Max Stahl has died, almost 30 years after capturing images of the Indonesian massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery in the Timor-Leste capital Dili, which helped change forever the course of the country’s struggle for independence.
By coincidence, he passed away on the same day as the death in 1991 of Sebastião Gomes, the young man who was buried in Santa Cruz and whose death led to the protest that would eventually end in the Santa Cruz Massacre.
More than 2000 people had headed to Santa Cruz to pay tribute to Gomes, killed by militia connected to Indonesian forces in the Motael neighborhood.
Filmmaker Max Stahl speaking to the 20th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review in Auckland in 2014. Image: Del Abcede/APR
The action of the Indonesian military was secretly filmed by Max Stahl and international attention on East Timor dramatically changed.
At the graveyard, the Indonesian military opened fire on the crowd and caused the deaths of 74 people at the scene. Over the next few days, more than 120 young people died in hospital or as a result of persecution of occupying forces.
Most bodies were never recovered.
Born on 6 December 1954 in the United Kingdom and a Timorese citizen since 2019, journalist and documentary maker Christopher Wenner, better known as Max Stahl, began his connection to the country in 1991 when he managed to enter East Timor for the first time.
Hiding among the graves
On November 12, hiding among the graves of Santa Cruz cemetery, he filmed one of many massacres during the Indonesian occupation of the country, with images being circulated around the world and changing the country’s history.
Filmmaker and digital historian Max Stahl at CAMSTL with an image from his 1991 Santa Cruz massacre footage in Timor-Leste. Image: David Robie/APR
Decorated with the Order of Timor-Leste, the highest award given to foreign citizens in the country, with the Rory Peck Prize for filmmakers and several other rewards, Max Stahl leaves as a legacy one of the main archives of images from the last years of the Indonesian occupation of the country and the period immediately before and after the independence referendum.
The Max Stahl Audiovisual Center in Timor-Lete (CAMSTL) contains thousands of hours of video, including extended interviews with key actors in the Timorese struggle for independence.
The archive was adopted by UNESCO for the World Memory Register and has been used for teaching and research purposes on Timor’s history under the framework of the cooperation protocol established between the University of Coimbra, the National University of East Timor and the CAMSTL
The descendant of a family of diplomats, he was wounded as a war correspondent in the Balkans.
Stahl studied literature at the University of Oxford and was a fluent speaker of several languages, including the two official languages of East Timor — Portuguese and Tetum.
He began his career writing for theatre and children’s television shows and found his calling as a war reporter when he lived with his family — his father was ambassador — in El Salvador where he sent reports about the civil war between 1979 and 1992.
Among other conflicts he covered were those of Georgia, former Yugoslavia and — from 30 August 1991 — East Timor, where he arrived as a “tourist” at the invitation of resistance groups.
“The king is dead. With great sadness, I write to inform you that Max passed away this morning around 04 am.”
— Max Stahl’s wife Dr Ingrid Brucens
Historic resistance leaders
Throughout his long ties to East Timor, where he lived until recently when he had to travel to Australia for medical treatment, he interviewed some of the historic resistance leaders like Nino Konis Santa, David Alex and others.
It would be Santa Cruz, and the 12 November 1991 massacre that would make the name Max Stahl known internationally with the images exposing the barbarism of the Indonesian occupation.
In Portugal, the images eventually made a special impact, both through the brutality of the violence and with the fact that survivors gathered in the small chapel of Santa Cruz praying in Portuguese while listening to the bullets from the Indonesian military and police.
The 1999 referendum prompted Max Stahl to return to East Timor where he covered the violence before the referendum and after the announcement of independence victory and accompanied families on the flight to the mountains.
News of Max Stahl’s death on Wednesday at a Brisbane hospital quickly became the most commented subject on social media in East Timor, raising condolences from several responsible and personalities linked to the cause of the struggle for independence.
In statements to Lusa, former President José Ramos-Horta described Max Stahl’s death a “great loss” to Timor-Leste and the world, and which will cause “deep consternation and pain” to the Timorese people.
“What a great loss for all of us to East Timor, to the world. Someone like Max, with a big heart, with a great dedication and love for East Timor … being taken to another world,” he told Lusa.
Dr Ingrid Brucens, Max Stahl’s wife, and who was with the children in Brisbane, announced his death to his friends.
“The king is dead. With great sadness, I write to inform you that Max passed away this morning around 04 am,” she wrote in messages to friends.
Antonio Sampaio is the Lusa correspondent in Dili
Photos of Max Stahl … top left he is wearing the Order of Timor-Leste, the highest honour for foreigners. Images: CAMSTL
CAMSTL video tribute
This video below is the CAMSTL team’s tribute to the memory of Stahl, who had dedicated 30 years of his life to the people of Timor-Leste. CAMSTL colleagues said on their Facebook page:
“The images and testimonies recorded by the journalist in the 1990s alerted the world to the serious human rights violations taking place in Timorese territory.
“From then on, the country’s independence restoration process gained momentum.
“Today, the journalist’s heroic trajectory ends on the earthly plane, but his legacy will continue to live on in the large archive created and directed by him, the Centro Audiovisual Max Stahl Timor-Leste.
“Dear Max. We will always be together with you in preserving the memory of the resistance struggle and the construction of the Timorese nation.
“We would like to thank Max’s friend José Ramos-Horta — Nobel Peace Prize and Former President of the Republic– for participating in this video.”
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Armed conflict in West Papua has caused an exodus of displaced people into one of the most remote parts of neighbouring Papua New Guinea.
The latest flashpoint in the conflict is in the Indonesian-administered Bintang Mountains regency, where state forces are pursuing West Papua Liberation Army fighters who they blame for recent attacks on health workers in Kiwirok district.
Since violence surged in Kiriwok last month, Indonesian security forces have targetted suspected village strongholds of the OPM-Free Papua Movement’s military wing.
At least 2000 people are recorded by local groups to have fled from the conflict either to other parts of Bintang Mountains (Pegunungan Bintang) or crossed illegally into the adjacent region over the international border.
Hundreds of people have fled across to Tumolbil, in Yapsie sub-district of the PNG province of West Sepik, situated right on the border.
A spokesman for the OPM, Jeffrey Bomanak, said that those fleeing were running from Indonesian military operations, including helicopter assaults, which he claimed had caused significant destruction in around 14 villages.
“Our people, they cannot stay with that situation, so they are crossing to the Papua New Guinea side.
“I already contacted my network, our soldiers from OPM, TPN (Liberation Army). They already confirmed 47 families in Tumolbil.”
Evidence of the influx
A teacher in Yapsie, Paul Alp, said he saw evidence of the influx in Tumolbil last week.
“It is easy to get into Papua New Guinea from Indonesia. There are mountains but they know how to get around to climb those mountains into Papua New Guinea.
“There are foot tracks,” he explained, adding that Papua New Guineans sometimes went across to the Indonesian side, usually to access a better level of basic services.
A village destroyed in Pengunungan Bintang regency, Papua province. Image: ULMWP/RNZ
Alp said West Papuans who had come to Tumolbil were not necessarily staying for more than a week or so before returning to the other side.
He and others in the remote district confirmed that illegal border crossings have occurred for years, but that it had increased sharply since last month.
For decades, the PNG government’s policy on refugees from West Papua has been to place them in border camps, the main one being at East Awin in Western Province, with support from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Thousands of displaced Papuan have ended up at East Awin, but many others who come across simply melt into the general populace among various remote villages along the porous border region.
Threadbare security Sergeant Terry Dap is one of a handful of policemen in the entire Telefomin district covering 16,333 sq km and with a population of around 50,000.
He said a lot of people had come across to Tumolbil in recent weeks, including OPM fighters.
“There’s a fight going on, on the other side, between the Indonesians and the West Papuan freedom fighters.
“So there’s a lot of disruption there [in Tumolbil]. So I went there, and I talked to the ward development officer of Yapsie LLG [Local Level Government area], and he said he needed immediate assistance from the authorities in Vanimo [capital of West Sepik].”
“They want military and police, to protect the sovereignty of Papua New Guinea, and to protect properties to make sure the fight doesn’t come into PNG.”
Sergeant Dap said he had emailed the provincial authorities with this request, and was awaiting feedback.
Papua New Guinea police … “There’s a fight going on, on the other side, between the Indonesians and the West Papuan freedom fighters.” Image: Johnny Blades/RNZ
More civilians crossing over According to Bomanak, the impacts of displacement from recent attacks in Kiwirok district are ongoing.
“This problem now is as we have damage in village, more civilians will cross over in Papua New Guinea side.
“Five to six hundred villagers, civillians, mothers and children, they’re still in three locations, out in jungle in Kiwirok, and they’re still on their way to Papua New Guinea,” he warned.
On the PNG side, Sergeant Dap said some of the people coming across from West Papua have traditional or family links to the community of Tulmolbil
But their presence on PNG soil creates risk for locals who are fearful their communities could get caught in the crossfire of Indonesian military pursuing the Papuan fighters.
Dap said he spoke with the OPM fighters who had come to Tumolbil, and encouraged them not to stay long.
“I’ve talked to their commander. They said there’s another group of people coming – about one thousand-plus coming in,” he said.
“I told them, just stay for some days and then you go back, because this is another country, so you don’t need to come in. You go back to your own country and then stay there.”
Clashes in the mountainous Pengunungan Bintang regency, near the border with PNG, in October 2021. Image: RNZ
The policeman has also been involved in efforts by PNG authorities to encourage vaccination against covid-19.
Mistrust of covid vaccines is deep in PNG, where only around 2 or 3 percent of the population has been inoculated, while a delta-fuelled third wave of the pandemic is causing daily casualties.
Sergeant Dap said convincing people to get vaccinated was difficult enough without illegal border crossings adding to the spread of the virus and the sense of fear.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two small babies were shot by the Indonesian military in Intan Jaya two days ago, claims the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP).
One of them has died, and the other is in critical condition. Thousands more West Papuans have been displaced in Intan Jaya and Maybrat as Indonesia bombs villages.
Two-year-old Nopelinus Sondegau, a Papuan baby alleged to have been killed by the Indonesian military. Image: ULMWP
One two-year-old, Nopelinus Sondegau, was killed by the Indonesian forces, ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda said in a statement.
A five-year old, Yoakim Majau, was also shot. The bullet was still in the baby’s shoulder.
“These killings are happening under the eye of the world while the Indonesian President [Joko Widodo] and ministers pretend that nothing is happening during talks with Pacific and Melanesian leaders,” said Wenda.
“These killings are happening as Indonesia tries to turn West Papua’s killing fields into a tourist destination.”
Wenda called for urgent United Nations intervention.
“Indonesia cannot use coronavirus as an excuse to delay the visit of the UN High Commissioner, recently called for by the Basque Parliament, any longer,” he said.
“Indonesia has hosted national games in West Papua during coronavirus, Indonesia has sent thousands of troops to West Papua during coronavirus, now Indonesia is killing small children during coronavirus.
“There can be no more excuses. Amnesty International, Red Cross, all international journalists, must be allowed in to monitor this urgent situation.
“My people are screaming for help. Where is the world?”
Indonesia’s popular tourism islands of Bali opened for tourism last week, while Thailand announced that from November 1 vaccinated travellers from 19 countries will be allowed to visit the kingdom including its tourism island of Phuket.
Both those countries’ tourism industry, which is a major revenue earner, has been devastated by more than 18 months of inactivity that have impacted on the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people.
India and Vietnam also announced plans to open the country to vaccinated foreign tourists in November, and Australia will be opening its borders for foreign travel from mid-November for the first time since March 2020.
Countries in the Asia-Pacific region — except for China — are now beginning to grapple with balancing the damage to their economies from covid-19 pandemic by beginning to treat the virus as another flu.
The media may have to play a less adversarial role if this gamble is going to succeed.
October 11 was “Freedom Day” for Australia’s most populous city Sydney when it came out of almost four months of a tough lockdown.
Ironically this is happening while the daily covid-19 infection rates are higher than the figure that triggered the lockdowns in June.
‘It’s not going away’
Yet, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet told Sky News on October 11: “we’ve got to live alongside the virus, it’s not going away, the best thing that we can do is protect our people (by better health services)”.
He added, “each time we tighten up, businesses are further disrupted, workers lose jobs, children are deprived of a proper childhood and school life”.
Singapore is coming out of lockdown when it is facing the highest rates of daily infections since the covid-19 outbreak.
Both Singapore and Australia adopted a “zero-covid” policy when the first wave of the pandemic hit, quickly closing the borders, and going into lockdown.
Both were exceptionally successful in controlling the virus and lifting the lockdowns late last year with almost zero covid-19 cases. But, when the more contagious delta virus hit both countries, fear came back forcing them back into lockdowns.
However, PM Lee told Singaporeans that lockdowns had “caused psychological and emotional strain, and mental fatigue for Singaporeans and for everyone else. Therefore, we concluded a few months ago that a “Zero covid” strategy was no longer feasible”.
‘Living with covid-19’
Thus, Singapore has changed its policy to “Living with covid-19”.
In a Facebook posting on October 10, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: “The phenomenal response from Australians to go and get vaccinated as we’ve seen those vaccination rates rise right across the country, means it’s now time that Australians are able to reclaim their lives. We’re beating covid, and we’re taking our lives back.”
On October 8, Australia’s Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said that though infection rates might still be a bit high, yet less than 1 percent of those infected were in intensive care units (ICUs).
Why didn’t political leaders take this attitude right from the beginning and continue with it? After all the fatality rate of covid-19 has not been that much higher than the seasonal flu in most countries.
True, it was perhaps more contagious according to medical opinion, but fatality rates were not that large in percentage figures.
According to the Worldometer of health statistics, there have been 237.5 million covid-19 infections up to October this year and 214.6 million have recovered fully (90.4 percent) while 4.8 million have died (just over 2 percent).
According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, there have been between 39-56 million flu cases, about 700,000 flu hospitalisations recorded in the US during the 2019-2020 flu season up to April 2020.
They also estimate between 24,000 to 62,000 flu deaths during the season. But did the media give these figures on a daily or even a weekly basis?
New global influenza strategy
In March 2019, WHO launched a new global influenza strategy pointing out that each year there is an estimated 1 billion flu cases of which 3-5 million are severe cases, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 influenza-related respiratory deaths.
This has been happening for many years, but, yet the global media did not create the panic scenario that accompanied covid-19.
Unfortunately, the media’s adversarial reporting culture has helped to create a fear psychosis from the very beginning of the outbreak in early 2020, which may have contributed to millions of deaths by creating anxiety among those diagnosed with covid-19.
During the peak of the delta pandemic in India, many patients died from heart attacks triggered by anxiety. Would they have died if covid-19 were treated as another flu?
In the US out of the 44 million infected with covid-19 only 1.6 percent died. In Brazil from 21.5 million infected, 2.8 percent of them died, while in India out of 34 million infected only 1.3 percent died.
But what did we see in media reports? Piles of dead bodies being burnt in India, from Brazil bodies buried in mass graves by health workers wrapped in safety gear and in the US, people being rushed into ICUs.
They are just a small fraction of those infected.
Bleak picture of sensationalism
I was the co-editor of a book just released by a British publisher that looked at how the media across the world reported the covid-19 outbreak during 2020. It paints a bleak picture of sensationalism and adversarial reporting blended with racism and politicisation.
It all started with the outbreak in Wuhan in January 2020 when the global media transmitted unverified video clips of people dropping dead in the streets and dead bodies lying in pavements. Along with the focus on “unhygienic” wet markets in China this helped to project an image of China as a threat to the world.
