Violent Protests in Papua Leave at Least 20 Dead

By The Associated Press

Two Melanesian Students in Wamena after being shot by Indonesian army declaring independence

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Violent protests by hundreds of people on Monday touched off by rumors that a teacher insulted an indigenous student in the restive Indonesian province of Papua have left at least 20 civilians dead, including three who were shot by the police, officials said.

An angry mob torched local government buildings, shops and homes and set fire to cars and motorcycles on several roads leading to the district chief’s office in the city of Wamena, said the Papua police chief, Rudolf Alberth Rodja.

A spokesman for the Papua military, Eko Daryanto, said at least 16 civilians, including 13 from other Indonesian provinces, were killed in Wamena, mostly after they were trapped in burning houses or shops. He said at least one soldier and three civilians had died in another protest in Jayapura, the provincial capital.

About 65 civilians were injured in Wamena and five police officers were critically injured in Jayapura, he said.

Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian security forces are common in the impoverished Papua region, a former Dutch colony in the western half of New Guinea that is ethnically and culturally distinct from much of Indonesia.

Television images showed orange flames and black smoke billowing from burning buildings in Wamena, and videos that circulated on the internet showed dozens of people, many armed with machetes, standing in front of shops and homes to protect them from the angry mob.

Chief Rodja said the unrest was precipitated by rumors that a high school teacher in Wamena, who is not from Papua, called an indigenous student a “monkey” last week.

Police officers at a university in Jayapura, the provincial capital. Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian security forces are common in the region.CreditMisael Noel/EPA, via Shutterstock

He said a police investigation did not find any evidence of racism against the student, and he added that false rumors have been created and spread in other schools and indigenous communities with the intention of causing violent unrest.

“This is a hoax, and I call on people in Papua not to be provoked by untrue news,” Chief Rodja told reporters in Jayapura, the capital of Papua Province.

Mr. Daryanto said that a mob of angry students attacked a soldier and several police officers in Jayapura with machetes and rocks, and that security forces responded with gunfire, killing three civilians. The soldier died on the way to a hospital. At least five police officers were in critical condition.

Joko Harjani, an airport official, said the protest forced the authorities to close the city’s airport until the situation returns to normal.

The demonstration came days after the Indonesian authorities managed to bring the province under control after weeks of violent protests by thousands of people in Papua and West Papua provinces who had complained of racism toward Papuans. At least one Indonesian soldier and four civilians were killed in that violence.

The previous protests were set off by videos circulated on the internet that showed security forces calling Papuan students “monkeys” and “dogs” in the East Java city of Surabaya, as they stormed a university dormitory where Papuan students were staying after a torn Indonesian flag was found in a sewer.

The videos prompted hundreds of Papuans who study in other Indonesian provinces to return home, forcing a local state university to accommodate them.

Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 after a United Nations-sponsored ballot that was widely seen as a sham. Since then, a low-level insurgency has simmered in the mineral-rich region, which is divided into two provinces, Papua and West Papua.

In recent years, some Papua students, including those who study in other provinces, have called for self-determination for their region.

New York Times – A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 24, 2019, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: At Least 20 Found Dead Amid Riots In Indonesia. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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Spikes of Violence: Protest in West Papua

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019, Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/

by BINOY KAMPMARK

Like Timor-Leste, West Papua, commonly subsuming both Papua and West Papua, remains a separate ethnic entity, acknowledged as such by previous colonial powers. Its Dutch colonial masters, in preparing to leave the region in the 1950s, left the ground fertile for a declaration of independence in 1961. Such a move did not sit well with the Indonesian desire to claim control over all Dutch Asia Pacific colonies on departure. There were resources to be had, economic gains to be made. The military duly moved in.

The New York Agreement between Indonesia and the Netherlands, brokered in 1962 with the assistance of the United States, saw West Papua fall under United Nations control for the duration of one year. Once passing into Indonesian control, Jakarta would govern the territory “consistent with the rights and freedoms guaranteed to the inhabitants under the terms of the present agreement.” Education would be a priority; illiteracy would be targeted, and efforts made “to accelerate participation of the people in local government through periodic elections.”

