PNG Prime Minister to take strong stand over West Papua ‘abuses’ with Indonesia

Pacific Scoop:  Report – By Scott Waide in Post Moresby

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill speaks about his new new West Papua strategy in the EMTV interview. Video: PNG’s EMTV

After decades of maintaining a relatively neutral stance, the Papua New Guinea government will finally make a strong representation to Indonesia to raise concerns over alleged human rights abuses committed by the Indonesian military in the West Papua region.

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said in an interview with EMTV on Friday that the Foreign Affairs Department will deliver a diplomatic note expressing the concerns of Papua New Guinea citizens over the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua to the Indonesian government.

The response comes days after representatives of more than 4000 Lutheran women called on Peter O’Neill to look into the difficulties faced by West Papuans.

The public appeal for government attention to the West Papuan cause was made by Rose Muingepe, a Lutheran Women’s representative who was attending a conference in Mumeng outside of Lae City.

“We are asking the government to raise the plight of the West Papuans on the floor of Parliament.  We know that women are being raped, men are being tortured and we want our government to pay attention to the issue.

Diplomatic note
Prime Minister O’Neill  said a diplomatic note would be passed on to the Indonesian government through PNG’s Jakarta embassy.

“We need to respect international conventions made in organisations like the United Nations.   We also need to respect that Indonesia is a part of those organisations.

“Through those conventions we will deliver a diplomatic note raising the concerns of our citizens over some of the reports that we are getting from West Papua on human rights abuses.”

This is the first time, in years that a Papua New Guinean prime minister has acknowledged human rights abuses in Papua.

Prime Minster O’Neill will also be bringing the West Papua issue to the attention of the Indonesian President in an upcoming democracy conference in Bali later this year.

At last month’s Pacific Islands Forum, Pacific Scoop’s Henry Yamo reported following an interview with Vanuatu Deputy Prime Minister Ham Lini that Pacific leaders did not back Vanuatu’s supports for West Papua.

Source: EMTV News

DEGENERATIVE POLITICS: Indonesia needs to first address the root cause of the crisis

TODAY'S critical situation in Papua is attributed to accumulative public policies that have been imposed on this richly endowed island for almost five decades. Acknowledging the root causes and implementing the right solutions are two daunting challenges.

The Indonesian jurisdiction of the island of Papua, which consists of Papua and West Papua provinces, is one of Indonesia's largest islands and one of the world's richest reserves for copper, uranium, gold and silver. But they are still the two provinces whose Human Development Index (HDI) is among the lowest in Indonesia -- at least, looking at the socioeconomic quality of life there. According to the Central Statistics Agency, the two provinces combined contribute 2.1 per cent of Indonesia's gross regional domestic product for oil and gas, and 2.2 per cent for the non-oil and gas sector.

The stepping down of Suharto and the new democratic era since 1998 has not solved degenerative politics in Papua. Until today, the Indonesian government is still struggling against serious insurgency movements that aim to separate Papua.

Papua is an obvious case where degenerative public policy is prevalent in a corrupt society exacerbated by weak law enforcement, weak democracy where transparency is hardly ever found, and conditions in which powerful parts of society disproportionately supersede other parties in many respects.

Degenerative politics have placed political elites, business communities and the central government as the powerful stakeholders (powerful and positively constructed). Papua's local indigenous people, however, have become dependents (positively constructed as "good" people but relatively needy or helpless, who have little or no political power).

Papua's local insurgents are deemed deviants and groups of reformers who aim to reform Papua economically, politically and socially are considered the contenders.

Looking ahead, Indonesia obviously needs strong and strategic leadership that knows how to implement at least five main objectives through a strategically overarching model of engagement.

FIRST, Indonesia needs a strategic leader who can acknowledge the bias and weaknesses within the government, including those of previous governments;

SECOND, the president, as commander-in-chief and a strategic leader, needs to be open-minded and accommodative towards diverse perspectives held by various stakeholders;

THIRD, the president, along with other policy stakeholders, needs to approach and solve problems in Papua from an overarching perspective using historical and innovative approaches coupled with the courage to take risks;

FOURTH, the endgame state of solving the issues in Papua must bring degenerative politics to an end; and,

FIFTH, the government needs to formulate and exercise an overarching, entire-governmental campaign to deal both with the provinces' root issue -- degenerative politics -- and current symptoms.

At an operational level, the government needs to engage in five interconnected measures.

THE FIRST is psychological engagement to truly win the hearts and minds of the people in Papua;

THE SECOND is law enforcement to deal with any abuse of power, including the allegation of mismanaged funding allocations from 2002 to 2010 as reported by the Supreme Audit Agency;

THE THIRD is public diplomacy to win support from domestic and international stakeholders, accompanied by a set of real actions in order to gain credibility and trust;

THE FOURTH measure is counter-insurgency (COIN) engagement in order to neutralise separatist movements. COIN must be a combination of offensive, defensive and stability operations. The government also needs to trace and halt any financial support for Papua's separatist movements; and,

THE FIFTH measure is the acceleration of economic development that is truly based on a well-designed platform of public policy so that the government can ensure that degenerative public policies are not implemented in the future; and development in its widest sense -- economic, social and political -- takes place in Papua.

Having succeeded in this strategic and overarching engagement, the government will be well in advance of the separatist movements, whose main components consist of mass bases, united fronts, political warfare, armed wings and international support.

The endgame state of any engagement in Papua must be strategic and overarching in order to create a lasting peace and sustainable development.