It contributed to the fear psychosis that was built up by the media tinged with racism and politicisation.
If we are to live with covid and other flu viruses, greater investments need to be made in public health.
In Australia, health experts are talking about boosting hospital bed and ICU capacities to deal with the new policy of living with covid, and they have also warned of a shortage of health professionals, especially to staff ICUs.
What about if the media focus on these as national security priorities? Rather than giving daily death rates and sensational stories of people dying from covid — do we give daily death rates from heart attacks or suicide?
We should start discussing more about how to create sustainable safe communities as we recover from the pandemic, and that includes better investments in public health.
We need a journalism culture that is less adversarial and more tuned into promoting cooperation and community harmony.
Kalinga Seneviratne is co-editor of COVID-19, Racism and Politicization: Media in the Midst of a Pandemic published in August 2021 by Cambridge Scholars Publishers. IDN is the flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate. This article is republished in partnership with IDN.
The National Commission on Violence Against Women with a network of Indonesian civil society organisations has directed its peacebuilding effort towards the proposition of an Elimination of Sexual Violence Bill through advocacy. It was initiated in 2012. In 2016, the commission and Service Provider Forum had the opportunity to submit a background paper for the bill to the parliament.
This bill embodies the critical value of peacebuilding, that is, meeting the needs and rights of security by managing sexual violence. The proposal addresses material, social, and cultural needs and rights built upon women’s experiences. A wide range of categorizations of sexual violence – sexual harassment, forced marriage, forced contraception, forced abortion, rape, sexual exploitation, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, and sexual torture– in the bill proposed by the commission and civil society demonstrates consideration of these needs and rights. Sexual violence has many faces, and these categories accommodate more forms of sexual violence to be processed legally. As a peacebuilding instrument, this bill’s content seeks an opportunity to prevent and reduce any form of sexual violence.
The damage survivors sustain from sexual violence is massive. Superficially it may seem that sexual violence is merely a matter of direct physical assault. In fact, the damage is also inflicted through cultural and structural violence, in which women are positioned as inferior, stigmatised and blamed for sexual violence. Meanwhile, perpetrators are often treated with impunity and there are few legal protections for survivors, who must endure traumatic legal process to resolve charges.
This bill aspires to be a foundation of transformation and recovery. The clauses on the assurance of survivor’s rights, recovery, and protection reflect this aspiration. Vigorous law enforcement with a survivor-centred perspective can transform the safety of women in society by pivoting on principles of justice and fairness. The law’s capacity to enable this transformation can be enhanced by legally binding mechanisms to enforce compliance. It can be the foundation of derived legal product or regulation, including fill the gap of anti-sexual violence regulation in education institution. On the other hand, survivor’s well-being should remain the focus. Survivors’ recoveries positively impact their personal development and social transformation by breaking the chain of violence.
In other words, the initial draft bill developed from background study for the legislation by the commission and Service Provider Forum is intended to abolish direct, cultural, and structural violence. The primary domain of this bill, if it is passed, is in mitigating structural violence where current regulations fail to accommodate women’s experiences. As a proposed law, it can help to construct an ‘infrastructure of peace’ in Indonesia by creating structural mechanisms to abolish sexual violence, even if there are shortcomings in Indonesian law enforcement.
The change of substance and nomenclature of the Elimination of Sexual Violence Bill to the term Sexual Violence Criminal Offence hampers the attainment of peace, particularly for women in Indonesia. The new bill cuts sexual violence to only four categories. It also abandons survivor’s rights, recovery, and protection clauses that matter in serving security. The parliament’s act in curtailing the bill’s substance has also curtailed its power to eliminate sexual violence.
Realising peace through peacebuilding requires cooperation from all parties. The National Commission on Violence Against Women and Indonesian civil society organisations, especially the Service Provider Forum, has built the path. The parliament and the government, who hold the authority to legislate regulation should support rather than diminish the survivor-centred version of the bill.
In my life and in my identity, my position as a woman has exposed me to many forms of violence, making me question what peace is. As a survivor of sexual violence, this bill gives me hope to find every-day peace. Any reduction to it keeps a peaceful life away from me, and other women in Indonesia exposed to sexual violence every day.
Protesting students have held demonstrations in several cities around Indonesia to mark seven years of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration, reports CNN Indonesia.
The protests came as President Widodo left Jakarta to officiate at the opening of a palm oil processing factory owned by the PT Jhonlin Group in South Kalimantan.
The largest demonstration was held in Jakarta on Thursday where protesters led by the National Association of University Student Executive Bodies (BEM SI) marched from the National Library to the State Palace in Central Jakarta.
The protesters were stopped at the Horse Statue because of a police blockade. However, there was no physical confrontation and the student took turns in giving speeches in front of the police blockade.
“Today, we are not here for existence, but to bring a clear substance,” said Boy, a representative from the Tanjung Karang Polytechnic during the action near the Horse Statue.
The demonstrators read out 12 demands after being prevented from approaching the State Palace.
One of the demands was that a regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) be issued to annul the revisions to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Law.
A similar action was also held in the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar.
The difference was that the students in Makassar blockaded Jalan Sultan Alauddin street, detained two trucks and set fire to used tyres.
The field coordinator of the student action in Makassar, Razak Usman, criticised the government’s alleged bias in development and demanded that President Widodo make pro-people policies.
“We demand the upholding of legal supremacy, reject amendments to the constitution, reject the Omnibus Law, want Law Number 19/2019 revoked, reject simultaneous regional elections, reject the removal of fuel subsidies and urge Jokowi to resolve the handling of Covid-19,” said Usman.
Students in the Central Java provincial capital of Semarang held a long-march from the Old City area to the office of the Central Java Governor, Ganjar Pranowo.
Upon arriving at the governor’s office they took turns in giving speeches. A number of different issues were taken up, including resolving past human rights violations, the Omnibus Law on Job Creation and the weakening of the KPK.
“What has resulted from Jokowi so far? Where are his promises?,” asked action coordinator Fajar Sodiq.
“Resolving past human rights violations are not heard, the Omnibus Law oppresses the ordinary people, and now we are witnessing efforts to weaken the KPK. Where [are the results of] Jokowi’s work?”
As the students were protesting, President Widodo was visiting South Kalimantan where he officiated at the opening of a biodiesel factory, a bridge and monitored covid-19 vaccinations.
The biodiesel factory, which is located in Tanah Bumbu, is managed by the PT Jhonlin Group owned by Samsudin Andi Arsyad alias Haji Isam.
President Widodo said he appreciated the processing of palm oil into biodiesel and said he hoped that other countries would follow Jhonlin’s example in processing palm oil into biofuel.
“Downstreaming, industrialisation, must be done and we must force ourselves to do it. Because of this, I greatly respect what is being done by the PT Jhonlin Group in building a biodiesel factory”, said Widodo.
Illegal palm oil plantations are destroying protected Indonesian rainforests and other habitats — and New Zealand’s industrial dairy sector is a major beneficiary, says a new environmental report.
The Deceased Estate report on rainforest destruction in Indonesia and West Papua. Image: Greenpeace Indonesia
The Deceased Estate has report found that there are four palm oil producers with at least 50,000ha of oil palm plantations illegally established inside the protected forest estate.
These producers include Wilmar International which imports palm kernel expeller (PKE) to New Zealand.
PKE is a product of the palm oil industry used as supplementary feed in New Zealand’s industrial dairying.
‘Illegal deforestation’
“Sadly we’re now seeing evidence of New Zealand agriculture benefiting from illegal deforestation for palm oil and PKE.”
New Zealand is the world’s largest importer of PKE, importing an estimated two million tonnes a year which is used to feed the dairy herd because there are too many cows for grass growth alone to sustain.
“New Zealand’s industrial dairying is cashing in on the destruction of endangered species, critical rainforest habitat and indigenous livelihoods in Indonesia,” said Rose.
“New Zealand’s intensive dairying benefits from ecological destruction in Indonesia while polluting rivers, the climate and drinking water at home.
“The New Zealand dairy sector’s use of PKE to support herd intensification and expansion, effectively outsources environmental costs onto some of the most diverse remaining forests and species in the world, and it has to stop.
“It’s unconscionable that New Zealand is complicit in the illegal expansion of palm oil plantations that undermine indigenous community land use and destroy the habitat of rare and endangered species such as Sumatran orangutans, tigers and elephants.”
‘Highly polluting’
Greenpeace Aotearoa is calling for an end to the importation of supplementary feed like PKE, “because it drives highly polluting dairy intensification in Aotearoa, contributes to rainforest destruction and increases climate emissions both here and in Indonesia.”
Clearance of Indonesian rainforest for palm oil released an estimated 104 Tg (million metric tons) of primary forest carbon from Indonesia’s forest estate between 2001-2019. This is equal to 60 percent of the annual emissions of international aviation.
Greenhouse gas emissions from NZ’s intensive dairy sector, supported by this illegal PKE, are 48 percent of this country’s total.
“With industrial agriculture being New Zealand’s biggest climate polluter, we need an urgent shift away from this high-input, industrial agribusiness model towards regenerative organic farming that works within the limits of nature,” said Rose.
The International Coalition for Papua (ICP) says there has been an increase in the number of arbitrary arrests in its latest report on human rights violations in Papua between July and September 2021.
The ICP found that mass arrests took place during military security operations in response to attacks by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), reports Suara Papua.
The increase in arrests was also related to the spread of protests opposing the extension of Special Autonomy for Papua and calling for the release of Papua activist and human rights defender Victor Yeimo.
“The mass arrests were reported to have been accompanied by violence by security forces which resulted in a significant rise in cases of torture and abuse,” the ICP report said.
“In unison with this the number of extra-judicial killings declined to only two, which were related to excessive use of force during law enforcement operations.
“This decline, however, does not mean that the armed conflict in West Papua lessened over the last three years.”
According to the ICP, violence related to the armed conflict has now spread to the regencies of Yahukimo and Star Highlands.
Armed clashes
Prior to this, the two regencies were largely unaffected by the impact of the armed conflict.
In August 22, 2021, TPNPB members killed and set fire to the bodies of two construction workers near the Kribu village in Yahukimo regency.
On September 2, 2021, TPNPB members killed four people and injured two TNI (Indonesian military) officers at the Kisor village in Maybrat regency.
On September 13, 2021, the TPNPB also attacked a sub-district military command (Koramil) post in Kiwirok sub-district in Star Highlands regency.
It was reported that a healthcare worker fell into a ravine and died during this attack and several public facilities were burnt to the ground. A joint security force responded by conducting raids in the three regencies which resulted in arbitrary arrests and torture.
The statistical figures show that the number of armed clashes that were reported increased threefold in late 2021 compared with 2017, increasing from 24 in 2017 to 44 in 2018 and 64 in 2020.
As of September 30, 2021, the ICP documented at least 63 armed clashes in West Papua since the start of the year.
Papuan pleas rejected
On July 15, the House of Representatives (DPR) revised the Special Autonomy Law. In doing so, the government ignored calls by the Papua Regional House of Representatives (DPRD), the Papua People’s Council (MRP), the West Papua People’s Council (MRPB) and thousands of West Papuans who rejected and protested against these unilateral revisions.
The revisions made 19 amendments to the existing Special Autonomy Law related to articles which regulate the allocation of Special Autonomy funds and the establishment of new autonomous regions.
Meanwhile, the establishment of a Papua Human Rights Court and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (KKR) were sidelined.
During the time that the Special Autonomy Law was being revised, security forces forcibly broke up protests by West Papuans in various parts of Indonesia on the grounds that they violated covid-19 health protocols.
A new report on freedom of expression and assembly in West Papua published by the UK based human rights group TAPOL describes how these protests were violently repressed by Indonesian security forces using the regulations on controlling the spread of covid-19.
During the period of the report, many countries declared their support for a fact-finding mission led by the United Nations to investigate allegations of human rights violations in West Papua.
Call for urgent mission
In September, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS or ACP) sent a letter to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) calling for, “an urgent mission to West Papua to provide an evidence based information report on the human rights situation”.
Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu also declared their support for a similar mission during the 76th session of the UN General Assembly.
On September 17 the UN published a new report on cooperation with representatives and its mechanisms in the field of human rights.
The report was drafted by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and referred to five cases of criminalisation and intimidation against West Papua human rights activists.
Here a bit of wrap up on recent developments in Indonesia. First two disclaimers:
(1) I have a long-standing interest in this country [see: Indonesia and the Rule of Law, 20 Years of “New Order” Government, a Study prepared for the ICJ, published by Frances Pinter Publishers, London, 1987, pp 208 (ISBN: 0 86187 919 8) and previous posts: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/indonesia/]
(2) the human rights situation has generally improved since that book in 1987 and is a lot better compared to other countries in Asia such as China and Myanmar.
Over the past two years, human rights defenders (HRDs) have faced unprecedented challenges in Asia, where existing risks were exacerbated, while new threats have emerged. Governments enacted and used repressive laws, online harassment became widespread, and Asian HRDs have seen their families and loved ones increasingly subjected to harassment and threats. The COVID-19 pandemic has also significantly increased violations against defenders, and created new challenges for them to safely conduct their work.
Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) and the Commission for Disappeared Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) presented a joint analysis, “Refusing Silence: A joint analysis on the situation of Human Rights Defenders”, as part of a collaboration in documenting cases of violations against human rights defenders in Asia, and particularly in Indonesia since 2020. [For the full PDF version of this analysis in English, click here]
The Indonesian government should put an end to the judicial harassment against human rights defenders Fatia Maulidiyanti and Haris Azhar, and uphold the right to freedom of expression, the human rights organisations said.
‘The Government of Indonesia must uphold its international human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as its own national constitution which protects the right to freedom of expression,’ said the groups.
The groups urged the Indonesian government to ensure that all persons can express their opinions without fear of reprisals, and to ensure its actions are compliant with Indonesia’s Constitutional protections for human rights and the ICCPR, of which Indonesia is a State Party. The National Human Rights Institution, Komnas HAM, must also work towards ensuring the protection of defenders facing judicial harassment, the groups said.
On 22 September, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment filed a police report against human rights defenders Fatia Maulidiyanti, Coordinator of the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Kontras), and Haris Azhar, Founder of Lokataru Foundation. The police report alleges that the two individuals violated criminal defamation provisions (Article 310 (1) of the Penal Code), and the controversial Electronic Information and Transaction Law (EIT Law). Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan has reportedly demanded IDR 300 billion, approximately USD 21 million, in compensation.
The report was filed after subpoenas were earlier sent to the two human rights defenders following a talk show on Haris Azhar’s YouTube channel, titled ‘Ada Lord Luhut di balik Relasi Ekonomi-Ops Militer Intan Jaya!! Jenderal BIN Juga Ada!!’, (There is Lord Luhut behind the relation of Economy-Military Operation Intan Jaya!! General of State Intelligence Agency is also there!!) in which Haris Azhar and Fatia Maulidiyanti discussed the findings of a multi-stakeholder report revealing the alleged involvement of active and retired Indonesian army officials in the business operations of the gold mining sector…
The report also recorded the escalation of violent and armed conflict triggered by military operations, one of which occurred in the Intan Jaya Regency. The conflict resulted in the loss of civilian lives and the displacement of thousands of people, including children and women.
‘The legal actions by the Coordinating Minister constitute judicial harassment and abuse of power. It criminalises the rights of these two human rights defenders to express their opinions on public affairs and creates a chilling environment for individuals who criticise the government,’ the groups said.
