News & issues

UK may normalise defence ties with Indonesia

Financial Times (UK) - March 30, 2006

Shawn Donnan, Jakarta – British Prime Minister Tony Blair signalled on Thursday that London would normalise its defence ties with Indonesia, saying in Jakarta that the two countries were entering a "new relationship".

Mr Blair's comments came after a meeting with Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, during which he praised the former general's leadership and Indonesia's role as a moderate voice in the Islamic world.

Mr Blair said the UK wanted to strengthen its defence and anti- terrorism ties with Indonesia and in doing so, would change its defence policy towards Indonesia. The UK has previously limited sales of arms and other military equipment as a result of past human rights violations by the Indonesian military.

Mr Blair didn't elaborate on how the policy would be changed, but said: "We want in defence terms now to treat Indonesia as it should be, as a friend and as an ally."

British officials had said earlier that closer defence ties could allow moves such as joint military exercises but might not immediately lead to arms sales.

Mr Blair said the UK and Indonesia would set up a joint Islamic council with participation from religious leaders in both countries. He also met with a number of Islamic leaders and visited an Islamic boarding school on Thursday.

During his meeting with Indonesia's Islamic leaders, he faced criticism over British policy on Iraq and Palestinians' new Hamas-led government.

Azyumardi Azra, a leading Islamic scholar and rector of Indonesia's State Islamic University, appealed for Mr Blair to engage Hamas.

"If Britain is committed to democracy, then they have to deal with Hamas who has been elected by the Palestinian people. You cannot ignore them," said Mr Azra. He also urged Mr Blair to pull British troops from Iraq so they can be replaced by UN peacekeeping forces.

Blair's visit – the last leg in his one-week tour that has also taken him to Australia and New Zealand – comes just over two weeks after Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, visited Jakarta where she praised Indonesia's efforts in fighting terrorism and improving democracy. The US resumed military ties with Indonesia last year.

Muslim protests ahead of Blair's Indonesia visit

Reuters - March 29, 2006

Jakarta – About 100 Indonesian Muslim hardliners staged a protest outside the British embassy on Wednesday ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Tony Blair to the world's most populous Islamic nation.

Blair is the first British leader to visit Indonesia in more than two decades since Margaret Thatcher in 1985. He is due to arrive in Jakarta from New Zealand on Wednesday evening.

"We see Britain as an invader," said Muhammad Rahmat, one of the protesters from the Hizbut Tahrir group, referring to the British government's involvement in Iraq. One protester wore a rubber mask resembling Blair's face and a sign around his neck saying: "I killed 120,000 Iraqi people."

Relations between Britain and Indonesia have been generally cordial, and there has been greater anti-terror cooperation between them despite Jakarta's quite vocal opposition to Britain's involvement in the war on Iraq.

Blair's visit is expected to boost bilateral cooperation as Western nations seek to build ties with moderate Muslims. In a bid to court Muslims in Indonesia, Blair is expected to meet leading Islamic scholars and visit a Muslim boarding school during his two-day trip.

After two hours, the protesters left the embassy which lies opposite Jakarta's main roundabout and staged another rally outside the Australian embassy to condemn Canberra's decision last week to grant temporary visas to 42 Papuans.

The 42 West Papuans landed on Australia's northern Cape York in a traditional dugout boat in January. Australia's Immigration Department said last week that they had a well-founded fear of persecution and issued them temporary protection visas.

Indonesia back on the world stage

Asia Times - March 30, 2006

Michael Vatikiotis, Singapore – It was a potentially sticky situation. There was Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda standing beside Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, on her recent visit to Jakarta, and the subject was Iran. The reporter asked: "Do you think the idea of an eventual Iranian nuclear bomb is inevitable?"

Given Jakarta's protracted efforts to restore close relations with Washington so that it may resume buying state-of-the-art military equipment and train its officers in the US, this was a potentially awkward moment.

But by Indonesia's top diplomat, it was taken as an opportunity to declare Indonesia's traditionally strong sense of independence. Like Iran, Indonesia is a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, he said. The treaty supports the rights of NPT parties to develop nuclear technology for peaceful uses, he added. Then he reminded Rice that he had recently visited Tehran and that the Iranian foreign minister had just visited Jakarta. On both occasions he had told the Iranians that Indonesia "would be among the first to tell Iran not to put their peaceful nuclear uses to developing nuclear weapons".

What on earth is Indonesia doing going anywhere near the Iran issue at a time when the United States is cheering, not chiding, Jakarta's counter-terrorism efforts and is considering negotiations toward a bilateral free-trade agreement? Why, too, would Indonesia go out of its way at a recent meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors in Vienna to ask that more time be given Iran to assure concerned parties that its development of nuclear technology is truly for peaceful purposes?

Welcome to the brave new world of Indonesian foreign policy. The international community has only just started to focus on Indonesia's successful democratic transition, the economy is only just recovering from nearly a decade of malaise and crisis, and the business community is waiting with genuine expectation for the government's "war on corruption" to be won. But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is an impatient man – he wants Indonesia to make its mark on the world now.

"We are the fourth-most-populous nation in the world. We are home to the world's largest Muslim population. We are the world's third-largest democracy. We are also a country where democracy, Islam and modernity go hand in hand," Yudhoyono declared last May in his first major foreign-policy speech. "And our heart is always with the developing world, to which we belong. These are the things that define who we are and what we do in the community of nations."

In fact, what Yudhoyono aims to do is pretty ambitious. Bringing democracy to Myanmar comes high up the list. So, too, does helping Palestinians win their statehood from Israel. Then there is North Korea: the president wants to visit Pyongyang and has already sent an envoy to the hermit state to try to restart stalled security talks between the two Koreas. And if dealing with one end of the "axis of evil" isn't risky enough, Indonesia has also flagged its intention to help reconcile Iran with the West, exemplified by Wirajuda's visit to Tehran last month, and thereafter by at least two high-level visits by Iranian officials to Jakarta.

Talk to many Indonesians about Yudhoyono's foreign-policy objectives and they will argue that the country simply isn't ready to take on the world. There are too many priorities at home: sorting out the economy, combating corruption, resolving internal conflicts and curbing Islamic militancy, to name just a few. Realists and pragmatists such as former foreign minister Ali Alatas argue that Indonesia is weak and has no clout in the international community. "Who would listen?" Alatas asks, though he recently served as a special envoy to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Fortunately for Yudhoyono, the United States is listening. Indonesia's democratic and moderate Islamic credentials appeal to Washington, which is also on the lookout for a strategic counterbalance to China in the region.

"Your challenge now is to expand the peace, the opportunity and the freedom that we see in much of Southeast Asia to all of Southeast Asia," Rice said in a speech to an Indonesian international-relations forum during her mid-March visit to Jakarta. "The United States is eager to work with ASEAN through our new enhanced partnership, and we look to Indonesia... to play a leadership role in Southeast Asia and in the dynamic changing East Asia."

Perhaps of all the remarkable transformations Indonesia has made over the past six years, its return to the diplomatic stage is potentially the most significant for the rest of Asia. Indonesia's hard-won democratic credentials could help promote and defend democracy and human rights in the region, its non- aligned credentials can amplify the voice of the developing world and, last but by no means least, Indonesia's status as the largest Muslim democracy could have a positive impact on the Islamic world and help bridge the growing divide with the Western world.

It's often hard for the outside world to appreciate just how far Indonesia has come since the 1998 fall of former president Suharto. The 2004 presidential election in Indonesia crowned a six-year-long political transition to democracy. Widespread fears of communal violence and administrative chaos proved unfounded. Incoming President Yudhoyono quickly established a government with serious policies aimed at tackling corruption, improving welfare and cementing representative democracy in place. His ability and resolve to pursue these goals in the face of the tsunami that hit Indonesia harder than any other Asian country and of ongoing terrorist attacks is nothing short of remarkable.

In his first year in office, Yudhoyono made several tough policy choices, among them his decision to pursue peace in Aceh province. The Helsinki agreement signed last August brought a halt to almost three decades of conflict in Aceh and potentially helped to set a precedent for using local autonomy as a way to settle protracted irredentist conflicts in the wider region, including for insurgency-racked southern Thailand. Less obviously, the new Indonesian government has set about fashioning an active foreign policy that, if successfully implemented, could see Indonesia emerge as a strong advocate for global peace and other humanitarian issues. Yudhoyono says he wants to be "a peacemaker, confidence-builder, problem-solver, bridge-builder".

This activism is not new for Indonesia. Although obscured for much of the past 30 years, Indonesia has historically played a constructive role in world and regional affairs. In 1955 Indonesia connected Asia with Africa through the Bandung Conference, which in effect elevated the role of the developing world in international affairs. In 1967, Indonesia was instrumental in bringing the non-communist countries of Southeast Asia together to form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In the 1980s, Indonesia initiated and helped see through the regional diplomatic effort that brought peace to Cambodia.

But the world has tended to view Indonesia through a rather different lens. The unfortunate history of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor after 1975 and the rough handling of internal conflicts in Aceh and Papua have seen tough military crackdowns on irredentism and widespread human-rights abuses, for which no one has truly been held responsible. Although Washington recently restored military-to-military ties, US officials are still waiting for Jakarta to prosecute the military officers culpable for the horrific violence that attended East Timor's separation from Indonesia in 1999. This kind of record doesn't easily make for credible peacemaking or bridge-building – and the recent upsurge of unrest in Papua points to obstacles ahead.

Then, too, there are plenty of domestic obstacles to effective policymaking. Yudhoyono's policy advisers are full of good ideas and intentions but lack the capacity to implement them. Indonesia's political culture militates against initiative-taking and effective delegation. Bureaucratic backbiting and petty jealousies plague the system and hinder creativity. Yudhoyono's team of talented advisers are constantly putting out small domestic fires and beating off damaging allegations of personal gain, which at times makes it hard to focus on complex foreign- policy issues.

However, there are distinct signs of change. Wirajuda has helped bring a measure of pride and prestige to the once-dispirited Foreign Ministry. He has promoted younger diplomats and given his aides more responsibility. Plum foreign postings are advertised and healthy competition for the posts is encouraged. Indonesia's new ambassadors to Australia and the United Kingdom are both relatively young high fliers.

Indonesia's new-age diplomats are also spending less time defending the indefensible. The armed forces have so far stayed out of sensitive political decisions and supported the Aceh peace process; as a rule the army and police no longer shoot demonstrators; and militants held responsible for acts of violence are being brought to justice through the courts rather than the streets. Some reflexive instincts are hard to change, though. The government is still barring journalists and human- rights workers from the restive Papua region.

Some initiatives are bearing fruit in modest ways. After Yudhoyono's controversial visit to Myanmar, that country's ruling military junta has announced that it will send its foreign minister to a newly established bilateral commission aimed at expediting Myanmar's slow progress to democracy. Human-rights activists have criticized the Indonesian government for engaging with the military regime in Yangon on the grounds that urgent issues such as the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi were not pressed. But the Indonesian Foreign Ministry argues that engagement and gradual persuasion are more effective agents of change. "If we become harder on Myanmar, they [will] close themselves even more," commented Foreign Ministry spokesman Desra Percaya.

It's a gamble because Myanmar's generals have proved skillful at using engagement as a delaying tactic. But this is not to say that Jakarta is turning soft on autocracy. In January Wirajuda called on the military junta in Myanmar to fulfill its pledge to introduce democracy. "Myanmar is disturbing the balance" of ASEAN, Wirajuda told the media in Jakarta. "And because of that we are asking it to show concrete steps toward democracy."

Indonesia's advantage as a pressure point on Myanmar is that it has no strategic interests at play on mainland Southeast Asia. Other nearby democracies such as Thailand and India find that economic and strategic interests inhibit them from advocating political change in Myanmar. Neither is Jakarta so closely bound to Beijing economically and culturally; its sheer size gives Indonesia something of a license to tweak the dragon's tail. Non-alignment may be out of fashion, but it was noticeable how Rice was greeted on her recent visit to Jakarta by editorials that positioned Indonesia as a friend, rather than an ally, of the United States.

Indonesia is also managing in a modest way to engage constructively with the more militant Islamic world. In the past few weeks Jakarta has hosted high-profile visits from the Iranian vice president and foreign minister. There are risks and opportunities for Indonesia: engaging with the militant fringe will fuel suspicions about Indonesia's own considerable fundamentalist problem. A recent poll in Jakarta revealed that more than 11% of people surveyed believe that suicide bombings against civilian targets can be justified. The opportunity is for Indonesia's moderate mainstream to start influencing the rest of the Muslim world.

On balance the latter is more important, as Indonesia's own struggle against conservative Islamic forces lends credibility to its push for tolerance and reform in the wider Muslim world. For this reason Indonesia's democratic transition could potentially be far more important than anything the administration of US President George W Bush can do in the Middle East to implant democracy.

[Michael Vatikiotis is a former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. He is currently a visiting research fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.]

Police Chief: Foreigners trying to split Indonesia apart

Tempo Interactive - March 28, 2006

Budiriza, Jakarta – Indonesian Police Chief, Sutanto has said he assumes that rumors spread by foreign parties are aimed at splitting Indonesia apart.

He called on all elements of the nation not to be provoked because this would only further the interests of the foreign parties.

"This provocation from outside parties is extremely cruel," Sutanto told the press at Sari Pan Pacific Hotel, after his speech at a State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) CEO gathering.

Sutanto said there were clear indications of the involvement of foreign NGOs, especially Australia NGOs, in the Abepura riot. This is shown by the protests against PT Freeport Indonesia's activities which occurred in many places at the same time. "You can see it yourself," he said.

Sutanto asked all community elements to be firm and bond against these foreign efforts. "We must not become the tools of foreign parties, as this would cause losses," he said According to him, the rumor of the deaths of 16 Cendrawasih University students is mere slander. "I ask that this rumor not be repeated," said Sutanto.

Muslim protests ahead of Blair's Indonesia visit

Reuters - March 29, 2006

Jakarta – About 100 Indonesian Muslim hardliners staged a protest outside the British embassy on Wednesday ahead of a visit by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the world's most populous Islamic nation.

Blair is the first British leader to visit Indonesia in more than two decades since Margaret Thatcher in 1985. He is due to arrive in Jakarta from New Zealand on Wednesday evening.

"We see Britain as an invader," said Muhammad Rahmat, one of the protesters from the Hizbut Tahrir group, referring to the British government's involvement in Iraq.

One protester wore a rubber mask resembling Blair's face and a sign around his neck saying: "I killed 120,000 Iraqi people." Relations between Britain and Indonesia have been generally cordial, and there has been greater anti-terror cooperation between them despite Jakarta's quite vocal opposition to Britain's involvement in the war on Iraq.

Blair's visit is expected to boost bilateral cooperation as Western nations seek to build ties with moderate Muslims.

In a bid to court Muslims in Indonesia, Blair is expected to meet leading Islamic scholars and visit a Muslim boarding school during his two-day trip.

After two hours, the protesters left the embassy which lies opposite Jakarta's main roundabout and staged another rally outside the Australian embassy to condemn Canberra's decision last week to grant temporary visas to 42 Papuans.

The 42 West Papuans landed on Australia's northern Cape York in a traditional dugout boat in January. Australia's Immigration Department said last week that they had a well-founded fear of persecution and issued them temporary protection visas.

Suharto avoids international tribunal

Associated Press - March 28, 2006

Slobodan Lekic – The spotlight of international justice has shone on Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic to hold them accountable for alleged war crimes. But many are asking: what about Suharto?

Indonesia's dictator for 32 years is widely believed responsible for the deaths of twice as many people as the former Iraqi and Serbian leaders combined, yet he lives freely in a posh residential district of Jakarta.

"Suharto certainly belongs in the same category as Milosevic or Saddam as far as crimes against humanity are concerned," said Dede Oetomo, a human rights activist and professor at Airlangga University in Surabaya.

"He receives preferential treatment in the West because he delivered Indonesia to them during the Cold War, while nobody in the political class here sees any benefit in pursuing him."

Critics say Suharto's and other cases highlight an inconsistency that lends credibility to charges that the trials in The Hague and Baghdad are "victors' justice."

In Iraq, Saddam's tumultuous trial is continuing in fits and spurts, while the effort to bring Milosevic to justice came to an abrupt halt this month when he died in custody at the International War Crimes Tribunal.

But Suharto, 85, is among half a dozen former despots around the world who have managed to evade or delay justice for their alleged misdeeds.

They include Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam, who directed the "Red Terror" of the 1970s but now lives comfortably in exile in Zimbabwe, and Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose security forces murdered thousands of leftists and other political opponents from 1973 to 1990. He is free on bail after being charged in a tax-evasion case.

Liberia's new government is urging Nigeria to extradite exiled warlord Charles Taylor, accused of causing tens of thousands of deaths during its civil war. And in Cambodia, no Khmer Rouge figure has stood trial for the death of an estimated 1.7 million people between 1975-79. It weakens the deterrent force of war crimes tribunals, said Dr. Harold Crouch, an expert on Indonesia at the Australian National University.

"Obviously the deterrent value would be much greater if they indicted all these people," Crouch said. "But Suharto always did what the West wanted him to do; that's the main difference between him and Saddam and Milosevic."

Suharto was an unknown two-star general in 1965 when he put down a still-unexplained military mutiny which he attributed to leftist officers.

In the confusion that followed, Suharto seized power from the legal government and launched a purge in which at least a half million people, mostly communists, socialists, trade unionists and other leftists, were executed.

As he tightened his grip, Suharto quickly gained support from Washington and other Western capitals, which viewed him as a bulwark against communism in Southeast Asia.

Washington facilitated Indonesia's 1969 takeover of the former Dutch colony of West Papua, and acquiesced in its 1975 invasion of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. The long wars that followed have claimed 200,000 lives in West Papua, human rights monitors say, and 183,000 in East Timor according to a UN and East Timorese government report.

The number of innocent Iraqis who perished during Saddam's rule is usually put at over 300,000, with no precise statistics available. Milosevic's wars in former Yugoslavia are said to have claimed at least 200,000 lives, although some place the figure lower.

In Indonesia, several dozen officers have been tried on charges of killing of hundreds of civilians in East Timor and elsewhere during Suharto's time, but all were freed. "If you can't convict a captain, how can you convict his president?" said Crouch.

The leaders of Indonesia's fledgling democracy set out to try Suharto for corruption, gave up, and have never sought to bring him to justice for war crimes.

