News Desk – Armed Conflict In Papua

 29 November 2023

Jayapura, Jubi – The PMKRI St. Thomas Aquinas, representing the Indonesian Catholic Student Association, voiced solidarity with the call for a humanitarian pause to alleviate the ongoing armed conflict in Papua.

During the National Study Conference in Denpasar, Bali, activists from 46 PMKRI branches across Indonesia joined in supporting this crucial initiative.

Tri Natalia Urada, Chairperson of the PMKRI ST Thomas Aquinas Central Board, affirmed the organization’s commitment to social justice and solidarity.

“We support the humanitarian pause as an effort to prevent more casualties in the Land of Papua,” she said, highlighting the dire need for peace efforts amidst escalating conflicts.

Tri also highlighted the distressing impact of law enforcement and military operations on civilians caught in conflict zones, specifying regions affected by armed conflicts.

“Armed conflicts in Papua are spread across Nduga Regency, Intan Jaya Regency, Bintang Mountains Regency, Yahukimo Regency, Puncak Regency, and Maybrat Regency,” Tri emphasized.

The plea for a humanitarian pause aims to mitigate the ongoing turmoil and pave the way for constructive dialogue towards a lasting resolution. PMKRI condemned all acts of armed conflict, urging an immediate halt and advocating for neutral mediation to address the core issues in Papua.

Meanwhile, Thalia Ohoitimur, Chairperson of the PMKRI St. Efrem of Jayapura Branch, reiterated the urgency of a Humanitarian Pause to address pressing humanitarian crises.

“We of the PMKRI Jayapura Branch have acted by sending books, clothes, stationery, milk, and baby food to the displaced people in Bintang Mountains Regency,” she said. (*)

