Jakarta disperses peaceful human rights protests in Papua

Amnesty International called on world leaders – meeting today and tomorrow in Bali – to press for respect for human rights in Indonesia. The UN Human Rights Council has been collecting reports from the government and civil society in recent days. Violence against the civilian population has increased in the last biennium.

Jayapura () – The G20 leaders, who are participating today and tomorrow in the Bali summit, “should ask the Indonesian government to comply with its obligations to respect and protect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association “. This was the statement issued today by Usman Hamid, Executive Director of Amnesty International Indonesia, after law enforcement broke up peaceful protests aimed at drawing international attention to the conflict in Papua province and human rights violations. by Jakarta.

On Twitter, human rights activist Veronica Koman denounced the arrest of at least 18 protesters in Jayapura and called for the intervention of the UN Human Rights Council.

It should be mentioned that on November 9, the 41st session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was held in Geneva, a periodic review program of the human rights situation in the 193 UN member states. The activists questioned the statements of the Indonesian government representative, Justice Minister Yasonna Laoly, as they considered them to be “contrary to the real situation, which Indonesian civil society has reported through an alternative report.” Regarding the situation in Papua, explained the head of local Amnesty campaigns, Nurina Savitri, “the government has only reported the situation from the point of view of infrastructure development and welfare, despite the fact that the violence continues “.

The island of New Guinea is divided into three: the easternmost part is Papua New Guinea, an independent state; in the center is the large province of Papua, while the extreme west forms West Papua. These last two regions belong to Indonesia, but since the 1960s there has been a permanent conflict against the Indonesian government, from which the armed liberation movements have demanded the creation of an independent Greater Papua. In 1962, Indonesia annexed the resource-rich territory in a referendum that was labeled a sham. In 1965 several militias united under the umbrella of the Free Papua Movement (Free Papua Movement, FPM). Yesterday, at least seven Papuan students were arrested for waving the blue and white striped flag with the star on a red field, the emblem of the FPM.

Previously, in March of this year, the UN had denounced the abuses perpetrated by the government against the Papuan aborigines -extrajudicial disappearances and murders, including of minors, among other cases. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a conflict monitoring program, during 2021 violence increased by 80% compared to 2020. In addition, since 2018, armed confrontations have spread outside the area traditional geographical area in which the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the main armed group in the region, operates.

In the past two years, direct violence against Papuan civilians by both state forces and TPNPB militiamen has also increased. Indonesian security forces suppressed and dispersed peaceful Papuan-led protests more frequently than others in which they were not involved.