[nasional_list] [ppiindia] In Indonesia, the battleground has shifted
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 04:07:19 +0100
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scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com ** In Indonesia, the battleground
has shifted
Tom Benedetti International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2006
VANCOUVER The attention that the tsunami brought to the previously
overlooked conflict in the Indonesian province of Aceh is contributing to an
end to three decades of insecurity and terror there. But while Aceh may be
moving toward peace, West Papua, at the other end of the Indonesian
archipelago, has been witnessing the opposite trend - a sudden escalation of
military activity by the same force that occupied Aceh, and East Timor before
that.
For more than 40 years, the world has looked the other way while West
Papua has been ravaged by the Indonesian military in a well-documented program
of repression and plunder. In 2004, a Yale University report concluded that
there is "a strong indication" of genocide against the Papuans.
Since the tsunami, the number of Indonesian troops in West Papua has
grown to an estimated 50,000. The Indonesian military's power is further
augmented by police forces and local militias that they fund and protect.
This escalation of military activity is ostensibly to bolster security in
the region, even though the vast majority of indigenous Papuans remain true to
their ideal of a land of peace. The Free Papua Movement has never been known to
attack civilians during 42 years of Indonesian oppression. Yet Indonesia has
labeled the movement a terrorist organization, enabling the Indonesian military
to regain military support from the United States, Britain and Australia that
had been withheld after the East Timor massacres in 1999.
West Papua's coalition of 250 tribes has repeatedly asked the Indonesian
military and its militias to lay down arms and show respect for human rights so
that conflicts can be resolved peacefully, through dialogue, to no avail. If
Indonesia was willing to talk peace in Aceh, why not in West Papua? There are
three major reasons.
First, foreign journalists and most researchers and aid workers are still
banned from West Papua. Unlike in Aceh after the tsunami, no one is looking.
Second, peace in West Papua is not what the Indonesian military wants. It
earns millions selling security services to resource companies such as the
gold-mining company Freeport-McMoRan - as documented by Jane Perlez and Raymond
Bonner in the IHT (Dec. 28) and The New York Times - and conflict is good for
business.
Third, most of the military's revenue does not come from the government
but is generated from all kinds of businesses, legal and illegal. Under the
auspices of its own network of foundations, the military generates income from
private security contracts, extortion, prostitution, smuggling and illegal
logging.
A study released last November by the Dutch government calls Indonesia's
annexation of West Papua in 1969 "a sham," and explains why West Papua is so
important to the Indonesian military: "There's a lot of money available in the
territory and the troops go where the money is, ... the military has to find 60
percent of its own budget." Others estimate that the military finances an even
higher fraction of its operating budget, and West Papua is the Indonesian
military's most lucrative area of operations.
As the number of troops mounts, so does the environmental destruction in
West Papua, Asia's largest remaining expanse of untouched tropical rainforest.
Since 2002, West Papua has been declared by Conservation International to be
the home of Asia's largest illegal logging industry, which threatens to wipe
out the bulk of its forests by 2015.
In 2005 Yan Christian Warinussy, West Papua's only indigenous independent
human rights lawyer, described human rights abuses "carried out with total
impunity by members of Indonesia's armed forces" including "torture, rape,
summary executions, arbitrary arrests, disappearances, the killing of
indigenous leaders and civilians alike, the displacement of indigenous
populations and confiscation of their lands."
In 2005, the U.S. Congress condemned human rights abuses in Papua, and
parliamentary committees in Britain, Ireland and New Zealand also expressed
concerns about injustice, crimes against humanity and military impunity. We can
only hope that mounting international pressure will encourage Indonesian
military reform, and lead to fruitful dialogue in West Papua and other outlying
regions of Indonesia.
(Tom Benedetti is the moderator of the West Papua Action Network, a group
of Papuans and Canadians working for justice and the environment in West
Papua.)
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