Background briefing
Pat Walsh1
, November 2023
This briefing offers an international human rights perspective on Prabowo Subianto, a
leading candidate in Indonesia’s 2024 presidential campaign.
The briefing draws particularly on evidence in East Timor’s CAVR truth commission
report, Chega! regarding Prabowo Subianto’s practice of unconventional warfare
during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor. Based on this evidence, the briefing
asks Indonesian voters to consider whether Prabowo Subianto is fit and proper to lead
their important country at this point in its history.
East Timor was a Portuguese, not a Dutch, colony. Under President Suharto, the
Indonesian military invaded, occupied and waged war against this Portuguese
territory 1975-1999. This intervention was forced, violent, and a violation of
international law and UN resolutions, including the right of the Timorese people to
freely decide their status.
Prabowo served in East Timor at least four times during the occupation. As an officer,
and later commander, in Indonesia’s elite and secretive special forces (Kopassus), his
role was unconventional and made use of his close family connection to Suharto to
operate independently of the regular military. He was once removed from East Timor
for not following orders.
Prabowo was active in East Timor in 1976 soon after the invasion; he commanded the
unit that killed East Timor’s legendary leader, Nicolau Lobato, in 1978; in 1983, he
bypassed a superior officer and undermined a peace process and is accused of
massacres in Kraras the same year; in 1986-7 he developed an anti-Resistance
strategy that was used to foster covert proxy war by pitting locals against locals; he
was associated with stealing Timorese children; he groomed a number of East
Timor’s most violent offenders such as Eurico Guterres; and in the 1990s used
Kopassus to train and direct militias and create ‘ninja’ gangs to terrorise Timorese.
These violations not only failed to deliver East Timor to Indonesia but were counterproductive.
The proxy warfare concept and shadowy role of Kopassus allowed Prabowo to
plausibly deny responsibility for deaths and violations. It enabled him to attribute
these crimes to local in-fighting, or what he called ‘civil conflict’. By accepting
Indonesia’s illegal annexation of East Timor as Indonesia’s 27th province, he could
also claim that he was repressing an ‘insurgency’.
1 The author was an adviser to CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação), East
Timor’s internationally funded truth commission 2001-2005 and its successor body. He is currently
adviser emeritus to Centro Nacional Chega! (CNC) whose mandate is to facilitate implementation of
CAVR recommendations. He was a pioneer of Indonesian in the Victorian school system, co-founder
of Inside Indonesia magazine and facilitator of extensive NGO and people-to-people relations with
Indonesia. He was awarded an Ordem de Timor-Leste in 2009 and an AM by Australia in 2012.
2
CAVR and several other inquiries, including one by Indonesia’s Human Rights
Commission, found that violations committed by the Indonesian military were crimes
against humanity, war crimes and violations of Indonesian law for which perpetrators
should be held responsible. Kopassus was the worst offender.
Prabowo denies responsibility and has not been tried for these crimes. But as an active
participant, planner and officer with command responsibility, he clearly shares
responsibility in international law for such excesses. They are the reason he was
banned from the US by three presidents, though he has been permitted access since
his appointment as Minister for Defence. Until cleared by an independent tribunal, his
suitability to serve as president of Indonesia must remain in serious doubt.
This paper also references allegations of human rights abuses by Prabowo that were
committed in Jakarta during the tumultuous transition away from the Suharto era in
the late 1990s.
Does post-Joko Widodo Indonesia need to recycle a damaged product of the Suharto
era? In view of his deeply compromised narrative, what is the point of Prabowo and
what principles would underpin a Prabowo presidency? Will not his past dog his
international performance and damage Indonesia’s good name? Is it fair for East
Timorese victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity to have to accommodate
their tormenter as leader of the important neighbour their country needs to work with?
What would his presidency mean for West Papuans?
3
Annex 1
PRABOWO: PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Prabowo Subianto is a 72 year old, wealthy, former Indonesian military commander
in East Timor, son-in-law of Indonesia’s President Suharto, and a leading candidate in
Indonesia’s 2024 presidential elections.
Born in 1951, he belongs to one of Indonesia’s most powerful families. He is the son
of Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (1917-2001), a noted Indonesian economist. His
mother, Dora Maria Sigar, was a Protestant Christian from Sulawesi (Celebes).
Prabowo married Titiek Suharto, Suharto’s second daughter, in 1983. They divorced
in 1998 during the Indonesian political crisis following Suharto’s resignation. Their
son, Didit Hediprasetyo, is a Paris-based women’s fashion designer and socialite.
Prabowo’s younger brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, is one of Indonesia’s
wealthiest entrepreneurs, a philanthropist and Christian. European educated, he has a
wide diversity of interests in forestry, plantations, coal mines, oil and gas from Aceh
to Papua and international interests in Russia and Canada. Hashim is a member of
Prabowo’s Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) party, backs Prabowo’s presidential
campaign publically and financially, and argues that his brother is the best qualified
and experienced of the three candidates.
Prabowo has extensive experience in the West and is said to be ‘solidly secular’. He
was educated in London, married in the Netherlands, has had military training in
Germany and the US, and has interests in Jordan.
Wealth
Prabowo is wealthy in his own right. His Nusantara Group has extensive holdings,
particularly in Kalimantan, and is reported to control 27 companies in Indonesia and
abroad. His business interests include palm oil, forestry, fishing, paper, and energy
(coal, gas, oil). He heads a number of national associations, including Indonesia’s
martial arts organisation. Prabowo has a well-guarded 24 hectare ranch near Bogor
that includes a mansion, swimming pool, helipad, library, stable of at least 18
thoroughbred polo horses, vet, exercise track and staff. To launch his 2014 election
bid, he rode a white stallion (estimated worth $300,000) into the stadium.
Military career
Prabowo Subianto has spent most of his professional life in the military viz. 1974-
1998, and in business. He has never served in the legislature or in government. For
most of his time in the military, Prabowo was a member of Kopassus, including as its
commander for three years (1995-1998).
Also known as the Red Berets and Ghost of the Jungle (Hantu Rimba), Kopassus is
the Indonesian military’s secretive ‘special operations’ force. It specialises in
unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency, intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism.
Its basic concept is to use locals against locals in order to gather intelligence, infiltrate
and foster covert, proxy warfare. The strategy gives officials the option of plausible
denial of responsibility for deaths and violations and the additional option of
attributing these to local in-fighting and grievances that Kopassus can even claim to
4
be trying to settle. In plain English, locals are recruited and bribed to do Kopassus’s
dirty work and, if necessary, to take the blame.
The strategy owes a lot to the West. The British employed a version in Malaya and
the French in Indochina in the 1940s. The US, which had used it, inter alia, in its
support of the Contras in Nicaragua, trained the Indonesian military in its use against
communism in the 1960s. As a creation of the Cold War, it depicted communism as a
threat to civilisation so evil that the full spectrum of responses was justified, including
the dark arts of unconventional warfare..
Following tours in East Timor, Prabowo is believed to have used a military study
course in Bandung 1986-1987 to develop a version of the model for use in East Timor
where communism was also used to justify illegal acts.2
Prabowo is known to be quick-tempered and independent-minded. His military
graduation in 1974, for example, was delayed for a year due to disciplinary offences.3
Later, he was removed from East Timor by General Benny Moerdani for failing to
follow orders 4 and in 1999 was dismissed from the military.
In 1996 in West Papua, Prabowo led a Kopassus operation to free a group of WWF
(World Wildlife Fund) researchers who had been taken hostage by the West Papuan
resistance in a bid for independence. Following the release of most of the captives,
Prabowo is alleged to have led his troops in reprisal raids against villages believed to
have supported the guerrillas. Allegations that he used a helicopter with International
Red Cross (ICRC) markings have been denied by the ICRC.
In 1998, Prabowo was appointed chief of Kostrad (Strategic Reserve Command) at
the behest of Suharto, his father-in-law. Shortly after his appointment, and in defiance
of Wiranto, the head of the army, Prabowo had hundreds of Kopassus brought to
Jakarta from East Timor to quell demonstrators who were demanding the resignation
of his father-in-law. Prabowo called them ‘traitors to the nation’.
Prior to that Prabowo organised the kidnapping of 23 student protesters. Some were
released but 13, including the well-known poet Wiji Thukul, are still missing. During
the same period Prabowo demanded to replace Wiranto as head of the army but was
demoted by President Habibie instead. A military council found Prabowo guilty of
2 Based on its examination of violations committed in East Timor in 1999, the joint Indonesia/TimorLeste Commission for Truth and Friendship concluded that there was a ‘structural interconnection
between the TNI (Indonesian military) and militia’ that went back to ‘long before 1999’ and that the
‘evidence showed unequivocally that these groups (militia and other paramilitary) regularly employed
violence to achieve their goals that resulted in gross human rights violations’. Per Memoriam Ad Spem,
Final Report of the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) Indonesia-Timor-Leste. 2008, p. xvi.
The CAVR Chega! report arrived at similar conclusions. See Chega! Vol. IV Responsibility and