"The problem for any post-Suharto government is that it is difficult to bring him to trial... because he is still backed and supported by the military, which itself participated in the killings of tens of thousands of people," said Munarman, head of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation. Like Suharto, he goes by one name.

"The politicians have to be very careful. There is still a very real possibility the military could wrest back power," he said.

Rice still luxury for Malang residents

Jakarta Post - March 27, 2006

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Malang – Muati, 60, seems to enjoy preparing the tobacco, which she blends with other ingredients and puts inside a roll of cigarette paper.

After lighting it up, she drags in the smoke deeply, as she stares blankly in front of her house, with walls made of woven bamboo, measuring eight-by-four meters. It is located in Bekur hamlet, some 60 kilometers west of Malang city.

Although she has just recently observed the 40th day ritual following her husband's death, who succumbed to digestive and respiratory illnesses, Muati said she could not afford to relax if she wants to survive. She has to ignore the grief, and carry a crowbar again, to make ends meet.

The mother of one has to start climbing up the hill located behind her house. Equipped with the crowbar, she breaks limestone rocks atop the hill so that she can sell them to middlemen, from which the earnings are just enough to buy her staple food – rice, which is then mixed with gaplek (dried cassava), tiwul (ground gaplek) or corn.

The woman, who is in her 50s, has been in this situation for the past three years, when her husband, who was also a rock breaker, fell sick, and was only able to lie weakly at home.

Her strength is definitely not the equal of her late husband when he was healthy. He could fill a truck with rocks within a week, but that is not the case for Muati. "The quickest I can fill a truck is one month," she said.

She earns Rp 40,000 (US$4.00) per truckload from breaking the rocks. The money is used to buy 10 kilograms of rice to be mixed with gaplek, which must last for a month. However, if something goes wrong, Muati has to resort to onlygaplek with cabbage and instant noodles.

Muati is one of the poorest household heads of around 850 families, or 6,500 people, living in Bekur hamlet.

According to the Bekur hamlet chief, Misadi, around 40 percent of the villagers are unable to afford unmixed rice. "They only keep the rice or mix it with gaplek, corn or tiwul, and will only cook it when there is a ceremonial feast," said Misadi.

According to Misadi, when the 40 percent of residents in Bekur hamlet can only eat pure gaplek, the other 60 percent can be considered better off since they can still eat rice mixed with a 50:50 or 60:40 ratio of corn, gaplek or tiwul.

Due to the harsh geographical conditions of the area, which is situated on a limestone hill range and far from the regental capital, in addition to its soil condition, which is only suitable for growing corn, sugarcane and cassava, buying rice at prices ranging from Rp 4,200 to Rp 4,500 per kilogram is a luxury staple for local residents.

Juariyah, 30, Muati's neighbor in the hamlet located near the site of the planned Sengguruh reservoir, said that she could only buy a maximum of 20 kg of rice at Rp 4,200 per kg each month.

"The amount of rice, which will be mixed with corn, is just enough for me, my husband, my child and my nephew, who is staying with us. If we had the money, we'd surely opt for pure rice," said Juariyah.

Her husband, Subur, 33, who is also a rock breaker, is still strong, and is able to meet orders for truckloads of limestone each week, but most of the time he does it in 10 days. He can usually earn about Rp 200,000 per month.

They are fortunate, since their child and nephew are excused from paying school fees, enabling Juariyah to set aside some money from her husband's earnings.

Most of the villagers in Bekur and its neighboring village, Bandarangin, do not own land for growing crops.

According to Misadi, the total area of rice crops in both villages spans just one hectare. The rest of the villagers lease the land that will soon be dammed up to create a reservoir, on which they grow cassava, corn and sugarcane.

Land leases range from Rp 8,500 to Rp 25,000 per year. Residents can only grow crops in the dry season.

The moment they are harvested, corn will be directly dried, removed from its cob and later ground up, as will cassava – peeled, put out to dry and ground up to make gaplek flour, so it can be preserved and kept for two to three months.

In the rainy season, corn and cassava can be harvested twice a year, but during long dry seasons, the crops can only be harvested once a year due to the less fertile land in Pagak district.

The government has actually provided assistance in the form of the cash aid program of Rp 300,000 to each family once in three months, but recipients in both hamlets argue that it is still inadequate to meet their basic needs.

The residents have also been provided with the rice-for-the-poor assistance, but must wait their turn for five months to obtain 10 kg of the government-subsidized rice – which is supposed to be Rp 1,000 per kg.

SBY irked by bellybutton

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Jakarta – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said a singer invited to the State Palace failed to perform because she was dismissed for showing her belly button. "I was disturbed. I told the singer to home," he said, describing himself as "conservative".

He revealed the incident when touching on the current controversy of the pornography bill at the opening of a conference of a students organization, GMNI, on Friday. He urged for calm deliberation of the bill. "We know what's porn and what's not," he said as quoted by Antara news service.

Indonesia 'not serious' about women's equality

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Ati Nurbaiti, Jakarta – Black T-shirts with feminist slogans were selling fast on Thursday to women wanting to express blunt objection to the pornography bill.

One read: "I don't want to be detained for coming home late; for wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt..." The transactions took place at the launch of the latest edition of monthly women's magazine Jurnal Perempuan (www.jurnalperempuan.com). Organizers were also accepting donations to a movement trying to prevent the bill from being passed.

Speakers at the launch said 25 years after signing the International Convention Against the Discrimination of Women, Indonesia's commitment to equality for women was still lacking.

Adriana Venny, the journal's editor-in-chief, said the progress made with new laws had been undermined by other regulations that discriminated against women.

"Indeed, we now have the domestic violence law, but instead of prioritizing other bills like the one on trafficking, the legislators are busy with the pornography bill," she said.

This edition of Jurnal Perpuan discusses the state's commitment to ending gender discrimination. It refers to the local regulations and bills considered unfavorable to women. Indonesia in 1984 ratified the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

One of the speakers at the launch, scholar and Religious Affairs Ministry research Siti Musdah Mulia, cited the tendency to focus on women's conduct in both the pornography bill and in regional regulations. In Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, she said adoption of sharia "should focus... on free education and health services" for the poor if the province wanted to try to promote Islamic values, rather than on symbolic issues like women's clothing.

Morality, said Siti should be interpreted on a broad level and include issues like honesty and good governance "which are also Islamic values".

As part of efforts to ensure equality, she said the ministry aimed to introduce by next year a new compilation of Islamic law to replace the current edition referred to in Islamic courts. The current draft is being reviewed by educational institutes, although it was scrapped by the ministry following an uproar over controversial issues such as polygamy.

Coming from a recent discussion in Malaysia on the reform of Islamic family law, Musdah said Indonesia was lagging behind other countries on the issue.

"I am so embarrassed that when people refer to the Prophet's sayings it is mostly about allowing polygamy," she said. A study of history and the Koran would show a rarely cited condition of polygamy – the requirement to be just to all wives, she said.

The new reference for Islamic courts would also allow women to be witnesses at their children's marriages. "The psychological impact of not allowing women to be witnesses is that they do not feel that they are considered equally human," Musdah said.

Big parties remain popular picks: Survey

Jakarta Post - March 24, 2006

Jakarta – If the general election was today, how would you cast your vote? The answer would be the same as in 2004, when the three biggest parties – the Golkar Party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Democrat Party – took the lead, says a survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI).

In the March 2006 survey, the three parties defeated the four other big parties, which each took below 10 percent of the "vote". Thirty-four percent of respondents said they would abstain from voting.

In the survey, potential voters, whose personality profiles defined them as "integrated" or rationally and psychologically balanced, opted for Golkar.

The Democrat Party, which had the highest score of 28.4 percent in the survey in January 2005, ended up in second place in March 2006. This is apparently due to the fact that Democrat Party voters are pragmatic types, who prioritize the benefits it has over other parties, rather than hold an emotional attachment to it, LSI executive director Saiful Mujani said.

"If the people think a party is no longer making things better for them, they will shift allegiances," he said. PDI-P and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) voters also tended to be pragmatic.

However, a series of surveys, conducted from April 2004 through March 2006, revealed fluctuating figures, indicating inconsistencies in public support for the parties. Saiful said this was the consequence of political parties' poor accountability and inability to accommodate the interests of voters.

"The parties have not tried hard enough to convey sincerity, nor approached the public to explain what their current programs and policies are," he said. "This gives the public the impression the parties they voted for are not accommodating their interests."

The survey also showed a considerable number of people feel alienated or do not associate themselves emotionally with any party. This impression substantiates the fact that votes for the seven major parties have decreased overall.

The survey showed that, in terms of public confidence, the parties are performing poorly in comparison to other public institutions, such as the House of Representatives, police and the presidential office.

The survey also showed the public is generally ill-informed about party activities and policies, particularly on the fuel price and rice import issues. Up to 90 percent of respondents had no idea about their party's stance on the fuel price rises, while 94 percent were in the dark about rice policies.

"This brings about the possibility of poor public participation in the next general election," Saiful said.

He said the survey should be construed as an early warning for political parties to boost their performances by improving their communications and networking with constituents.

Golkar deputy secretary Rully Chairul Azwar responded positively to the survey. "We (Golkar) are going to upgrade our internal recruitment mechanism, so that we will have more credible candidates," he said.

He pointed out that transparency was a must within a political party, so the public had easy access to information about their candidates.

Aceh

Indonesia misses Aceh law deadline

Agence France Presse - March 31, 2006

Indonesia has missed a deadline to pass a law granting autonomy to Aceh under a peace pact with separatists but both sides say the delay would not derail the process.

The pact signed last August by the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) called for a law granting Aceh partial self-rule by March 31.

Ferry Mursyidan Baldan, chairman of a parliamentary committee debating the bill, said lawmakers needed more time.

"We have said all along that there's no way we can finish the discussion on March 31. We won't be able to finish discussing a bill in one month, let alone one dealing with an issue as big as Aceh," Baldan told AFP.

"It won't undo the the process that has taken place in Aceh. We are doing our best and this bill is a priority," he said.

Baldan said contentious issues included relations between the central government and the Aceh government, revenue-sharing from the region's natural resources, and the participation of independent candidates in local elections.

A GAM spokesman, Teuku Kamaruzzaman, said the delay was justified and did not consider it a blow to the peace process. "There are many issues that need to be discussed bit it is not reasonable to expect them to finish today," he told AFP.

A report by the International Crisis Group think-tank warned that the law had been diluted by the home affairs ministry and that the toughest times were ahead for the peace accord.

The GAM agreed to drop its demand for independence in return for – among other concessions – the right to form local political parties, which are banned elsewhere in Indonesia to discourage separatism.

Nationalist lawmakers say Jakarta may have gone too far in its concessions, but they have insufficient numbers to block the bill.

Women in Aceh refugee camps sex crime targets: report

Agence France Presse - March 30, 2006

Jakarta – More than 100 cases of sexual violence or harassment have been reported by Acehnese women living in camps and shelters after the 2004 tsunami, according to a report by an Indonesian women's commission released Thursday.

Research compiled over the five months to February this year found 108 cases of sexual violence or harassment, including 10 rapes, all committed mostly by individuals close to the victims.

As of the end of 2005, around 67,000 people remained in tents and 30,000 lived in shelters in Aceh, where some 168,000 people died when the massive waves lashed the coast.

Young women aged 18 to 28 bore the heaviest brunt of the crimes, ranging from peeping toms at camp public bathrooms to actual rapes, the report said. In the worst instance, a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped by seven men.

The report, however, said about three-quarters of domestic violence victims had reported their cases to police, who had tended to respond positively by arresting the perpetrators. It did not give a figure for the number of domestic violence victims.

It called on Jakarta and Aceh administrators to be more actively involved in supervising security at the camps and shelters and to set up state-run agencies for women to report any assaults.

10,000 tsunami victim houses uninhabitable: Report

Deutsche Presse Agentur - March 29, 2006

Wellington – About 10,000 houses built by international aid agencies for tsunami victims in Indonesia are unfit for human habitation and may have to be rebuilt, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Heru Prasetyo, a director at BRR, the agency in charge of rebuilding Indonesia's Aceh province and nearby Nias Island, which were hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Asia on December 26, 2004, revealed the housing problems during a visit this week to New Zealand, Wellington's Dominion Post reported.

Prasetyo headed an Indonesian delegation sent to thank the New Zealand government and local aid agencies for their contributions to the region's recovery programme.

Indonesian officials told New Zealand aid agencies that some new houses built in Aceh were substandard and had no running water, sewerage or wastewater outlets. Prasetyo said the faulty houses would have to be rebuilt, but he would not name the aid agencies responsible.

BRR figures showed that just 16,000 of the 120,000 houses planned for Aceh and Nias had been completed with another 13,000 under construction, the paper said.

New Zealander Kevin Duignan, an International Red Cross construction project coordinator in Aceh, told the paper that he was aware that some unacceptable replacement houses were lying empty. He said that some had been built with untreated timbers and already been eaten out by termites.

Duignan said the Red Cross was committed to building 22,500 houses, which would have sanitation and running water if approved by its Geneva-based headquarters and BRR.

Aceh: Activists launch first local political party

Green Left Weekly - March 29, 2006

James Balowski, Jakarta – On March 16, left-wing Acehnese political activists publicly launched the Acehnese Peoples Party Preparatory Committee (KP-PRA), which they hope will provide the basis for establishing the first local political party.

The launch – held at a restaurant in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh – was attended by around 600 KP-PRA supporters. Also present were representatives of Acehnese mass organisations and Juha Christensen from the Aceh Monitoring Mission.

The launch heard greetings from a number of Acehnese and Indonesian organisations as well as solidarity messages from political parties in Malaysia, Bolivia, Venezuela and Germany.

According to the March 17 Detik.com website, KP-PRA chairperson Thamrin Ananda said that the group has already established representative offices in 11 regencies across Aceh, including in Banda Aceh, Greater Aceh, Sigli, Bireun, North Aceh, Lhokseumawe, Central Aceh, West Aceh, Nagan Raya and South Aceh. The KP-PRA is aiming to establish a presence in 12 regencies in order to fulfil the administrative requirements to establish a new political party.

According to the March 16 Aceh Kita daily, Ananda said that the idea of forming KP-PRA was a response to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Helsinki on August 15, and the a decision reached at the Acehnese Popular Democratic Resistance Front (FPDRA) congress in February to encourage its activists to form a local Acehnese party.

It is still unclear however if the draft law on a government for Aceh currently being debated by the House of Representatives will allow the formation of local parties. Speaking with Detik.com, Ananda said that if after the draft law on a government for Aceh is ratified, "local parties are accommodated in accordance with the Helsinki MoU, then next August we will proclaim the KP-PRA as a local party in Aceh".

Ananda went on to explain that if it turns out that local parties cannot be formed, the KP-PRA will affiliate with one of the existing national political parties that has the same vision and program. He emphasised that such a party would have to be one seeking to create "a government that is clean, democratic, popular and free from foreign intervention".

On March 21, Ananda told Green Left Weekly that one of the other reasons PRA supporters had chosen to first launch a preparatory committee was to give an opportunity to other groups and individuals to join and participate in the KP-PRA's congress in August – so that they can be actively involved in deciding the party's program.

Ananda said that there has been a "very positive response from ordinary Acehnese to the initiative", in particular from students, teachers and nurses' groups. He said that KP-PRA's main support was among the small farmers who make up the majority of the population and who were most affected by the 30-year armed conflict between Indonesia and GAM.

Ananda told GLW that, although there are still problems with bureaucratic obstacles, since the signing of the MoU there has been a dramatic decline in the level of repression and an opening up of democratic space. When asked about the threat of militia groups and the February 17 attack on the offices of the Aceh Referendum Information Centre, he said that while the government has failed to disband or disarm the right-wing militias, their activities have been largely restricted to Central Aceh.

"Certainly, militia groups still exist but they are not very visible and largely inactive and their activities are in no way as bad as during the period of martial law and civil emergency when they could count on the open backing of the military and police."

Ananda also explained that the massive influx of aid money for reconstruction has created a scramble among local capitalists to link up with foreign capital in competition with Indonesian capital from outside of Aceh. "This is one of the main reasons sections of the Jakarta elite supported the peace process, to promote their own business activities in Aceh. As a result, this massive inflow of money has done nothing to improve the standard of living of the majority of Acehnese people. That is why the Acehnese people need a local political party such as KP-PRA as a concrete vehicle to defend the people's future."

The Acehnese long for local party

Tempo Interactive - March 29, 2006

Raden Rachmadi, Jakarta – The result of the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) research in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam province on March 8-18 shows that most of the people there yearn for the establishment of a local party.

"From the 77 percent of those surveyed in the Aceh ethnic group, 67 percent agree with the local party's existence in Aceh," said the head analyst of LSI, Anies Baswedan, reporting on the result of the "Peace and Local Politics in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam" survey, yesterday.

The survey took a sample of 1,015 respondents and applied the multistage random sampling method. The margin of error is around 3.1 percent at the level of reliability of 95 percent.

In the regional head election context, Anies went on to say, 64 percent of respondents agree with an independent governor, regent, and mayoral candidates. "Fifty-seven percent claimed to have heard that the coming regional head election will be direct," he said.

Sixty-two percent of the Acehnese are also certain that the direct regional head election will be without any pressure. However, according to Anies, in the area that formerly was the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) base, half of the respondents or 53 percent are certain that there will still be pressure. "This is due to past trauma," he said.

In response to the survey result, the Special Committee for the Aceh Government Draft Bill Chairman, Ferry Mursyidan Baldan does not view that the request for the legalization of the local political party as exclusive to the Aceh region.

The data also represents the hope of future politics in the area which was declared as Military Operations Area (DOM). "Local political parties are regarded as instruments to built the hope of politics in the future," said the Golkar Party politician.

Regarding security in Aceh, 76 percent of respondents say that it is improved and 73 percent say that there is progress in the peace process between GAM and the government, and 67 percent are certain that both sides will actually be in accordance with the Unifying State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).

Meanwhile, 48 percent of the Acehnese are certain GAM will stop its struggle to separate from Indonesia. According to Anies, it is clear after an analysis based on GAM's former territory. "Only four out of ten Acehnese in the territory claimed they are certain that GAM will not separate," he said.

