West Papua Crisis Continues

West Papua Crisis Continues
Monday, 18 June 2012, 5:32 pm
Article: West Papua Media Alerts

West Papua Crisis Continues

Last week on June 6th, West Papua media and local sources described an incident where two members of an Indonesian army battalion killed a small Papuan boy in a car accident. Local residents then attacked and killed two soldiers. Now with heavy-handed force, Indonesian security forces are burning villages and indiscriminately shooting civilians. Hundreds of homes have been burnt, villagers are fleeing and at least 8 have been killed, many more injured and Amnesty International has made a public statement calling for an independent investigation on these attacks.

Today, we are here for the victims of Indonesia’s violent campaign of repression against the indigenous peoples of West Papua. The US-funded counter-terrorism squad, Detachment 88, has already been dispatched. As they are trained and advised by both U.S. and Australian Special Forces, the West Papua Association and the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs of the Federated Republic of West Papua are protesting the Indonesian Consulate/Embassy in Australia.

On June 28th, another protest is planned at the Australian Parliament in Canberra Australia. We were planning to continue our show of support, however, here in Los Angeles, the first world Congress of Indonesian Diaspora (CID) will be held at the LA Convention Center the following weekend from July 6-8.

We can think of no better place or time to show the world that Indonesia is a brutal state repressing indigenous populations. The United States has also been complicit in this brutality since 1962, when West Papua declared independence from the Dutch. During that time, Indonesian president Suharto began a campaign of disappearances and human rights violations in West Papua that has continued to this day. Further, it was the U.S. having stakeholder interests in West Papua mining resources that conspired for West Papua’s re-colonization into Indonesia.

The US has been an unrelenting supporter of Indonesia’s repressive regimes. President Obama has just transferred 24 F-16s and Apache attack helicopters to the Indonesian military and has been funding and training Indonesia’s Special security forces. We need to let Obama know that we do not support US militarization in Indonesia or anywhere else in the Pacific, including Jeju, Guam, Okinawa, the Philippines, and the ongoing military occupation of Hawaii.

Freeport-McMoRan, the Arizona-based mining company which owns and operates Grasberg mine, located in West Papua, is the largest gold mine, and third-largest copper mine in the world. The New York Times reported that Freeport had paid tens of millions of dollars to the Indonesian military to protect control over mineral resources from labor activists.

Powerful transnational mining and financial interests are determined to control the mining and abundant natural resources of West Papua’s lush tropical rainforests, and we are standing in solidarity with West Papua’s independence and self-determination over their traditional resources, as defined by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

When President Yudhoyono addressed U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon at the Second Jakarta International Defense Dialogue last month, he said, “the guns are silent and peace reigns in Aceh,” adding that it was his “outside the box” policy that led to the changing mindset, approach and outset of the Aceh region.

As West Papua villages go up in flames and more West Papuan villagers are shot or killed with weapons and training transferred to Indonesian security forces by the United States, I wonder if Yudhoyono will continue with the same speech when he hosts the Safety & Security Asia summit in December.

ENDS

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