Accountability, #444-493 (pp. 2367-2378). 3
Dr Ingo Wandelt, Prabowo, Kopassus and East Timor, On the Hidden History of Modern
Indonesian Unconventional Warfare. regiospectra, 2007, p. 123. Dr Wandelt is a German Malaysia and
Indonesia specialist and author of several Indonesian language dictionaries.
4 ‘I sent Prabowo to East Timor to set up long-range patrols,’ Moerdani told Adam Schwarz. ‘He
became obsessed with catching Xanana. He had gone out of control. I heard reports that Prabowo was
beating patrol leaders when they came back empty-handed. I had no choice but to bring him back to
Java.’ Quoted Wandelt, op.cit. p. 132
5
kidnapping the anti-Suharto activists; he was dismissed from the military and went
into voluntary exile in Jordan.
These violations and alleged crimes in East Timor led three US presidents from both
sides of politics (Clinton, Bush and Obama) to ban Prabowo from visiting the US.
However, after President Joko Widodo appointed him Indonesia’s defence minister in
2019, the Trump administration lifted the ban, a decision denounced by some in
Congress and numerous Indonesian and US human rights organisations.
Electoral record
Prabowo is the chair of Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement Party), a right-wing
populist political party, which he set up in 2008 to serve as a vehicle for his political
ambitions. The party has branches in youth, women, Muslim, Christian, HinduBuddhist, and Chinese sectors.
Prabowo has run for high office in all four of Indonesia’s direct presidential elections.
He failed to secure a party nomination in 2004 and lost as the vice-presidential
nominee in 2009. He has since lost presidential bids twice. His first attempt, in 2014,
was challenged by Indonesian lawyers who called for him to stand trial over
allegations of human rights abuses. It failed. Many NGOs also called for him to step
down, possibly contributing to his loss. Prabowo, however, blamed the loss on
‘massive cheating that is structured and systematic’. Experts, world leaders and
Indonesia’s Constitutional Court all rejected that claim. He also blamed cheating for
his second loss in 2019; again his appeal was rejected by the Constitutional Court.
The claims sparked riots that left eight people dead and hundreds injured.
In addition to his Trump style rejections of election results, Prabowo has also made
outrageous claims such as that studies showed Indonesia would fall apart in 2030 and
that Indonesian terrorists were not Muslims but foreign controlled infiltrators. He has
also been accused of pandering to hard-line Islamists.
Prabowo is also prone to broad, messianic type commitments. According to his
Facebook page, he is promising that, if elected in 2024, he will free Indonesia from
poverty, hunger and malnutrition so that its children will grow up happy, strong and
smart.
Current legal challenges
In response to legal challenges, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court headed by President
Joko Widodo’s brother-in-law, handed down two critical judgements in October. The
first was that, though legally too young at 36, President Joko Widodo’s son, Gibran
Rakabuming Raka, could campaign as Prabowo’s vice-presidential running mate
because of his experience as governor of Solo. The decision was only made after
Gibran’s uncle, the chief justice, attended to vote. Professor Tim Lindsey, Indonesian
law expert at the University of Melbourne, thinks it ‘reeks of political manipulation
and interference’.5
The ruling is currently being challenged on grounds of conflict of
interest.
5 https://johnmenadue.com/a-twist-in-indonesias-presidential-election-does-notbode-well-for-the-countrys-fragile-democracy/
6
The Court also over-ruled a challenge that Prabowo was in breach of Article 169 of
the election law that disqualifies candidates who have betrayed the State, been corrupt
or committed other serious criminal acts. Petitioners argued this disqualified Prabowo
because he had been guilty of kidnapping students in 1997-1998. Their request that
the article be clarified to include human rights violations was rejected. The petition
did not mention Prabowo’s record in East Timor.
Both court decisions favour Prabowo whom President Joko Widodo supports over
Ganjar Pranowo, his own Democratic Party (PDI-P) candidate6
. Why Widodo favours
Prabowo is not clear. Some suggest it is because Prabowo has pledged to continue
Widodo’s signature project of re-locating the capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan.
Prominent Indonesians such as the popular musician Iwan Fals and writer Goenawan
Mohamad, who previously supported Widodo, are publicly condemning the president
for pushing his son to be Prabowo’s running mate.
Conclusion
The picture that emerges from this profile is of a man who has been definitively
shaped by his military and privileged background. The narrative also portrays a hardline, failed, disgraced, ambitious and deeply unconventional individual who is prone
to bending the rules and has been prepared to use military, high-level and far-right
connections to advance his interests and career at the cost of the lives and human
rights of others. Violence has been a feature of much of his professional life. He
continues to face allegations of grave human rights violations committed over many
years in East Timor and in Indonesia. The recent Constitutional Court cases strongly
suggest judicial favouritism and possible corruption on Prabowo’s behalf and do not
bode well for the rule of law if he is elected president. Overall, the picture that
emerges is anything but the image of someone who understands, respects and
complies with the rule of law that is so badly needed in Indonesia and internationally
at this time.
Annex II
PRABOWO SUBIANTO AND EAST TIMOR7
Indonesia invaded, occupied and waged war against East Timor, a former Portuguese
colony, 1975-1999, in violation of international law. Following military and popular
resistance, international advocacy, and the fall of Suharto, East Timor gained its
independence in 1999 through a UN-facilitated referendum.
6 Ganjar, 54, is from the Javanese heartland of Central Java. Though university educated, his
background is far humbler than Prabowo’s. His father was a police officer, his mother a small vendor.
He is described as populist-left. During his time as a PDI-P opposition member of the national
parliament and his two terms as governor of Central Java, the photogenic Ganjar, a user of social
media, has earned a reputation as an anti-corruption campaigner and a pro-people social reformer. 7 Chega! p. 2415 has a summary of Prabowo’s appointments.
7
East Timor’s internationally funded truth commission, CAVR8, concluded that
Indonesia committed crimes against humanity and war crimes during its 24 year
military occupation. Kopassus9
, said CAVR, was the military unit associated with
most human rights violations. A second truth commission that focussed on 1999 and
was conducted jointly with Indonesia (CTF)10 arrived at the same conclusion for the
final year of the occupation. No Indonesian military commanders, including
Prabowo, have been punished or sanctioned for these violations. As he was not in
East Timor in 1999, Prabowo was not indicted by the UN Serious Crimes Unit. Like
other Indonesian senior officers, he has been rewarded with appointments or
honours. His cv includes a long list of awards.
The years of Prabowo’s military service (1974-1998) coincide closely with the years
of Indonesia’s illegal war against East Timor (1975-1999). He served in East Timor at
least four times, most of it with the Kopassus Special Forces.
Prabowo is believed to have arrived in East Timor in March 1976, and to have been a
lieutenant during the height of the war and the devastating famine of 1977-1978.
CAVR reports that Prabowo led the Kopassus Nanggala Unit 28 that located and
fatally wounded Nicolau Lobato, then President of East Timor, on 31 December 1978.
(Chega! pp. 228, 2708n) Lobato is Timor-Leste’s revered hero whose statue stands at
the western entrance to the capital of Dili.
Along with a number of surrenders by Resistance leaders, the death of Lobato was a
triumph for the Indonesian military and Prabowo. It also occurred at a time of mass
surrender of civilians forced out of Resistance control by military-induced starvation.
Undertaken to separate ‘the fish from the water’ (i.e. to isolate the Timorese guerrilla
resistance from the people by forcing them out of the interior), this humanitarian
disaster accounts for most of Timor’s war-related deaths. (Chega! Forced
displacement and famine, pp. 1165-1363). CAVR does not directly associate Prabowo
with the famine, but he was active in the war zone at the time and the strategy has all
the hallmarks of the unconventional warfare in which he and Kopassus specialised.
In 1983, the Timorese governor Mario Carrascalão joined with Indonesia’s military
commander, Colonel Purwanto, to negotiate a ceasefire and talks with the Resistance
leader Xanana Gusmäo. CAVR believes that Prabowo undermined the ceasefire.
Chega! attests that Prabowo, then deputy-commander of a Special Forces unit, was in
the general area at the time and that, following the breakdown of the ceasefire,
Kopassus troops under his command committed massacres in the Kraras area.
(Chega! passim, including pp.250-255, 1288-1290, 1996-1998).
8 CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação), the Timor-Leste truth and
reconciliation commission, functioned 2001-2005. Its 5-volume report, entitled Chega! (no more!),
documents and attributes responsibility for human rights violations committed on all sides 1974-1999.
Visit TiSA CAVR report (Bishop’s University, Canada) for the full report in English (including index).
9 Kopassus has been known by different names but has had the same role throughout its history. 10 CTF (Commission for Truth and Friendship) was a joint Timor-Leste/Indonesia commission that
functioned 2005-2008. Its report entitled Per Memoriam Ad Spem (through memory towards hope)
focussed on institutional, not individual, responsibility. See Bishop’s University TiSA archive.
8
Denial of responsibility
Prabowo denies responsibility for these killings. In a letter to the Jakarta Post, dated
28 December 2013, he wrote, ‘I was nowhere near the site’.11 Being somewhere else
and denying personally shooting those who had surrendered, however, does not
excuse an officer of responsibility. ‘Under international law it is not only the person
who directly carries out a crime that is responsible, but also that person’s superiors,
especially in the military or government’ (Chega! op.cit. p.119)