However, a House of Representatives (DPR) member from Aceh, Ahmad Farhan Hamid, confirmed that GAM members will not be armed again fighting for their goal. He admitted having heard a statement of GAM prominent in a discussion in Aceh that if the government fails to live up to the Helsinki memorandum, GAM will not take up arms. "But they will continue to see what the government's value is in carrying out the memorandum," said Farhan.

Acehnese unsure peace will last: Poll

Jakarta Post - March 29, 2006

Hera Diani, Jakarta – Six months after the government and Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a peace deal, the Acehnese say they are feeling more secure but many still worry the accord could break down at any time, a survey says.

The poll of 1,015 people in Aceh this month by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) revealed that 76 percent of the sample rated the security situation in Aceh from good to excellent.

Nearly 90 percent of those surveyed also rated the performance of the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) and the Indonesian government in keeping the peace from good and excellent.

But while security got top marks, the Acehnese were far more downbeat about their living standards. Around 76 percent said life had gotten tougher since the peace deal, blaming the government for the soaring prices of basic commodities and high unemployment.

Most Acehnese are also still afraid to talk about politics, especially those living in areas which were former GAM strongholds. And more than half said they were still afraid of being arrested for no reason by security forces, while around 50 percent were unsure if GAM had given up its secessionist ambitions.

Asked about the planned regional elections for the province, 43 percent of Acehnese said they were not aware of any direct elections, with the lack of knowledge highest in rural areas.

However, a clear majority of 67 percent of those surveyed supported the establishment of local political parties, and 64 percent backed the idea of fielding independent candidates for gubernatorial and regional posts. In traditional GAM areas, about half the population worried they would be coerced into voting for particular candidates.

LSI chief researcher Anis Baswedan said the survey showed peace in Aceh was currently about "the absence of conflict" rather than "the presence of freedom" or justice. "The Acehnese are still worried because several peace agreements signed before the one signed in Helsinki in August last year have failed," he said Tuesday.

Legislator Fery Mursyidan Baldan, who chaired the House of Representatives special committee that helped formulate the Aceh administration bill, said the survey showed the Acehnese wanted to be involved more in the political process, which was why they supported the establishment of local parties.

Regional elections in Aceh were initially scheduled for April but are likely to be delayed until after the Aceh governing bill is passed.

Fery blamed people's ignorance of the planned local elections on a sluggish Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP). "What the KIPP has done so far is insignificant. Data on voters is not yet available. All this, when the upcoming elections are likely to be huge because they will involve 18 regencies; the whole province," he said.

Aceh's political hurdle tougher than disarming: analysts

Agence France Presse - March 29, 2006

Bhimanto Suwastoyo, Jakarta – Indonesia will miss a deadline Friday to pass a crucial law granting autonomy to Aceh but the province's peace process should remain on track if the two sides maintain open dialogue, analysts said.

The failure will be the first significant hitch in the otherwise smooth implementation of a pact signed with the rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM) last August, which provided for a law granting Aceh partial self-rule by March 31.

But analysts said it was more important to properly debate the contentious and wide-ranging bill than to rush its passage, and said its delay should not derail a process aimed at ending nearly 30 years of deadly conflict.

"It is impossible for us to meet the provisional deadline of March 31, as the special parliamentary committee was only set up at the end of last month," said R.K. Ginting, a deputy chairman of the 50-member body scrutinising the law.

"We have not set any new deadline but we hope to complete the process in April if possible," Ginting told AFP, noting that the government only submitted the draft bill to parliament in the first week of February.

Irwandi Yusuf, a GAM liaison officer with the Aceh Monitoring Mission – a team of foreign monitors overseeing the peace process – said that the delay officially constituted a breach of the peace agreement.

"However, we understand the reasons. The government was late in submitting the draft bill. When one starts late, one finishes also later," Yusuf said. He added that the hold-up would prompt commensurate delays in other stages of the peace process, including local elections. He declined further comment.

Rufriadi, a lawyer and activist with the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation in Banda Aceh, said both sides must come up with another timetable quickly and publicise it to prevent distrust of Jakarta flaring in staunchly-Muslim Aceh. "The public in Aceh and in the rest of the country need to know about the new schedule," he said.

He did not see the delay as a serious matter as such an important law "should be comprehensively debated". But he said the law should still be quickly passed so elections can be held before June 15, when the mandate of the monitoring mission expires, so it can mediate any dispute.

Prominent Aceh sociologist Ahmad Humam Hamid also said both sides stood to gain with a more thorough debate on the draft law. "The schedule is a mindset, a set of assumptions, and is not rigid," he said.

Asked how optimistic he was that the debate would be speedy, he pointed to the process so far, which has been labelled as "irreversible" and has seen rebels hand in hundreds of weapons and non-local security forces withdraw. "Experience has shown that sometimes the process can proceed beyond our expectations," Hamid said.

Another deputy chairman of the parliament's special committee, Ferry Mursyidan Baldan, said some 1,446 questions on the law, not yet fully revealed to the public, had already been fielded by members of parliament. "It is so far the highest number of questions (ever) fielded on a political draft law," he said.

He said the length of time needed for the discussion would largely depend on the method of debate to be followed, to be determined in early April. "I am still confident that if we agree on the right mechanism – for example by addressing the questions in clusters and not individually – we will be able to complete the debate in not too long a time," he said.

The law is supposed to see Jakarta make its greatest concessions yet to preserve peace in Aceh, which was hammered by the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami. Some 168,000 Acehnese died in the disaster but it spurred on peace negotiations as both sides reassessed their priorities in its aftermath.

In signing the pact, GAM agreed to drop its demand for independence in return for, among other concessions, the right to form local political parties, which are banned elsewhere in Indonesia to discourage separatism.

Opposition has been fierce among lawmakers from nationalists, who say that Jakarta may have gone too far in its compromises, but they have insufficient numbers in parliament to block the bill.

Walhi tells government to use confiscated timber

Jakarta Post - March 23, 2006

Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) in Aceh deplored the recent decision of the Forestry Ministry to grant forest utilization licenses to five companies in the province.

Walhi's executive director in Aceh, Cut Hindon, said Wednesday the reason for granting the licenses, which were given to allow the companies to supply timber for reconstruction work, made no sense and could destroy the province's forests.

For the post-tsunami reconstruction work, Aceh reportedly needs 200,000 cubic meters of timber. "Demand for timber in Aceh should not pose a risk (to the forest). The demand for timber could actually be met without destroying the forest," Cut said.

She also criticized the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR) and the provincial administration for allowing the licenses to be issued. "They could actually use confiscated timber or timber from grants," Cut said.

Walhi said that based on the Forestry Ministry data, there were some 71,000 cubic meters of confiscated timber. The figure excluded timber confiscated in the province.

In Aceh alone, Walhi recorded more than 33,000 cubic meters of timber that was confiscated by the police during the 2005 illegal logging crackdown across Aceh. She said if all the confiscated timber was used for reconstruction projects, it would means there would only be a shortage of 50,000 cubic meters. "The shortage can be taken from timber received from grants or donated for Aceh," Cut said.

She urged the central government to evaluate the move to issue forest utilization licenses in Aceh considering the impact on people living in forested areas and along the riverbanks.

Walhi's data shows that 46.40 percent or 714,724 hectares of riverbank areas, from a total of over 1.5 million hectares in the province, had been damaged, with the more serious degradation found in the eastern coastal area of Aceh.

West Papua

Papuan graduate injured in shooting

Jakarta Post - March 31, 2006

Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura – A recent graduate of Cendrawasih University in Papua was shot Tuesday evening by two unidentified assailants, in the latest incident following a bloody clash March 16 near the university that left five security officers dead.

Cendrawasih rector Bert Kambuaya said Wednesday the shooters wanted to destroy a peace agreement between the students, the police and religious leaders following the clash.

"Someone wants to tarnish the peace agreement. This person doesn't want peace in Papua. I'm shocked and angry, everyone has agreed to maintain the peace and this shooting took place out of nowhere," Bert told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He alleged the attackers were attempting to turn Papua into a conflict zone like Ambon or Poso. "I call on students to remain calm. Don't be provoked or make any reaction, because someone wants to take advantage of the situation to tarnish our peace agreement," he said.

Responding to the attack, he said, will only worsen the situation. "Trust the police to find the shooters," Bert said.

Tuesday's shooting took place only two hours after a delegation of ministers and security officials, including Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo A.S., Indonesian Military chief Air Chief Marshal Djoko Suyanto and National Police chief Gen. Sutanto, left the province.

Provincial police spokesman Sr. Comr. Kartono Wangsadisastra said Wednesday that Papua Police chief Insp. Gen. Tommy Jacobus had vowed to take harsh action if any police officers were found to be involved in the shooting.

"The National Police chief has said that if any police officers were involved, they will be dismissed," Kartono said.

Asio Richard Iek was injured in the shooting, which took place at the Cendrawasih Waena campsite at 8:30 p.m. Richard received his diploma from the university Tuesday morning.

The victim was sitting with four friends when two men approached on a motorcycle. As the motorcycle neared, the five heard a small explosion, which they assumed was from a burst tire.

Only when Richard cried out in pain did they realize it was a gunshot. The victim was rushed to Dian Harapan Waena Hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove the bullet.

After the surgery, doctor Theo Tompas said a bullet about two centimeters in length had entered the victim's waist, passing through his intestine and ending in his bladder.

"The bullet was given to the police, as witnessed by the victim's family," Theo said. He said the victim had lost a lot of blood and would take at least two weeks to recover.

Jayapura Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Taufik Pribadi said the bullet would be sent to National Police Headquarters for ballistic tests. "(From the tests) we hopefully will be able to determine the owner of the gun," he said.

Police spoke with Asoi's four friends about the shooting Wednesday.

Residents of Jayapura went about their normal activities Wednesday, while on the campus of Cendrawasih groups of students could be seen looking at photos of Tuesday's commencement ceremony.

Papuan refugees in PNG dream of return to free homeland

Australian Associated Press - March 30, 2006

Lloyd Jones, East Awin, Papua New Guinea – At the age of five, Donatus Kaenop was carried through the jungle and across the border into Papua New Guinea by his refugee parents escaping violence and persecution in the Indonesian province of Papua.

More than two decades later he is a barefoot community health worker in ragged trousers harbouring a dream of one day returning with his family to be a doctor in his free homeland, independent of Jakarta's domination.

With recent violent Papuan protests and police crackdowns across the border, that day seems as long off as ever.

Kaenop thought his family was just going on a hunting trip when he crossed the border. He was one of thousands who in 1984 escaped Indonesian forces trying to stamp out the independence struggle. They fled killings, beatings, rapes, torture, disappearances.

The arrival of Papua of hundreds of thousands of Javanese and other Indonesian migrants under Jakarta's transmigration policy has pushed Papuans to the fringes in their own land.

Kaenop's home is now with 2,500 Papuan refugees in the remote East Awin settlement along a rough jungle road in PNG's Western Province. He works from a simple aid post with a hard earth floor, helping fellow refugees in Komopkin village which lacks electricity.

It is a long way by dirt road and open boat to the nearest town of Kiunga on the Fly River.

But thanks to the Catholic diocese, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), PNG government authorities and donor agencies like AusAID, Kaenop's and other aid posts are maintained for the 12 refugee villages at East Awin along with a health centre and schools.

The refugees only have a 1km strip for food gardens each side of the road and the soil is becoming overworked prompting them to go beyond the limit to find more fertile ground and risk clashes with local landowners.

Kaenop recalls his journey across the border with members of his parents' Muyu tribe from Mendiptana. "It was very dangerous and very sad. They walked through the jungles with luggage on their backs. I had to be carried by my parents on top of other goods," he said.

Kaenop has two children who have never seen his birthplace and his aging parents may die before they get the chance to return to the homeland they long for.

"I'm really hoping we can go back but at the moment those people working in the political rooms are slow. That's our homeland and we can't keep staying in other people's land.

"We need to be free from Indonesia, we don't want them to be always chasing us. They are still kidnapping our political people, that's why we are in fear."

"When they go for studies and political meetings, they kill them," Kaenop says.

Indonesia has steadfastly defended its sovereignty over Papua and maintains that allegations of human rights abuses are exaggerated.

This month tensions have soared in Indonesia's easternmost province with violent protests at the US-run Freeport gold and copper mine and the town of Jayapura.

Demonstrators were angry over the mine's environmental destruction and complaints that little of the revenue from the mine benefits Papuans.

At least six people were killed in the Jayapura protests, including four policemen and a member of the air force who were killed by mobs.

Human rights groups are investigating reports that up to 16 students were killed by police in retaliation.

Australia's decision last week to grant temporary protection visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers who arrived in Cape York in an open boat also heightened tensions.

An enraged Jakarta withdrew its ambassador from Canberra, insisting the Melanesian people of Papua are not persecuted.

The former Dutch colony was taken over by Indonesia in the 1960s but a so-called Act of Free Choice endorsed by the United Nations in 1969 has been widely condemned as rigged to ensure the region's inclusion in Indonesia.

A low-level secessionist struggle has been waged ever since and rights groups say tens of thousands of people have been killed.

The recent tensions have raised fears of another influx of asylum seekers to PNG.

Kaenop says if things get worse, some people such as students involved in the protests might have to get out. "But there are soldiers on the border and they are fully armed and we fear them."

Fadela Novak, a temporary UNHCR protection officer for the East Awin camp from New Zealand's Immigration Service, says the agency has heard nothing strong about a new wave of refugees but the situation is not stable in Papua.

UNHCR and the PNG government have contingency plans in place for such an influx with crossing points and temporary camp sites identified, she says. "It could happen, it's a question of being ready for it."

Meanwhile, the East Awin refugees are there to stay, she says. "It's very clear there is not a solution for repatriation tomorrow. They say they will not go back until independence or decent autonomy. These are people who are not going to go back soon."

The East Awin refugees are officially recognised by the PNG government and given residency permission under a "limited integration policy".

But about 5,000 more reside in 17 informal settlements along the border where the government doesn't want them and provides little or no services. Authorities fear border villages might be used as back camps by independence fighters of the OPM, the Organisasi Papua Merdeka or Free Papua Movement.

PNG's Immigration Department border and special projects manager Chris Kati says if there is a new influx of refugees, more room is available along the road at East Awin to resettle them.

But he says the government is not in a good position to extend the 1km strip on either side of the road because it has only paid local landowners about five per cent of the agreed purchase price for the original block.

Following the big influx of 12,000 to 15,000 asylum seekers who crossed in 1984/85, a few thousand have opted to go back. The last reasonably big influx was of Highlands people from Wamena in 2000.

Novak says it is difficult to monitor how those who decided to return to Papua have fared because Indonesian authorities have declined UNHCR requests to monitor the situation inside the province.

Long-term East Awin refugee Nixon Matirani says the Indonesians employ a "smiling policy" to encourage what they call "border crossers" to return, offering assistance with housing and food. But the authorities will watch those returnees and any false move means brutal retaliation, he says.

The former OPM communications operative says the organisation is now disunited and Indonesian intelligence people are very clever at sowing seeds of discord within the movement.

In a meeting at East Awin with Novak last week, the Wamena people urged the UNHCR to help them resettle somewhere else on better land and handed over a petition of their political grievances to go to the UN in Geneva. "We are sitting here dreaming and dying," one leader said.

Howard and Downer portrayed as 'sex-crazed dingoes'

Australian Associated Press - March 30, 2006

One of Indonesia's biggest-selling newspapers has depicted John Howard and Alexander Downer as a pair of sex-crazed dingoes, dragging media outrage over the Papua visa row down to a new low.

The front page of the Islamic-leaning Rakyat Merdeka (People's Freedom) newspaper was dominated by the cartoon of the two having sex under a palm tree on an otherwise barren island signposted "Papua".

Headlined "The adventure of two dingo" (sic), the drawing shows the Prime Minister as the dominant dog, shaking as he tells the Foreign Minister: "I want Papua!! Alex! Try to make it happen!" A small Australian flag hangs off the PM's wagging tail.

In the wake of Australia's decision to grant visas to 42 Papuan asylum-seekers, Indonesian nationalists accuse Canberra of secretly plotting Papua's breakaway from Jakarta's grasp, likening it to the 1999 independence crisis in East Timor.

The lurid caricature is the worst-taste example of a new Papua cartoon craze in the Indonesian media since the row flared last week. The media's response has perhaps been given added edge by still-simmering anger in Indonesia over the prophet Mohammed cartoon furore.

Another Jakarta paper depicted the hairy arm of a gorilla labelled as Australia shaking hands with a suit and cufflink-clad Indonesian arm.

The English-language Jakarta Post newspaper, read by most foreigners in Indonesia, showed a furious Indonesian eagle staring at the rear of a retreating kangaroo, with the bird's chicks in its pouch flying a Papuan independence flag. "Don't worry, it's just temporary," the kangaroo is saying.

The same image was adopted by protesters rallying outside Australia's Jakarta embassy this week when some painted obscenities on its walls.

West Papuan refugees win visa victory

Green Left Weekly - March 29, 2006

Sarah Stephen – On March 23, the immigration department announced that 42 of the 43 West Papuan asylum seekers who arrived in Australia on January 18 and have been held on Christmas Island since then, had been granted refugee status. They will be issued with three-year temporary protection visas.

A March 23 media release by the department stated: "A decision is yet to be made on a visa application from the remaining member of the group, as there are further case-specific issues to be pursued."

NSW Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, who campaigned for the asylum seekers to be given refugee status, declared: "The situation in West Papua is clearly very dangerous for those who assert their right to self-determination, so the decision to grant protection visas is a good one." "I hope this decision", she said, "indicates acknowledgement by the Australian government that the situation in West Papua is a human rights nightmare. I shall be asking the government about the foreign policy implications of the decision."

Nettle added that it was "illogical for the Australian government to continue to support conditions which lead to the oppression of West Papuans in their country while also acknowledging this oppression with these protection visas".

The refugees will be immediately transferred to Melbourne. Organisers of West Papua solidarity rallies to be held in a number of cities on April 2, are hopeful that some of the refugees will speak at the rallies.

Police crackdown after anti-Freeport protests

Green Left Weekly - March 29, 2006

Kerryn Williams – After police attacked a protest outside the Cendrawasih University in the West Papuan capital Jayapura on March 16, several police officers and an Indonesian military intelligence officer were killed. Many students and other citizens, including a five-year-old child, were injured in the conflict and more than 70 people were arrested.