‘We call on the Indonesian government to amend all repressive laws and legal provisions that hinder the protection of freedom of expression, and ensure the laws align with international human rights standards. The criminalisation of defamation is an inherently disproportionate and unnecessary restriction to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, under international human rights law.[4] Indonesia must immediately drop the charges against Fatia and Haris and take steps towards preventing the misuse of litigation against human rights defenders and civil society that erode the exercise of their rights,’ they concluded.
And then there is the situation of Papua:
Indonesia regularly receives criticism for its strategy in relation to separatist groups in Papua, a strategy that relies heavily on a security-based approach and which has raised questions about the government’s commitment to human rights. Most recently, the nation found itself included on a list of 45 countries cited as being culpable of intimidation and reprisals against human rights defenders seeking to cooperate with the UN, according to an annual report from the UN Secretary General’s Office distributed on September 17.
On 21 September 2021 A U.N. expert has urged Indonesia to provide an independence activist in its Papua province with proper medical care to “keep him from dying in prison”, after reports that his health had deteriorated.
Victor Yeimo, 39, who is the international spokesman of the West Papua National Committee, was arrested in the provincial capital of Jayapura in May. He has been charged with treason and inciting violence and social unrest in relation to pro-independence protests that swept the remote, resource-rich region for several weeks in 2019. Yeimo has denied the charges.
His trial went ahead in August despite repeated requests from his lawyer for a delay on medical grounds, Mary Lawlor, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, said in a statement on Monday. “I’ve seen it before: States deny medical care to ailing, imprisoned human rights defenders, which results in serious illness or death,” said Lawlor. “Indonesia must take urgent steps to ensure the fate does not await Mr Yeimo,” she said, adding that his access to medical care had been restricted and his prison conditions “may have amounted to torture”. Yeimo is being treated at a Jayapura hospital after a court ordered he receive medical attention. Papuan activist Rosa Javiera told a news conference organised by the rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday that Yeimo was suffering from chronic tuberculosis that required continuous medical treatmentt.
The Indonesian government has used the covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to crack down on West Papuan street protests and to impose online censorship, according to new research published by the human rights watchdog TAPOL. Covid-19 protocols have given more power to the police and military to crush protests but they are not fairly implemented across Indonesia in general. The findings are in a new study, the West Papua 2020: Freedom Of Expression And Freedom Of Assembly Report, in which TAPOL has collated and analysed incidents recorded by West Papuan and Indonesian civil society organisations.
The West Papua 2020 Report. Image: Tapol screenshot APR
Advocates warn that the the involvement of the Indonesian military (TNI) in a food estate programme initiated by the government last year may enable potential human rights violations.
“Military deployment will be followed by the act of securing land grabbing, for example,” said rights NGO Imparsial director Gufron Mabruri in an online discussion this week.
“There is the potential for human rights violations to occur, especially if the community resists and confronts the security forces.”
Such potential for human rights violations, Mabruri said, was confirmed by the absence of any accountable mechanism, Mabruri said.
The TNI has its own military court to prosecute members suspected of committing crimes.
However, the military court is closed to the public and is seen as a shield for impunity in many cases.
‘Separatist’ stigma a problem
Mabruri also warned that the stigma of Papuans as alleged “separatists” should be taken into consideration when putting the national soldiers on civil programmes.
“Moreover, armed groups in Papua are now labeled as terrorist organisations. This will make things escalate quickly when there is a conflict between the TNI and the community,” he said.
He suggested President Joko Widodo and the House of Representatives evaluate all military engagement practices in various sectors because it would weaken civil institutions.
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researcher M. Haripin also said that the involvement of the military in the food estate project was very problematic, as seen in past involvement.
“Some might think that this is too presumptuous because the military situation has changed. However, for me even now, the military is still very problematic and we cannot put aside our past history and our present concerns,” Haripin said.
Indeed, ever since it was launched last year until now, the food estate programme has been under heavy criticism, especially with the involvement of the military in its implementation.
“There is the risk of creating ‘khaki capital’, or the political economy of the military, in the TNI-supported food estate,” he said.
“Corporations earn profits while soldiers ensure that everything goes according to plan,” he said.
Arjuna Pademmeis a Tabloid Jubi reporter. Republished with permission.
By Lenny Tristia Tambun and Novy Lumanauw in Gresik, East Java
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has laid the foundation stone for a giant smelter belonging to copper and gold mining firm Freeport Indonesia in the East Java town of Gresik.
The smelter is built on 103-hectare land at the Manyar Special Economic Zone at a cost of US$3 billion, according to government data.
Jokowi said the smelter would be able to extract 1.7 tonnes of copper from ores and 6000 tonnes of gold annually.
“The single-line smelter we are going to build will be the biggest in the world because it has a capacity of extracting 1.7 tonnes of copper a year,” the president said in a ceremony to mark the start of the construction.
Freeport Indonesia operates the giant copper and gold mine at Grasberg in Papua.
He added Indonesia had the seventh biggest copper reserves in the world after Chile, Australia, Peru, Russia, Mexico, and the United States.
“Only a few of us have knowledge about this,” he said.
Lack of processing facilities
Jokowi said that despite having mines and mineral reserves, Indonesia could not reap the fullest benefit in the metal industry due to a lack of processing facilities, in comparison to countries like Japan and Spain which have higher value-added components in their manufacturing process.
“That’s why we built the Freeport smelter here in Gresik,” the president said.
The Indonesian government has a 51 percent stake in the local unit of US mining giant Freeport McMoRan.
The construction stage alone is expected to create 40,000 jobs for locals, Jokowi said.
State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir said Freeport Indonesia had been performing well since the government secured a commanding stake on December 21, 2018.
Freeport’s revenues were estimated to more than double from Rp 50 trillion last year, Thohir said.
Soaring global copper prices and increased output in Indonesia would add to the pace of the company’s growth, he added.
“The company booked a net profit of approximately Rp 10 trillion last year and we expect the figures to reach Rp 40 trillion by the end of this year,” Thohir said.
Ministers from Muslim-majority nations to travel to Kabul to discuss women and girls schooling ban
Foreign ministers from several Muslim-majority countries are planning to go to Kabul in part to urge the Taliban to recognise that the exclusion of women and girls from education is a distortion of the Islamic faith.
The proposal has the support of western diplomats who recognise that calls from them concerning universal values are going to have less traction with the Taliban than if the call comes from leaders of largely Islamic states.
A Papuan woman politician has warned Indonesian security forces against restricting women from selling noken — traditional string bags — and other accessories displaying the banned Morning Star flag design at the Papuan National Games (PON XX) venue in Jayapura.
Orpa Nari, a Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP) member of the Women Workgroup, said the police should not be afraid of “a pattern”.
“It’s just a pattern,” she said. “None of these mamas [Papuan women] weave the pattern as a way to go against the state.
“If anything, it’s our identity as Papuans,” Nari told the Papuan newspaper Tabloid Jubi.
Previously, the security forces reportedly forbade Papuan women from selling any Morning Star-patterned accessories during the Games as they were considered a resistance symbol against the Indonesian state.
Nari said that Papuan women had been making noken with various patterns — including the Morning Star — for a long time, even before the National Games.
“It has nothing to do with the Games event. It’s common to find accessories with the Morning Star design made by Papuan women.
“It’s simply a part of their identity that cannot be forgotten and let go,” she said.
Supported their families
Nari added that these women had supported their families through knitting and making accessories.
“It’s their livelihood. We Papuans know it by heart,” she said.
MRP chair Timotius Murib said he had received information that residents and supporters wearing clothes and accessories with the Morning Star pattern were not allowed to enter the National Games venue
“Some people who wore bracelets or clothes with the Morning Star pattern were forbidden from watching the Games.
“These accessories are common and not just worn by native Papuans,” said Murib.
Murib hoped that the security forces would not overreact to the phenomenon.
“Don’t overdo it, it’s just an accessory. Let’s create a good atmosphere during the PON XX and make it a successful event,” he said.
The two-week-long Games end on Friday.
Yance Wenda is a Tabloid Jubi reporter. Republished with permission.
Eighty-three covid-19 cases have been reported during the Indonesian National Games (PON-XX) being held in Papua as of yesterday afternoon, says Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin.
He said evaluation of the Games would improve public health protocols in future.
“The 83 cases are concentrated among the participants competing in several sports — judo, archery, roller skating, cricket and motocross — as well as originating from a number of provinces (Jakarta, East Java, Central Java and Bali)” Sadikin told an online media conference on community activity restrictions (PPKM).
According to the ministry’s observation, virus transmission occurred in the lodging as each room was occupied by four people and the PON participants often ate together, the minister said.
“It will be our evaluation to improve the implementation of health protocols in future events,” he said.
The implementation of the health protocols could still be improved by giving greater authority to the regional covid-19 handling task forces, he added.
Furthermore, he said that his ministry had noticed that seven infected athletes had returned to their provinces before the end of their five-day quarantine period.
One athlete returned to Tarakan City, North Kalimantan Province, two returned to Jambi Province, three to Sidoarjo District, East Java Province, and one to the Special Region of Yogyakarta Province, he said.
“The President [Joko Widodo] has urged the athletes to be quarantined at their hometowns,” Sadikin said.
Several standards had been set regarding the implementation of health protocols at the XX PON, including giving adequate authority to the task forces and maintaining distancing among participants at the hotels and hostels both while resting and eating, the minister said.
Other standards included conducting routine covid-19 PCR tests to identify infected participants faster and keeping isolation centers ready to quarantine patients immediately, he added.
Asia Pacific Report notes that the Games were controversial because of repeated calls to postpone them given the public health risks from the covid-19 pandemic.
Desi Purnamawati and Uyu Limanare reporters with Antara News.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s visit to Papua last weekend to officially open Indonesia’s National Games (PON XX) and officiate a number of infrastructure projects are ceremonial and will not provide any benefits to the ordinary Papuan people when cases of human rights violations are left unresolved.
This assessment was made by former political prisoner and Papuan activist Ambrosius Mulait in response to Widodo’s visit which he sees as nothing more than “image building” in the eyes of the ordinary people and the international community.
“Jokowi came simply to bolster his image, he didn’t come with the genuine intention of resolving human rights,” Mulait told Suara Papua.
Mulait said that the Indonesian government appeared inconsistent in dealing with the covid-19 pandemic because it wasallowing crowds to gather at National Games events.
“We are questioning the Jokowi administration’s inconsistency, why given the state of the pandemic in Papua are they continuing with PON activities involving thousands of people?” he asked.
“It’s surprising, covid-19 cases are already rising, but all of a sudden the figures are deemed to be falling and the PON can be held.”
The secretary-general of the Papuan Central Highlands Indonesian Student Association (AMPTPI) also criticised the repression and violence by police against Papuan students demonstrating peacefully in front of the United States Embassy in Jakarta on September 30.
“The police are also racist in their handling of Papua mass actions. Meanwhile they weren’t repressive towards a demonstration at the KPK [Corruption Eradication Commission office] several days ago, and instead gave them space [to demonstrate],” he said.
Mulait said the state was truly unfair in its treatment of Papuans.
“The Papuan people continue to be silenced by repressive means, peaceful actions are broken up, protesters are arrested, labeled ‘separatists’, jailed. The way they are handled is very discriminative and racist,” said Mulait.
Papua student activist Semi Gobay also expressed disappointment. He said that President Widodo had already visited Papua nine times but not one case of human rights violations had been addressed let alone resolved.
“At the height of the PON XX, he came down to look at noken [traditional woven baskets and bags] made by mama-mama [traditional Papuan women traders]. But the internally displaced people in Nduga and Maybrat, the shooting cases in Puncak, Intan Jaya and the Star Highlands are not dealt with by the Indonesian government under the authority of President Joko Widodo” he said.
Gobay said this further demonstrated the real face of the government.
“The president comes and visits and buys lots of noken, but the many conflicts in Papua are not resolved. What’s behind all of this?” he asked.
“The Indonesian government has no good intentions towards us. All the best in celebrating the PON on the sorrows of the West Papuan nation.”
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Brother Frater Anton Syufi of the Papua’s Order of Saint Augustine (OSA) has been arrested by the Jayapura city district police for wearing a banned Morning Star (BK) independence flag T-shirt while watching a soccer match between Papua and East Nusa Tenggara at Indonesia’s National Games at Mandala Stadium.
This was conveyed by Frater Kristianus Sasior, also from the OSA, who assisted Brother Syufi at the Jayapura district police.
Syufi, who was arrested at 4 am last Sunday and detained until 7 pm, was finally released at 10 pm because police did not find any other issues to charge him with.
The Morning Star flag of West Papua … outlawed. Image: SIBC
“The police said he was detained because he wore a BK T-shirt. The police said that he was disturbing the Papua PON XX [20th National Games], said Brother Sasior.
“There is a prohibition on wearing things with the BK design. Brother Frater Anton did not [show] it intentionally because he was wearing two layers of clothing.
“When his favourite team won he jumped up and down and opened his outer shirt so police saw the costume underneath with the BK design.
“He was summoned and taken to Jayapura city district police. The police said they were still waiting for the head of the intelligence unit to arrive so we were [also] still waiting”, explained Sasior when contacted by Suara Papua by phone from Sorong.
A similar story was conveyed by Evenisus Kowawin who said that Syufi was detained for wearing the Morning Star T-shirt while watching the soccer match.
“Frater Anton was arrested because he wore a BK shirt. Police saw the shirt then dragged him out, interrogated him then took him to the district police. He’s currently still at the police [station],” explained Kowawin.
The interim president of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) has accused Indonesia of holding its 20th National Games “on the bones of my people”.
“While we mourn for three years of Indonesian military operations, these games are a dance on top of our graves, on top of our suffering, on top of our cries,” Benny Wenda said today in a statement.
“I call on my people to ignore these games and focus on liberating us from this tyranny.”
The two-week Papuan Games (PON XX), centred mainly on the new Lukas Enembe Stadium complex in Jayapura, were opened on Saturday by President Joko Widodo.
Wenda said that the ULMWP had gathered new information that in the past three years at least 26 local West Papuan political figures and 20 intellectual and religious leaders had died in suspicious circumstances after speaking out about human rights and injustice.
“Some of them were official heads of their local districts, others were prominent church people,” said Wenda in the statement.
“Many turned up dead in hotel rooms after unexplained heart attacks, usually with no forensic evidence available.
‘Systematic killing’
“This is systematic killing, part of Jakarta’s plan to wipe out all resistance to its rule in West Papua.
“These deaths have occurred at the same time that Indonesia has sent more than 20,000 new troops into West Papua. They are killing us because we are different, because we are Black.”
Wenda said that while President Widodo visited “my land like a tourist”, more than 50,000 people had been internally displaced by Indonesian military operations in Nduga, Intan Jaya, Puncak and Sorong since December 2018.
The Lukas Enembe Stadium and the Papuan National Games complex. Image: Tribun News
“High school children and elders were recently arrested and blindfolded like animals in Maybrat. The PON XX is a PR exercise by the Indonesian government to cover up the evidence of mass killings,” Wenda said.
“Any use of the Morning Star flag, or even its colours, has been totally banned during the games. One Papuan Catholic preacher was arrested for wearing a Morning Star [independence] flag t-shirt during a football match.
“Our Papuan rowing team was banned from the games for wearing red, white and blue, the colours of our flag.