One article stood out: “Indonesia will make arrangements, with the assistance and participation of the United Nation Representative and his staff, to give the people of the territory the opportunity to exercise freedom of choice.” In 1969, a ballot was conducted in line with the provision, though hardly in any true, representative sense. In the rich traditions of doctored representation and selective enfranchisement, 1,026 individuals were selected by Indonesian authorities to participate. Indonesia’s military kept an intimidating watch: the vote could not be left to chance. The result for Indonesian control was unanimous; the UN signed off.

Unlike Timor-Leste, the historically Melanesian territories of Papua and West Papua remains under thumb and screw, an entity that continues to exist under periodic acts of violence and habitual repression from the Indonesian central authorities. A policy of transmigration has been practiced, a point argued by scholars to be tantamount to genocide. This has entailed moving residents from Java and Sulawesi to West Papua, assisted by Jakarta’s hearty sponsorship.

The Indonesian argument here has been ethnic and political: to confect a national identity through assimilation. Under President Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”)), one keen to push the idea of “Indonesia Maju” (“Advanced Indonesia”), renewed stress is being placed on infrastructure investment, economic growth and natural resources, of which Papua features heavily.

The indigenous populace has had to, in turn, surrender land to those transmigrants and appropriating authorities. “The rights of traditional law communities,” notes Clause 17 of Indonesia’s Basic Forestry Act of 1967, “may not be allowed to stand in the way of transmigration sites.”

Appropriations of land, the relocation of residents, and the odd massacre by Indonesian security forces, tend to fly low on the international radar of human rights abuses. West Papua lacks the cinematic appeal or political heft that would encourage around the clock coverage from media networks. Bureaucratic plodders in the various foreign ministries of the world prefer to render such matters benign and of little interest. Geopolitics and natural resources tend to do most of the talking.

In late 2015, for instance, Scott Busby, US deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and James Carouso, acting deputy assistant secretary for Maritime and Mainland Southeast Asian affairs, ducked and evaded anything too compromising in their testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy. The consequences of demographic policies directed by Jakarta were assiduously ignored. Massacres and institutional accountability in the territory were bypassed, as were Indonesian efforts to prevent scrutiny on the part of human rights monitors, the UN Special rapporteur and journalists.

This year, more instances of violence have managed to leach out and gurgle in media circles. It took a few ugly incidents in the Javanese city of Surabaya to engender a new wave of protests which have had a rattling effect on the security forces. Last month, pro-Indonesian nationalist groups, with reported encouragement from security forces, taunted Papuan students with an array of crude insults in East Java. (“Dogs”, “monkeys” and “pigs” were part of the bitter mix.) The fuse was lit, notably as arrests were made of the Papuans themselves. “Papuans are not monkeys”, proclaimed banners being held at a rally in Central Jakarta on August 22.

Government buildings have been torched in Jayapura. Additional forces have been deployed, and internet access cut. There are claims that white phosphorous has been used on civilians; prisons are being filled. There have even been protests in Indonesia’s capital, with the banned Morning Star flag being flown defiantly in front of the state palace. (Doing so is no mild matter: activist Filep Karma spent over a decade of his life in prison for doing so.)

The struggle for independence, at least in the international eye, has been left to such figures as Benny Wenda, who lobbies governments and groups to back the “Free Papua” campaign. He is particularly keen to take the matter of the Free Choice vote of 1969, that nasty instrument that formalised Indonesian control, to the United Nations General Assembly. Last month, he had to settle for taking the matter to the Pacific Islands Forum as a representative of Vanuatu’s delegation. In January, he gifted the UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet a petition with 1.8 million signatures seeking a new referendum for the territory.

The response from an Indonesian government spokesman was emphatic, curt, and conventional. “Developments in Papua and West Papua province are purely Indonesia’s internal affairs. No other country, organisation or individual has the right to interfere in them. We firmly oppose the intervention of Indonesia’s internal affairs in whatever form.”

The hope for Jokowi and the Indonesian authorities will be simple: ride out the storm, conduct a low-level suppression of protests, and place any talks of secession on the backburner. In this, they can count on regional, if hypocritical support. In the words of a spokesman for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “Australia recognises Indonesia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Papua provinces. Our position is clearly defined by the Lombok Treaty between Indonesia and Australia.”Join the debate on FacebookMore articles by:BINOY KAMPMARK

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email:bkampmark@gmail.com

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