Protesters were demanding the closure of the giant US-owned Freeport gold and copper mine and the withdrawal of the Indonesian military (TNI) and police from West Papua.

Free Papua Movement (OPM) international spokesperson John Ondawame told Radio Australia on March 23 that "It was a peaceful demonstration. They demanded the closure of Freeport mining because of reports it is responsible for human rights abuses, environmental destruction and lack of negotiation with the landowners... people were angry and this anger had been there for many, many years."

Locals are also angry at the huge payments made by Freeport to the Indonesian military to guard Freeport – a role that has increased violence against and harassment of people living near the mine.

According to a March 20 Detik.com report, some NGOs have suggested the violence on March 16 was due to conflict between the TNI and Indonesia's national police over the lucrative business of security provision at the Freeport mine.

Ondawame said the military has been restricting people's movement since the protests and many West Papuans have fled into hiding. A major police operation was launched on March 17 to search for people suspected of involvement in the protests the previous day. Student dormitories were raided and according to the March 18 Jakarta Post, several people were hurt in roadblock checks, including a 10-year-old girl who was shot.

The March 18 Australian quoted police spokesperson Kartono Wangsa Disastra as saying, "We will never stop hunting these people who have created havoc and murdered our officers."

In a March 20 statement, the Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition noted that Indonesian troop deployments have increased this year and that there are now some 40,000-50,000 troops in West Papua. APSOC have demanded an independent investigation into police brutality after the March 16 protest.

Priyo Pribadi from the Indonesian Mining Association told Radio Australia on March 21 that the mining industry is concerned about "investor confidence" after a series of protests at Freeport and other major mines in Indonesia.

In late February, protesters forced a four-day closure of Freeport when they blockaded access roads to defend their right to pan for gold remnants in discarded tailings from the mine.

The West Papuan parliament and legislative review body were scheduled to discuss the crisis at Freeport on March 21, and to consider calling for the mine's contract to be renegotiated so that a greater share of the profits are given back to the community. The meeting was postponed for up to two months.

The March 22 Melbourne Age quoted Freeport opponent Markus Haluk as saying that the debates must be held within two weeks or else "we will mobilise the masses, we will occupy the parliament building". Emphasising the protesters' commitment to the closure of Freeport, he added that "the test for Jakarta is if they want to win Papua's heart or Papua's gold".

The March 23 Jakarta Post reported that the previous day 500 protesters, including West Papuan students, demonstrated in Makassar, South Sulawesi, against Freeport, and that similar protests were held in other Indonesian cities.

Indonesia fears Canberra stoking support for independent Papua

Agence France Presse - March 28, 2006

Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – Fears that Canberra is stoking support for Papua to break away from Indonesia sparked Jakarta's strong reaction last week to Australia granting visas to Papuan asylum-seekers, analysts said.

Indonesia, a massive archipelago nation that has long struggled to maintain the integrity of its borders – with enormous bloodshed – is concerned Canberra's move could transform Papua into another East Timor, they said.

"By giving the visas, it at least provides moral support for independence," political analyst Saiful Mujani from the Indonesian Survey Institute, a respected polling centre, told AFP.

Jakarta withdrew its ambassador last week after Australia granted temporary visas to 42 asylum-seekers who travelled there from easternmost Papua on an outrigger canoe in January. The case of one additional Papuan is pending.

The asylum-seekers, who included pro-independence campaigners, accused Indonesian security forces of rights abuses and genocide in the remote province, a former Dutch colony which was only incorporated into Indonesia in 1969.

Mujani said politicians feared that the Papuan group would become a force for change similar to East Timorese exiles who fled to Australia during the 1990s and helped sway public opinion against Jakarta on the territory.

After a 24-year occupation by the Indonesian military, East Timor finally voted for independence in 1999 and became the world's youngest nation in 2002, a move that still has nationalists licking their wounds here.

Canberra's decision to back the referendum and later send troops to quell militia violence after two decades of opposing self- determination for the former Portuguese colony severely soured relations between the two countries.

"There is a precedent in how Timorese activists got protection from Australia. For example (Jose) Ramos-Horta, he even became famous and got a Nobel prize with the help of Australians," Mujani added.

Horta, East Timor's current foreign minister, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 and spent years lobbying for East Timor's independence from his Australian base.

Despite Australian Prime Minister John Howard's firm assertion that Canberra is opposed to independence for Papua, Indonesians are deeply suspicious of their southern neighbour.

"Australia provocateur!" screamed Monday's headline in tabloid Rakyat Merdeka. Under a smaller headline declaring: "Australia wants independence for Papua like East Timor," the paper quoted Australian Greens senator Bob Brown saying Papua had a right to self-determination.

Respected daily Koran Tempo on Friday featured a cartoon of a kangaroo carrying Papuans in its pouch with the caption: "Is this our two-faced neighbour?"

In a weekend editorial, Media Indonesia also accused Australia of "firing its ammunition to shoot an Indonesia which is already injured," referring to the loss of East Timor.

Pro-independence Papuans have long argued that the vote by just over 1,000 of their people to come under Jakarta rule was rigged and that they should be granted a chance at East Timorese-style self-determination.

They have failed, however, to win over mainstream international support and the rebel Free Papua Movement (OPM) is now fragmented and ill-equipped.

Jakarta suspects that a groundswell of popular support for independence could see Canberra make an about-face, just as it eventually did on East Timor, analysts said. "It's possible Howard will change his position," warned Ikrar Nusabakti, an analyst from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

Indonesians believed that Australia's speedy issuing of the visas to the Papuans – after the nation attempted to return boatloads of Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians to Indonesia – was proof Canberra secretly backed Papuan independence, he said.

Australians were sympathetic to the plight of the Melanesian, and mostly Christian Papuans, rather than Indonesians or refugees from the Middle East, in Indonesia's view, he added.

Australia's press has pounced on the issue, with heavy coverage over the weekend highlighting the risk of more Papuans fleeing for Australia and criticising Jakarta's administration of Papua.

Cover-up fear over dead in mine riot

Melbourne Age - March 27, 2006

Andra Jackson – An anglican minister from Victoria witnessed a confrontation in West Papua between protesters and Indonesian police, who fired rifles and tear gas into the air before charging into a demonstration that turned into a deadly riot.

Five members of the Indonesian security forces were killed in the March 16 confrontation, which grew out of a protest by students, academics and West Papuan highlanders against the US-owned Freeport gold mine. The demonstration began outside Cendrawasih University, Abepura, outside the provincial capital, Jayapura.

The Reverend Peter Woods, from St Andrews Church, Somerville, on the Mornington Peninsula, was visiting West Papua at the invitation of the indigenous Bethel church. He encountered the protest on the way to an appointment at the university.

Pictures he took of the scene are the first to be published in Australia.

Mr Woods said police lost control of the protest, which turned into a riot in which angry demonstrators stoned and killed three policemen and one intelligence officer. But the numbers of Papuans beaten and killed on the day or in later reprisals had been covered up, he said.

He said media, family, friends and other concerned people had been refused access to Jayapura's main hospital where the injured and a fourth policeman who later died were taken.

"There were wounded people, including children. Children had been shot. That has not been publicly aired yet." Mr Woods said he had heard from a number of consistent sources that a five-year-old child had been shot.

Among those bashed was the university's law and politics lecturer, Franz Kapissa, whom Mr Woods had gone to meet. He photographed his swollen face.

Mr Woods said news footage on Indonesian television showed "two plain-clothes officers shooting pistols, firing into the gates of the university". "It looked to me that one of them was taking potshots just trying to pick off who he could. He wasn't firing above heads, he was firing at people. There was footage on Indonesian television of policemen shooting into the air out of cars and on the backs of motorbikes."

The March 16 protest was the second day of demonstrations over the Freeport mine. The protesters had barricaded a section of road leading to the main airport.

Mr Woods said he saw 400 to 500 protesters, some sitting on the road, some standing in the university, confronted by about 100 armed police. He was standing in the university grounds with a video camera, filming down on to the road. "There was high emotion and incredible tensions. I saw bottles gathered."

He said organisers tried to calm everybody down and gestured for people to stay sitting.

"There was at least 50 metres between the line of police and the demonstrators," he said. "I filmed the first advance by the police, and there wasn't any interest in further negotiation shown by those of the police who were negotiating with the leaders."

The protesters offered to leave one side of the road open but were told to disperse, he said.

When the leaders refused, "there was a charge onto the demonstrators by firing into the air tear gas. They fired rifle fire into the air." "I got out of the initial surge and the gunfire, and as it turned out it was probably a good thing I did get out, otherwise I would have been a target," said Mr Woods, who returned to Australia on Saturday night.

Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja said at the weekend that human rights group were investigating reports that up to 16 students had been murdered by security forces.

Mr Woods said that while in West Papua he had heard that 16 students had been killed in revenge attacks, but had been unable to verify this. He said that since returning home he had spoken to a church leader in West Papua who said a member of the Indonesian riot squad, BRIMOC, had told him: "There have been killings. It hasn't come out yet."

The Age approached Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for comment on Mr Woods claims but his office failed to respond last night. The claims come as the granting of protection visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers has strained relations between Jakarta and Canberra.

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday dismissed suggestions that Indonesia could retaliate by blocking a prisoner exchange scheme, which could allow convicted drug smugglers Schapelle Corby and the Bali nine to serve their time in Australia.

Mr Howard said he believed the West Papua issue would have no impact on the prisoner transfer negotiations or on relations with Indonesia.

"It will not disturb the close friendship between the governments of the two countries," he said. "We do not support for a moment the West Papuan independence claim. To those who are urging us to do so, I say we will not."

He also warned that the decision to give the 42 Papuans protection visas was not a green light for others to follow. Meanwhile, three Papuans have reportedly sought political asylum in Papua New Guinea following the Abepura riots.

[With Tim Colebatch]

Australia's confusion on West Papua

Melbourne Age - March 27, 2006

Damian Kingsbury – Australia's decision to grant 42 West Papuan asylum seekers temporary protection has put the relationship with Indonesia under its most serious strain since the East Timor debacle of 1999. It has also highlighted contradictions in Australia's policy towards Indonesia.

The withdrawal of Indonesia's ambassador and associated harsh words are a serious diplomatic gesture and cannot be underestimated. However, they also have to be understood as speaking to Indonesia's "nationalist" and pro-army (TNI) hardliners, who would accept nothing less from their otherwise reformist president.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is trying to bring the TNI under genuine civilian control, which it is resisting. The TNI's position in West Papua, and the future status of the territory, is the test case in this contest and in large part is behind the recent deterioration in the situation in the former Dutch colony.

Yudhoyono's closeness to Australia works against him when dealing with the hardliners and could damage his cautious but clear reform agenda – including a possible negotiated settlement of the West Papua problem. His Government therefore has to be seen to be critical of Australia.

But Jakarta is also genuinely annoyed that Canberra's decision to accept the asylum seekers has created new domestic and international problems over West Papua. Apart from anything else, it regards Australia as inconsistent, and when it comes to Australian support for the TNI this is correct.

The already parlous political environment in West Papua has clearly worsened in recent months. The escape by the asylum seekers was both an indication of this and intended, by them, to highlight it. The recent riot over the giant Freeport gold and copper mine, which left dead four police and a military intelligence officer, was another.

There have also been other demonstrations and riots against the elections on 10 and 11 March for the governors of the now-divided province. Jakarta had promised to address West Papua's many political and economic problems with the granting of special autonomy in 2001. However, this has largely been observed in the breach, with the division of the province being the final betrayal.

The TNI has doubled the number of permanent troops in the province since September. Their casual violence towards indigenous Papuans and a requirement to fund up to three-quarters of their budget from local sources – both legal and illegal – has worsened the local security environment.

In December the TNI's commander in West Papua, Major-General Mahidin Simbolon – who was deeply involved in East Timor's violence in 1999 – confirmed that local soldiers and police had been paid $US26.6 million between 1998 and 2004 by Freeport for protection. Such protection frequently involves human rights abuses.

Australia's recognition of the asylum claims highlights its own contradictory policy towards Indonesia. The decision officially confirms the asylum seekers' claims of continuing human rights abuses in the territory – a long record that includes the 2001 murder by the Indonesian special forces, Kopassus, of Papuan leader Theys Eluay. Yet last year Australia formally renewed training links with Kopassus.

Australia's military links with Indonesia, and the proposed security treaty, is the sort of papering over of such contradictions that led to the fall-out between Australia and Indonesia over East Timor. It remains a policy the longer-term costs of which are much greater than any claimed short-term benefits.

Australia's contradictory stance towards the TNI does not assist Yudhoyono in his efforts towards military reform, complicates Indonesia's internal political processes and leaves most Australians wondering why successive governments have insisted on supporting such a corrupt and brutal military.

A more appropriate policy would be for Australia to refuse to deal with the TNI until it is clearly under civilian authority.

Until Australia adopts a consistent policy towards Indonesia, problems over Australia's legal obligations and moral intentions will continue. In the meantime, Australia's engagement with the Indonesian military only helps to sustain its unreconstructed, brutal and corrupt practices.

[Associate Professor Damien Kingsbury is director of international and community development at Deakin University. He is author of The Politics of Indonesia (Oxford).]

Nothing to gain by antagonising Jakarta

The Australian - March 27, 2006

Harold Crouch – Indonesians have reacted with outrage at the Australian decision to grant temporary protection visas to 42 of the 43 Papuans who reached Cape York in an outrigger canoe two months ago.

By granting the visas, Australia is acknowledging the credibility of the Papuans' claim that they fled "from the intimidation of the killing and the persecution inflicted by Indonesian authorities against us".

The withdrawal of the Indonesian ambassador in protest indicates that Australia faces a serious problem in managing its relations with Indonesia. Still, it is premature to suggest that Australia is moving towards the sort of breakdown that occurred during the East Timor crisis of 1999.

Since the loss of East Timor in 1999, Indonesia has been obsessed with the possibility of national disintegration. In fact, there are no serious separatist pressures in most of Indonesia. Armed separatist movements have been active since 1999 in only two provinces – Aceh and Papua – which together make up about 3 per cent of Indonesia's population. In both cases, the mainstream military opposed compromises with rebels and preferred to concentrate on "eliminating" them through military action.

In Aceh, after much bloodshed over many years, a peace agreement that promises to integrate former rebels into a democratic political process, was finally reached last August in Helsinki.

It is important to remember that leading members of the peace camp now occupy top positions in the Indonesian Government. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla both played important roles in this process long before they attained their present offices, while Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda was Indonesia's negotiator in the first round of talks in 2000.

Progress has been much less marked in Papua where the small Free Papua Organisation, with its obsolete weapons, launches occasional isolated attacks but has never constituted a serious military challenge.

Discontent with Jakarta, however, is widespread. Even local government officials in casual conversations often refer to the central government as "Indonesia", as though Papua is not part of Indonesia.

Following the fall of president Suharto in 1998, a non-violent independence movement led by Theys Eluay garnered substantial support until Eluay was murdered by Special Forces soldiers after being invited to a dinner at their base in 2001. Non-violent activists have often been imprisoned for symbolic acts of resistance such as singing the Papuan anthem and raising the Papuan flag.

Among them was the leader of the current batch of refugees, Herman Wanggai, who served a year in prison for this crime. In recent times much unrest in Papua has focused on the exploitation of resources by the giant Freeport gold and copper mine and the failure of the Indonesian Government to implement fully a special autonomy law adopted in 2001.

It is in this context that Indonesian officials are now talking as though Australia's granting of visas to Papuan refugees is tantamount to challenging Indonesian sovereignty over Papua. They claim that Australia "vigorously" rejects applicants for asylum from other countries but rushes to grant asylum to Papuans, evidence, they suggest, that Australia must have some hidden motives (although in fact Australia provides asylum to thousands of non-Papuans from all over the world).

The chief security minister, Admiral Widodo Adisutjipto, spoke of "speculation about the presence of elements in Australia who support the separatist movement in Papua" and the chief of intelligence revealed the "involvement" of unnamed Australian non-government organisations in the clash between students and police near Jayapura a fortnight ago.

Behind these attitudes is the persistent, if usually unstated, belief that Australia somehow plotted East Timor's exit from Indonesia and is now looking for a way to implement a similar scenario for Papua.

Indonesian officials have attempted to assure the recent refugees that they can safely return home. The military commander says the military was not searching for them before their flight and the Government has "guaranteed their security" if they decide to return.

But the problem with guarantees of security is that the past behaviour of the security forces has made it difficult for Papuans to have much confidence in such promises. Although the murderers of Eluay were eventually brought to court in 2003, they seemed proud of their achievement, their sentences were short (their leader, a lieutenant-colonel received three years) and the then army chief of staff, General Ryamizard Ryacudu, hailed them as "national heroes" for their defence of Indonesian sovereignty, an attitude that reflected the sentiments of many military officers. Until Indonesia's military reformers can bring about a transformation of military culture, it will not be easy to convince Papuan dissidents that their rights are likely to be respected.

Australia and Indonesia have experienced regular mini-crises in their relations that usually prompt observers to declare that ties have reached their lowest point since East Timor. Often the substantial issue in such crises – Schapelle Corby, the Bali Nine or Papuan asylum-seekers – are irresolvable. We don't have much choice but to accept that there will be differences in approach.

But that doesn't mean that such differences can't be managed. During the past few years, the multiple strands connecting the two countries have created beneficial bonds at many levels that neither would want to see broken.

Without doubting the genuineness of Indonesian protests on the visa issue, it is likely that Yudhoyono and his advisers are focusing their attention on a more pressing domestic problem. Next month the Indonesian parliament is expected to vote on a law to implement the Aceh peace agreement. The bill is facing strong opposition from nationalist elements in the parliament, the same people who are most vocal on the issue of Papuans gaining refugee status in Australia. Even former presidents Megawati Sukarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid are among those who believe the Government is making too many compromises on Aceh.

If the Government upsets the nationalists by soft-pedalling on the Papuan issue, it is not impossible that it could find it harder to pass the Aceh law relatively intact, with the risk that the peace achieved in Helsinki could be threatened.

The Australian Government, with bipartisan support, is right to downplay the present crisis. One lesson of the East Timor experience is that, while maintaining our position, we should avoid statements that stir up public opinion in Indonesia and make it more difficult for Indonesia's leaders to preserve the warm relations that have been achieved in recent years.