Papuan Games a ‘PR stunt’
“Indonesia continues to hold this PR stunt even while Vanuatu and PNG call for a UN visit to West Papua in line with the call of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States.”
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who officially inaugurated the National Games last Saturday, buys nokens – traditional Papuan woven bags – from a craftswoman in Jayapura. Image: President Widodo’s FB page
Wenda said there was no reason Indonesia could not allow the visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to take place.
He asked that if Indonesia wanted to use the covid-19 crisis as an excuse to stop the visit, why was the Jakarta government sending tens of thousands of troops into West Papua.
“Why are they holding the National Games in the middle of military operations and a pandemic?” Wenda asked.
“President Widodo, do not ignore my call to find the peaceful solution that is good for your people and my people.”
The ULMWP repeated its call to “sit down to arrange a peaceful referendum, to uphold the principle of self-determination enshrined by the international community”, Wenda said.
“You cannot pretend that nothing is happening in West Papua. The world is beginning to watch.”
As a devout Catholic, Valentina Wanopka, an indigenous woman of Wambon Kenemopte tribe from Subur Village, Boven Digoel regency, never passes aday without praying. She believes that it is the strongest weapon she has, particularly in these days of predicament: fighting against the investment plans of the PT. Merauke Rayon Jaya (MRJ). The industrial timber forest company is targeting her adat land. This company is owned by an Indonesian conglomerate and Texmaco group founder, Sinivasan Marimutu, who also had business connections with Soeharto. MRJ is targeting an area of 206,800 hectares that stretches from Subur district to Muting District in Merauke regency, the majority of which is owned by the Indigenous Wambon tribe.
Wanopka herself is not an indigenous Wambon woman; she is a Muyu woman who married a Wambon man. Since her husband passed away a few years ago, she has been in charge of defending her husband’s traditional land to ensure that one day her children can inherit it. She knows exactly the consequence of her firm stance: that people will surely question it: “You are a woman, you have no right to speak on behalf of this land. Let your eldest son decide it.” However, she never backs down, she fights for her six children and future generations. She will not allow her children to live without land or forest in the future. She says, “Mama always prays to God; may we win this struggle.”
The inheritance of adat land in the Wambon tribe, as described in 1986 by Jan Boelaars, a Dutch anthropologist, mostly follows a male lineage; the eldest son automatically inherits from the father. Additionally, women are given the right to utilise it for their livelihoods, and sometimes it can be given as a dowry from her husband’s family. However as Boelaars emphasized “Women can’t inherit the land. At most they just may take some from their mother.”
Wambon people value their adat land as sacred and historical, shaping their indigenous identity. We often hear them say “This land is the land of Mengayu”. Mengayu was a period of war in the past, during which their headhunting ancestors expanded their territory. They believe blood, life and courage has been sacrificed so they can own the land today.
They rely on nature to fulfil and maintain their livelihood. This can be seen through the continuing gender division of labour employed in this community, where adult men hunt and trade, while women deal with food provision by gathering sago and subsistence farming.
In Subur Village, most women keep small farm plots next to their house or in their forest, where they grow bananas, sweet potatoes, cassava, ubi etc. They also gather sago from the forests and swamps. Meanwhile, men are responsible for hunting, making wooden-boats, and fishing. All of this illustrates the shared interest of both men and women in the natural world of their customary lands. Despite the rule of inheritance, which positions men as holders of land rights, women also have interests in the land.
There is a common and well-known philosophy throughout Papua, which represents the strong bond between women and nature; “Land is Mama”. By extension the forest has a similar role to a mother; caring for, feeding, nurturing and protecting humans. We might suspect that it sounds like a romantic attachment of the stereotype of domestic work to one gender. However, it is reflected in what these Indigenous women, who fight for their land are doing. In a meeting with Boven Digoel’s caretaker regent on October 2020, Valentina Wanopka said:
“Our forest is a big supermarket. Everything we need lies within; food, shelter, traditional medicines, it’s all for free as long as we preserve it. This MRJ investment will only pose a threat to women’s lives. Rivers are polluted, endemic animals are lost, our historical places will be displaced by Industrial Plantation Forests. We, as Indigenous women can no longer weave Eno (fibres of the melinjo tree) because the trees have been cut down. We can’t gather sago and access our medicinal plants. We have been fooled enough by the oil palm plantations that came first. We will not repeat the same mistake by allowing a different company to come into our forests.”
She utilises the philosophical notion of “Land is Mama” as a political tool to express her resistance. It is a way to manifest the “invisible works” of women. the neglected and ignored understanding that forests, sago swamps and rivers are a vital production space for women, a place where they have the widest access to subsist their live. Environmental degradation directly oppresses women’s lives. They have no option other than to demand that their right as women, to utilise the land, should be defended and respected.
Wanopka is a part of larger story of Papuan Indigenous women who encounter challenges in the fight for land rights. Rikarda Maa, an indigenous Awyu woman from Ampera Village in Boven Digoel, experienced verbal abuse from those who support the company. “I was threatened by my own family. They said that if the company failed to invest here, it’s because of me.”
Indo Asiana Lestari, a palm oil company planning to invest in the land of the Awyu people, has obtained the location permit on a 39,190 hectare which was previously controlled by PT. Energy Samudera Kencana, Menara Group. Since 2017, Indo Asiana Lestari has been trying to obtain the consent form Indigenous Awyu in Mandobo and Fofi District, but has always failed. Learning from the experience of the surrounding villages that did not prosper even after accepting the presence of palm oil companies, some refused to consent. In addition, as a forest-dependant community, they worry about the multidimensional impacts of a plantation that will threaten their livelihoods.
The investment plan of PT. Indo Asiana Lestari polarises the Awyu Tribe community. Those for the plantation argue that they need development and jobs opportunities, while those against believe that the forest is more than enough to feed and support their livelihoods, and presume it will only bring more harm than good. One opposition group has organised themselves into a group called The Cinta Tanah Adat (Love Traditional Lands) Paralegal Community. This community was initiated in 2018 by the Awyu Tribes in response to the Indo Asiana Lestari concession, to protect Adat land and environmental sustainability. Their resistance has included participatory mapping, traditional ceremonies, public protests, and writing letters to the government. This resistance was quite capable of holding back the investment plan until November 2020, when the pressure increased. The polarisation and friction between the two groups also worsened. At its peak, in November 2020, Egidius Suam, an Awyu Tribal leader in the paralegal community, was forced to sign a consent letter by the local police office. Rikardaa Maa, one of the few women in this community who also witnessed the incident, said; “Just after the signature was written in the letter, heavy equipment was transported through Digoel River to the village. They (the company) seemed so impatient.”
Rika, works as a teacher in a local elementary school. She is also the only woman in the Ampera Village Government, as a member of the Bamuskam (Village Consultative Body). Despite her influential position, she still feels that women have greater challenges in a public space, especially in the decision-making process.
She says “I am the only one woman in this structural position. But I think, it is only to fulfil the quota, in fact I am never involved in some important meetings regarding the village. It seems like I am invisible.”
She also experiences these challenges in her own family and marga (sub-tribe). As the eldest in her family, she has no rights to ownership of adat land. All the decisions regarding the land are the business of her father and younger brother. Luckily, her father also opposes the plantations, at least up to this day. However, some members of the Maa sub-tribe have different positions on the investment. They continue to try to influence her father to reconsider his stance.
Rika has maintained her position even in the face of rejection and verbal threats from her family. They have asked her to stop protesting and overreacting, and claim her activism will prevent the company’s investment from bringing improvement to their lives. Recognising that she could not fight alone in the village, Rika organised a group of women who shared a similar position to her. She collected signatures and wrote a rejection letter to the government. However, the power of capital wins overall.
Amid the chaotic contestation over natural resources in Papua, it is the indigenous women who are constantly pushed out of the arena. Their voices are more often silenced and unheard. The patrilineal lineage of adat land inheritance excludes women from the decision-making. Women are invisible and rarely given adequate space for participation. They are also threatened, belittled and underestimated, if they decide to fight. However, they have important role in preserving the forest and ensuring food and water provision in their family. They need more than just a mic to speak-up, they should be the first to be asked what should happen on adat land.
Two Melanesian state leaders addressed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on West Papua last week.
During the 76th UNGA, both Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, James Marape, and Vanuatu’s Prime Minister, Bob Loughman, expressed concern about human rights issues in West Papua.
While Marape devoted only 30 seconds of his 41-and-a-half-minute address to making some indirect remarks on West Papua, Loughman spent several minutes taking a more assertive approach.
Regardless, that 30 seconds was greatly appreciated by Papuans.
Here is the transcript of Loughman’s speech at the UNGA on 27 September 2021:
“In my region, New Caledonia, ‘French Polynesia’ and West Papua are still struggling for self-determination.
“Drawing attention to the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples as stipulated in the UN Charter, it is important that the UN and the international community continue to support the relevant territories giving them an equal opportunity to determine their own statehood.
“In my region, the indigenous people of West Papua continue to suffer from human rights violations.
“The Pacific Form and ACP leaders, among other leaders, have called on the Indonesian government to allow the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua Province and to provide an independent assessment of the human rights situation.
“Today, there has been little progress on this plan. I hope the international community, through appropriate UN-led process, takes a serious look at this issue and addresses it fairly.”
Human rights concerns
The following is the transcript of the brief West Papua section in Marape’s address to the UNGA on 26 September 2021.
“While commenting on the United Nations peace effort on the PNG, I would also like to recall on the Pacific islands Leaders Forum (PIF) in 2019 and the out-sitting visit by the United Nations human rights mechanisms to address the alleged human rights concern in our regional neighbourhood.
“This visit is very important to ensure that the greater people have peace within their respective sovereignty and their rights and cultural dignity are fully preserved and maintained”.
The two leaders of Melanesian states expressed concern over West Papua in accordance with resolutions adopted by regional bodies, such as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (ACP) in 2019.
One of the most important features of these resolutions was the call for the root causes of the West Papua problem to be addressed.
These resolutions remain primarily concerned with human rights issues. In reality, these violations of human rights result from deeper problems that are often forgotten or ignored.
For Papuans, this deeper problem relates to sovereignty: the Papuans contend that the means by which Indonesia has claimed sovereignty over West Papua was fraudulent and immoral.
Tackling the root causes
Unless the world’s leaders and international institutions — the United Nations, the ACP and/or the PIF — address these root causes, it is highly unlikely that human rights problems will be solved.
In addition, continuing to acknowledge Indonesia’s sovereignty in these resolutions would legitimise human rights abuses, since these violations are a consequence of Indonesia’s breach of sovereignty.
During the 2016 UNGA, leaders of seven Pacific nations (Vanuatu, Palau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, and the Solomon Islands) raised the issues of West Papua.
Many of them agreed that the root causes should be addressed. To date, we are no closer to having a conversation about these issues than we were a few years ago.
It appears that voices like those just heard from two leaders from Melanesia at the forum occur once in a blue moon and then vanish into a sea of deaf ears.
A new lens on Indonesian colonialism
The West Papua situation has since deteriorated. In West Papua, shootings continue unabated, and prominent leaders such as Victor Yeimo continue to be arrested and imprisoned.
We continue to receive reports of Papuan bodies being found in the gutter, on the street, in the bush, in hospitals, houses, and hotels. The internal world is also bombarded by images and videos that depict Papuans who have been tortured, abused, burned or killed.
Abock was the former regent of the Yahukimo, the Star Mountains Highlands in Papua, and the chairman of the Papua National Mandate Party’s regional leadership council.
In May, Papuans also lost the Vice-Governor of the Papuan Province, Klemen Tinal, at Abdi Waluyo Hospital in Jakarta.
In September 2020, another prominent Papuan leader from the highlands region of Papua, Lanny Jaya, Bertus Kogoya, died in a hotel room in Jakarta.
Kogoya was the chair of the Regional Leadership Council (DPW) of the Papua Provincial Working Party at the time of his death.
Jakarta dangerous for Papuans
Jakarta, the capital and most populous city of Indonesia, has been dangerous and unwelcoming for Papuans, who are punished with death upon arrival. The causes of their deaths are rarely determined by authorities.
In response to these never-ending brutalities, the West Papuan National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the resistance movement, retaliated. A number of deaths of security personnel and immigrants have been attributed to them.
The armed wing often claimed that their targeted victims are not ordinary immigrants, but people who have been either directly or indirectly implicated into the state’s security apparatus, which threaten Papuans throughout the land.
A military post in Sorong, in the Mybrat region of West Papua, was attacked in early September 2021, resulting in the death of four Indonesian soldiers.
Two years earlier, in December 2018, the TNPB killed at least 19 workers in the Nduga region, suspected to be members of security forces.
In recent weeks, a 22-year-old health worker, Gabriella Maelani, was killed in the Kiwirok district of Star Highlands. This, coupled with the burning of public health buildings, are only a few of the heartbreaking atrocities perpetrated in West Papua against humanity.
These shootings and killings have conflicting narratives wherein the West Papua liberation army accused their victims of being either directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of Papuans.
Justifying ‘securitisation’
In contrast, the government of Indonesia has attributed all forms of violence to the liberation armed wing, which conveniently justifies their securitisation of the entire region.
A massive humanitarian crisis has resulted from these killings, displacing the residents of entire areas from their homes and forcing them into forests, causing further deaths of villagers, either through starvation, sickness, or reprisal attacks by the Indonesian military.
Human tragedies never end in the land popularly known as “the little heaven that falls to earth.”
As reported in Asia Pacific Report, lawyer and human rights activist Veronica Koman has called for an independent investigation into the death of the Kiwirok’s health workers.
But even such requests are consistently denied by the authorities. Human rights organisations, NGOs, and rights activists have pressed Jakarta to investigate these atrocities for years with no result to date.
In West Papua, people live in conditions of what French sociologist Émile Durkheim termed anomie, meaning the breakdown of the existential structure that holds human life, morality, ethics, norms, and values together.
In this world, what is justice for one is a crime against another. It is a complete breakdown of the system; it is a war of freedom and survival in a tangled world – entanglements which make it virtually impossible to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these crimes when the very system necessary to deliver justice is inherently incongruent.
That is what anomie is, in essence.
An exotic dream
West Papua may seem like an exotic dream world full of wealth and lush greenery to Indonesians and Western companies which thrive on its natural resources. These people have no concern for protecting this paradise world; instead, they go there to dig, cut, extract, and steal for their multimillion-dollar mansion in Jakarta, London, Washington, or Canberra.
This is the only place that Papuans call home on this planet. Tragically, this home has been turned into a theatre of killings.
The fate of their land and cultural identities are at stake as the colonial Indonesians and imperial West have thrust the Papuan people into a fierce struggle for survival in their ancestral homeland.
The deaths of Papuans, immigrants, and security personnel are not isolated incidents. They are the victims of big wars for global control fought behind the scenes in Rome, Beijing, Jakarta, London, Canberra, Moscow, Auckland, Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra.
The real perpetrators live in these imperial capital cities. The mourning relatives in West Papua or elsewhere in Indonesia will never meet these perpetrators nor see them brought to justice as they control the very system in which these crimes are perpetrated.
According to a report from the Asian Human Rights Commission in 2013 entitled “Neglected Genocide”, Australia provided Iroquois helicopters to Indonesia in the 1970s along with Bell UH-1H Huey helicopters from the United States.
These helicopters, among other aircraft and resources, were used by Indonesia to bomb Papua’s highland villages of Bolakme, Bokondini, Pyramid, Kelila, Tagime, and surrounding areas.