12. This obligation was
    ignored by Prabowo’s commanding officers. Late in 1983, he was promoted from
    captain to major, a high rank for a 32 year old.
    Proxy warfare
    As reported by Dr Wandelt above, Prabowo spent 1986-7 taking courses at a military
    institution in Bandung where he worked on the proxy militia concept explained
    above. The concept was based on framing the Timor issue as an ‘internal conflict’.13
    It shows Prabowo the problem-solver and ambitious careerist at work. He believed the
    model would seal Indonesia’s victory in East Timor, enhance his status and absolve
    the Indonesian military like him from blame. He implemented the plan on his return
    to East Timor in 1989.
    14
    Chega! highlights the central role of the militia and paramilitary organisations during
    the last two decades of the Indonesian occupation. These groups were responsible for
    widespread abuse in violation of both international and Indonesian law.15 Prabowo
    and Kopassus, records Chega!, engaged in a form of psywar to intimidate and
    terrorise the Timor-Leste population, increased military training of civil servants and
    university students, expanded the paramilitary teams, and established new militia
    organisations.
    One of these was a Timorese youth organisation called Gadapaksi16. Prabowo
    personally funded its creation in 1995. Initially intended to showcase Indonesian
    welfare for youth on the fringes of society, Gadapaksi ‘quickly developed a host of
    11 This letter was a reply to the Amsterdam-based Indonesian journalist Aboeprijadi Santoso. In a
    letter to Jakarta Post dated 20 December 2013 (in the run-up to Indonesian elections in 2014), Santoso
    asked, ‘What ever happened in Kraras, Timor-Leste, ‘Pak’ Prabowo?’
    12 See Professor Gerry van Klinken’s detailed account of the Kraras killings entitled Prabowo and
    human rights in Inside Indonesia magazine #116, April-June 2014. The article is based on the CAVR
    report which devoted 27 pages to these killings. At the time of writing, van Klinken was professor of
    Southeast Asian history at the University of Amsterdam. The article is also available in Bahasa
    Indonesia.
    13 Prabowo’s letter to the Jakarta Post, op.cit. 14 ‘As soon as he arrived, signs of unconventional warfare began to appear in East Timor’s capital,
    Dili: In July 1989 […] new covert operations were unleashed in Dili and the urban centres. During this
    period hooded gangsters, referred to locally as buffo (clowns), terrorized Dili at night. [… They were, I.
    W.] East Timorese collaborators given special training by the Special Forces for intelligence,
    interrogation, and assassination work.’ Kammen, Douglas (2001) The Trouble with Normal: The
    Indonesian Military, Paramilitaries, and the Final Solution in East Timor. In: Anderson, Benedict R.
    O’G., ed., Violence and the State in Suharto’s Indonesia. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University, 160-
13. Quoted Wandelt, op.cit. p. 137
    15 See Chega! op.cit. pp. 121-123 16 Gadapaksi is short for Garda Muda Penegak Integrasi (Young Guards Upholding Integration).
    Wandelt believes the organisation represented the institutional realisation of Prabowo’s 1986 study,
    that it was a model organisation of East Timorese ‘contras’ for unconventional warfare. Op.cit. pp.
    139-140.
    9
    illegal or semi-legal smuggling, gambling, and protection rackets’.17 It grew rapidly
    and sent hundreds of its members to Indonesia for training by Kopassus. Dressed as
    black-clad ‘ninjas’, members roamed the streets of Dili at night terrorising the local
    community. The activity, notes Chega!, was similar to the state-sponsored Petrus
    killings of some 5000 petty criminals – described by Suharto as ‘shock therapy’ – that
    General Benny Moerdani initiated in Java in the early 80s. It also evokes Prabowo’s
    abduction of student activists in Jakarta in 1998.
    Stolen children
    Chega! and other sources18 associate Prabowo with the transfer (also referred to as
    ‘stealing’) of Timorese children from their families and country. High-level civilian
    and military officials, including Suharto, his wife Tien Suharto and their daughter,
    Titiek, Prabowo’s wife, were also involved in the practice. Transfers of this nature are
    a grave breach of international law. Occupying powers are prohibited from deporting
    protected persons.19
    One of the roughly 4000 stolen generation was Rozario Marcal, better known as
    Hercules, the code name he was given by Kopassus. Hercules, a feared underworld
    figure in Jakarta (preman in Indonesian), is unwaveringly loyal to Prabowo. Preindependence, Prabowo bribed Hercules to intimidate nationalist Timorese students
    and during Prabowo’s presidential bids in 2014 and 2019, Hercules mobilised his
    network of strongmen and vigilantes in support of his patron.
    Indicted protégés
    East Timor also found itself saddled with a number of other Timorese who could be
    described as Prabowo clones. Four examples taken from Chega! follow.
    One is Prabowo’s protégé Joanico Cesario Belo, also a Kopassus officer, who headed
    up the Team Saka militia in Baucau. (Chega! p. 2657) In 1999, the Saka militia was
    responsible for the deaths of 43 Timorese, the destruction of property and
    displacement of hundreds of families. Belo was indicted by the UN Serious Crimes
    Unit, but not his dalang (puppeteer) Prabowo.
    Martinho Fernandes, the district head (bupati) of Viqueque was another. Fernandes, a
    former associate of Prabowo and honorary member of Kopassus, strongly supported
    the local militias. (Chega! p. 2803)
    A third Prabowo clone was Abilio Osorio Soares, the governor of East Timor from
    1992 till the end of the Indonesian occupation. Chega! reports that Prabowo was
    instrumental in the appointment of Soares to the top job. In 1999, Soares fully backed
    the formation of the Sakunar (Scorpion) militias and used his position to secure
    funding for militias. (Chega! pp. 295, 2800) A large pro-Indonesia rally held outside
    17 Kammen 2001: 168-169. Quoted by Wandelt, op.cit. p. 140. For more on the proxy-organisations
    see Greenlees, Don and Robert Garran (2002) Deliverance. The Inside Story of East Timor’s Fight for
    Freedom. Crows Nest, Allen&Unwin, 129-136. 18 See Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) https://stolenchildren.asia-ajar.org/ Also Helene van Klinken
    Making them Indonesian, Child Transfers out of East Timor, Monash University Asia Series, 2012. For
    a discussion of motives (largely assimilationist), see van Klinken pp. 39-44. 19 See UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. International Criminal Court (2016). CAVR
    recommendation on separated children, 11.2 (Chega! p. 2611)
    10
    Soares office in April 1999 preceded a violent rampage through the capital that
    resulted in 13 killings. Soares was indicted by the UN Serious Crimes Unit and found
    guilty by the Indonesian Ad Hoc Human Rights Tribunal. It is not known if Prabowo
    spoke up for him.
    A fourth protégé is Eurico Guterres, whom Prabowo recruited into Gadapaksi. The
    most violent and notorious of the militia leaders, Guterres personifies Prabowo’s
    impact on East Timor. In 1999, Guterres established his own militia called Aitarak
    (thorn). Both prior to and following the UN-facilitated referendum of 30 August
    1999, the fire-brand Guterres terrorised the Timorese community and was responsible
    for several massacres. These included murders at the home of Manuel Carrascalão
    and a massacre at the church in Liquica. As Wandelt notes, ‘He (Guterres) was the
    ultimate ‘product’ of Prabowo’s UW (unconventional warfare)’.
    20
    Having failed in East Timor, Guterres exported his experience in unconventional
    warfare to West Papua, where he set up a pro-Indonesia militia group to combat the
    Papuan resistance. It also failed. In keeping with the proxy character of Prabowo’s
    unconventional warfare model, Guterres, not Prabowo his creator, was found guilty
    and sentenced to prison by an Indonesian court for crimes in East Timor.
    Conclusion
    Prabowo Subianto’s fingerprints are all over East Timor, from the beginning to the
    end of the occupation, even – thanks to the Timorese militia he co-created – when he
    wasn’t there. Using Kopassus’s specialist function and his family connection to
    Suharto, Prabowo could operate independently of local Indonesian commanders. His
    shadowy movements have also has made it difficult to attribute particular violations
    or events directly to him.
    Binding UN Security Council resolutions in 1975 called on Indonesia ‘to withdraw
    without delay all its forces from the Territory’.21 Prabowo defied this ruling, and more
    generally the rule of law, by fighting and commanding a range of military operations
    in East Timor after that time.
    Prabowo does not deny that he waged war against East Timor, nor that he agreed with
    Indonesia’s illegal annexation in 1976 that the UN rejected. He denies, however, that
    this makes him accountable for the crimes against humanity and war crimes
    committed during his tours of combat in East Timor that have been documented by
    two truth commissions22, several independent inquiries23 and academic studies.
    20 Wandelt, op.cit. p. 141 21 UN Security Council Resolution 384 (1975) # 2 22 The two commissions are the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
    (CAVR) and the bi-lateral Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF). In 2008, Indonesia’s then
    president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), endorsed CTF’s findings.
    23 Two UN-authorised investigations, conducted in late 1999, and Indonesia’s Human Rights
    Commission concluded that crimes against humanity were committed in 1999, that Indonesian
    authorities bore prime responsibility, and that an international criminal tribunal should be established to
    investigate and punish those responsible. This tribunal did not eventuate. Indonesia was given the
    benefit of the doubt and allowed to conduct its own trials. All those charged were acquitted except for
    the notorious Timorese militia leader, Eurico Guterres. The trials were widely condemned as a travesty
    of justice.
    11
    There are four reasons behind this denial.
    First, Prabowo maintains that the East Timor issue was an ‘internal conflict’ that
    Timorese on one side asked Indonesia to help resolve.24
    Second, after Indonesia declared East Timor its 27th province in July 197625, the
    conflict could be construed as an insurgency against Indonesia that was Prabowo’s
    responsibility as a counter-insurgency specialist to deal with.
    Third, Prabowo maintains that Timorese leaders do not hold him responsible. ‘I have
    been accepted’, he wrote in 2013, ‘and even photographed in meetings and friendly
    conversation with former Timor-Leste president Xanana Gusmão (April 20, 2001),
    Lere Anan Timur (November 21, 2008) and Mari Alkatiri (June 20, 2013)….Would
    Xanana and other Timorese freedom fighters, our nation’s former enemies, have
    befriended an Indonesian officer truly guilty of such despicable crimes against
    civilians?’26
    Fourth, in his Jakarta Post letter, Prabowo states that the UN has charged him with
    human rights violations either. It is true that the UN Serious Crimes process that
    functioned in East Timor before full independence in 2002 did not indict Prabowo.
    However, its indictments only related to crimes committed between January and
    October 1999 and, as mentioned previously, Prabowo was not in East Timor at that
    time. As someone with command responsibility in East Timor during the war,
    however, Prabowo cannot hide from the principal findings of the CAVR truth
    commission on the State of Indonesia and the Indonesian security forces. The 19
    paragraphs in question are a profoundly disturbing litany of injustice that demand
    accountability. The illegal use of force – against a state, its civilians, culture, property,
    women and children – is the feature common to the executions, massacres27,
    24 Following Fretilin’s declaration of independence on 28 November 1975, the Timorese parties that
    had fled to Indonesian Timor after a civil war petitioned Indonesia (under Indonesian pressure it is
    claimed) to support them with personnel and weapons to defeat Fretilin which was depicted as
    communist. The latter label was only partly true but, given the Cold War milieu of the time and
    Suharto’s positive reputation in the West for his liquidation of communism, the claim affected the
    judgement of many, including Suharto, and sealed East Timor’s fate. Though East Timor never
    attacked Indonesia proper, Fretilin-led East Timor could easily be depicted as a threat to Indonesia. It
    was only when resistance continued in East Timor after the end of the Cold War that the falsity of this
    propaganda became clear. Though covert to begin with, Indonesia’s military intervention on 7
    December 1975 was overt and a full-scale invasion by air, land and sea by regular troops. 25 Suharto’s attempt to legitimise Indonesia’s integration of East Timor followed a petition from an
    Indonesian convened Popular Assembly of some 30 selected East Timorese held in Dili in May 1976.
    Most countries declined to send observers to the event and the UN rejected it in Resolution 31/53 (1
    December 1976) and called for a genuine act of self-determination. That Assembly closely resembled
    the engineered ‘Act of Free Choice’ that Indonesia had held in West Papua only seven years before.
    This time, however, most countries would have nothing to do with its Timor iteration.
    26 As already mentioned (fn 8) Prabowo’s letter was in response to a letter in the Jakarta Post by the
    Indonesian journalist Aboeprijadi Santoso. In a second letter, not published by the Post, Santoso points
    out that, as politicians and diplomats, Timorese leaders have had to deal with Prabowo differently to
    when he was their sworn enemy. 27 See list of at least 101 massacre sites, Chega! pp. 3104-3105.
    12
    bombings28, torture, imprisonment, starvation, sham trials, sexual abuse and other
    forms of violence that were perpetrated at various points throughout the war.
    There is no denying that Prabowo enjoys a teflon quality and Trump-like self-belief.
    These attributes have allowed him to deny all allegations arising from his
    responsibility as a soldier and commander in East Timor. He is running for the
    presidency of Indonesia in the hope that amnesia, the passing of time, an ignorant
    electorate (that ironically includes millions of tech-addicted millennials prepared to
    live in an alternative universe), are on his side. Prabowo will also find comfort in the
    knowledge that a compliant international community is prepared to favour
    pragmatism over principle and excuse him from the much trumpeted rule of law.
    But as a US Ambassador to Indonesia observed during one of Prabowo’s previous
    failed election campaigns, the final arbiter of the claims and counter-claims
    surrounding him has to be an independent, properly constituted inquiry or judicial
    court, not the court of public opinion. The onus, said the Ambassador, is on Prabowo
    to allow the claims and evidence to be tested. The Jakarta Post recently carried a
    piece calling on Prabowo to apologise for his human rights ‘mistakes’.29
    Until he is cleared of allegations of wrong-doing, Prabowo is not fit and proper to
    serve as the president of this great nation. Surely a country of 280 million has other
    options.
    If Prabowo is elected a dark cloud will settle over Indonesia. Indonesia will be
    perceived as regressive, prepared to forget rather than remember and learn, and to
    tolerate impunity when, in fact, it could be a beacon of democracy and champion of
    the rule of law in a much troubled region and world.
    28 Late in 1978, Indonesian bombing of Mt Matebian nearly wiped out the remaining Resistance.
    Chega! suggests this bombing included napalm. (p. 227) Research by the Swiss historian, Dr Regula
    Bochsler, demonstrates that this napalm was a Swiss product. (See Nylon and Napalm. 2022) 29 Kornelius Purba, Jakarta Post, 6 July 2023.

