is widespread and has become “a standard procedure” of the Indonesian state security apparatus in targeting pro-Papuan independence activists. As we notice here, the police use torture to extract confessions from suspects, to collect intelligence information and/or simply to exact shock and awe effects. If torture fails, suspects are charged with anachronistic laws such as Regulation 12/1951. This law was the product of the Dutch colonial power in its attempt to justify any arrest of pro-Indonesian activists back in early days of independence struggle. The maximum penalty of carrying a weapon is 10-year imprisonment.
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US-based Chevron, the leading crude oil producer in Indonesia, is set to spread its wings to the eastern part of the country after wrapping up a seismic survey of two exploration blocks in West Papua. The firm’s production alone accounted for 40 percent of Indonesia’s oil output last year of around 870,000 barrels-per-day.
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Several sources are reporting that over 500 people have fallen ill and close to a hundred people have already died from malnutrition and “disease outbreaks” since November of last year in five remote villages in West Papua’s Kwoor District, Tambrauw Regency.
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The Papua New Guinea Health minister Michael Malabag, speaking as a private citizen, has said it is time PNG made a bold stand for the independence struggle of the mostly Melanesian indigenous people of the Indonesian province of West Papua.
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This article will present a challenge to all who have a heart for and who are working without reward to save the ethnic people of West Papua which are now heading towards annihilation.
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Ordinary people in this part of the Pacific are painfully aware that the West Papuan people continue to live under the gun. It is the politicians in Melanesia who have been slow to take up the cause. But that may be changing.
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We are always told how primitive the Papuan people are; that we are the nobles in fine clothes while they are the koteka-wearing savages. We know that God created one of the most-stunning paradises on earth there, which we call Raja Ampat; that their land is rich in gold and natural resources. We are always told that not only do Papuans wear koteka (penile guards) but that they also harbor life-threatening separatists, and we are always told the number of soldiers killed by the OPM (Free Papua Movement). But what we’ve never been told is that Papuans are also human. We have never been told how they struggle for their lives; how they fight for their land and trees, to prevent some multinational corporation from raping them; how they honor nature and their ancestors. We have never been told their history; how they fought for their independence from the Dutch in 1961; how their fathers were threatened at gunpoint to vote in support of Indonesia’s occupation in the 1969 “Act of Free Choice”.
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The West Papua struggle is a difficult one and what outcome will emerge in the years to come is still hard to see. A lot of thoughts crossed my mind on Wednesday night when I attended the Benny Wenda/Free West Papua Concert.
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Eight Indonesian soldiers were killed on February 21 in West Papua. The attacks were claimed by the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (TPN-OPM). The attacks came after a series of violent crackdowns by Indonesian authorities on a growing movement of peaceful protest by Papuans calling for end to Indonesian occupation and for self-determination.
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Officials from the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation (WPNCL) have submitted an application for Melanesian Spearhead Group membership at the organisation’s headquarters in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Dr John Ondawame said this was a historic occasion that also marked the beginning of concerted efforts this year to advance the cause. “We hope this will encourage Indonesia to take necessary steps to resolve the issue. Being a member is also natural because we are an inseparable part of the Melanesian family. For years our efforts to take the issue back to the UN was hindered by lack of official support by the Independent States in Melanesia.”
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The Asian Human Rights Commission are reporting that seven West Papuan men were arbitrarily arrested, tortured and interrogated, in two separate incidents, by Indonesian police on February 15th, 2013.
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