[Harold Crouch, a former director of the International Crisis Group's Indonesia project, is an emeritus professor in the research school of Pacific and Asian studies at the Australian National University in Canberra.]

Australia says Papua row won't break ties

Reuters - March 27, 2006

Canberra – Australia tried to soothe ties with Indonesia on Monday after granting asylum to 42 boat people from the country's troubled Papua province and as media reported more Papuans were heading to Australia.

About 100 protesters gathered outside Australia's embassy in Jakarta on Monday to object to Canberra's decision last week to recognise the Papuans as refugees despite Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono asking for the group be returned.

Indonesia recalled its ambassador in Australia last week and described the visa decision as disappointing and deplorable.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was at pains to make it clear the decision was made in accordance with international and Australian law and that Canberra still recognised Indonesia's sovereignty over Papua.

"Indonesia has shown it can resolve its own problems in its own way through dialogue. They did that in Aceh and I'm sure that the government of Indonesia will endeavour to do the same thing in Papua," Downer told parliament on Monday. "We will do what we can to ensure (our) close friendship continues," he said.

But The Australian newspaper reported that a steady stream of students from Papua were already making their way to Australia to claim asylum, in a move the newspaper said would put Canberra in a "diabolical position".

"Even if it manages to intercept them, and house them in an offshore facility while their claims are processed, it will be extremely difficult to avoid major damage to the relationship with Indonesia," Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan wrote.

Howard, who has said Australia's ties with Indonesia would not be broken by the Papua issue, has told reporters the Immigration Department's decision was not a green light for illegal immigrants.

He said Australia's successful policy, developed in 2001, of intercepting boatloads of asylum seekers at sea and turning them away would not be changed. The controversial policy has stemmed a flow of illegal immigrants often organised by people smugglers.

Papua's police spokesman Kartono Wangsadisastra dismissed on Monday the reports that more Papuans were fleeing as "all lies".

The Papuan refugees sailed for five days to reach Australia in a traditional outrigger with a banner accusing the Indonesian military of conducting genocide in their homeland.

Papuan independence activists have campaigned for more than 30 years to break away from Indonesia while a low-level armed rebellion has also simmered. Human rights groups accuse the Indonesian military of widespread abuses there.

Indonesian authorities deny that, and recent regional elections in Papua and companion province West Irian Jaya, which shares Indonesia's part of the island of New Guinea, went relatively smoothly and peacefully.

But four policemen and one soldier were killed earlier this month in the Papua capital Jayapura in clashes with protesters demanding the closure of a US mining operation in the province.

[Additional reporting by Diyan Jari and Achmad Sukarsono in Jakarta]

Things in West Papua are far from settled

Melbourne Age - March 26, 2006

Tom Hyland – It's unlikely that Alexander Downer believes what he says about the new row that has erupted between Australia and Indonesia over 42 Papuan asylum seekers.

Despite Indonesian protests over Australia's decision to grant protection visas to the Papuans, Downer says "things will settle down after a short period of time".

Maybe he'll be proved right, on a superficial level at least. After all, it is not in Indonesia's interests to draw too much attention to an Australian decision based on an independent finding that the Papuan boat people have a well-founded fear of persecution.

But Downer is engaged in wishful thinking if he's arguing that the wider issue of West Papua is about to "settle down" or that Australia doesn't risk being dragged into even more perilous diplomatic dilemmas as a result of fundamental flaws in Indonesian rule over its easternmost territories.

Despite, or because of, the good but muddled intentions of Indonesia's new democratic leaders, Jakarta's administration of Papua is at best a mess. At worst, when the security forces have their way, it can be brutal, cynical, corrupt and murderous.

"The core problem for Indonesia in Papua is governance," says Melbourne academic and Papua specialist Richard Chauvel. "How do you rule a place by means other than military ones, with a population that basically doesn't want to be part of Indonesia?"

You rule it with alternating mixtures of persuasion and co-option on the one hand and repression and intimidation on the other, while at the same time applying the old maxim of colonialism – divide and rule.

This is not to say that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is necessarily pulling the levers of both arms. A regional diplomat says Yudhoyono is sincere in his talk of special autonomy, which theoretically will give local people a say in running their own affairs and a share of the revenue from the area's rich natural resources. But Yudhoyono is a long way from West Papua and can't control events there.

In the meantime, Papuan elites are played off against one another. Those who refuse to co-operate with Jakarta are sidelined and ignored. In extreme cases, those who advocate independence are persecuted, tortured, forced into exile, even murdered not on the orders of Yudhoyono in Jakarta, but by military and intelligence agencies who believe they have a sacred duty to uphold the integrity of the nation.

This approach, of course, makes it difficult for Indonesian officials to negotiate with Papuan leaders. "The trouble is, as soon as strong Papuan leaders emerge, the TNI (the Indonesian army) kills them," says one Australian source.

At its simplest, Melanesian Papuans believe their freedom was stolen in a bogus UN-endorsed "Act of Free Choice" in 1969, in which 1022 Papuan "representatives", selected by Indonesian officials, voted for integration with Indonesia after a campaign of intimidation and bribery.

For Indonesia, the issue is one of national identity. The nationalists who founded the modern state laid claim to all of the territory held by their former colonial rulers, the Dutch. When Indonesia gained its independence in 1949, the Netherlands retained control over what is now West Papua, and it became an article of national faith to "recover" it.

Downer's repeated assurances that Australia will always recognise Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua ring hollow – after all, this is what successive

Australian foreign ministers, including Downer, said for more than two decades in relation to East Timor. And even if Australia's words are accepted in Jakarta, Indonesian and Australian officials are sometimes tormented by a similar nightmare.

It goes something like this: an act of violent resistance in West Papua leads to indiscriminate Indonesian reprisals, which are caught on videotape (remember the 1991 Dili massacre?). This in turn prompts outrage in Australia, fanned by pro-Papuan groups. This inflames the latent popular Australian fear of Indonesia (remember the hysteria over Schapelle Corby?), which leads to massive pressure on Canberra to "do something".

Maybe things will "settle down", as Downer hopes. But given the irreconcilable aspirations at work in West Papua, don't expect it to be soon.

Muslim jihadists 'moving in'

The Australian - March 27, 2006

Greg Roberts, Kiunga, Papua New Guinea – Muslim extremists from The Philippines and elsewhere are claimed to be setting up bases in Papua with the blessing of elements of the Indonesian military.

Papua New Guinean Catholic bishop Giles Cote said the extremists were entering Papua to fight supporters of the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM).

"Our information indicates that jihad militants are in Papua to do the dirty work of the police and military," said Bishop Cote, who diocese of Western Province borders Papua.

As anger in Jakarta mounted over Australia's decision to issue temporary protection visas to 42 of 43 Papuans who arrived in a boat on Cape York in January, Indonesia rejected Bishop Cote's claims. "It is not true that there are any religious militants backed by the TNI (Indonesian military) in Papua," said Dino Kusnadi, a spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra.

Bishop Cote told The Australian in the PNG town of Kiunga that he believed the Muslim extremists came from the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, and Sulawesi and other islands in northern Indonesia. He doubted Indonesia's repeated assurances to Canberra that Papuan asylum-seekers would not be harmed if forced to return home.

The Catholic Church is assisting 6000 Papuans living in 17 refugee camps in PNG. "These people are afraid to go back," Bishop Cote said. "They fear they will be jailed or worse. Our information suggests it is not safe for them to be returned."

Bishop Cote believed several thousand Indonesian troops had been relocated from Aceh – where Jakarta last year resolved a longstanding separatist rebellion – to Papua. "I am concerned that soon we will have another wave of refugees coming across the border for protection."

Free West Papua Campaign Australian organiser Nick Chesterfield said Bishop Cote's comments supported OPM claims that Muslim extremists were being armed by the TNI to form militias to crack down on the pro-independence movement.

He said separatists believed militias were responsible for a spate of killings in recent weeks around the town of Timika, which services the giant US-run Freeport copper and gold mine.

Mr Chesterfield said the bishop's comments also supported claims by the OPM that Indonesian troops were airlifted from the Lhoksamawe district of Aceh late last year to the Papuan towns of Enarotoli, Nabire and Manokwari.

However, Mr Kusnadi said no troops had been relocated, and Muslim extremists were not encouraged to establish themselves in Papua. "I am not questioning the credibility of the bishop but perhaps you can question his sources," Mr Kusnadi said. "There is no new military push in Papua. Indeed, there never has been a military push in Papua."

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra declined to comment on Bishop Cote's claims.

Lost at sea in political storm

The Australian - March 26, 2006

Carmel Egan – Relying on nothing more than the word of a good friend and their faith in God, the West Papuan 43 turned their dugout canoe south and made for Australia. It was January 13 and the five families of 37 adults and six children were heading, literally and politically, into a storm.

Instead of the six to eight hours they had been told it would take to cross from the southernmost point of Irian Jaya to Weipa on the tip of Cape York, the group were lost at sea for four days.

They had originally left from Jayapura on the north coast of Irian Jaya, and used the canoe, powered by an outboard motor, to hop between coastal villages and towns until they reached Merauke.

It was there they were told Australia was just hours away. "Nobody helped us," said Henock Nawiea, a spokesman for 10 of the group now receiving medical treatment in Perth.

"Our friend, an activist in Merauke, he said it would be six to eight hours. We lost the way in the middle of the ocean and we were in the ocean four days after that, because we don't know the way from Merauke to Australia and there was bad weather and we didn't bring our food and drink. We were thirsty and hungry and very scared and it make us weak and we had some people sick."

The canoe had been made by the father of Herman Wainggai, who organised the group's flight. Mr Wainggai, who remains on Christmas Island with 33 of the group, last night thanked the Australian Government for accepting their plea for asylum.

"We wish to express our respectful thanks for this decision to the Australian Government, the Department of Immigration and also I wish to thank the people of Australia who have helped and welcomed us. We also wish to thank God."

The Indonesian Government has said none of the 43 were being persecuted or sought by authorities when they left Irian Jaya and their safety was guaranteed if they return. But the group last night rejected the assurances saying "Indonesian talk" was not to be trusted.

Mr Nawiea claimed that 300 West Papuan villagers who fled to Papua New Guinea in 2002 were encouraged to return with promises of improved welfare and housing, only to be imprisoned, tortured or killed. "We don't want to go back. We know the Indonesian talk," he said.

Mr Nawiea, an IT student and political activist, said he was imprisoned and beaten in Timika, on the central south coast, for several days in 2002 before fleeing into the mountains and hiding from the authorities.

"My situation in West Papua was unsafe," he said. "Sometimes they come looking for me and some of my friends, so our life there was very uncomfortable. In Timika people not live proper like other people, like in Java. They can't talk in Timika. They get angry to us if we make demonstrations."

Mr Nawiea brought his 21-year-old sister and 12-year-old nephew with him to Australia. The boy's father, who is active in the West Papua freedom movement, has been missing for about a week in Jayapura.

The West Papua 43 are expected to be transferred from detention on Christmas Island to freedom in Melbourne next week.

Those in Perth are being treated for symptoms of TB, stomach complaints and one for a leg injury. But the group remains fearful for the safety of their friends and families and for the future of the province under Indonesian rule.

"Many people are killed already and they are going to kill and torture many of the people there," Mr Nawiea said.

Life in exile will require a lot of adjustment, according to Australian West Papuan community matriarch Anto Rumwaropen.

"They will be very traumatised, especially the children," Ms Rumwaropen said of the newest members of the 4000-strong Australian-West Papuan community.

"I know what it is like to try to find somewhere to live away from the oppression, away from the Indonesian military, but to find also a place where you can continue the struggle for our country to be free," she said.

She was four years old when Indonesia began its takeover of West Papua on May 1, 1963. At 20 when she fled with her political songwriter husband Augustus and his reggae band, the Black Brothers, in 1979.

Lawyer's representing the group expect the 43rd member to be granted asylum in the coming weeks.

Australia should take Indonesia to UN over Papua: Greens

Australian Associated Press - March 25, 2006

Sydney – The Australian government must take the issue of Papua's right to self-determination to the United Nations, the Greens say.

Greens Senator Bob Brown accused the Howard government of hypocrisy over the issue, and called on Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to stand by Australia's international human rights obligations.

"It's time that this government had the gumption to take the matter of the right of the West Papuans to an act of self- determination to the United Nations," Senator Brown told reporters.

"The Howard government talks about liberty and democracy, is prepared to take part in the Bush invasion of Iraq for liberty and democracy, but when it comes to our neighbours it turns its back on liberty and democracy.

"The West Papuans have a right to self-determination, as did the East Timorese, and Alexander Downer should be standing up for that right, which Australians believe in."

Senator Brown said Indonesia's decision to recall its ambassador was "petulant". He said the country must expect that its crackdown on Papua would damage bilateral relations.

Indonesian Ambassador to Australia Mohammad Hamzah Thayeb was yesterday ordered home. The announcement came less 24 hours after a senior Indonesian foreign ministry official delivered a formal protest to Australian Ambassador Bill Farmer in Jakarta.

Jakarta had lobbied Canberra for weeks to return a group of 43 Papuans, who landed by boat at Cape York in January. But the federal government has decided to grant temporary protection visas to 42 of them.

The asylum seekers claim genocide by Indonesian security forces in Papua, a former Dutch colony which Jakarta forcibly took control of ahead of a 1969 UN-backed vote widely seen as rigged.

"The Indonesian government has to expect that it will damage relations with neighbours when it uses its armed forces to crack down on people expressing their wish for... all those things that we expect should be available to all citizens of the world under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights," Senator Brown said.

Australia needed to show real strength against Jakarta over the "bloody crackdown" on Papua if it wished to avoid an influx of asylum seekers, Senator Brown said.

Papua crisis needs more active Assembly, ICG says

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Jakarta – Although disillusioned and even threatened with losing its relevance, the Papuan People's Assembly (MRP) remains the best available channel to address grievances in the province and thus must be engaged more actively in dialog with the government, a report from an international analysis group said.

The report from the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) released Thursday said MRP remains "the most representative body to emerge so far and has the support of key Papuan institutions."

"It is up to the government in Jakarta to make the first move to salvage the relationship" between Jakarta and MRP, and also Papua, the report said. "It needs to engage the MRP actively on both the Freeport and West Irian Jaya issues."

The report titled Papua: The dangers of shutting down dialog" was released by ICG's Jakarta office headed by researcher Sidney Jones.

The establishment of the Assembly, inaugurated last October, was in accordance with the 2001 special autonomy law for Papua; but various parties, the report says, became disillusioned with policies of the central government considered to undermine the autonomy law and the MRP's authority. Observers have also said inconsistency with the special autonomy law has led to more international support for calls of its separation from Indonesia.

The Assembly had rejected the establishment of the West Irian Jaya province which on March 11 saw a relatively peaceful election for a governor despite the MRP's warning of violence.

But given the large local turnout in the West Irian Jaya elections, implying local support for the new province, "the bigger question is whether the MRP is still a relevant actor," the ICG said.

The ICG report noted that the Assembly had not played a crucial role in decreasing tension in the Abepura area in Jayapura, which saw a riot on March 16, in which four police and an air force officer were killed.

Assembly members had pointed out to various grievances aired by protesters, triggered by dissatisfaction with operations of PT Freeport Indonesia which they say have failed to benefit Papuans amid allegations of environmental damage by the world's largest gold and copper mine.

The riots saw "sluggish" MRP response, the ICG report said, with an MRP team only arriving at Timika, the site of the mine, on March 12 following the first clash on Feb. 21 between local miners and security officers on Freeport property.

The Assembly sent press statements condemning the Abepura violence and urging the government to seriously address grievances in the province. Along with other Papuan leaders they expressed dissapointment when on a visit to Jayapura a day after the clashes, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo AS did not have a dialog with them.

ICG further noted the gap in perceptions of the MRP. Papuan leaders "had envisaged the Assembly as a representative body of indigenous leaders that would protect Papuan culture and values in the face of large-scale migration from elsewhere in Indonesia and exploitation of (its) natural resources".

But Jakarta-based politicians "saw it as a vehicle for Papuan nationalism and deliberately diluted its powers." The report said the MRP must nevertheless be strengthened by genuine recognition from Jakarta apart from increasing its own negotiating skills.

Students hide in the jungle

The Australian - March 25, 2006

Sian Powell, Jakarta – Indonesian security forces continued to hunt for students in hiding in Papua's jungles yesterday.

While Jakarta furiously denied the asylum-seekers had been persecuted, the Indonesian navy confirmed it was upgrading bases on the Papuan coast. "That (asylum-seekers) is a tactical problem," said Commodore Abdul Malik Yusuf, adding that keeping watch for asylum-seekers was only a small part of the navy's brief.

Indonesian Human Rights Commission regional chief in Papua Albert Rumbekwan said he was concerned others would follow the 43 asylum-seekers who had sailed to Australia. "When feelings of fear are very high, that can happen," he said.

Hundreds of students remained frightened to leave the jungles on the outskirts of Papua's provincial capital Jayapura. On the run after they were caught up in a riot at Cendrawasih University last week, some of the students have been eating leaves, too frightened to come out into the open.

Such a predicament is common in Papua where independent observers believe the security forces routinely assault and oppress the people of Indonesia's remote eastern province.

Arnoldus Omba, a student at the University of Science and Technology in Jayapura, said he and seven others had been living in the wild since last week. "We eat whatever we can eat," he said. "Young leaves, cassava root, and we hunt birds too." Mr Omba said he was terrified of capture. "We're frightened we will be killed by them (the police)," he said. "We're not criminals."

Cendrawasih University criminology academic Basir Rohrohman said the students had not returned to the campus. "They're refugees, because they're terrified by the hunt of the security forces," he said.

Mr Rumbekwan said the protest last week, which left four police officers and an airforce officer dead, drew international attention to the brutality rampant in the province.

"The security forces took their revenge with assaults and torture," he said. "Now the religious and social leaders and the NGOs are warning the people not to do anything which could bring damage on everyone. Because of what happened, many people are terrified, they have fled and they are hiding in the jungle."

Australia has routinely refused to support Papuan claims for independence, although the Free Papua Movement (OPM) has reportedly in the past had some support from Australian-funded NGOs.

For decades, Australia was one of the only nations in the world to recognise Indonesia's annexation of East Timor, and Australian support for Indonesia's national integrity has been equally firm, a policy of both the Labor and Liberal parties.