Suara Papua – November 10, 2023

Jayapura — Victor Yeimo, leader and political figure of the West Papuan independence struggle, has just been awarded the 2023 “Voltaire Empty Chair Award”. The international award in the field of human rights was given to Yeimo by the Australian organistion Liberty Victoria on Friday November 10.

The spokesperson for the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) and the Papuan People’s Petition (PRP), according to libertyvictoria.org.au, received the award for his persistent struggle for human rights, freedom of speech and civil liberties in West Papua, and because he was considered a strong fighter for West Papuan independence from Indonesia.

It was noted that Yeimo has gone through a long struggle, having been arrested repeatedly, thrown into a police cell, charged with treason and being tried when he was seriously ill. He has been in and out of Indonesian prison many times.

Liberty Victoria is Australia’s longest-standing civil liberties organisation which for the last seven years has continued to aggressively fight for civil and human rights in the world.

Since being established in 2016, the Voltaire Empty Chair Award has been given to people deemed worthy of receiving it even though they have sometimes not been able to attend in person as a consequence of their defense of human rights, freedom of speech or civil liberties.

Victor Yeimo, a pro-independence activist and staunch human rights defender was once placed on the police’s wanted persons list (DPO) by Indonesian authorities after he led a demonstration against racism directed at Papuan students in Surabaya on August 16, 2019,

He has been arrested and imprisoned three times — in October 2009, May

2013 and May 2021 — for exercising his civil rights in leading peaceful demonstrations.