Australian-trained terror squad
Danny Kogoya, one of the key OPM commanders who died in hospital near the PNG-Indonesia border in 2013, was shot by an anti-terrorist squad trained by the Australian elites.
Kogoya died as a result of an infection caused by the amputation of his right leg after having been shot in Entrop Jayapura, Jayapura, Indonesia on 2 September 2012.
Maire Leadbeater, a New Zealand-based human rights activist, wrote an article published in Green-Left in May 2021 in which she stated: “Since 2008, New Zealand has exported military aircraft parts to the Indonesian Air Force.”
In most years, including 2020, these parts are listed as “P3 Orion, C130 Hercules & CASA Military Aircraft: Engines, Propellers & Components including Casa Hubs and Actuators”.
West Papua will see the use of this military hardware as Indonesia continues to increase its presence in the region in an attempt to crack down on the highlands, which have already suffered massive displacement in the Nduga region.
It is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the immense volume of weaponry, skills, and training the Western governments supply to Indonesia.
It is important to ask why Western governments aid Indonesia in eliminating indigenous Papuans. These questions can be answered by looking at what the Māori of New Zealand, the Aboriginals of Australia, and the Native Americans endured.
Colonisation by settlement
Colonisation through settlement has proven to be the most pernicious in human history. Tragically, this project is being undertaken by Indonesians in West Papua with the assistance of Western governments, based on the logic of exterminating one population in order to replace it with another.
Europeans have done this in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States with great success.
Currently, they are dispensing all of their knowledge, expertise, and weapons to Indonesians in order to eradicate the Papuans. They continue to supply arms to Indonesia, despite knowing the arms will be used against the Papuans.
The Indonesian government’s execution of their plan to exterminate Papuans is neither secret nor new. In 1963, General Ali Moertopo declared that the Papuan people should be sent to the moon.
Decades later, General Luhut Panjaitan said the Papuans should be sent to the Pacific.
Recently, General Hendropriyono said the 2 million Papuans should be sent to Manado Island in Northern Sulawesi.
Indonesian generals’ voices
These words are coming from Indonesia’s military generals who undoubtedly have military affiliations with those Western countries that supply those munitions.
International organisations such as the UN, the PIF, and the ACP fail to challenge Western-backed Indonesia’s pernicious logic of annihilating the Papuan people through the system of “settler colonialism”.
Both West Papua and Papua are not simply provinces of Indonesia but Indonesian settler colonies.
Viewing West Papua through the lens of a Settler Colony helps to understand all the activities conducted in region better, as Indonesia attempt to assimilate, reduce, remove, and eliminate the original inhabitants so that new settlers can occupy the vacated lands.
Without real actions, written resolutions and human rights rhetoric at UN forums are nothing more than funeral letters or platitudes intended to comfort the dying and entertain the perpetrators.
The ultimate betrayal
Papuans’ stories are reminiscent of a Hollywood movie in which deserted civilians wait for a rescue train which never arrives. The sad truth is that Papuans die every day waiting for this train.
A train did arrive on 1 December 1961, when the Dutch prepared and assisted the Papuans in joining the new global community of the independent state.
Tragically, Papuans were thrown off the train when Indonesia invaded West Papua in 1963, after being permitted to invade by those imperial planners during the controversial New York Agreement a year earlier.
A sham referendum that followed in 1969 irrevocably sealed the fate of the Papuan people, known to Papuans as the “Act of No Choice”. To date, Papuans are still awaiting another train that will bring them into the global nationhood of humanity. The question is, who controls this train?
Despite all of these tragedies, the will to live continues to ignite the flames of hope and freedom in a world encircled by the clutches of despair.
Often, that will to live is strengthened each time West Papua is mentioned at the United Nations, which motivates the Papuans to wait for the next long-awaited train, which never arrives. Rumours and news spread, and their social media accounts are filled with messages of hope, thanksgiving, and prayers.
Appreciation messages
Here are the comments of these varieties expressed in appreciation for the speeches delivered by two Melanesian state leaders recently at the UNGA.
Free West Papua Camping Facebook Page wrote the following words:
“Our Sincere Gratitude and a big thank you to Prime minister of PNG, Hon. MP. Mr James Marape, to recall the PIF Leaders’ Resolution on West Papua in 2019, on your speech (mins. 41.05-41.35) at UNGA, September 25 2021. (41.05:) (41.35). Only God knows that the 30 seconds part of your speech is highly appreciated, respected and valued by our people back home who are struggling under Indonesian atrocities and colonial system and all Papuans in exile including those that are residing in your beloved country, PNG. May God bless your leadership and your government and your people back home to become a blessing for other countries, especially, for the Melanesians and the Pacific Islanders in our region. Peace be with you and your entire country. Long live PNG Long live MSG countries!! Long God yumi trustem and stanap for our freedom, dignity, justice, sovereignty, peace and cultural identities. Freedom for West Papua, one pela day”
The campaign page also posted the following message in appreciation of the Prime Minister of Vanuatu’s speech:
“On behalf of the people of West Papua we thank you to Prime Minister of Vanuatu, Hon. MP Mr Bob Loughman, for Addresses [sic] Human Rights situations at United Nations today on his speech (at UNGA, September 25, 2021) Long live Vanuatu, God bless VANUATU”
Papua’s fate hangs in “30 Seconds” and only God knows the outcome.
In Marape’s 41-and-a-half-minute speech, only 30 seconds were devoted to West Papua. In addition to omitting the name of West Papua, the speech was carefully constructed, avoiding certain words that may reveal the identities of those who commit heinous crimes that go unpunished.
Key message for families
Nevertheless, that 30-second speech was highly appreciated by the families of the victims.
The reality of the Papuans under Indonesian rule can be summarised in those 30 seconds.
As Papuans wait in the emergency room of an Indonesian hospital, they feel as if they are on life support as Indonesia continues to fiddle with its oxygen life support system. In that situation, time and rescue is of the essence.
Marape’s 30-second statement regarding West Papua prompted the Free West Papua Campaign to remind an unresponsive twin brother that time is running out.
In spite of it seeming inconsequential to him and the rest of the world, the Free West Papua Campaign says that “those 30 seconds are highly valued, appreciated and respected because every second counts to prevent another Papuan death accompanied by another loss of land.”
In the end, “only God knows the 30 seconds” declared the Free West Papua Campaign groups.
Both God and 30 seconds symbolised impossibilities of great magnitude and triviality, and a courageous human agent like James Marape can turn these impossibilities into possibilities to determine the fate of dying humanity and biodiversity in the land of Papua.
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
A key road in Sorong, West Papua province, which had been damaged for two years, has been hurriedly resurfaced in the lead up to a visit to the city by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
President Widodo arrived in Sorong yesterday while visiting the Papuan region to officially open the National Games in Jayapura at the weekend.
The damaged section of Jalan Jenderal Sudirman, which is located right in front of a petrol station in the Klaligi area of Sorong Manoi district, was resurfaced with asphalt by the Public Roads Department and the West Papua Provincial Public Works office, reports the state news agency Antara.
The road, which has been damaged for two years, was repaired using a full armada of equipment.
Local people were surprised by the road repairs, saying they never suspected the road – which had been left damaged for two years – would be repaired in the lead up to Widodo’s visit.
Klaligi village resident Musa admitted to being surprised to see the full deployment of heavy machinery to re-asphalt the road, which until now had just been left damaged.
Musa said there had been frequent traffic accidents due to the damaged road.
Long-standing complaints
“After we checked, it turns out that there is to be a visit by the president to Sorong city on [Monday], so the road was immediately re-asphalted,” said Musa.
The head of the Sorong City Public Works office, J Sinaga, said that the community had already complained about the damaged road.
“But Jalan Jenderal Sudirman in Sorong city is not under the authority of the Sorong city regional government, but under the authority of the provincial [government] and the public roads [department]”, said Sinaga.
President Widodo traveled to Papua on Saturday to officially launch the opening ceremony of the 20th National Games (PON XX) at the Lukas Enembe Stadium in Jayapura.
A major national sports event opened in Papua at the weekend, with officials hoping it will showcase the Indonesian government’s commitment to developing the province and reassure the public that the region is safe despite an active and escalating pro-independence insurgency.
The National Games, an event held once every four years, were scheduled to take place last year but were postponed because of the covid-19 pandemic.
The games opened on Saturday and run until October 15 in Jayapura, the provincial capital, and three regencies.
Billy Mambrasar, a Papua-born adviser to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, said the government hoped the games would help boost the economy of the deeply impoverished region.
“The National Games in Papua, as Pak Jokowi hopes, will be successful not only in terms of sporting events and organisation, but also in creating a multiplier effect,” he told reporters.
Mambrasar said he had travelled across Papua to ensure that Papuan small businesses were involved in organising the games.
Youth and Sports Minister Zainudin Amali said the people of Papua were already benefitting economically from the games.
‘Economic impact’
“It has brought an economic impact on the communities,” Zainudin said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.
“People sell T-shirts and souvenirs. Moreover, the situation here is under control.”
Papua won the right to host the games in 2014, outbidding Bali and Aceh provinces. A total of 7039 athletes and officials have descended on Papua for the country’s biggest sporting event, in which competitors are competing for medals in 56 sports.
The games are being held at venues in Jayapura City and three regencies – Jayapura, Merauke and Mimika. Some events, including esports, began last week.
The director of the National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) expressed optimism that the games would proceed without incident, saying the insurgency was “hundreds of kilometers away”.
“The military and police have taken necessary security precautions, so we are optimistic that all events will go well,” Boy Rafli Amar said in a video interview with detik.com.
More than 21,000 police and soldiers had been “deployed to prevent any security and public order disturbances,” national police chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo said.
‘Safe and smooth’ hope
“What we hope is that the games will run safely and smoothly, while covid-19 remains under control,” Listyo told reporters after visiting sport venues in Papua on Thursday.
The areas where the games are being held are generally peaceful. But violence linked to the insurgency has broken out in other parts of the region that comprises Papua and West Papua provinces, and which makes up the western half of New Guinea Island.
In September, suspected rebels set fire to public buildings, including a health clinic and an elementary school in Kiwirok district, after security forces killed an insurgent during a gunfight, police said.
A 22-year-old nurse died after falling into a ravine while trying to flee the scene of the attack. One of her colleagues survived after being stabbed.
A policeman and a soldier were also killed in clashes with rebels.
The insurgency has simmered for decades in the Papua region, but violence has intensified in the past three years.
In April, the government designated pro-independence rebels as “terrorists” after insurgents ambushed and assassinated an army general who headed the regional branch of the National Intelligence Agency. The killing prompted Jokowi to order a crackdown.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who will officially inaugurate the National Games, buys Nokens – traditional Papuan bags – from a craftswoman in Jayapura, Papua, Indonesia, Oct. 1, 2021. [Courtesy President Joko Widodo’s official Facebook account]
The Lukas Enembe Stadium – named after the governor of Papua province – and the Papuan National Games complex in Jayapura. Image: Tribun News
Some local businesses unhappy
Jayapura Regent Mathius Awoitauw said the games could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“The National Games are a matter of pride for Papuans, because it is extraordinary to have been entrusted to host it,” he said.
But some local businesses, including members of the Chamber of Papuan Indigenous Entrepreneurs (KAPP) and the Papuan Coffee Community, said they had been left out.
“We have had several meetings with the games’ organisers but there has been no progress,” Meky Wetipo, KAPP’s executive director, told BenarNews.
“We hope that they can entrust us with providing 3 tonnes of skipjack tuna, several tonnes of carrots, and fruit. But all these things are being done by government agencies.”
Denny Yigibalom, a coffee farmer and owner of the TIYOM coffee brand, said he had met with local lawmakers to discuss cooperation between coffee farmers and the games’ organisers, but there had been no further communication.
Makers of noken, traditional Papuan bags, said they were disappointed not to have been enlisted to provide souvenirs for the games, said Cintya Warwe, the manager of the Papua Women’s Market.
Noken purchase promise
“During a meeting at the end of August with the women of the Meepago noken community, the women complained because the organisers had promised to buy 5000 nokens. But this has not happened,” Cintya told BenarNews.
She said she heard news that the games’ committee wanted to buy 25,000 fake nokens from outside Papua to be used as mementoes.
However, some indigenous small businesses are taking part in the events by setting up tents to sell handicrafts outside the new Lukas Enembe Stadium, which cost nearly $1 million to build and is named after the serving governor of Papua.
Individual residents have also been allowed to set up stalls outside the stadium and sell handicrafts and betel or areca nuts, which are traditionally consumed raw by Papuans and people in neighboring Papua New Guinea.
In Merauke, women from the Marind tribe are selling handicrafts, including bags, hats, wallets, bracelets, necklaces, and bows along the city streets.
“Sales are worth up to 3 million rupiah (U.S. $210) a day. Bags, wallets and hats are the most popular. Most of the buyers are contingents from outside Papua,” said Maria D. Keimawu, leader of a small businesses association.
Covid-19 concerns
The provincial government, meanwhile, has taken measures to prevent the spread of covid-19 during the games, including by ramping up vaccinations and limiting the number of people who can enter the main stadium to fewer than 10,000, officials said.
“Gatherings of large numbers of people, even with strict health protocols, should be cause for concern,” said Masdalina Pane, a member of the Indonesian Association of Epidemiologists.
She said cases spiked after the recently completed Tokyo Olympics and the European football championship.
Yunus Wonda, the games’ chief organiser, said more than 50 percent of people in the areas that host the games had received at least on dose of a vaccine.
“We will make sure that everyone entering the venue have been vaccinated, that’s the main requirement,” he said, referring to the opening ceremony at the Lukas Enembe Stadium.
Victor Mambor is editor of Tabloid Jubi and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
This month, the Central Jakarta District Court ruled on a lawsuit accusing the Indonesian government of unlawfully permitting air pollution in the capital to exceed permissible, healthy limits, reports Binoy Kampmark.
The Papua Advocacy Team says that Indonesian police committed acts of violence and sexual harassment while breaking up a protest and arrested 17 people in front of the US Embassy in Jakarta last week.
The team said that that the protest on Thursday was forcibly broken up by police without legal grounds.
“During the dispersal of the rally, there were protesters who were hit in the eye, trampled on, kicked, and a Papuan woman was sexually harassed,” the team declared in a media release.
Based on the advocacy team’s release, the protesters from the Papua Student Alliance (AMP) and several other civil society organisations arrived at the US Embassy at around 11 am.
The action was to demand the annulment of the 1962 New York Agreement which paved the way for Papua’s integration into Indonesia, the release of all Papuan political prisoners and the withdrawal of the military from Papua.
As they began conveying their demands the police immediately ordered then to disperse on the grounds of covid-19 social distancing restrictions.
According to the advocacy team, teargas was fired at the demonstration when police broke up the action.
Protester thrown out
“One of the protesters who couldn’t stand the teargas was thrown out of a vehicle by police and injured their foot. Other protesters meanwhile were packed into a [police detention] vehicle because they door was locked from the outside,” the group said.
According to the advocacy team, these incidents were a violation of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Law Number 39/1999 on Human Rights and Law Number 9/1998 on the Freedom to Express and Opinion in Public.
The advocacy team also believes that the police actions were a violation of freedom of expression and opinion which is guaranteed under the 1945 Constitution.
The Papua Advocacy Team is made up of Michael Himan, representing the group Papua This is Us; Citra Referandum from the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH); Nixon Randy from the Community Legal Aid Institute (LBH Masyarakat); and Abimanyu Septiadji from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).