Papua was integrated into Indonesia following an "Act of Free Choice" in 1969 but most Papuans condemn the referendum of 1000 "people's representatives" as a whitewash.

Papuan police spokesman Kartono Wangsa Disastra said officers were still hunting 12 suspects. He conceded another detachment of Indonesia's notorious paramilitary police had been sent to the province, but he said there was nothing for the innocent to fear.

Yet Father Max Dometau, from the Papuan Presidium Council, said Papuans had learned to fear the security forces. "The students are still being hunted and it's difficult to reassure them it's safe to return because they're still traumatised," he said.

He had heard the students who were still on the run would look for asylum in Papua New Guinea and in Australia. "It's because they don't feel safe," he said.

Papuan stand-off

The Australian - March 25, 2006

Sian Powell, Jakarta – Hiding in a tattered hut in West Papua's dense jungle and existing on food brought by sympathetic villagers, university student Everistus Kayep is confused by the maelstrom that has engulfed his life.

Two weeks ago he was studying maths and management at Cendrawasih University, on the outskirts of West Papua's provincial capital of Jayapura.

A native Papuan, he had been monitoring the accelerating tension in Indonesia's remote and resource-rich province. Demonstrations had erupted in Java while hundreds of kilometres to the east, in West Papua, blockades were manned by tribal locals armed with bows and arrows, skirmishes broke out at the Sheraton Hotel in Timika and security guards employed by the giant US-run Freeport gold and copper mine were attacked. Resentment was building.

West Papuans believed they were being robbed of their wealth: profits from their gold and copper, timber and gas were funnelled straight back to Jakarta, leaving the province mired in poverty and disease. They feared the often brutal Indonesian security forces and saw the collapse of their hopes for autonomy and the forcible splitting of their province. The five-month-old Papuan People's Council, or MRP, was on the verge of collapse. Once seen by West Papuans as the shining hope of autonomy, the council has simply been ignored by Jakarta.

West Papuans are oppressed, marginalised and sometimes tortured, according to reputable judges, including the US Department of State. On Thursday, independent assessors at Australia's Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs said 42 of the 43 West Papuan asylum-seekers who sought sanctuary would be offered visas, a decision tantamount to conceding they had been persecuted and one that infuriated Jakarta.

Thursday was a turning point for many West Papuans, a rare victory in a campaign that has been riddled with violence and punctuated with world leaders routinely and regularly denying support for the rebels. Yet in Indonesia the denial is too often seen as support for the way West Papuan troubles have been handled and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, despite his 2004 election promises, has done little to ease the pain in the benighted province.

Ten days ago Kayep joined a protest outside the university, which disintegrated into a riot that left dead four police officers and one air force officer.

"My task was to document it, I was taking photos," he says. "As I was taking a photo of a police officer being mobbed, I was almost shot with a rubber bullet." Police later said they found a car nearby full of rocks, along with Molotov cocktails, knives and bows and arrows.

"We didn't do that; we students only prepared speeches, banners and pamphlets," Kayep says from his hide-out. "We don't hate the police, we are just struggling for the closure of Freeport."

He believes a double game was being played out. "That intelligence officer from the air force [who was dressed in civilian clothes], he was doing the provoking," he explains. "The evening before he was disturbing people, riding a bike and shouting 'Oi'. The next day he came again and people saw him throwing rocks at Brimob [Indonesia's brutal paramilitary police]."

Police have denied using provocateurs and have pointed to the fact no protesters were killed. It's true that although furious police officers beat up students, none were killed, a laudable development in the history of Indonesian policing.

Hundreds of students remain in hiding in the jungles, hunted by the police. "We are the children of the jungle, so we feel safe in the jungle," Kayep says.

West Papua police spokesman Kartono Wangsa Disastra says it's certain the university students took part in the violence, along with others, and he sees the work of Papua's best-known separatists, the Free Papua Organisation, or OPM, behind the scenes. The fear of rebels has fuelled an increased deployment of troops, yet the activists are scattered, poorly armed and in trouble.

While OPM is down to a few hundred members by all accounts, there are many other movements spreading and shifting shape under the rebel umbrella.

Edison Waromi, law and politics director of the Papuan National Authority, declines to say whether his group organised the protest, but he is happy to take credit for the asylum-seekers' victory. He says he appointed activist Herman Wanggai as the leader of the group on the voyage intended to draw international attention to West Papua's plight.

The Indonesian navy is in the process of boosting and enlarging its bases on the south coast of Papua, in tandem with an increased deployment of security forces across the province.

"They fled because the situation was not safe and they were threatened," Waromi says. "We know there are international conventions that guarantee the rights of asylum-seekers. We hope this will put up a portrait of Papua during the last 40 years, a portrait of injustice in Papua. In this climate, Jakarta must be sensitive to the fact that Papua's problems have already become an international issue." He says he hopes an independent nation of Papua will be part of the South Pacific group rather than Southeast Asia.

This kind of talk drives a spike of fury deep into Indonesian hearts, where the loss of the tiny half-island of East Timor still rankles.

Independence is not an option, not least because Papua's vast wealth is essential to Indonesia's bleeding budget. Freeport is the nation's biggest taxpayer, contributing $US1.1 billion ($1.55 billion) in taxes and royalties to Indonesia last year; only a tiny proportion found its way back to Papua.

Many ordinary Indonesians still blame Australia and the UN for the loss of East Timor. Now Australia has offered West Papuans asylum, and mounting resentment in Jakarta makes it clear this is likely to be the biggest blight on Australian-Indonesian relations since East Timor.

As with the East Timorese, Papuans consider themselves different from other Indonesians. Largely Christian and Melanesian, they resent the racist attitudes of mostly Muslim Indonesians and they see the Act of Free Choice used to legitimate Indonesia's absorption of their homeland as a monstrous deception. Yet all this could be dealt with if the economy worked and Indonesia provided reasonable measures of autonomy.

Adriana Elizabeth, Papua research co-ordinator at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, says West Papuans endure human rights abuses and economic deprivation. "Of course there are groups fighting for independence, but they are only small," she says, adding that most West Papuans are simply trying to get by, and the hardships of their lives have fuelled their support for the rebels and their distrust of Jakarta.

"The problem is development. If the problems of the economy were dealt with, I don't think there would be a dilemma for them. If not, the asylum-seekers won't stop. The Government should think clearly how to quickly foster development and build human rights in Papua."

[Additional reporting: Emmy Zumaidar.]

Trouble by the boatload

The Australian - March 25, 2006

Greg Sheridan – Is there another boat on the way? This is the question now in Australia-Indonesia relations after the granting of temporary protection visas to 42 West Papuans. The West Papuans came here by boat and claimed they were being persecuted in the troublesome province of Indonesia. This is a big, big, big story.

In response to the Australian grant of protection visas, Jakarta withdrew its ambassador and there were angry denunciations of Australia by Indonesian parliamentarians.

While naturally we do not know the precise motivations of the people who came here by boat, their action is a brilliant stroke in the ongoing political drama of Indonesia, Australia and West Papua.

West Papua could be the new East Timor of Australia-Indonesia relations, only much more troublesome and of much greater long- term significance. The Howard Government understands the stakes very well. It had limited leverage over the decision to grant asylum, which is undertaken after an independent review process by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has done everything in his power to prepare the Indonesians for this decision.

At the end of February Downer went to Jakarta for a day, ostensibly to attend a conference on terrorism. His true purpose was to speak to his Indonesian counterpart, Hassan Wirajuda, about the Papuans. He had four central points to make to Wirajuda.

First, that the Australian Government was steadfastly committed to the policy that West Papua was part of Indonesia and that Indonesia had legitimate and permanent sovereignty over West Papua.

Second, that Australia supported President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's efforts to bring about a political settlement in West Papua through a special autonomy package.

Third, that the formal decision on granting temporary protection visas to those involved was not a question of government policy. It would be decided first by immigration department officials acting under set rules that involved international law and treaty obligations.

And fourth, that even if the Papuans were rejected by the department, they would be in Australia for a substantial time because they would inevitably appeal to the Refugee Review Tribunal, and after that to the Federal Court and then the High Court. This whole process could take years.

Downer may not have made the point but such a prolonged process, with the Papuans cast as victims, may well have done much more to polarise Australian opinion against Indonesian rule in West Papua than a decision allowing them to stay.

At one level, the Indonesians have taken this calmly. Wirajuda was polite and friendly in all his conversations with Downer. However, for Indonesia to recall its ambassador is a very serious diplomatic step. It did not take this step all through the turmoil of East Timor.

The official Indonesian statement draws attention to Australia's repeated determination to keep out boatpeople from Middle East nations. These included Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power and Afghanistan when the Taliban was in power. The Indonesians are affronted that they are seen as not only persecuting their citizens in West Papua but in some sense are registered as worse than these Middle East nations.

But perhaps the most telling sentence in the Indonesian statement was this: "The decision justifies speculations that there are elements in Australia that support separatist movement in Papua."

Many Indonesians see West Papua, and Australia's involvement in it, as another East Timor. For many years Canberra reassured Jakarta that its policy was to recognise Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, but in the end, from Indonesia's point of view, Australia was crucial in East Timor gaining independence.

Many Indonesians suspect Australia of having a secret, similar game plan for West Papua. The international debate on West Papua will occur mainly in Australia. It will be led mainly by Australian non-government organisations.

It will percolate to the rest of the international community through Australian-based activists. And if an independence referendum is held, it will be because Australia has changed policy. And it will almost inevitably involve Australian soldiers, during the vote or just after. Some elements of this widespread Indonesian perception are clearly wrong.

Canberra never had a conspiracy to make East Timor independent but got caught up in a series of unpredictable events. It was the Indonesians who decided to hold a referendum on the issue and once that decision was made the movement of Australian public opinion was inevitable.

Certainly the Howard Government has absolutely no desire to see an independent West Papua.

Nonetheless, it faces an exquisite dilemma. There are certainly human rights abuses in West Papua and Canberra cannot and should not be blind to that. But in trying to support human rights in West Papua, Canberra wants to give no comfort to the independence movement.

The stakes for Indonesia are enormous. Indonesia has only just got military to military relations re-established with Washington. It is just beginning to attract new foreign investment and register good economic growth. If West Papua becomes an international cause celebre, this could all come under threat.

There are two ways this could happen. A single, gross act of disastrous policy, such as some heavy-handed security operation or massacre, could inflame international opinion, especially in the US Congress.

Alternatively, if a succession of Papuan activists were to row to Australia and repeatedly test our refugee assessment machinery, building on the precedents of these West Papuans, this could become a running sore in the relationship and give the issue a new, heightened international profile. As well as giving Australia a whole new boatpeople problem.

The most encouraging factor is that the Indonesian Government, especially the President, has a lot invested in the relationship with Australia. It won't want to blow it all away over this one incident. Things can probably shortly return to normal. Unless, of course, there are new boats on the horizon.

Church denies it condones separatism

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Jakarta – The Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) has responded angrily to a government official's allegation that churches have been used as a medium to spread anti-government propaganda by Papua separatists.

The allegation was made by National Resilience Council secretary general Lt. Gen. Muhammad Yasin earlier this week amid growing political tension in predominantly Christian Papua.

"The council's statement over-simplifies the Papua issue and discredits the church as a separatists' den," PGI chairman Andreas Yewangoe said.

Andreas said it was wrong to point the finger at the church for the current crisis in Papua because the roots of the problem were injustice and poverty. "The PGI fully supports all religious leaders' efforts to make Papua a peaceful land," Yewangoe said.

Indonesia recalls Australia envoy

Agence France Presse - March 24, 2006

Jakarta – Indonesia has recalled its ambassador to Australia amid a furore over Canberra's decision to grant temporary visas to 42 asylum seekers from restive Papua province.

Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin said its envoy would be called back to Jakarta for "consultations" with foreign ministry officials over the matter.

"It is not a permanent recall, but it is important because there are issues that need to be discussed over this incident," Thamrin told a press briefing.

He said Indonesia would not overreact but its response "will be calibrated and this type of response we believe is suitable." Australia said this week it had granted visas to all but one of the 43 Papuans who arrived in the north of the country by boat in January.

The Papuans, who include pro-independence activists and their families, have accused Jakarta of "genocide" in troubled Papua, a former Dutch colony taken by Indonesia in the 1960s.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda told reporters that the recall would take place "as soon as there's a flight that can take our ambassador home," the Detikcom online news agency reported.

Australia's envoy in Jakarta, Bill Farmer, was also summoned to the foreign ministry Thursday and told of Indonesia's "disappointment and our dismay," Thamrin told AFP earlier.

Speaking ahead of the recall, Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said while he expected "protests of one kind or another from Indonesia" over the decision he did not think it would affect bilateral relations.

"I think they'll be some protests from Indonesia but I think things will settle down after a short period of time," he told reporters.

Indonesia released a statement late Thursday saying the government was "surprised, disappointed and deeply deploring" of Australia's decision to grant the visas.

It said Jakarta had made "absolutely clear" that none of the Papuans were being sought by the authorities and were not subject to any persecution.

"Indeed, the Indonesian government guaranteed their safety if they wish to return back to Indonesia. The decision (to grant the visas)... is therefore baseless and without any legal merit," the statement added.

Indonesia also said Australia's action "justifies speculation" that elements there supported separatist movements in Papua which Canberra had failed to act against.

Australia also insisted Friday that it remained opposed to independence for Papua where a separatist movement has simmered since it came under Jakarta's rule.

Downer, who personally informed his Indonesian counterpart Wirajuda of the decision by telephone, also said that the visas were issued in Australia following legal procedures.

"This isn't a decision that's made by the Australian government, but through a process which is set in Australian law... we're certainly not in any way changing our position on the recognition of West Papua as part of the Republic of Indonesia," he told Australian radio. "We retain that view very strongly, that West Papua must remain as part of Indonesia."

The sometimes difficult relations between Jakarta and Canberra Jhad been steadily improving under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's first directly-elected president.

Bilateral ties hit a low point in 1999 when Australia led peacekeeping troops into the then-Indonesian province of East Timor to halt violence by pro-Jakarta militia following the territory's vote for independence.

Indonesia orders Freeport to improve waste management

Associated Press - March 23, 2006

Jakarta – Indonesia's government Thursday threatened legal action against US mining giant Freeport unless the company improved the environmental record of its massive gold mine in Papua province.

The announcement follows several recent demonstrations against the company, some of which have called on the government to take over the mine, run by a local unit of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX).

Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said the mine would be given between "two and three years" to undertake improvements in the management of the millions of tons of waste ore, known as tailings, that are pumped out of the mine each year.

Reacting to the announcement, Freeport spokesman Siddharta Moersjid the company "has the same objective as the Ministry of Environment, which is to minimize the impact of our mining operations to the environment." He said the company would continue to cooperate with the ministry.

The environment minister said there were fears that tailings could start piling up and possibly trigger landslides or flooding in communities living close to the mine in the highlands of Papua province in Indonesia's far east.

Witoelar said that if the problems remained unresolved then his ministry would file a lawsuit against the mine, similar to the one that was pursued against fellow US miner Newmont (NEM) over alleged pollution at its mine.

Witoelar made the declaration after receiving a report by a team of independent experts tasked with assessing whether Freeport's mine was damaging the environment. He said the mine had committed various violations, of which the tailing issues was the most pressing.

Papuans decry government's attitude

Jakarta Post - March 24, 2006

Jayapura – Papuan community leaders, smarting at the refusal of a minister to meet with them last week, have accused the central government of arrogance and an "unwillingness" to address problems affecting their province.

Representatives of the Papuan Legislative Council (DPRP), Papua People's Assembly (MRP) as well as local religious figures issued a joint statement of their concerns, which was sent Thursday to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The focus of their disappointment was Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo AS's visit to Jayapura on March 17, one day after the clashes between protesters and security officers.

Four police officers and one Air Force soldier were killed on March 16 by protesters, who demanded the closure of the gold and copper mine run by PT Freeport Indonesia.

All the five were involved in efforts to break up a rally in which the protesters blocked a road in front of the Cendrawasih State University campus in Abepura.

A copy of the statement was received by Antara newswire's bureau office in Jayapura.

During the visit to Jayapura, Widodo and his entourage of other high-ranking officials visited bereaved families of the dead as well as the injured at a local hospital. In another stop at Trikora Military Command Headquarters, the members of the delegation gave speeches but did not provide time for dialog.

The group said the refusal to engage in discussion showed the central government was not committed to solving problems in the province. They also said it was different from the accommodating approach toward the settlement of problems in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, where a peace agreement with local people was reached last year.

Signatories to the statement included DPRP deputy spokesman Komarudin Watubun, MRP chairman Agus A. Alua, Papua Bishop Mgr. Leo Laba Ladjar and chairman of the Papuan chapter of the Communion of Indonesian Churches Rev. Herman Saud.

Meanwhile, at least 16 lawyers from Papua and Jakarta are ready to defend 15 people named suspects in the killing of the five security personnel.

Pieter Ell, coordinator of the Papuan chapter of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said in Jayapura the lawyers were from Kontras Papua, the Jayapura branch office of the Legal Aid Institute (LBH), the Papuan chapter of Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM), the Democratic Alliance for Papua, Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) and Kontras Jakarta.

Pieter said the suspects had been treated fairly during questioning.

Papua Police have questioned 76 people in connection with the incident, and a reconstruction of the clashes was held Wednesday at the incident site near Cendrawasih State University.

The reconstruction, led by chief of the National Police investigating team Sr. Comr. Matius Salempang, attracted a crowd of onlookers after traffic was halted for nearly 30 minutes from the direction of Jayapura to Sentani airport.

Papuan anger focuses on world's richest mine

Asia Times - March 23, 2006

John McBeth, Jakarta – The pretext may have been demands for the closure of Freeport Indonesia's Grasberg copper and gold mine, 500 kilometers away across Papua's rugged central highlands. But while focusing on the world's most profitable mine attracted international attention, the true motivation for last week's bloody demonstrations in Papua's provincial capital, Jayapura, ran much deeper.

The student-led protests, in which four policemen, an air force officer and a protester were beaten and stoned to death, underline once again the need for the Indonesian government to do a lot more to address the remote territory's grievances, which range from an unfair distribution of the wealth gleaned from its natural resources to political double-dealing in Jakarta and a deep-rooted disrespect for Papuan culture.