Yeimo’s most recent arrest and imprisonment was on charges of makar (treason, subversion, rebellion) for leading a peaceful protest against racial discrimination in West Papua in 2019. Yeimo was placed in solitary confinement for three months and denied access to his lawyers, family and even medical treatment. His health had deteriorated during the trial process.

In May 2023, the Jayapura District Court ruled that Yeimo had violated the Criminal Code (KUHP) on the pretext that he has disseminated prohibited information. However the was verdict was annulled in July

2023 and he was sentenced to one year in prison.

After serving 28 months in prison, Yeimo was finally released from the Jayapura Penitentiary on Saturday November 23, 2023. Thousand of Papuans took to the streets to greet him and held a parade to Waena to celebrate his release.

During the award ceremony, Liberty Victoria stated, “We are proud to announce that the 2023 Voltaire Empty Chair Award was awarded to Mr.

Victor Yeimo, a strong supporter of West Papua’s independence from Indonesia and international spokesperson for the West Papua National Committee and the Papuan People’s Petition”.

“We are honored that Mr Victor Yeimo has received the 2023 Liberty Victoria Vacant Chair award.”

Comments by Victor Yeimo

After receiving the award, Yeimo spoke about racism in Indonesia, which he said was deeply rooted.

“Racism is a disease. Racism is a virus. Racism is first propagated by people who feel superior. The belief that other races are inferior. The feeling that another race is more primitive and backward than others”, said Yeimo.

“After Indonesia became independent, it succeeded in driving out colonialism, but failed to eliminate the racism engendered by European cultures against archipelago communities. Currently, racism has developed into a deeply ingrained cultural phenomenon in Indonesian society, leaving them with a sense of inferiority as a result of their history of colonisation.”

Yeimo also said that the struggle by the people of the West Papuan nation will never end.

“The 1962 New York Agreement, the 1967 agreement between Indonesia and the United States regarding Freeport’s work contract, and the Act of Free Choice in 1969 were without the participation of the Papuan people.

This exclusion was rooted in the belief that Papuans were viewed as primitive and not entitled to the right to determine their own political fate.”

[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was “Gigih Perjuangkan HAM Papua, Victor Yeimo Raih Penghargaan Voltaire Empty Chair”.]

News Desk 11 November 2023

Jakarta, Jubi – Several prominent figures in Indonesia issued a collective plea for a humanitarian ceasefire to stop the ongoing armed conflict in Papua.

In Jakarta on Thursday (9/11/2023), Gomar Gultom, the General Chairperson of the Association of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) announced several notable signatories including Sinta Nuriyah of Nahdlatul Ulama (Former First Lady of Indonesia 1999-2001, Wife of KH Abdurrahman Wahid), Yanuarius Theofilus Maatopai You (Bishop of Jayapura), Siprianus Hormat (Chairman of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference), Marzuki Darusman (Former Attorney General of Indonesia during the presidency of KH Abdurrahman Wahid), and Alissa Wahid (Chairperson of the Nahdlatul Ulama Executive Board).

Franz Magnis Suseno, Makarim Wibisono, and Abdul Mu’ti, though did not attend the event, were declared as supporters of the Call for Peace in Papua.

The call for peace was prompted by the signatories’ reflections on global challenges, including the crises in Ukraine and Palestine, emphasizing the need to address domestic issues.

“On a different scale, the humanitarian crisis that we witness in the world can also be seen closely in the Land of Papua,” said Gultom.

The call underscores that only a peaceful resolution can prevent loss of life and foster prosperity, justice, and well-being in Papua. The signatories expressed deep concern over the armed conflict, urging the Indonesian government and all parties involved, including armed civilian groups, the ULMWP (United Liberation Movement for West Papua), traditional leaders, and Indigenous Papuans, to engage in dialogue and take immediate steps toward peace.

The signatories called for building trust as a crucial first step, urging state officials to collaborate with all segments of society to address the humanitarian crisis and initiate dialogue for a peaceful resolution. They emphasized the importance of dialogue facilitated by trusted, impartial mediators, including national figures and Papuan Alissa Wahid highlighted the dire consequences of armed conflict, including hunger, displacement, and increasing casualties, and emphasized the need for the government to engage with diverse parties to find a new approach for resolution.

Efforts to initiate a humanitarian pause in Papuawere previously undertaken through a Memorandum of Understanding signed by ULMWP, the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas), and the Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP) in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 11, 2022. However, the process faced setbacks after Komnas HAM revoked it on February 9, 2023.

Kornelius Purba (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta   ●   Sun, October 29, 2023 Many Indonesians were probably surprised when 60 percent of eligible Australian voters said “No” in the Oct. 14 referendum to alter the constitution to create a Voice to Parliament to represent the indigenous Aborigine peoples. A nation that portrays itself as a noble defender, or even moral policeman, of human rights in Asia-Pacific shamelessly refused to practice what it has preached. 

The Australians may need to recall what is written in the Holy Book now that they have repeatedly denied the rights of the indigenous people. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”

It was the second referendum on the same issue after the 1998 plebiscite, in which Australians voted against a constitutional amendment. It needs a national majority and majorities in at least four of the six states to win the referendum.



“This is a bitter irony,” one of the indigenous leaders said. “That people who have only been on this continent for 235 years would refuse to recognize those whose home this land has been for 60,000 and more years is beyond reason,” Reuters quoted the indigenous leader. 

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accepted his share of the blame for the failure of a referendum question on indigenous recognition that could weaken his authority. “We know that referendums are hard, that is why only eight of 45 have passed,” Albanese said. “I certainly accept responsibility for the decisions that I have taken.” I think Maori people, who account for 15 percent of New Zealand’s population, are much luckier than Aboriginal Australians. Like millions of people across the globe, I always feel amazed watching the All-Blacks rugby team, who always perform the famous Haka as a part of their pregame ritual. 

It is always touching for New Zealanders, including their prime ministers, to perform the traditional Māori greeting, in which two people press their noses together, some including touching the foreheads at the same time. Why is New Zealand different from Australia? Or why does Australia find it so difficult to learn from New Zealand? 

Knowing that they often lecture other nations, including Indonesia, on democracy and human rights, it should not be difficult for the Australians to follow New Zealand’s way, even if it may look humiliating. For decades, even as the world community acknowledged Indonesia as the third-largest democracy after India and the United States, the Australian government, politicians, media, non-government organizations and academics still feel the need to criticize, if not condemn, Indonesia’s human rights track record, especially in Papua. 

What makes Australia upset with Indonesia is perhaps the undeniable fact that Indonesia is more important to Australia than the other way around. Both belong to the category of middle power. Still, in the eyes of many Indonesians, Australia is less important than other trade partners, despite its claim to be the deputy sheriff of the US in Asia-Pacific. I must acknowledge that Australia’s criticisms of the way Indonesia treats Papua are not groundless. 

For decades Papua has remained marginalized, discriminated against and impoverished despite its huge natural resources. Resentment toward the central government has led to demands for independence and a separatist movement.

Australia has often received Papuan rebels as asylum seekers or refugees, based on humanitarian reasons. Indonesia has often expressed anger with Australia’s hospitality, although it would be better for Jakarta to reflect on why the Papuans feel restless in their own country. 