The group strongly urged Indonesian police chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo to take action against the officers and to apologise.
“To take firm action in terms of ethical, disciplinary and criminal [sanctions] for the violations and the physical, psychological and sexual violence by the Central Jakarta Metro Jaya district police against the protesters,” the group said.
17 demonstrators arrested
One of the protesters, former political prisoner Ambrosius Mulait, said that 17 demonstrators were forcibly taken away by police as soon as they arrived at the US Embassy.
They were only released on Friday, October 1, after being questioned for 18 hours.
“It was only [on Friday] at 7.45 am that they were released without any kind of status, none were declared suspects [charged],” said Citra Referandum, an advocate for the arrested activists.
Kompas.com reports that the Papua Advocacy Team said two Papuan activists had also been arrested by police at the Jakarta LBH despite the fact that they did not take part in the US Embassy rally.
Indonesian police forcibly broke up a protest marking the 1962 Rome Agreement in front of the US Embassy in Central Jakarta this week and arrested 17 Papuan activists.
One of the demonstrators, former political prisoner Ambrosius Mulait, said the 17 arrested protesters were forcibly taken away by police as soon as they arrived at the US Embassy.
“We hadn’t even started the action and were forced to get into crowd control vehicles,” said Mulait about the protest on Thursday.
Mulait also said that police were “repressive” when they were arresting the protesters by firing teargas until a physical clash broke out between demonstrators and police.
“Some of our comrades were assaulted by the police,” he said.
Central Jakarta district police chief Senior Commissioner Hengki Hariyadi confirmed that 17 Papuan activists were arrested.
Hariyadi said that they did not allow the protest action because Jakarta was currently under a level 3 Enforcement of Restrictions on Public Activities (PPKM) in order to prevent the spread of the covid-19 pandemic.
“During a Level 3 PPKM all activities which have the potential to create crowds are prohibited, in this case they did not have a permit to express an opinion in pubic, so it was without a recommendation from the security forces,” said Hariyadi.
The protest by the Papuan activists made six demands:
[The right to hold] an action in the context of marking the 59th anniversary of the Rome Agreement [that led to Jakarta’s colonisation of Papua];
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to withdraw all TNI (Indonesian military) and Polri (Indonesian police) from Papua because they were making the situation for the Papuan people “uncomfortable”;
Release political prisoner Victor Yeimo who is currently in ill health and is being detained at the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) command headquarters in Jayapura;
Reject the extension of Special Autonomy for Papua which had failed to bring prosperity to the Papuan people;
Give Papuans the right to self-determination (through a referendum);and
Reject racism and fully resolve human rights violations in Papua.
IndoLeft News backgrounds the crisis:
The 1962 Rome Agreement was signed by Indonesia, the Netherlands and the United States in Rome on September 30, 1962.
The agreement provided for a postponement of a referendum on West Papua’s status which had been scheduled to be held in 1969 under the New York Agreement signed on August 15, 1962, that the referendum would use a consultative process, that the UN’s report on the implementation of the referendum would be accepted without open debate and on US commitments to invest in resource exploration and provide funds for development programmes in West Papua.
Mental illness has historically dwelt in the shadows of the global health and development agenda and only recently has moved from the margins to become a central priority in research and policy. Mental disorders account for 30% of the worldwide non-fatal disease burden and 10% of the overall disease burden, including death and disability, and the cost to the global economy is estimated to reach as high as USD 6 trillion by 2030. Large middle- and low-income countries like Indonesia struggle with a plethora of challenges in delivering adequate mental health care to its 270.2 million citizens. Centralised funding for Indonesian mental health is only 1% of the national health budget; health expenditure is around 3% of GDP. National health programming such as Indonesia Sehat, the incorporation of mental health into primary care basic standards and voluntary contributions from provincial budgets does provide some additional resources. However, there is a severe shortage of mental health personnel, treatment and care facilities, especially outside the island of Java.
Estimations based on the 2018 Basic Health Survey (RISKESDAS) indicate there are 450 000 families in Indonesia with at least one member diagnosed with schizophrenia; given the high level of stigma against mental illness and psychosocial disabilities, we suggest this number is much larger. Many of these people are subject to human rights abuses, being left to languish in cages, stocks or chains referred to as Pasung. Human Rights Watch estimated that 12,800 people were experiencing Pasung at the end of 2018. Over 26.23 million people, more than the entire population of Australia, suffer from clinically relevant symptoms of anxiety and depression and 16.33 million likely meet the diagnostic criteria for a depressive disorder.
Although there is a shift to community-based outpatient models of care, Indonesia’s 48 mental hospitals and 269 psychiatric wards in general hospitals are still the primary sources of care. There are just over 1000 registered psychiatrists, 2000 clinical psychologists, 7000 community mental health nurses, 1500 mental health trained GPs and 7000 lay mental health workers unevenly distributed across the archipelago, (Ministry of Health Regulation on Pasung Management, 2017; Pols, 2020). Need outstrips supply, with eight provinces without a mental hospital: three of these hospitals without a single psychiatrist. Less than half of all primary care centres and only 56% of government district hospitals are equipped to handle mental health cases. Fortunately, there are many passionate and committed mental health personnel, government officials, academics, consumer group founders and mental health advocates who are working tirelessly to implement the vision embodied by the 2014 Indonesian Mental Health Law. Our webinar for World Mental Health Day is a small sample of these extraordinary individuals, who will share their experiences in Indonesian mental health.
Dr Nova Riyanti Yusuf, a psychiatrist, legislator (member of the DPR from 2009-14 and 2018-19), novelist, scholar, television personality and activist, was one of the driving forces behind the 2014 mental health law. She will talk about the ongoing journey of the mental health law, what its vision is for Indonesian mental health and the current state of implementation at the grass roots level. Professor Hans Pols, a renown psychiatric historian based at University of Sydney and expert on Indonesian mental health will then take us through a brief history of Indonesian Psychiatry and will talk about some of the emerging trends for the future of the profession across the archipelago. Anto Sg,Pasung survivor and current recipient of an Australia Award currently studying a Master of Health Promotion at Deakin University, will share his person experience of Pasung and introduce the survivor or consumer group movement in Indonesia. Dr Erminia Colucci currently based at Department of Psychology, Middlesex University, UK will is working with the Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH), Psychology at the University of Gadjah Mada and Ade Prastyani, GP and scholar on traditional healing approaches to mental health. We will show a short exert of their upcoming film produced by their collaborative Together4MentalHealth. After which, CPMH director, distinguished academic and clinical psychologist Dr Diana Setiyawati will provide us with a current update on community mental health initiatives in the age of Covid19. Aliza Hunt, Centre for Mental Health Research PhD Candidate and Endeavour Scholar at the ANU is chairing the session.
In this in-depth analysis, published in two parts this week, Lila Sari looks at vaccine distribution in Indonesia, and the surprising entrance of political parties into the roll-out.
Media reports suggest that Golkar has received a large allocation of coronavirus vaccines from the government. Golkar was among the first to launch a party-led vaccination program, commencing on 21 March 2021. It has created a new a unit to run vaccinations and provide other pandemic-related services, which it calls “Yellow Clinics” (yellow is the colour of the party). Using these Yellow Clinics as its main facility, the party claims it had administered at least 200,000 doses of vaccines as of late August 2021. From the Yellow Clinic Instagram account, we can learn that the focus of distribution was Jakarta, with most of the mass vaccination events held at the central office of the party in Jakarta. Other regions in Java (West, Central, and East Java), Aceh, and South Kalimantan received the rest of the vaccines, but in much lower numbers. At the time of writing, the Yellow Clinic vaccination program continues, with the party now offering Pfizer vaccines for free in Jakarta.
Golkar’s ability to access the vaccines promptly and in large numbers was undoubtably a product of the party’s key role in the ruling coalition at the national level. Golkar general chairperson Airlangga Hartarto sits in the cabinet as the coordinating minister for economic affairs, a position which places him at the center of power and gives him the capacity to influence the Ministry of Health and other important agents in vaccine distribution, like PT Bio Farma.
Golkar is the quintessential elite party in Indonesia. It is dominated by wealthy and influential businesspeople, former bureaucrats, and former generals. These connections give it the organisational and financial capacity to convene and run many mass-vaccination programs. Between March and September, it seems Golkar thus primarily conducted its own vaccination campaign independently, though on a few occasions it collaborated with businesses and held mass vaccination events at factories, including at the PT Santos factory in Karawang, West Java, and a PT HM Sampoerna factory in East Java.
Golkar vaccination events, especially those in Jakarta, have also focused on promoting Airlangga Hartarto, the party chairperson, presumably reflecting his ambition to run in the presidential election in 2024.
A Golkar billboard in Jakarta. Photo by Yus Prinandy.
PDI-P
The core party in the ruling coalition, PDI-P has about a fifth of the seats in the national parliament, and President Joko Widodo is a party member. At the regional level, the party is also strong: in the 2018 local election, it won six of 17 provincial elections and 97 of 171 city/ district elections. PDI-P’s pattern of delivering mass vaccinations is different from Golkar. PDI-P is more diverse in terms of regional distribution, branding, and partnerships.
I have found media and social media reports of the party running mass vaccination events in many regions in Java, the southern part of Sumatra (Lampung, South Sumatra, Jambi), and Central Kalimantan. These are all areas where PDI-P is strong politically. The party still, however, focuses on Java more than other regions. Meanwhile, unlike Golkar events which often promote Airlangga, PDI-P mass vaccinations often do not place much emphasis on central party bosses, but rather highlight the role of local leaders who hold posts at the central and regional level. Some of them are national and regional parliament members, and also leaders of regional branches. For example, in Kendal Regency (Central Java), the mass vaccination promoted local figures such as head of the district branch, the provincial party leader, and the national parliament member from the region, Tuti Nusandari Rusdiono. The event also featured a local health official as a ‘’supervisor”.
Another example, a mass vaccination event in Bangka Belitung Province, put up a banner with five photos on it. They included the PDI-P’s crown princess and speaker of the DPR, Puan Maharani, a local member of the DPR, chairs of the provincial and district branches in the region, and the mayor. The mass vaccination itself was held at the so-called Rudi Center—an office that belongs to Rudianto Tjen, a DPR member and a prominent PDI-leader.
Mayor of Semarang City, Hendrar Prihadi and three Projo (pro-Jokowi) members in a mass vaccination on 16 September 2021 in Semarang (credit: Abdul Mughis).
Meanwhile, when it comes to collaboration, because PDI-P dominates the government at the central level and in many regions, the party can engage easily with local governments, and POLRI/TNI in holding these events. It can also readily use public facilities and resources, including community healthcare centers or Puskesmas, and local health offices (Dinkes) as well as local police or army resources, to provide both venues and personnel for their activities. In fact, according to one source in a government agency in Central Java, doctors from public healthcare facilities often complain about having to do extra work at these party-led vaccination events.
NasDem Party
NasDem is a new party that was founded by old oligarchs and political elites associated with Golkar and the Democrat Party. Similar to Golkar, it is an important part of the national governing coalition. Party leaders have tried hard to make themselves different from their predecessors, Golkar and the Democrat Party, and to create a new image to attract voters. Still far from being dominant in parliament and cabinet, the party has growing influence and power in some regions. In 2018, governor candidates supported by NasDem won elections in North Sumatra, West Java, Central Java, West Kalimantan, Southeast Sulawesi, and NTT. Furthermore, party chairperson, Surya Paloh is a media mogul who owns the MetroTV network.
Hence, it is not surprising that NasDem seems to have acquired quite a large quota of vaccines for its mass vaccination programs. Like PDI-P, the party relies upon, and foregrounds, politicians who sit in the DPR and in the provincial governments to lobby for access to vaccines. According to media reports I have compiled, NasDem has been dispensing more than 200,000 doses of vaccines, mostly in the greater Jakarta region but also elsewhere, including West Java, Central Java, Papua, NTT, and Bangka Belitung
Some of the politicians in charge of vaccine distribution happen to be related to local government heads, which presumably also makes it easier for them to acquire vaccines. Take the example of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT Province) in eastern Indonesia. One DPR member from here, Julie Laiskodat, is the wife of the NTT Governor, Viktor Laiskodat. Both are NasDem elites and run businesses. As a DPR member and the governor’s wife, Julie could easily negotiate with the Ministry of Health to get a vaccine share for NTT Province. As the wife of the Governor, she leads various organisations responsible for women’s affairs (PKK, Bunda PAUD, etc.) in the province, which gives her an added incentive to get a vaccine quota and allocate it to her constituency. Unlike other politicians who hold only one-off or at most a few mass vaccination events, she is holding vaccination events in NTT regularly: twice a week from August, and scheduled to last until December.
Are party campaigns helping achieve herd immunity?
It is difficult to access reliable data on the number of doses allocated to parties, because these allocations take place through informal and non-transparent processes. Therefore, I tried to gather data from online media and social media, and compiled claims by party leaders about the number of vaccines parties were distributing. I identified eight political parties as being involved in vaccine distribution between March and September 2021. If each political party—based on public claims in the media—has distributed around 200,000 doses (a rough estimate), this will generate a total of around 1.6 million doses. This number is miniscule compared to the targeted population of 208 million and will contribute very little—less than 0.5 percent—to achieving the national vaccination coverage goal.
Sometimes parties and the leaders of the government’s COVID-19 taskforce suggest that these party-led vaccination programs help outreach in low coverage regions and among marginalised groups (e.g., transgendered persons and rubbish pickers), as informed by one Partai Solidaritas Indonesia member While it is hard to know about the latter claim, we can test the argument about regional coverage using information from parties’ social media and online media.
Before checking that information, we should see how the coverage rate of vaccinations varies across provinces in Indonesia (Figures 1 and 2). These figures use data from the Ministry of Health’s vaccination dashboard (SMILE) that are publicly available.
Figure 1 shows us that very few regions have achieved high vaccination rates (i.e., above 60%) for dose 1. The most successful provinces in this regard are DKI Jakarta, Bali, Riau Islands, and Yogyakarta. The ministry of health has prioritised these regions as centers of the economy, government, and tourism. Other provinces, however, are at or below 40% coverage rate. For second dose administration, Jakarta is the highest; Riau Islands, Bali and Yogyakarta are all still below 40% while other provinces are even further behind.
Now, where have political parties been holding their vaccination events? What regions did they focus on? Figure 2 shows the spatial variations of regions covered by political parties during the period of March to September 2021.These data are based on my own counts of events covered in the mass media and party social media accounts.
Figrue 2. Spatial variation of party-led vaccination programs. Source: various online media and social media.
Comparing the two figures, it is obvious that the parties are not distributing their vaccinations in places where coverage and capacity are low. Instead, they dispense vaccines in Java, particularly Jakarta and West Java, where the national vaccination roll out is working relatively effectively. The argument that party campaigns help to attain herd immunity and reach out to the areas where vaccines are most needed is weak.
Conclusion
What are we to make of these party-led vaccination programs? The examples presented above imply that the parties are using these programs to promote the popularity of party leaders and cadres. The parties do so by crafting an image that they are being responsive and helpful to the government, whilst also sending out a message that they have fought hard to get an allocation from the government to their people.