Analysts say the demonstrations last Thursday had been planned for months by two radical groups allegedly linked to the territory's fizzling independence movement. Those plans appear to have pre-dated last month's unrelated blockade of the Grasberg mine itself, where police clashed with several hundred illegal miners panning for gold in the mine tailings, or waste rock, just below Freeport's mill.

As it was, the trouble with the miners, which dates back several years, served as the pretext for a March 14 attack on the four- star Sheraton Hotel near the lowlands town of Timika. That attack has been blamed on members of the Association of Mountain Papua Students (AMPS), an offshoot of the newly formed Front Pepera Papua Barat and one of the two activist groups believed to be behind the violence in Jayapura two days later. The groups are relatively new, and little is known about them apart from their links with the independence movement.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has made it clear he has no intention of bowing to protesters and closing the Grasberg mine, which last year earned the central government US$1.1 billion in taxes and royalties. Hit hard by the $5 billion Bre-X gold scam in 1997 and by a controversial ongoing pollution case against the US mining company Newmont, Indonesia's mining industry is already in the doldrums and struggling to attract new investment.

Yudhoyono also pointedly warned Jakarta's political elite against becoming embroiled in the Papua situation, a reference to opposition figures and other critics who have been seeking to turn public opinion against Freeport and US oil company ExxonMobil. Only last week, Exxon was given the go-ahead to act as the operator of Java's new Cepu oilfield after a prolonged dispute with the state-run Pertamina oil company, in which Yudhoyono personally intervened.

Never far from the surface, and often used as a potent weapon by Jakarta power-holders to pressure the government for personal gain, Indonesian nationalism in recent years has become increasingly linked to US actions around the world, particularly those perceived to be an attack on Islam. Recent protests by Islamic activists included both Freeport and Exxon in a long shopping list of complaints.

Political manipulation may also be at play. Defense Minister Sudarsono said this week that there seemed to be "integrated coordination" connecting separate demonstrations in the past few days at Cepu and the burning this Sunday of a Newmont Mining Corp exploration camp, 60km from the company's copper and gold mine on the island of Sumbawa. It was not clear whether he was referring to actions of opposition politicians or radical environmentalists.

In Papua, however, a different form of nationalism is ascendant, born out of the region's incorporation into the Indonesian republic in a controversial United Nations-sanctioned vote of "free choice" in 1969. Jakarta's inept handling of its easternmost province and a barely disguised disdain for the Papuans, who ethnically are distinct from the ruling Javanese, have only exacerbated a problem that now seems to have attracted a new and perhaps more radical generation of activists whose ultimate objective appears to be Papua's independence.

Front Pepera, one of the new radical groups, is reputedly led by Hans Gebze, an Australian-educated member of the dominant Dani highland tribe who has strong links with Australian leftist groups. Crisis Group International (CGI) analyst Francesa Lawe- Davies said it is difficult to determine what the organization stands for, but noted: "We haven't seen this level of coordination for several years."

The latest disturbances come after a year in which Freeport contributed five times as much to central government coffers as ever before. Since 1992, royalties and taxes have averaged an annual $180 million, with the company adding more to the economy in the form of salaries, local procurements for food and other supplies, and community-development and local-government programs.

The problem, of course, lies in how much actually goes to Papua – an issue that rests solely with the central government. Of this year's $1.1 billion, Papua is guaranteed 80% of the royalties, or a paltry $65 million. Even then, instead of being sent directly to Jayapura, the money must first go to the notoriously tight-fisted Finance Ministry in Jakarta before it is redistributed.

Last-minute changes to the 2001 Special Autonomy Law by Jakarta's House of Representatives denied Papua a share of corporate taxes, by far the largest chunk of the annual payments. But as compensation, it is supposed to receive an additional 2% of the total grant Jakarta hands out to regional governments each year. That, according to a recent World Bank review, amounted to about Rp1.8 trillion ($200 million) in 2005 – to go along with the more than Rp3 trillion it gets as a normal allocation.

Papuan leaders complain about the slow disbursal of funds, but Jakarta has a complaint of its own. Local police and prosecutors, working under the supervision of the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK), are currently investigating widespread corruption in the governor's office and several of the province's 19 regencies. Jakarta is also scratching its head about the whereabouts of $4 million it recently provided in electoral support funds to Papuan officials. As in Aceh, Indonesia's other special autonomy region, Papua has not always been well served by its own elite.

Up the coast from Freeport, BP is developing the 24-trillion- cubic-foot Tangguh gas field, which will eventually provide the major source of income for the newly created Indonesian province of West Irian Jaya. Although revenues will only begin to flow after a four-year cost-recovery period, the company is expected to contribute as much as $200 million a year to the province when Tangguh reaches full production capacity in 2016.

Under a complicated formula that also applies to Aceh, 70% of post-tax revenue will be divided up between the provincial administration in Sorong (40%), the three districts affected by the project (30%) and the central government (30%). Now, $200 million would appear to be far more than the threadbare West Irian Jaya administration could absorb without slippage.

If finances are a problem, the political situation in Papua is a minefield of Jakarta's own making. While the rebel Free Papua Movement's (OPM) stuttering bow-and-arrow insurgency hardly poses a serious challenge to Indonesian security forces, the threat of spreading civic unrest could well be real if the government continues to treat the Papuans as less than equals.

The latest recipe for rancor has been the March 10 local elections, which in effect cemented in place West Irian Jaya as a separate province and ignored the entreaties of moderate Papuan leaders to give the idea more time. The passage of a 1999 bill dividing Papua into three provinces – Papua, Central Irian Jaya and West Irian Jaya – has long been a catalyst for discontent, particularly among the elite in Jayapura who stand to lose the most.

In 2001, president Abdurrahman Wahid's administration enacted the Special Autonomy Law, which states that any territorial division has to be approved by a 42-member Papuan People's Council (MRP). But avowed pluralist Wahid was subsequently replaced by avowed nationalist Megawati Sukarnoputri, who proceeded to issue a presidential decree in early 2003 creating West Irian Jaya – covering all of Papua's so-called Bird's Head region.

Legal experts say the special-autonomy legislation trumps the 1999 bill, but it has one glaring loophole: there is nothing that specifically says it supersedes previous laws. Former ambassador Sabam Siagian, a member of the Papua Forum, is also critical of the fact that Megawati's home affairs minister, retired army general Hary Subarno, appears to have deliberately delayed the formation of the people's council.

Indonesia's Constitutional Court last year gave the green light to the creation of West Irian Jaya, but the whole episode and the decision to go ahead with the elections is seen as another case of Jakarta riding roughshod over Papua's newly won autonomous status. "What's so damaging is that they have been ignored," Siagian said. "The deeper problem is that Jakarta doesn't have the attention span to deal with Papua."

Under the best of circumstances, covering events in Papua in any objective way is difficult – even on the ground. But the government and its myriad opposition groups don't make it any easier, first by denying access to foreign journalists and applying a selective process to other dispassionate observers, and also by leveling an unending stream of human-rights-violation allegations at Indonesian security forces that have not been independently verified.

Take the case of 43 Papuans who sailed in January from the coastal town of Merauke to Australia's Cape York Peninsula in an outrigger canoe and are now seeking political asylum. Leaving aside the veracity of their claims of torture and repression by Indonesian soldiers, the episode illustrates the problem of trying to get a clear picture of what is going on in Indonesia's largest and least-populated territory.

Papuan and Western human-rights groups claim the Indonesian military is still engaged in genocide on a scale previously seen in East Timor, but Jakarta-based Western diplomats say they have seen nothing to support those allegations. Many Australians betray a bias by referring to the territory as West Papua, the same name used by the independence movement. Although the province was called Irian Jaya during president Suharto's rule, it was subsequently changed by Wahid's administration to Papua – not West Papua.

East Timor has clearly left an indelible mark on the Australian psyche. While that is understandable given its life-saving role after the bloody events of 1999 and Indonesia's refusal to punish those responsible for the violence, there is a sense in Indonesia that certain Australian human-rights groups are now rubbing their hands and thinking they can help to accomplish independence for Papua as well.

This month the Australian ambassador to the United States, former spy chief Dennis Richardson, asked that same question in a speech criticizing the motives of those fighting for Papua's independence. "Perhaps those critics cling to an Indonesia which no longer exists, and for them to accept the Indonesia of today and to reinforce the positive developments in Indonesia is to deprive them of their raison d'etre," he said.

In a country such as Indonesia whose intelligence services often prefer to deal more in conspiracy theories than fact, it feeds into the long-held belief that Australia is out to dismember its vast northern neighbor. That may seem implausible, but for diehard nationalists – particularly in the military and the House of Representatives – it is no laughing matter and frequently arises in public statements.

The government, on the other hand, has failed to provide any genuine reassurances that it has improved its treatment of the Papuans – yet another example of Indonesia's lack of attention to public relations and to international opinion. Critics say closing the province off to Western journalists and independent human-rights monitors, as has been the case for the past three years, inevitably leaves the impression that Jakarta has something to hide.

Minister Sudarsono, a political scientist who has been trying to reform the military, makes it clear that the government's closed-door policy won't change any time soon. What makes the government nervous, he explained recently, is that foreign reporters will act as a magnet for disaffected Papuan groups and only worsen an already difficult, though hardly crisis, situation.

The Indonesian military has an unenviable reputation to live down, but its more recent behavior in Aceh shows it may be making important progress on the human-rights front. Western diplomats say the last verified case of serious rights abuse in Papua occurred two years ago, in response to a separatist raid on an armory in the central-highlands town of Wamena.

Observers also note that during the latest disturbances in Jayapura and Timika, the paramilitary Police Mobile Brigade, a notoriously trigger-happy force that goes by the unfortunate acronym of "Brimob", appears to have acted with considerable restraint. Although four members of the security forces died and another 19 were wounded in the Jayapura incident, there is no evidence so far that they killed any protesters.

Thousands of students, however, have taken to the hills fearing reprisals in the wake of the recent violence. Witnesses say that the police also appear to have made tactical mistakes in dealing with the protesters.

Sudarsono acknowledged there have been past incidents of brutality and rape committed by government troops, but he said there is a tendency to insinuate that they were systemic and institutionally inspired. The same bias was obvious in the coverage of the August 2002 ambush that killed two American schoolteachers in the now-infamous Tamika ambush, with some Western newspapers alleging – without supporting evidence – that it had been planned by the top military leadership.

One of the biggest issues internationally is the government's military strength in Papua. Military analysts, relying on a variety of sources, now say there are 11,000 troops spread across the largely roadless territory – not 15,000 as has been widely reported. That is still substantially more than was originally thought, an indication the army may have beefed up under-strength battalions already in the province, particularly those stationed close to the Papua New Guinea border. There are currently more soldiers per citizen in Papua than anywhere else in Indonesia – though Papua is a massive territory to defend.

Human-rights groups, who use the high-end figure, claim reinforcements are continuing to be sent in. Jakarta, on the other hand, insists that they are deliberately misreading normal yearly rotations. Government officials privately admit that because most of the troops are based in and around towns, it leaves the impression the province is over-militarized.

The government's plan to base a third Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) division in Sorong, the old oil-mining town that serves as the West Irian Jaya provincial capital, won't be realized until 2014, a much longer term than originally thought. Even then, the division will be split between Sulawesi and Papua, with the apparent task of strengthening security across the entire eastern region. Both existing Kostrad divisions are based on Java.

All this conforms with recent moves, precipitated by the Ambalat territorial dispute with Malaysia over oil resources, to pay more attention to the country's territorial integrity. In Papua, for example, diplomatic sources say that the army is departing from its previous anti-guerrilla posture and putting greater emphasis on combined battalion-level operations that fit better with its newly defined role as an external defense force.

Like many countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has dealt poorly with its minorities. Papua is perhaps the most glaring example, a vast Melanesian territory whose people and culture are starkly different from those of the rest of the archipelago. The Javanese, in particular, who continue to have a dominant influence on Indonesian public life, have shown little patience for the Papuans, their aspirations or their culture.

It is this unhappy attitude that the Indonesian government has to overcome. Sudarsono, a Javanese himself, understands it well. He told foreign reporters recently that a lack of respect for Papua's unique culture ranks alongside economic injustice and unfair distribution of state income as one of the biggest problems confronting efforts to bring about genuine reconciliation.

[John McBeth is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review. He is currently a Jakarta-based freelance journalist.]

Four killed in Papua mine protest

Radio Australia - March 23, 2006

The Uniting Church in Australia has called for dialogue and calm in the Indonesian province of Papua, in the wake of a violent demonstration which left four Indonesian security personnel dead.

The three policemen and a military intelligence officer were killed at a protest on Saturday by hundreds of demonstrators, mainly students, who claimed they were fighting off a police assault at Cendrawasih University in the provincial capital, Jayapura. The protest was demanding closure of the giant Freeport Mine, claiming it's multibillion-dollar profits are not benefitiing the people of Papua, which comprises the mainly Melanesian western half of New Guinea island.

Presenter/Interviewer: Bruce Hill

Speakers: John Ondowame, international spokesman for the OPM; Reverend Dr Dean Drayton, President of the Uniting Church in Australia

Hill: It's a violent upsurge in the Indonesian province, which has seen a low-level pro-independence insurgency by the Free Papua Movement, the OPM, for many years. The international spokesman for the OPM, John Ondowame, who' based in Vanuatu, says things are still very tense in Papua.

Ondowame: The situation in West Papua right now is very strictly controlled by Indonesian military and people are not allowed to move around, exercising their freedom of movement. Many demonstrators, including 73 people have been arrested. Some of the students now run away, hiding in the bush.

Hill: Well some of those students might have something to fear. At the protest, four Indonesian security personnel were killed, two of the bodies were actually doused with petrol and set on fire, and one had his skull crushed with a rock. This is a pretty violent sort of thing to happen?

Ondowame: It was a peaceful demonstration. They demanded the closure of Freeport mining because of reports it is responsible for human rights abuses, environmental destruction and lack of negotiation with the landowners, Amungme and Kamoro and the Papuans. Therefore people were angry and this anger had been there for many, many years.

Hill: It doesn't sound very peaceful if four security personnel were murdered?

Ondowame: It was provoked by Indonesian military because in the beginning, people, students, they sat down and addressed their grievances to the authorities. But when the Indonesians provoked the situation and they directly responded by demonstrating against the police.

Hill: Meanwhile, Papuan church leaders have appealed for outside help. Reverend Dr Dean Drayton, President of the Uniting Church in Australia, says they have a close relationship with the Evangelical Church in the Indonesian province, and they want to help raise their concerns internationally.

Drayton: The church leaders are saying to us very clearly, 'this is not about independence, it's about how can the autonomy of the province that's been promised by the Indonesian government, how can that be put into practice?' Because they feel that they are losing all that has been precious to them, and the levels of frustration are rising as that sense of loss and the use of resources of their province are not being adequately used within the province. They fear that that's just going to keep on continuing and they want that to stop.

Hill: So what's the Uniting Church in Australia doing in response to this?

Drayton: We are listening to what's happening, in regular communication, and when the invitation came or the request came that we in fact speak to the Australian government and to the Indonesian government, on the weekend at a national meeting of our standing committee we in fact are calling upon the Indonesian authorities to act responsibly and with restraint in Papua, and to offer more opportunities for dialogue with Papuan religious and community leaders.

Hill: Four people are dead, members of the security forces, are you concerned about that aspect of things?

Drayton: Of course because when people are killed we're not sure of all of the events that happened when we look from here. But clearly there were demonstrations which were reflecting the deep and rising levels of frustration of the indigenous people in Papua. And whatever happened in the confrontation, when it leads to in fact police being killed, and possibly students being killed, then we must be really concerned.

Indonesians in hiding after Papua protest

ABC Radio - March 23, 2006

Peter Cave – Up to 1,200 students are reported to be hiding in the hills around Jayapura, the capital of Indonesia's Papua province, fearful of revenge attacks by members of the Indonesian Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob).

Brimob has a reputation for brutality in dealing with separatist conflicts in places such as Papua and Aceh and has been strongly criticised by international human rights groups on many occasions.

A student rally last week demanding the closure of the giant US operated Freeport Gold and Copper Mine deteriorated into a riot that police say has left six people dead including five members of the security forces.

Elsham human rights group spokesman Aloy Renwarin says the 1,200 students who live in dormitories at the state-run Cendrawasih University, which was at the centre of the clash last week, are in hiding.

He says they are hungry and some are in need of medical attention. The university remains closed and the streets are tense. However, when asked to go on tape, he refused, saying he feared reprisals.

Local student association spokesman Hans Magel spoke by mobile phone from Timica near the site of the mine that the students say is polluting the environment, and is tacitly condoning human rights abuses by the Indonesian Security forces it pays to protect it from locals displaced by the operation.

"The students are hiding in the jungle because they feel threatened. They are short of food, the conditions are not sanitary... it's an emergency situation," he said.

Last week, Indonesian television footage showed police shooting directly at students in the university grounds but the authorities still have not released details of casualties among the demonstrators, maintaining at first that only blanks were used and then that police only fired into the air.

Police have confirmed to reporters that members of Brimob involved in the clash have been confined to barracks and their weapons, about 40 in all, have been taken from them for examination.

Indonesian reporters in Jayapura were reportedly beaten by members of Brimob and had their cameras smashed in the hours and days after the riot

"I can't tell you exactly how many were shot," Mr Magel said. "In such traumatic circumstances, we ourselves are finding it difficult gathering casualty figures. The latest information we have is that 22 were seriously injured."

Indonesian daily Koran Tempo has quoted a spokesman for Indonesia's Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono, as saying the minister believes Australian Greens Senator Kerry Nettle was indirectly linked to last week's violence. The newspaper says Senator Nettle was a supporter of Papuan independence and was intending to travel to Papua province next month.

When the ABC talked to the spokesman, Bonnie Leonard, he denied the newspaper report, but confirmed the minister would appeal to Senator Nettle not to visit because it was not safe and that the visit might create more violence. Senator Nettle says she has not applied to go to Papua but she would like to.

Indonesia minister slams West Papua visas

Australian Associated Press - March 23, 2006

Rob Taylor and Heru Rahadi, Jakarta – Australia's decision to grant temporary visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers is an "unfriendly" act and Indonesia must protest, a senior Indonesian MP said today.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today announced 42 of the 43 Papuans who landed at Cape York in January have received temporary protection visas (TPV) and would be relocated from Christmas Island to Melbourne.