The Human Rights Law Centre’s director of communications, Tom Clarke, said the arrival of asylum seekers from Papua should remind Australia of the expectation to provide human rights leadership in the region. “Reports of political assassinations, torture and the violent repression of peaceful political gatherings in Indonesia’s Papuan provinces are all too common.

 Fundamental human rights are regularly violated. It’s understandable that people will come to Australia seeking our protection,” the human rights defender once said. In my column in The Jakarta Post on Oct. 6, I wrote about how Indonesia and Australia split over the newly agreed Timor-Leste-China strategic partnership. During his visit to China, Timor Leste Prime Minister Ramos Horta and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement between the two countries on Sept. 23. Indonesia did not react, at least in public. By contrast, the Australian government and media openly expressed strong suspicions that Timor-Leste would follow in the footsteps of the Solomon Islands, which formed a military pact with China in July last year. 

In my view, many in Australia have shared their frustration with smaller and ungrateful neighbors for choosing to play the China card to retaliate against their “blood-sucking colonial master”. “Imagine Chinese ghosts in Australia mainstream and rightwing media,” Ramos Horta said. “Should we wear badges proclaiming our enduring love for Australia? But even then, would the overjealous Australian media stop accusing us, poor Timor-Leste, of being ungrateful [and] pro-China?” 

Indonesia is the former colonial master of Timor-Leste. But why has Australia more often acted as a colonial master itself? Indonesia has accepted Australia’s criticisms of human rights abuses in Papua, and in then East Timor. Now it is the turn of Indonesia to ask Australia,” Don’t you feel shame at the result of the referendum on the Aborigines?” *** The writer is a senior editor at The Jakarta Post 

 October 20, 2023 in News

The International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) held a major meeting in the UK Parliament yesterday (October 18th 2023), calling for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to be urgently allowed to visit West Papua.

The IPWP meeting was held to support the recent communique issued at the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) Leaders’ Summit in August, urging Indonesia to facilitate a UN visit to West Papua before the next Leaders’ Summit in 2024. Indonesia promised to facilitate a UN visit in 2018. Five years on, they are no closer to allowing the UN access.

Over 85 countries have now called for the UN visit. This includes all member states of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), the European Commission, and individual nations including the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands. At Indonesia’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) last year in Geneva, eight countries, including the US, Canada, and Australia, expressed profound concern over the human rights situation in West Papua and urged international investigation.

The IPWP meeting was hosted by Alex Sobel, UK Labour MP and IPWP Chair. West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda addressed the crowded room, along with Jennifer Robinson, of Doughty Street Chambers and the International Lawyers for West Papua (ILWP). MEP and President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont and Senator Gorka Elejebarrieta, both IPWP Vice Chairs, addressed the meeting by video link.

Demonstrations took place across West Papua over the past two days in support of the meeting.

Benny Wenda said: “I welcome the MSG communique, but words have to mean action. Even since the MSG meeting Indonesia has killed many West Papuans, and tortured and displaced even more. Melanesian leaders should ask themselves: are we trying to save West Papuans, or are we allowing Indonesia to carry on their occupation with impunity? The MSG and PIF must do all in their power to secure a visit.”

Carles Puigdemont said: “If Indonesia has a serious commitment to become a member of the part of the international community that respects human rights, there is no other alternative than for Jakarta than to facilitate the UN High Commissioner’s visit right now… I reassure you that our just struggle for a free West Papua will continue, in the European Parliament and at the European Commission.”

Gorka Elejebarrieta said: “We believe that the reports of serious human rights violations in West Papua have to be taken into account. We believe that the international community, and especially the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, cannot avoid the issue any longer. Indonesia must support and facilitate mechanisms of the international community for the full respect of human rights and the full respect of the rights of West Papuans.”

AFP Jakarta   ●   Wed, October 18, 2023 The National Police said on Tuesday that armed rebels had gunned down seven civilians when they opened fire on a gold mine in Papua. Authorities said assailants fired shots at mining workers on Monday afternoon in the remote, mountainous Yahukimo district.  Police claimed The West Papua Liberation Army (TPNPB) separatist group led by Egianus Kogoya was behind the shootings.

“We will chase the perpetrators and we will take legal action against the separatists and Egianus Kogoya,” Faizal Ramadhani, head of Cartenz Peace Taskforce, a special group formed to handle the Papua separatists, said in a statement Tuesday.

Faizal said a police unit sent to retrieve the bodies and rescue survivors was fired on by the rebels. “As soon as we arrived at the location, our personnel were attacked and the gunfire lasted 1.5 hours,” he said. Seven bodies have been retrieved from the location while 11 other people were rescued alive, police said. Most of the dead were migrants from the South Sulawesi. 

The rebels also burned down excavators, trucks and the workers’ camp, police added. The rebels claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying that they had warned the migrants to leave the region and all Papuan areas. “(Indonesia) must immediately open a negotiation with the Papuan nation to find a solution,” said the group’s spokesperson Elkius Kobak in a statement. The group is also responsible for the February 2023 kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot from the Papuan highlands.  Papua has seen several deadly attacks linked to the insurgency in recent years. Ten people were killed in July last year when a group of rebels attacked a truck full of civilians transporting goods.  In March 2022, eight telecommunications workers were shot dead while installing communications towers in Puncak district.

Papuan DPR members say illegal gold mining has a high potential for conflict

I feel sorry for the seven mine workers who were killed. May the family always be given strength. Second, Papua is very rife with illegal gold mining activities

News Desk – Illegal Gold Mining

October 19, 2023

Jayapura, Jubi TV– The potential for conflict in illegal traditional gold mining areas in a number of districts in Tanah Papua is considered quite high. However, the government seems to be neglecting it. The government is considered not serious about controlling illegal gold mining areas, even though conflicts often occur in the area.

This statement was made by a member of the Papua DPR’s Commission for Government, Politics, Law, Human Rights and Security, Laurenzus Kadepa.

Kadepa stated that this was related to the attack and murder of seven traditional gold miners in Kali I, Seradala District, Yahukimo Regency, Papua Mountain Province, on Monday (16/10/2023).

The West Papua National Liberation Army or TPNPB also stated responsibility for the attack.

“I feel sorry for the seven mine workers who were killed. May the family always be given strength. Secondly, Papua is very rife with wild or illegal gold mining activities, but it seems that the government is just ignoring it. “In fact, if you look at the potential for conflict in this mining area, it is very high,” said Kadepa when contacting Jubi via telephone, Thursday (19/10/2023).

According to him, apart from the potential for conflict, illegal gold mining also causes serious damage to nature and forests.

“I have always been vocal about closing all illegal mines in Papua,” he said.

He said, in 2018, he urged the Acting Governor of Papua at that time, Soedarmo, to go directly to Korowai, Boven Digoel Regency, which is now part of South Papua Province, to look at illegal mining activities there.

This was based on the aspirations of the Korowai people at that time through Pastor Trevor. At that time, the Papua Province regional government communications forum came to the location.

“Unfortunately, these steps were not followed by the governors and regents in Papua. “For me, the presence of illegal mining like this has many negative impacts, so it must be closed,” he said.

Laurenzus Kadepa also asked the security forces and TPNPB involved in the armed conflict not to continue killing civilians for various reasons.