These events are heavily political—but political in the distinctive clientelistic sense that is the dominant mode of politics in Indonesia. The newly democratized political system has generated intense competition among parties and politicians. It also makes winning elections expensive. The political parties and their leaders need to always be finding new ways—even during this global pandemic—to keep their supporters loyal and win over new voters. The fact that is often incumbent DPR members who organise these events in their own electoral districts shows that the parties are using these events to provide favors—potentially lifesaving favors—to their political supporters in their own base areas. Distributing vaccines is thus an excellent way to supplement the old-fashioned forms of patronage distribution, such as handouts of money, food, government jobs and contracts, which are typically more costly—politicians often have to provide these themselves – and have less impact.
While the benefits to the parties and their politicians are clear, whether these events really help the national vaccine roll out is less so. The party-led vaccination programs surely target and prioritise their own constituents and supporters, meaning that those with the right political connections have the privilege of getting vaccinated before those who lack such connections. This can disrupt the targeting of those who need vaccines the most.
In this in-depth analysis, published in two parts this week, Lila Sari looks at vaccine distribution in Indonesia, and the surprising entrance of political parties into the roll-out.
What role exactly do the political parties play in vaccine distribution? How do they access the vaccines, how do their approaches differ and what motivates them? I’ll be looking at these questions across two articles this week. In today’s article, Part 1, I’ll examine the broader practices of vaccine acquisition and distribution by political parties and their partners, and in Part 2 I’ll look at how this plays out in Golkar, PDI-P and NasDEM’s approaches.
To accelerate vaccine delivery, the government has instructed several institutions to help the Ministry of Health and local governments to deliver the vaccines. The first, and main, track of the vaccine rollout relies on diverse state bodies. The Indonesian Police and Army (TNI/POLRI), the Coordinating Agency for Family Planning (BKKBN), and even the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) have been involved in administering vaccinations in several regions. According to the Ministry of Health’s dashboard data, this main track has delivered 167.5 million doses.
In addition to these public sector institutions, the government has expanded the vaccination delivery track to the private sector, using private companies and state-owned enterprises. This second track, which the government has dubbed the Gotong Royong (mutual cooperation) vaccination program, uses a very different modality than the standard government approach. Companies and enterprises are expected to use their own funding and resources to acquire and deliver different vaccine brands or types. In particular, the Gotong Royong program uses the Sinopharm vaccine, unlike the Sinovac-Bio Farma, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Novavax, Moderna, and BioNTech vaccines used in the standard program. The goal is for these companies to then deliver these vaccines to their own employees.
As part of the Gotong Royong program, the government also uses the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (KADIN) to provide brokerage services to bring together the private sector and the Ministry of Health and PT Bio Farma, the state-owned enterprise responsible for importation and distribution of vaccines. This track has delivered 915,295 first doses (6.1% of the total targeted population for vaccinations) and 663,515 second doses. Whereas 28,413 companies have applied to participate in this program, only 258 (less than 1% of the applicants) have received an allocation from the Ministry of Health and PT Bio Farma.
This program makes sense for the private sector: it is more efficient and economical for companies to vaccinate their workers than to test them regularly and spend money on supporting infected workers. By vaccinating their workers, companies hope to be able to run their businesses at full capacity.
Despite the mobilisation of so many actors in the vaccination roll out, it seems this is not enough. Politicians in Indonesian’s national parliament have criticised the slow progress and uneven distribution in vaccination delivery. Perhaps it is this criticism which has pushed the government to open a third vaccination track, a track that involves these politicians and their parties. This third track, however, is not clearly stipulated in government regulations on the vaccination program (the latest being Ministry of Health Regulation No. 10/2021 and the Minister of Health Decree No. 4638/2021).
Nevertheless, reports in online media and social media show that several political parties have been actively involved in the vaccination program. These include parties from the government’s ruling coalition, like the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Golkar Party, National Awakening Party (PKB), National Democrat Party (NasDEM), and National Mandate Party (PAN), as well as the opposition parties, like the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the Democrat Party (PD), and even small parties like the Indonesia Solidarity Party (PSI).
This is a highly unusual practice. To my knowledge, Indonesia is the only country where political parties are not only organising their own vaccination programs but also actually injecting vaccines into people’s arms.
In fact, it seems like the program is accelerating, with political parties competing to give out vaccines, and using the program as a way to demonstrate their ability to work with the government and achieve the important national goal of reaching herd immunity. Interestingly, each party has claimed to be the first to deliver a coronavirus vaccination program.
What role exactly do the political parties play in vaccine distribution? How do they access the vaccines, how do their approaches differ and what motivates them?
At first, when I noticed reports of party vaccination programs, I assumed that they were buying the vaccines they were delivering, as with companies using the Gotong Royong track, rather than drawing on government stocks.
After all, the parties present their campaigns as if they are solely their own initiatives. Most of the parties mentioned above have been running mass vaccination activities in ways that resemble election campaign events. For example, they use big banners with photographs of their prominent leaders, and hand out t-shirts, and goody bags containing party merchandise, food, and souvenirs to people who come to get vaccinated.
These events typically include speeches from elite politicians, who are usually members of the national parliament (DPR) or the local parliament (DPRD) in the area concerned, or they might be the local chairperson of the party regional branch. Sometimes, the national chairperson (Ketua Umum) of the party appears. Typically, in these speeches the politicians concerned praise how responsive and concerned their party is about the community and how they have worked hard, or fought, to ensure community members get the vaccines. Sometimes, they claim that the mass vaccination event involves collaboration with state institutions, private sector actors, and/or mass organisations. Sometimes, party leaders bring along leaders from the local government and/or local police and army officials, representatives of private companies, and of mass organisations.
They also claim to have provided funds to distribute these vaccines. Such claims are partly true, as politicians and parties apparently do finance some elements of these vaccination events. They provide cadres and resources to organise registration, provide the venue, as well as snacks, lunches, and fees for the medical staff providing the vaccinations. However, it turns out that, unlike the Gotong Royong program, parties do not need to buy the vaccines they deliver. Instead, they receive them from the Ministry of Health. This is where the lobbying capacity of party bosses comes in.
How do they access vaccines?
In general, my respondents from political parties and local media explain that their party received an allocation of vaccines from the Ministry of Health. In their capacity as the Ministry’s counterparts in the DPR, members of the Commission IX of the DPR, which is responsible for health and labor affairs, can submit a request to the Ministry to allocate buffer stocks—stocks left over from the quota used for the government-led vaccination program. Then, based on the Ministry’s assessment, the Ministry can grant them a quota. These politicians normally prioritise distribution to their own electoral districts (daerah pemilihan or dapil).
In short, much like other government benefits and programs, COVID-19 vaccines have now become a political commodity which politicians can use to solidify their constituency and supporters. This is an important opportunity for them to survive in what observers have called Indonesia’s “patronage democracy” as written by Aspinall and Berenschot in Democracy for Sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia. When parties and politicians habitually provide their supporters with benefits of various kinds, it makes sense for them to view the coronavirus vaccination program as a new political commodity they can distribute.
Aside from this channel, some respondents from the national government, as well as local experts and members of watchdog institutions in some regions, explained that some parties have been able to access vaccines from other state institutions, such as local governments, POLRI and the TNI. As explained above, these institutions also received vaccine allocations and were responsible for delivering jabs through the government-led vaccination program. They have discretion on how to deliver their vaccines. They can use their own facilities, such as local public health clinics and hospitals, police or military health institutions, or partner with private healthcare services, or even partner with mass organisations, or, it turns out, with political parties.
This discretion has opened up opportunities for parties and politicians to use these allocations for their own promotional purposes, though typically presented as joint effort or kerjasama (cooperative) schemes. Party elites request the allocation from the national or local government, POLRI and the TNI to deliver the vaccinations under their party’s banner. In return, the parties will name these institutions as their partners, and they will pay for the vaccinators’ fees and other operational costs to deliver the vaccines.
Perceived religious prohibition, vaccine coercion, anti-Chinese sentiment and reliance on alternative health and hygiene practices are contributing to low vaccination acceptance.
In fact, it is not only parties who use this approach. In some regions, according to my anonymous sources, some big business groups have also used the kerjasama scheme. These are typically business groups owned by oligarchs—i.e., the super wealthy individuals who dominate both political and business life in Indonesia. Such companies can sometimes use the quotas allocated to central government agencies, local governments, and POLRI/TNI, bypassing the formal Gotong Royong vaccination track provided for the private sector. Of course, they label the vaccination events they then run as a form of collaboration with the real owner of the vaccine quota. But in fact, these companies acquired the vaccines for free and much more quickly than they would as part of the Gotong Royong track, with no need to wait for KADIN to process their proposals. By doing so, I estimate they save around 75% of the costs they would incur if using the Gotong Royong track.
To access vaccines, political parties and the companies thus need to lobby and negotiate with government institutions which are authorised vaccine distributors. But having access to political power and good connections with those institutions helps. In many cases, party leaders and other politicians have family connections with the governor or other local officials, and this, too, can allow access.
Take, for example, in one region of Indonesia, where a senior politician, who is also the owner of one of the biggest conglomerates in the region. He is known to have close connections with two generals who hold very high positions in the country, are from the same region as the elite politician and served as his adjutants when he was in the office. Having this close connection as a patron gives the elite politician easy access to use the police quota in the region for vaccination events run by his companies.
Another example can be seen in a woman politician, a prominent party elite, and member of the DPR. She is also the wife of a former two-time mayor in the region. Her husband is a senior politician with a colourful background. He retains much influence in the city including in the prison sector, given that he spent some years in jail for corruption. The woman has good access to the Ministry of Health as she is a member of the DPR’s Commission IX. Once she attained the quota, she distributed it where she and her husband have many fans: in the prisons and among networks of women’s Islamic devotional groups.
Tomorrow: How Golkar, PDI-P and NasDEM approach vaccine distribution.
Papua human rights activist and lawyer Veronica Koman has called for an independent inquiry into the attack on health workers in the Kiwirok district, Star Highlands, Papua, saying there are two versions of how the tragedy happened.
A healthcare worker, 22-year-old Gabriella Maelani, was killed during the attack by the West Papua National Liberation Army-Free Papua Organisation (TPNPB-OPM) resistance movement.
“There is one version which is clearly being shared a lot in the media. And there is a second version circulating among the Papuan people,” Koman told CNN Indonesia.
Koman said that the chronology of events which was being broadcast by most news media depicted the alleged brutality of the TPNPB-OPM during the attack.
In the second version alleged the attack was triggered when a person wearing a doctor’s uniform shot at the TPNPB, causing a shootout inside the healthcare building, Koman said.
She said that in Papua many TNI (Indonesian military) personnel held dual posts as teachers and doctors. She believed this caused a great deal of suspicion in Papua.
Nevertheless, she was saddened by the news that a healthcare worker died, although she said that the truth about the chronology of events must still be investigated.
Death of healthcare worker
Based on information she had received, the death of the healthcare worker was not because they were tortured by the TPNPB as alleged.
“The Papuan people’s version is that it’s not true that there was torture. Gabriella jumped [into a ravine] while escaping, she wasn’t thrown into the ravine by the OPM,” she said.
Koman called for an independent investigation. According to Koman, finding out which chronology was correct would influence several factors, particularly racism against the Papuan people.
“If for example the alleged barbaric actions are not true, it will influence the stigma and racism against the Papuan people. And that is very barbaric,” she said.
“Looking for examples of human rights issues, we can separate it. The ones adversely affected should be the OPM, not the ordinary Papuan people.
“In general with minority groups, including the Chinese, when one person does wrong, everyone is adversely affected. LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] for example, if a gay person does something, the whole community is adversely affected. So it’s important to straighten it out.”
Koman also said care was needed to be taken with the witness testimonies.
Information under duress
She questioned whether or not the witnesses provided information under duress.
“There would have been many soldiers around them … So they could have been pressured,” she said.
Earlier, the TPNPB-OPM admitted responsibility for attacking public facilities such as a community healthcare centre and school building in the Kiwirok district on September 13 and 14.
They claimed that the attack was a form of resistance demanding Papuan independence from Indonesia.
The Presidential Staff Office said that “armed criminal groups” (KKB) — as officials generally describe Papuan armed independence fighters — violated human rights law after the healthcare worker died during the attack on September 13.
Presidential Staff Deputy V Jaleswari Pramodhawardani said that the armed group had violated several laws such as the healthcare law, the nurses law, the hospital law and the healthcare quarantine law.
An Auckland property developer is involved in a company linked to carrying out deforestation in Indonesian-controlled Papua, where virgin rainforest is being bulldozed to grow palm oil plantations. Newsroom Investigates.
From above, the satellite image shows two insignificant dark-coloured shapes, like a couple of missing puzzle pieces in a flat sea of green. But on the ground, they represent devastation.
This innocuous picture illustrates the beginning of what is earmarked to become the world’s largest palm oil plantation, replacing one of the last remaining rainforests on earth.
Two years ago, the Tanah Merah megaproject began clearing just 230 hectares in Papua, the Indonesian-controlled half of New Guinea (the other half of the island is Papua New Guinea).
That relatively small land area was just a warning of what is predicted to come: 270,000 hectares have been allocated to the project, an area 10 times the size of Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges.
After halting work due to alleged non-payment of staff salaries, in March this year the bulldozers arrived again and forest clearing resumed. This can be seen using near-real time satellite imagery on Nusantara-Atlas.org – the newly felled sections of rainforest are in pink.
The project is divided into seven concessions — parcels of land — of around 40,000 hectares each in Boven Digoel, a regency in Papua’s southeast.
Documents obtained by Newsroom show three of those seven concessions are controlled by a company called Digoel Agri Group, whose majority shareholder is listed as a New Zealander. (Read the full response from Digoel Agri Group here.)
Environmental experts say the Tanah Merah project is a sign of things to come and if this entire forest is razed it will be catastrophic — hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon will be released, contributing to the world’s failure to stay under two degrees Celsius of warming.
So why, when we face a climate emergency of biblical proportions, is an Auckland property developer involved in the felling of some of the world’s most diverse, intact, old-growth forest?
‘Charming’ and ‘brazen’ Neville Mahon is 61 with a soft face and a swatch of sandy hair that was once red. (See David Williams’ story looking at Mahon’s business history here)
He has an affable demeanour, and enjoys a weekly standing appointment with a group of associates at a popular Chinese restaurant in Auckland.
Neville Mahon during his meeting with Newsroom Investigates’ Melanie Reid and Bonnie Sumner. Image: Newsroom
He cuts a controversial figure in New Zealand — he doesn’t do social media, and the only online accounts of his existence are a bunch of articles that detail court cases over failed property developments and a Wikifrauds page dedicated to his involvement in the Fiji Beach Resort & Spa, which says dozens of mum and dad investors were left out of pocket in 2010.
(Mahon’s name is registered against more than 120 New Zealand companies, the bulk of which are now defunct.)
Newsroom has spoken with a number of people on the condition of anonymity who have had dealings with him. They variously describe him as “charming”, “brazen” and someone who “worries about looking like a bad guy”.
Sometime around 2015, after he had extricated himself from the Fiji Beach Resort & Spa debacle, Mahon jumped on a plane to Jakarta for business meetings with some Indonesian movers and shakers.
It was to be the beginning of a new chapter in Mahon’s life, a move away from property and into what he described to Newsroom as the “resource sector”.
Three years later, his name popped up as a majority shareholder alongside that of Indonesian political operator Ventje Rumangkang on a companies registration document under the business name Digoel Agri Group.
Rumangkang was the patriarch of a well-connected family and one of the founders of the Democratic Party in Indonesia. He died suddenly last year and his son, Jones, took his place as Digoel Agri’s managing director.
Permits to log rainforest and create palm oil plantations cannot be bought and sold, they can only be issued by local government officials. So instead they are allocated to companies.