The critical success factor to achieve this goal is to think and act strategically: Indonesians must be honest with ourselves, understand our past mistakes, clearly acknowledge the real problems, address the underlying causes -- not merely act as a fire extinguisher to treat the perennial symptoms -- and dare to take risks and adopt innovative ways to solve the chronic problems. It's time for Indonesians to think clearly and act for Papua. If we fail to save Papua, the country's national security will be in peril. Jakarta Post

Source Read more: Strategic leadership, policies can save Papua 

Pollies blind to West Papua abuses

SEEKING JUSTICE: Mako Tabuni supporters want answers after the activist was killed by police. Picture: AFP Source: AP

 MAKO Tabuni was a powerful speaker and vice-chairman of the West Papua National Committee.
 
During rallies in Jayapura in April, the wiry Highlander stood on makeshift stages to demand self-determination for Papua and West Papua, the resource-rich provinces on the eastern margin of the Indonesian archipelago.
Details on his birth date are hard to find but we do know he died on June 14, executed by Indonesian police while he was chewing betel nut in Abepura, the university town outside Jayapura.
His death is another flashpoint in the battle for justice in the region.
And, once again, it throws light on what is a very messy and intractable crisis on our doorstep.
Witnesses say an unarmed Tabuni had separated from friends and was walking near Cendrawasih University when plainclothes police jumped from three cars and shot him six times. He was taken to a police hospital in Jayapura, where he died.

Human rights activists say Tabuni was shot by members of Detachment 88, an anti-terrorist force primarily trained and bankrolled by the US and Australia through the Australian Federal Police.
Witnesses and respected Baptist church leader Socratez Sofyan Yoman have dismissed police claims that Tabuni was armed with a gun used in the non-fatal shooting of a German tourist on a Jayapura beach in May.
Australians who know the Papuan situation well say the indigenous peoples would settle for less than independence.
They just want an end to the killings, torture and disappearances by the Indonesian military and police forces and for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to make good on his promises of "special autonomy" for the region.
For too long, the Papuans have been second-class citizens in their homeland.
The special autonomy deal announced in 2001 was supposed to give Papuans greater representation and a greater share of tax receipts from the resource-rich region.
But the reality remains that Papua and West Papua (the region was split into two administrative areas in 2003) are heavily militarised, with more than 30,000 security personnel operating with impunity.
This state of affairs goes largely unnoticed in Australia, although some politicians are disturbed by the situation.
Victorian Greens Senator Richard Di Natale has pushed for greater Australian input.
He wants Canberra to press harder for the democratic and human rights of Papuans to be upheld and for a greater opening up of the region to journalists and observers.
But Australia's major parties want to steer clear of the thorny issue of Papuan independence and justice.
They don't want to undermine our warm relations with the moderate and reformist President Yudhoyono.
There is no appetite whatsoever for an East Timor-style intervention. And, in the longer term, the prospect of another unstable Melanesian nation alongside PNG and Solomon Islands is not attractive.
Canberra's approach to the Papua issue is very straightforward. It goes to great lengths to stress Indonesian sovereignty over the provinces and accepts Jakarta's assurances it is trying to make things better.
This is all well and good. But the murder of Tabuni, allegedly by police units funded and trained by Australians, is not a good look for a country that holds itself as a champion of human rights.
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David Costello is the foreign editor of The Courier-Mail.
costellod@qnp.newsltd.com.au - http://www.couriermail.com.au/

Indonesia's mixed military ties

Indonesia and Australia's leaders this week have signed deals on defence cooperation, and Australia has gifted Indonesia with four refurbished heavy transport aircraft.

While Australia and Indonesia are strengthening their military ties, other nations, such as the Dutch are concerned by the Indonesian military's dismal human rights track record.

But as Australia's military ties with Indonesia grow stronger, other western nations are keeping their distance.
Indonesia has had to pull out of a $280 million deal to buy 100 battle tanks from the Netherlands after waiting several months for the Dutch parliament to approve the sale.

Dutch media reports that the majority of parties in the Dutch parliament opposed the deal because of Jakarta's poor human rights record.

Peter King, a research associate in international relations from the University of Sydney spoke to Radio Australia's Connect Asia. He says that the Dutch's concern with human rights in Indonesia harks back to their historical relationship with the region.
"Well the Dutch have been very sensitive to human rights violations in Jakarta. I think there is a historical reason for that." he said.

"They themselves mucked up the whole West Papua issue during their own colonial administration, they held it back from Indonesia and then in the end had to give in to international pressure."

"So they compensate that by kind of indicating that being forced to hand West Papua to Indonesia, even in this post Suharto democratic period has been a risky business because the army continues to dominate affairs so much in West Papua.
The United States and the European Union have similarly imposed military embargoes on Indonesia, says Peter King, for example, those imposed after massacres committed by the Indonesian military in 1991 and 1991.

The US reinstated military sales to Indonesia in 2006, supported by Australia.
"It wasn't a very good idea because the army has continued to abusive, particularly in Aceh for a time, but Aceh got autonomy and a proper peace deal in 2005."

"In West Papua the human rights violations by the military and the police have continued."
Australia has pursued a strategy of working with the Indonesian military with the hope of improving its record on human rights issues that way. But Mr King says the continuing power of the military in Indonesia is a danger to its democracy.

"I think it is long term danger for Indonesian democracy that the military hasn't been brought in to line on these human rights issues, particularly in West Papua now," he said.

"The Government has just been too reluctant to give up its use of military force to get its way in West Papua. It needs to negotiate with the West Papuans rather than use the so-called security approach."

Souce News: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/