West Papuan Civil Society Calls For UN And Pacific Access To Region

Johnny
Blades RNZ Pacific senior journalist

West
Papuan civil society organisations have called on Indonesia
to allow access to their region for the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, and to open up genuine,
inclusive dialogue.

Claims of persistent human rights
abuses continue as violent conflict has deepened in the
rugged interior of the Indonesian-controlled Papua region in
recent months, causing an increasing number of Internally
Displaced People (IDPs).

In recent weeks, numerous
Pacific countries have echoed the 2019 call by the Pacific
Islands Forum (PIF) for Indonesia to allow the UN rights
office to visit Papua to assess claims of widespread rights
abuses.

Seven years on and the visit is yet to occur,
although Indonesia’s government told RNZ Pacific last month
the visit remains “on track”.

However, the patience of
Pacific island countries has been tested – the call was
again made at last month’s PIF summit by the countries in
the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) bloc.

Human
rights advocacy group Elsham Papua’s director Paul Mambrasar
said that the request is one of a series of calls to action
and demands the civil society groups have made.

“The
first one is unconditional international access by the UN
body, and also from representatives from MSG and PIF, which
is the result of the recent communiqué to visit West
Papua,” Mambrasar said.

“It is an invitation which
needs to be made by Indonesia.”

Speaking at this
month’s UN General Assembly in response to recent calls by
Pacific governments, including Solomon Islands and Vanuatu,
Indonesian diplomat Nona Gae Luna said the government “takes
all credible claims of human rights violations
seriously”.

“Our national institutions and legal
mechanisms, including the Independent National Human Rights
Commission, is working continuously to address such
allegations,” she said.

West Papuan human rights
defender Rosa Moiwend said Jakarta has long dismissed
concerns about rights issues in Papua.

“The Indonesian
government is always promoting the positive image of the
human rights situation in West Papua, while the real
situation on the ground is still getting worse, especially
around the military operations and the impact to the
people,” Moiwend said.

“We now have like 127,000 IDPs
waiting for the right time to go back home, and this is
something that happened for a long time.”

Access to
Papua is also restricted for international humanitarian
organisations who could help the IDPs.

Jakarta’s
sensitivity over any attempts to internationalise the Papua
issue was evident at the UN.

“Arrangements for any
visit by the High Commissioner should be agreed between the
host state and the office of the High Commissioner – they
are not set by a third (party) or any regional body,” Gae
Luna said.

Nonetheless, Moiwend said the renewed
Pacific Islands push for access to West Papua was welcome
and timely.

“This is very consistent because the
leaders already made a communiqué before, and the West
Papuans, especially the CSOs, was really happy with that
because the consistency is still there,” she
said.

“However, they need a clear action, and they
also urged the Indonesian government to respond
constructively with the statement made by the
leaders.”

Military forces

Mambrasar said the
renewed call by Pacific countries is also timely because
Papua is now more militarised than ever as Indonesian troops
deploy
in greater numbers to fight the disparate guerrilla
forces of the West Papua Liberation Army.

“They use
more advanced military equipment to fight insurgencies. They
now have drone unit, and then, for example, they now use
aeroplane to bomb the insurgent fighters,” he said of the
evolving tech used by Indonesia’s military
(TNI).

“They use the Brazilian-made Super (Tucano)
Toucan aeroplane to bomb. It’s not only a law and order
issue, which in the past has been the main domain of the
police, but now the military is also engaged.”

The
Indonesian government considers the Liberation Army to be an
armed criminal group, and rarely refers to the Papuan
struggle for independence.

Gae Luna underlined that
Indonesia makes no apologies for the presence of security
forces in Papua

“Any serious discussion of Papua must
reflect the full picture. Innocent civilians, teachers,
health workers, and many others have fallen victim to
violence by armed criminal groups.

“Indonesia has a
responsibility to protect all of its citizens. Law
enforcement must and will remain subject to Indonesia’s laws
and our international human rights
obligations.”

Dialogue

One of the other calls
by the civil society groups is for a credible, inclusive,
and meaningful political dialogue to resolve the root causes
of the Papuan conflict permanently,

Mambrasar said
that Jakarta may ignore the troubled history of Papua’s
incorporation into Indonesia, but each new generation of
Papuans comes back to the problem, and that needs to be
acknowledged.

“When you engage with issues otherwise,
you’ll go nowhere,” he told RNZ Pacific.

“Because it’s
been going for decades, and young generations of Papua keep
on coming, emitting the same issue, so we’re going in same
thing over and over again.

“So, what Indonesia must do
now is to sit and invite all the genuine representatives of
West Papuans to sit and talk, and you know to discuss the
best ways to go forward.

“Once you sit together and
you know equally, and you see West Papuans as human beings,
then you know we can find something.

“I believe things
have happened in East Timor in South Africa and in some
parts of Africa and South America, why don’t we just look at
those experience and maybe pick up one or two, and we can
use it
here.”

© Scoop Media