In the case of Digoel Agri, three subsidiary companies were set up to manage three concessions as part of the Tanah Merah megaproject.
Forest clearance and palm oil plantation development by Megakarya Jaya Raya, one of the concession holders in the Tanah Merah project in Papua’s Boven Digoel Regency. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
The investigation also exposed Neville Mahon’s involvement in the project, describing him as the Rumangkang’s chief investment partner and the majority shareholder — claims he would come to dispute in a face-to-face meeting with Newsroom.
Another name that also appears on the documents is Australian man Selva Nithan Thirunavukarasu, known as Nithan Thiru.
He was a director of Gleneagles Securities, an Australian financial services firm — the very same company believed to have looked after Mahon’s money from the Fiji Resort & Spa development.
Thiru’s name also appears on the New Zealand companies documents from another property development involving Mahon, a worker accommodation complex in Queenstown that never eventuated.
The Digul River in Papua’s Boven Digoel Regency. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
The Kiwi tree defender Tanah Merah is just one of a number projects on the island involving dozens of players from around the world, including the Middle East, Korea and Malaysia, who are already turning the varied flora into monocrop forests of palm oil trees.
But a network of individuals and organisations is attempting to shine a spotlight on what’s going on in Papua to prevent what they say is an environmental and human rights calamity.
One of those is Grant Rosoman. Tall, lean and 60 years old, he looks more university professor than tree-hugger, despite dedicating his life to protecting tropical forests and their inhabitants.
Greenpeace International adviser Grant Rosoman … people had no idea their decking was coming from the destruction of people’s lives and forests. Image: Newsroom
In the late 1980s and early 1990s he worked to halt the importation of kwila coming from Indigenous communities in Malaysia, at one point chaining himself to a log at a Christchurch timber yard. His campaigning succeeded.
“We managed to drop imports down to a fifth of what they were and to raise awareness of the issue. Because people had no idea their decking was coming from the destruction of people’s lives and forests. And it’s a bit the same with Papua.”
As a senior adviser to Greenpeace International, he tells Newsroom he is shocked a fellow New Zealander is involved in this – and warns the impact of losing a forest this size during a climate crisis will be catastrophic.
The Rainbow Warrior III sailing on the Boven Digul River in Papua. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
“If we lose this forest then we don’t survive climate change. That’s how important it is for everyone.”
He says all New Zealanders should be concerned about what’s going on over there.
“This is the first time I have come across a New Zealander investing in tropical rainforest destruction.”
But, isn’t it a bit rich for someone from Aotearoa New Zealand — a country that has systematically wiped out two thirds of its native forest in favour of naked rolling landscape covered in cows and a tidal wave of urban housing — to pass judgment when another country seeks to make money from its primary resources?
“We in Aotearoa made the mistake of clearing most of our lowland forest and now there are massive very costly national and local programmes to restore the forest that has been lost. We don’t want Papua to make the same mistake, especially for the local customary communities that are so reliant on and spiritually tied to their forests. The local communities are telling us this,” says Rosoman, who adds that they instead support local enterprises that protect the forest but also generate an income, such as sago, medicinal plants and spices, and ecotourism.
“Destroying the forests of Papua for the benefit a few wealthy Indonesian elites or foreign investors like Neville Mahon is not development.”
Destruction of virgin peatland rainforest by the Tanah Merah logging and palm oil project in Papua. The photos show new road networks leading into vast areas of untouched, virgin rainforest, indicating where operations are likely to expand. Image: Greenpeace
Atlas of destruction New Guinea’s landscape is extraordinary. Mangroves and peat swamps sit alongside tropical alpine grasslands and lush forests: a recently released study in Nature journal proclaims it as “the most floristically diverse island in the world”, home to more than 13,000 species of plants.
It is the world’s largest tropical island, with 83 percent of Indonesian New Guinea supporting old-growth forest, and the third largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo.
But Indonesia, the fourth largest emitter of carbon, carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions and by far the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, is running out of arable land to grow the fruit.
Members of the Indigenous Auyu community in their ancestral forest in Boven Digoel, Papua. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
The thing about palm forests is they have a shelf life — after 25 to 30 years these vast monocrops begin to fail because the soil no longer holds up.
In the last few decades around 21 million hectares of Indonesian land has been relinquished to plantation companies. To put that in perspective, Aotearoa New Zealand’s landmass totals 26.8 million hectares.
Used in everything from biscuits and shampoo to biofuel and supplementary feed for Kiwi cows, palm oil made the Southeast Asian country $23 billion last year — and Papua is Indonesia’s final frontier for this moneymaker.
After laying waste to millions of hectares of primary forest in Borneo and Sumatra, this island is the last remaining opportunity to exploit the primary forest for timber and to grow colossal tracts of palm oil monocrops to feed the demand for the ubiquitous product.
Deforestation accounts for the bulk of Indonesia’s CO2 emissions, and this month Indonesia cancelled an agreement it had with Norway to halt deforestation in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental protection incentives.
A meeting with Mahon Mahon told Newsroom he couldn’t speak on behalf of the company, but did eventually meet us at a Newmarket café so he could address some of the allegations reported about him in overseas media.
He orders tea and agrees to let us take notes.
Mahon disputes the four main accusations: that he has a majority shareholding in Digoel Agri Group, that the company has an interest in timber, that the concession area is rainforest at all, and that the land is being used to grow oil palms.
He says the claims are all “bullshit”, and can’t figure out why anyone in New Zealand would be curious about the topic: “What the hell….it’s in Indonesia, it’s in the back end of nowhere, what is the interest here?”
When asked why he hadn’t attempted to rectify the inaccuracies before, he says: “These people are so nasty that even if you tried to correct it, you’d just get yourself into a worse mess.”
By “these people” he means reporters and organisations like Greenpeace International.
“There are people that are out there that are paid to cause that sort of trouble. I mean that’s the reality, they’ll seize on anything.”
Throughout our conversation Mahon repeatedly denies that the area the Digoel Agri concessions cover is rainforest.
“There’s no virgin rainforest in there whatsoever. That’s actually just complete and utter bullshit. That area was cleared out by Malaysians 35 years ago. I mean, it’s just a stupid allegation to start with. If it was a rainforest, I can assure you my partner and my children wouldn’t even want to walk out the door.”
A road running between rainforest and new palm oil plantations as part of the Tanah Merah project in Papua. Image: Greenpeace
We put this to Grant Rosoman, the forest protector from Greenpeace. He tells Newsroom this is “patently incorrect”, and points to satellite images, aerial photos, field visits and an assessment of timber that all show the concession area is predominantly primary forest.
French environmental scientist Dr David Gaveau, who lived in Indonesia for 15 years and has also been to the area in question, backs this up. He set up Nusantara-Atlas.org for exactly this reason.
“In April I saw that the clearing [in Boven Digoel] had continued since I first looked at it two months before. That’s the whole point of the system, to be able to demonstrate a conservation outcome. Consumers don’t want the food they eat to be causing deforestation.
“The companies have understood this and they’ve signed on these no deforestation pledges. So what we’re doing is developing a system that can verify these pledges on a near real-time basis.”
Environmental scientist Dr David Gaveau over primary forest in Boven Digoel. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
The platform works as an alert system so officials, NGOs or anyone with a computer and an internet connection can see what’s happening.
“These forests are becoming a very rare resource. And we all know they are an important part of the world’s ecosystems for earth to thrive and for humans to thrive. And so why is it still happening? Why is New Zealand even involved in this?”
‘Majority’ shareholder But just how involved really is Neville Mahon? In international reports, he is listed as a majority shareholder in Digoel Agri Group, something he strenuously denies at our meeting.
He tells Newsroom he and his family own just “seven to eight percent” of the company.
“It would be quite nice if we did own it,” he says with a laugh. “The reality is we don’t, but my family have a small shareholding,”
Instead, he says he temporarily “fronted” the company when it was first set up.
“What happened was about five or six years ago when the opportunity came up from an Indonesian family I basically sorted a deal out and then I had to pass most of it on. I just didn’t have the money to fund it. But the problem is it was my name there on day one. And so everybody seized on my name.”
Newsroom sought companies records for Digoel Agri Group from the Indonesian government via four separate sources. All documents have been vetted as legitimate and all four — one from 2018, another from 2019 and two from this year — show Mahon as a majority shareholder.
Whatever his exact beneficial shareholding, or exactly how it is configured, what our investigation can confirm is that he was forecast to receive profits from rainforest timber production into the millions this year.
Another contentious issue is the intended land use. Mahon takes a sip of his tea and leans over the table. The company’s shareholders are only interested in bare land and agriculture, not timber, he tells us.
By agriculture, does he mean palm oil plantations?
“What the Indonesian government is motivated towards is food. They’re importing something like 70 percent of their food. So our interest is to put rice, soya beans, sorghum, cattle, you know, whatever we can on it because you’re on the back door of 240 million people.”
But documents from the Indonesian government obtained by Newsroom and translated into English are clear: the concessions attached to the Digoel Agri Group subsidiary companies are expressly for logging and palm oil.
For food crops to be planted, they would need new permits to be issued.
Another palm oil concession within the Tanah Merah project. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
Finally, we wanted to know about the trees. Reports indicate the timber involved in the Tanah Merah project is estimated to be worth US$6 billion, and a sawmill owned by Malaysian logging giant Shin Yang has reportedly been set up on the island.
Mahon says he has “no interest” in the wood: “We have nothing to do with the forestry at all, nothing to do with it. This is just regrowth, which hasn’t even got a lot of value because it’s not, for example, mahogany. What you’ve got to remember is I, or my shareholders, have got no interest in that side of it at all.”
Yet in a judgment issued by the High Court at Auckland in June in a bankruptcy proceedings case against Mahon, Justice Sussock writes of Mahon referring in his evidence to the possibility of security being provided at some future date “from a debt that is due to [him] from a joint venture forestry operation” and that Mahon says “there are monies due to [him] in terms of loans as well as an equity interest in the forestry operation”.
(Greenpeace and NGO Pusaka, which advocates for Indigenous communities in Indonesia, are currently investigating where the logs from the Digoel Agri Group concessions are going.)
When pressed on these issues, Mahon said the best thing we could do is to email him a list of questions and he would send them to the company’s managing director in Indonesia for a response.
So we did.
A spokesperson from Digoel Agri Group, Jones Rumangkang, wrote to Newsroom that the company has business permits to develop “less than 78,630 hectares” — two of their three concessions. (It is unknown what they plan to do with the third concession.)
He writes that they pay attention to, “the principles of sustainability through the NDPE approach in accordance with our sustainability policy.” NDPE is a palm oil industry led initiative which stands for No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation.
Rumangkang also backed up Mahon’s claim that he is a minority investor, and said the company is committed to following all relevant environmental and consent regulations, including agreement from the local Indigenous communities.
“We have obtained approval from the indigenous peoples who control the land we are working on. We also do not develop areas that are sacred and have local cultural values as well as hunting areas and areas that are a source of staple food such as sago forests.”
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According to an in-depth report released by Greenpeace International in May this year, Indonesian law states that Indigenous land can only be surrendered to a plantation company through musyawarah (a consensus decision-making process), but that this did not occur in the case of the Tanah Merah project.
A member of the Indigenous Auyu community in his ancestral forest in Boven Digoel, Papua. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
Instead, police and representatives turned up to the villages handing out envelopes full of cash. There was no clarity around what these were for, but the project to clearfell their land has divided once close Indigenous clans.
The effects can be seen in a film, The Secret Deal to Destroy Paradise, in which locals talk of not being able to carry out their traditional way of life and practices such as hunting, fishing, gathering and processing sago.
“It feels like the clouds have fallen. All destroyed in an instant. What will be the fate of our grandchildren?” asks the chief of the Auyu clan, Bonevasius Hamnagi.
United Arab Emirates-owned companies with concessions in the same Tanah Merah project have already displaced some traditional hunting grounds.
“It used to be customary indigenous forest,” says Mikael Felix Mamon of Anggai village, as he stands before a seemingly endless array of uniform oil palm saplings sitting atop the bare ochre earth, waiting to be planted.
“It used to be a place for hunting. We searched for pigs or other animals. Fishing. And a source of drinking water. We could find these things quite freely. Now the indigenous people looking for food to fulfill our basic needs must go a long way. Further inland. Because our forest around here is gone.”
And agreements to create health, education, facilities, clean water, housing and electricity have not been fulfilled.
Members of the Indigenous Auyu community in Boven Digoel, Papua. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
Grant Rosoman says this is a common occurrence in Papua and that companies can make up to US$2000 per hectare per year while paying locals less than US$10 per hectare in a one-off payment for taking their land.
“The impact on the community — we are hearing from them and from the local NGOs that are supporting the community — is huge. And if we look at the concessions that have already been developed in that area, their loss of livelihood, their rights not being respected, their sacred sites being desecrated and destroyed, and their food and water sources being destroyed as well.”
And many locals are pushing back against the corporations, people like longtime environmental activist Bustar Maitar, who leads campaigns in Papua to protect the ecosystems through the EcoNusa Foundation, and clan leaders who have been coming together to put pressure on the government to stop the deforestation.
A political situation There have also been long running debates about whether the Tanah Merah permits to log and plant palm oil have been obtained legally.
According to the NGO Pusaka, permits have not been issued for Digoel Agri to clear the land and is calling on the Indonesian government to take steps to halt the destruction.
They claim that because the original permits were not issued in accordance with the correct process, including the consent of local indigenous people, this would mean the forest clearing happening under Digoel Agri is illegal.
Franky Samperante, director of Indigenous rights NGO Pusaka. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
When Newsroom contacted Pusaka director Franky Samperante, he was firm in his request to international players like Neville Mahon.
“I found that the companies are carrying out eviction of the forests and important places of indigenous peoples without the consent of many communities, they are threatened with losing their sources of food and livelihoods.
“We ask the government and companies to be consistent with regulations and commitments to sustainable development, by not doing deforestation, violating human rights and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples.”
Indonesia is no stranger to human rights controversy. According to Amnesty International reports, at least 100,000 West Papuans have been reported killed by the Indonesian authorities since the takeover in the 1960s.
Everyone Newsroom spoke to was reluctant to answer questions about the Indonesian government’s involvement in deforestation.
But without government approval, these individual companies would never be allowed to bring in the bulldozers, so isn’t this, in fact, a political situation?
“Papua as a sensitive place for the Indonesian government,” says Greenpeace’s Grant Rosoman. “And there are rights abuses that are going on. They’re being documented by some of the media that’s coming out and it’s a very unsafe place. So there is a lot of fear about speaking out about Papua and what’s going on there.”
“We focus on the deforestation and we can monitor that from satellites so we can see what’s going on and we don’t believe it’s a good thing for a New Zealander like Neville Mahon to be there destroying the forest and basically staining the reputation of all New Zealanders in the process of doing it.”
Since our café meeting with Mahon, we have contacted him several times in an attempt to reconcile his statements to us with what’s on the official documents.
We again received a reply from the company saying he has a small beneficial shareholding.
In the meantime, the bulldozers continue their work while activists and people like Rosoman try to keep them at bay.
“It’s not acceptable to be clearing rainforest in this day and age. We’re in 2021, we’re in a climate emergency. There’s plenty of other land where you can develop businesses. We do not need to clear rainforest for business anymore. It shouldn’t be done.”
Produced by Newsroom with the support of NZ on Air. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of Newsroom and investigations editor Melanie Reid.