“Stop killing civilians for whatever reason. I’m surprised that all this time there have been civilians shot by the TPNPB because it was part of the intelligence apparatus. On the other hand, if the TNI/Polri shoot civilians, they say they are part of the TPNPB, OPM and others. This is very dangerous. “If the government doesn’t find a solution, it will be dangerous for the lives of people in Papua,” said Kadepa.

Previously, TPNPB spokesperson, Sebby Sambom, said that the TPNPB Special Forces Kodap III Ndugama and Kodap XVI Yahukimo were responsible for the attack on the mine in Kali I, Seradala District, Yahukimo Regency, Papua Mountain Province.

“The Free Papua Organization TPNPB is responsible for the murder,” said Sambom.

Sambom stated that the gold mine in Seradala District was an illegal gold mine. He also conveyed accusations that there were TNI intelligence workers working in the mine at Yahukimo.

According to Sambom, his party has repeatedly warned civilians to leave areas of armed conflict, because the TPNPB will not compromise and shoot them.

Sambom stated that his party again demanded that the government immediately open a space for dialogue to find a solution to the armed conflict in the Land of Papua.

“We, TPNPB, ask the state to immediately open a space for negotiations with the Papuan people, to find a solution. “Once again, we TPNPB are not playing around,” he said. (*)

This article has been published on jubi.id with the title: Kadepa: Illegal gold mining has the potential to cause conflict

 BY ALFIAN KARTONO

Updated 9:31 PM AEDT, October 2, 2023

JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP) — Five Papuan independence fighters were killed in a clash between security forces and a rebel group in Indonesia’s restive Papua region, police and rebels said Monday.

A joint military and police force killed the five fighters from the West Papua Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, in a battle on Saturday with dozens of rebels armed with military-grade weapons and arrows in the hilly Serambakon village in Papua Highland province, said Faizal Ramadhani, a national police member who heads the joint security force.

Security forces seized two assault rifles, a pistol, several arrows, two mobile phones, cash, more than 300 rounds of ammunition and a “morning star” flag — a separatist symbol — after the clash, Ramadhani said.

Rebels in Papua have been fighting a low-level insurgency since the early 1960s, when Indonesia annexed the region, a former Dutch colony.

Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 after a U.N.-sponsored ballot that was widely seen as a sham. Since then, the insurgency has simmered in the region, which was divided into five provinces last year to boost development in Indonesia’s poorest region.

Sebby Sambom, a spokesman for the liberation army, confirmed the police claim but said that losing five fighters “would not make us surrender.”

“They were the national heroes of the Papuan people,” Sambom said in a statement provided to The Associated Press on Monday. “They died in defending the Papuan people from extinction due to the crimes of the Indonesian military and police who are acting as terrorists.”

The rebels in February stormed a single-engine plane shortly after it landed on a small runway in Paro and abducted its pilot. The plane initially was scheduled to pick up 15 construction workers from other Indonesian islands after the rebels threatened to kill them.

The kidnapping of the pilot was the second that independence fighters have committed since 1996, when the rebels abducted 26 members of a World Wildlife Fund research mission in Mapenduma. Two Indonesians in that group were killed by their abductors, but the remaining hostages were eventually freed within five months.

The pilot kidnapping reflects the deteriorating security situation in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua, a former Dutch colony in the western part of New Guinea that is ethnically and culturally distinct from much of Indonesia.

Saturday’s fighting was the latest in a series of violent incidents in recent years in Papua, where conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian security forces are common.

Data collected by Amnesty International Indonesia showed at least 179 civilians, 35 Indonesian troops and nine police, along with 23 independence fighters, were killed in clashes between rebels and security forces between 2018 and 2022.

___

Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

Posted on FB

Five Members of TPNB KODAP XXXV Fell In The Battlefield Of Oxibile And Komnas TNPB Announces National Grief.

Shared by: Sebby Sambom (Jubir KOMNAS TNPB)

Press Release of the Management of the TPNB Komnas Headquarters as of October 2, 2023

Goodbye Patriots of Papuan, and rest in peace (RIP).

The Management of the TNPB Komnas Headquarters has Received a confirmation report from the Commander of the TPNB Kodap XXXV East Star on today Monday 2 October 2023 that 5 members of the TNPP have fallen in the battlefield, in the area of Serambakon District, Pegunungan Bintang Region due to being shot by Terrorist Forces which are members of the Army and the Police.

We also received reports that these 5 fallen TNPB members have been mutilated like animals, therefore the TNI police did not publish photos and videos of our members that they shot dead.

Therefore, we inform the international community and the UN that the Indonesian Military and Police are real terrorists (the Indonesian military and police are real terrorists in West Papua).

Thus, on today Monday 2 October 2023 we officially announce national mourning, for 5 members of the TNPB who fell in the battlefield. And it needs to be known by all components of Papuan people that they are the National Heroes of Papuan nation, because they failed in defending and saving Papuan nation from extinction due to the Military crimes and Police of Indonesia who are truly terrorists.

Please follow the report from TPNB Kodap XXXV Eastern Star below!

The chronology of the fall of 5 members of the TPNB commandos of the 35 east star defense area.

At star mountain region papua

The place where the 5 members of the TNPB fellows in the district of Mount Bintang, SERAMBAKON DISTRICT, in MODUSIT VILLAGE

Chronology

========

On Saturday, September 30, 2023

Fasting time : 5:00

Places. At : modusit village.

Troops while sleeping one of the houses in the forest in modusit village

At star mountain papua

After that

TNI entered the house where the TNPB troops slept, then attacked with snipers, basoka, and other weapons

After being paralyzed,

Grab

Weapons belonging to TPNB Komado of 35 east star defense area.

= . 2 long barrel gun barrel

=. 1 piece pistol

=. Ammunition or bullets about 300 more, cellphone 2 pieces, 1 Pajar star flag, money ETC.

After that, THE VICTIMS ARE CUT IN PIECES BY THE ARMY, JOINT POLICE

AND FOR A WHILE THE VICTIMS HAVEN’T BEEN EVALUATED BECAUSE

THE COMBINATED ARMY AND POLICE

STILL ON WATCH 1 FOR EVACUATION,

THEN IT IS NOT FOR A WHILE

EVACUATE.

And names2

Name-name. TNPB member who fell in battlefield

AS FOLLOWS:

1. 1st battalion commander shows off in name. : this is the BUS BABY.

gender type. : man Religion : protestant Christians

2. KODAP intel Deputy Commander by Name. : HERE COMES TO MIMIN.

SEX TYPE. : Male

Relieved. : protesting Christians

3. TOP NAME : OTTO KASIPKA

gender. : Male

Relieved. : Protest

4. IN NAME :ALEXS LEPKI

gender. : Male

Relieved. : Protest

5. In the name :TARKUS AKMER.

gender. : Male

Relieved. : Protest

Evidence and photo we can not confirm yet.

Because Medan is dominated by

THE COMBINATED ARMY, POLICE.

So

The chronology of events

On the battlefield

Saturday 30th of September 2023.

Thus is the press broadcast of the Management of the Commnasium Headquarters of TPNPPB, and thank you for the good cooperation.

Forwarded to all parties by Jubir Komnas TPNB Sebby Sambom,