The group said they feared they would be killed if they were sent home – a charge Indonesian officials deny.

A spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Dino Pati Djalal, said Jakarta was still drafting a response to the announcement.

But Djoko Susilo, a nationalist MP and member of Indonesia's powerful foreign affairs commission in Parliament, said the decision was "too much".

"Giving asylum to them means Australia confirms what's been claimed by the group," he said. "This is an unfriendly gesture by the Australian Government."

The 36 adults and seven children, who include pro-independence activists and their families, spent five days at sea in a dugout canoe before arriving on Cape York in January.

They have accused the Indonesian military of conducting genocide in Papua, a former Dutch colony taken over by Indonesia in the 1960s following an independence referendum widely dismissed as rigged.

Mr Yudhoyono phoned Prime Minister John Howard, saying the group should not be given political asylum and should be returned to Indonesia, promising they would not be harmed.

Mr Djoko said the group should not be given asylum under any circumstances. "The Indonesian Government must mount a diplomatic protest," he said.

Aloysius Renuaren, the West Papua director of the Indonesian human rights watchdog Elsham, said the was no doubt the group had legitimate claims to asylum, highlighted by recent violence in the restive province in which five security officers were killed. "They felt intimidated," he said.

Mr Renuaren said he had once been the lawyer for the leader of the group, Herman Wanggai, after he was arrested in 2002 for raising the banned morning star independence flag.

"Afterwards he was afraid," Mr Renuaren said. "It's his choice where he feels safer, in Indonesia, Papua or Australia. It's a freedom of rights issue for him."

Walhi tells government to use confiscated timber

Jakarta Post - March 23, 2006

Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) in Aceh deplored the recent decision of the Forestry Ministry to grant forest utilization licenses to five companies in the province.

Walhi's executive director in Aceh, Cut Hindon, said Wednesday the reason for granting the licenses, which were given to allow the companies to supply timber for reconstruction work, made no sense and could destroy the province's forests.

For the post-tsunami reconstruction work, Aceh reportedly needs 200,000 cubic meters of timber. "Demand for timber in Aceh should not pose a risk (to the forest). The demand for timber could actually be met without destroying the forest," Cut said.

She also criticized the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR) and the provincial administration for allowing the licenses to be issued. "They could actually use confiscated timber or timber from grants," Cut said.

Walhi said that based on the Forestry Ministry data, there were some 71,000 cubic meters of confiscated timber. The figure excluded timber confiscated in the province.

In Aceh alone, Walhi recorded more than 33,000 cubic meters of timber that was confiscated by the police during the 2005 illegal logging crackdown across Aceh. She said if all the confiscated timber was used for reconstruction projects, it would means there would only be a shortage of 50,000 cubic meters. "The shortage can be taken from timber received from grants or donated for Aceh," Cut said.

She urged the central government to evaluate the move to issue forest utilization licenses in Aceh considering the impact on people living in forested areas and along the riverbanks.

Walhi's data shows that 46.40 percent or 714,724 hectares of riverbank areas, from a total of over 1.5 million hectares in the province, had been damaged, with the more serious degradation

Pornography & morality

Overhaul porn bill or drop it: PDI-P tells House

Jakarta Post - March 31, 2006

Jakarta – The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which has been by far the most vocal party in its opposition to the pornography bill, is proposing revisions to the bill if pressure to drop the bill fails.

Member of the House of Representatives Special Committee for the pornography bill, Sukmadewi Djakse, said that the content of the bill was extremely dangerous because it not only tried to regulate people's morality but was also trying to change a multicultural society into a monocultural one.

Sukmadewi said that the PDI-P faction of the House proposed a revision of six points in the bill. She said that PDI-P proposed that the title of the bill be changed from the Pornography and Indecent Acts bill to Control of Distribution of Pornographic Materials bill. Under the new title, the bill would only regulate the distribution of pornographic materials, and not people's conduct.

PDI-P proposes that the bill accommodate the cultural, ethnic, and religious differences in society; that it should not control people's private lives or make assumptions about individual morality or ethics. PDI-P also asserts that the bill should not regulate public morality and ethics based on one particular religion and should not be counterproductive to empowering people. Likewise it should not discriminate on the basis of gender, or limit artistic creativity.

Sukmadewi said that if House legislators did not agree to the six points proposed by PDI-P, then they would certainly reject the passing of the bill into law.

Secretary-general of PDI-P, Pramono Anung, said that the pornography bill threatened the nation's plurality, adding that an ideological battle was raging.

He added that with the deliberation of the pornography bill, the battle had been brought to the national level, with some groups trying to insert Islamic teachings into the nation's laws. He added that the ideological battle was also playing out on the local level with local government regulations that implemented sharia, such as in Cianjur, West Java, and the most recent controversial regulation on prostitution in Tangerang.

He said that the debate on nationhood had already been carried out by the nation's founding fathers, with the foundation for the Republic of Indonesia determined by the Constitution and the state ideology Pancasila, and not based on any particular religion.

University of Indonesia's Reni Ch. Suwarno, from the political science department, said that the bill ran counter to the 1984 law on the eradication of discrimination against women.

Reni said that there was a stigma on people who opposed the pornography bill as they were seen as supporting pornography, or they were not perceived as good Muslims.

She said that this stigma was unfounded and that the substance of the bill endangered women's rights, as well as the nation's integration, with four provinces – Bali, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, and Papua – opposing the bill. Bali has even threatened to secede, if the bill is passed into law.

The bill has drawn controversy because it prohibits kissing in public, inappropriate or provocative dress and nudity in art, among other things.

North Sulawesi opposes porn bill

Jakarta Post - March 27, 2006

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta – North Sulawesi has formally expressed its opposition to the pornography bill and at least three other provinces are expected to follow suit, lawmakers said over the weekend.

The deputy speaker of the North Sulawesi Council, Djenri A. Keintjem, said House speaker Agung Laksono had been officially informed about the stance of the provincial legislature.

The bill has met with strong opposition from various sectors of the North Sulawesi community for its vague definition of what constitutes pornography and its content, which is seen as incompatible with local culture.

"The law is not needed because the contentious issues have been covered by existing laws, such as the Broadcasting Law, the Press Law, the Child Protection Law and the Criminal Code," Djenri was quoted by Antara as saying.

In Jakarta, legislator Alfridel Jinu of the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), who is also a member of the team deliberating the bill, said that Bali, Papua and East Nusa Tenggara provinces were expected to formally oppose the bill. "They have made it clear they will reject the bill as well," he said.

The Bali provincial government has openly rejected the bill on the grounds that it is incompatible with the local culture and Hinduism, the religion of most Balinese, and that it may threaten the province's tourist industry, which is its economic lifeline.

East Nusa Tenggara and Papua have also aired objections for similar reasons. PDI-P, which enjoys strong support in the four provinces, has hinted it may reject the bill. The political faction in the House that has openly supported the bill is the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party, while other parties have not made up their minds.

The bill is currently being introduced in the provinces and will be finalized based on input from the regions and from various experts.

Last week, House Speaker Agung Laksono promised that the House would "be prudent and careful" in deliberating the bill to accommodate the interests of as many sectors as possible. "We will work on the draft before submitting it to the government for further deliberation," he said.

In Jakarta on Sunday, about 1,000 people rallied to support the bill that critics say is a threat to the secular and moderate traditions of the world's most populous Muslim nation.

The protesters, including many women and young children, chanted "We refuse pornography!" as they gathered under gloomy skies in Jakarta to press the House to pass the bill, which is supported by conservative Islamic politicians and preachers.

"Those who only see this issue from a human rights, liberal and secular point of view are trying to disrupt efforts to curb pornography," Ma'ruf Amin, a member of the Indonesian Ulema Council, was quoted by AP as saying.

The bill bans pornography and calls for prison terms and fines for kissing in public, exposure of a woman's "sensual" body parts and the display of "erotic" artworks.

Some women's and human rights groups say the bill would be a serious blow for rights and artistic freedoms, and is an attempt to impose elements of Islamic sharia law in the country.

Amin, however, said activists "only want to limit those (artists) who tend toward obscene acts, which carry enormous social costs." The vague terminology used in the bill has led to fears that traditional dancing, skimpy clothing and even bathing in rivers could be declared illegal.

The country already has laws banning pornography, and critics say police should simply enforce them better.

Labour issues

Please don't strike, manpower minister says

Jakarta Post - March 31, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – The manpower and transmigration minister has appealed to workers not to stage massive strikes throughout the country to protest a draft labor law, which unions say will drastically reduce employee pay and conditions.

Erman Suparno said Wednesday the draft bill currently before the House of Representatives had yet to be finalized.

Promising to look after workers' interests in the bill, he said industrial action, although legal, would be counterproductive because it would cause losses to employers and deprive workers of income. Massive labor disruptions could also affect investment in the country, he said.

Several labor unions have threatened to stage a nationwide strike as a last resort to stop the government from revising the 2003 labor law. They said the draft bill favored employers at the expense of workers as part of a government plan to boost foreign investment in the country.

The bill allows investors to hire contract-based workers and outsource permanent jobs and core businesses to other companies, phase out service pay for dismissed workers and cut other payouts by almost 50 percent. It also allows investors to hire expatriates to occupy key positions, including director and commissioner roles.

Workers have rallied in major cities and towns across Java during the past two weeks to oppose the revised bill.

"The bill is not final. All articles deemed contentious are subject to changes. The government is open to any suggestions from all stakeholders before (the bill) is submitted to the House of Representatives for deliberation," Erman said.

He promised the government would take the workers' side when revising the bill but stressed it should also help increase investment and create more jobs in the country.

It would be unwise and undemocratic if workers tried to force the government to revise the legislation while tripartite negotiations on the bill were still underway, he said.

"Workers and labor unions are allowed to channel their aspirations and their ideas about the planned revision through the government and the House. And they should table their ideas for discussion with other stakeholders," Erman said.

The government had already received several alternative draft bills from labor unions and employers, he said. The minister declined to comment on the substance of these drafts.

Former manpower minister-turned-labor activist Bomer Pasaribu called on the government to drop the revised bill, saying bad governance, not labor laws, were the main impediments to increased investment in the country.

"The government should focus on creating good governance, ending corruption in the bureaucracy, revising the tax system, eliminating the high-cost economy, enforcing the law and ensuring security for investment," Bomer said.

While acknowledging continuing high unemployment was a serious problem in the country, Bomer said it had little to do with decreasing investment flows.

The government could not legally prevent workers from going on a general strike to fight for their interests, which were legitimate, he said.

Tussle ahead over labor law

Jakarta Post - March 29, 2006

Jakarta – The revision of the labor law is vital to provide a more stable labor system that would lead to more jobs from the expected inflow of labor-intensive investment, an employers' group says.

Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) chairman Sofjan Wanandi said the planned revision was aimed at new job creation without disturbing the current workforce, despite labor union arguments it puts workers at a disadvantage.

Apindo contends the 2003 Labor Law is slanted in favor of workers' rights and has been an obstacle to new investment, aside from legal uncertainty and complicated bureaucratic procedures.

The argument contrasts with a World Economic Forum survey cited by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies researcher Medelina K. Hendytio, which ranked the law seventh in obstacles to investment.

Sofjan also said several domestic companies had moved their production base to more competitive countries like China and Vietnam. "This revision is not only aimed at attracting foreign investors, but also (bringing back) local companies that have gone abroad," he said.

For the private sector, the group says there are five important issues to be addressed in the revisions, including the seeking of a less burdensome severance pay system. Labor unions say the proposed revisions undermine the interests and welfare of workers.

"Currently, it is very burdensome for companies to have to pay severance pay up to 30 times a worker's wage, even for workers fired for criminal acts," Apindo secretary-general Djimanto said.

Many companies have opted for using contract workers because of the risk of huge severance payment payouts, he added. "Asking for a less burdensome severance pay regulation doesn't mean that we want to avoid paying it," Sofjan said.

Apindo labor law revision negotiating team member Anton J. Supit said that in China, the maximum amount of severance pay was 10 times monthly pay, in Vietnam six times and in Thailand 12 times.

Employers are also seeking a more consistent wage system, outsourcing flexibility as well as clear regulation on labor protests.

Sofjan said any disagreement about the proposed revisions should be addressed in tripartite discussions instead of voiced in street demonstrations. Apindo, as a representative of the business sector, has proposed a discussion next week with the government as well as labor unions on the proposed revisions.

"We are not trying to hassle those who have jobs but instead trying to provide work security for the 65 percent of our working population outside the formal sector," he said.

According to the Central Statistics Agency, 11.19 million people were unemployed as of last year.

Points of contention in revising the Labor Law

I. Current Law

1. Contract-based work

a. Chapter 59 on labor contract

• A contract period lasts for two years and can be extended for another two years
• It cannot be implemented for permanent jobs

b. Chapter 65 on labor protection

• Labor protection and job standards are at least similar to those in the law
• Employers are allowed to outsource temporary work to other companies

2. Leave

Chapter 79: Sabbatical leave is for at least two months and can be taken in the seventh and eighth years of employment. It is effective only for workers in certain companies and regulated in a ministerial decree

3. Remuneration

Chapter 88: Minimum monthly wages are set on the basis of minimum physical needs, with additional considerations of company productivity and economic growth 4. Industrial action Chapter 142: Sanctions on illegal labor strikes are regulated in a ministerial decree

5. Dismissals

1. Chapter 156 on severance pay

a. Employers are obliged to pay severance pay for dismissed workers

b. Severance pay amounts to a maximum nine times the worker's monthly wage for those employed for eight years or more

c. Service pay amounts to a maximum 10 times the worker's monthly wage for those employed for 24 years or more

d. Housing and medical allowances are set at 15 percent of severance and/or service payments

2. Chapter 161: Workers dismissed for violating company regulations and collective agreements after being reprimanded three times consecutively have the right to receive service and severance payments and allowances as stipulated in Chapter 156

3. Chapter 164: Workers dismissed because of a merger receive severance and service payments and allowances of twice the amount as stipulated in Chapter 156

II. Revised bill

1. Contract-based work

a. Chapter 59 on labor contracts

• The period of the labor contract is five years at the longest and cannot be extended
• A labor contract can be implemented for all kinds of jobs

b. Chapter 65 is abolished

• Employers are allowed to outsource part of, or all, of their core business to other companies

2. Leave

Chapter 79: Besides annual leave, employers could grant sabbatical leave to deserving workers, as regulated in company regulations

3. Remuneration

1. Chapter 88: The government sets the minimum wage as a safety net after considering the financial condition of small-scale firms

2. Chapter 89: Employers are obliged to set a remuneration system

4. Industrial action

Chapter 142:

Alternative I: Workers taking part in illegal strikes can be dismissed without any severance pay

Alternative II: Workers taking part in illegal strikes can be prosecuted

5. Chapter 156 on labor dismissals

1. Similar

2. Severance pay amounts to seven times the monthly wage for those employed for six years or more

3. Service payment amounts to six months the monthly wage for those employed for 25 years, or more.

4. Dismissal process refers to Law No. 2/2004 on labor court

III. Apindo:

1. Contract-based work

a. Chapter 59: Labor contract is based on real need

b. Severance of contract (by employed): Workers are obliged to pay any losses to employers

2. Vacation: Similar

3. Remuneration:

• Minimum wages are at least accepted as safety net measures
• Regulation on minimum wages can be postponed through bipartite negotiations

4. Industrial action

• Similar

5. Dismissals

1. similar

2. Severance pay amounts to a maximum five times the monthly wage

3. Service payment is phased out

4. Dismissal process is simplified

Court finds flaw in labor law

Jakarta Post - March 29, 2006

Jakarta – The Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that a law requiring migrant workers to have a minimum junior high school diploma qualification was against the law.

The court ruled Article 35 of the 2004 Migrant Workers' Placement and Protection Law was unconstitutional after a request for judicial review submitted by three labor recruitment and exporting agencies – Apjati, Ajaspac, Himsataki – and Indonesian Manpower Watch (IMW).

Challenging the law, the labor associations said it contravened the Constitution that said individuals should be given equal chances to get jobs.

However, in the ruling the court said the article's minimum age requirement of 18 years of age should stand to ensure minors were not sent overseas to work.

"The panel of judges declare that the article... is against the 1945 Constitution," court Chief Justice Jimly Asshiddiqie said, reading out the verdict.

"The limitation of a junior high school diploma stipulated in the article goes against... (rights guaranteed in) the Constitution; the right to survive and the right to prosper," Jimly said.

He said until the government could guarantee minimum nine-year educations for all its citizens, the law was unfair.

The ruling was issued with dissenting opinions by two of eight judges – H.A.S. Natabaya and Achmad Roestandi.

Roestandi argued setting minimum requirements for migrant workers would encourage people to continue their schooling. "Therefore, the requirement is not a constitutional matter but a policy choice by lawmakers," he said.

Around 62 percent of migrant workers sent abroad, mostly to work as maids, only had elementary school diplomas.

The court rejected the associations' appeal for it to review several other articles in the law, which included a requirement for a labor recruitment agency to have Rp 3 billion as start-up capital and to deposit Rp 500 million in a state banks as collateral.

Workers oppose Labor Law changes

Jakarta Post - March 28, 2006

Thousands of workers in a number of cities took to the streets Monday in opposition to a proposed amendment to the 2003 Labor Law.

In Semarang, Central Java, approximately 3,000 workers protested at the provincial council building, saying the amendment was unfair to employees. The protesters were critical of several of the proposed new articles, including one that would cut severance pay for dismissed workers.

"I condemn the government for saying the revisions are intended to attract foreign investors. Sacrificing workers is not right. Investors don't want to invest here because of complicated bureaucratic procedures and rampant corruption. Don't blame the workers," said protest coordinator Aris.

In Pasuruan, East Java, about 2,000 workers gathered to condemn the proposed amendment.

A presidential instruction was issued Feb. 27, urging the Labor Law be revised to stimulate the job market. Some of the more contentious proposed amendments include opening more jobs to expatriates, cutting the amount of severance pay for fired employees and easing the procedures for laying off workers.

Thousands of workers reject revisions to labour law

Tempo Interactive - March 27, 2006

Joniansyah, Tangerang – About five thousand workers in Tangerang District this morning (27/3) took to the streets to rejecting the revision the State Decree13/2003 on Manpower Affairs.

The action of the workers from various companies was directly related to the visit of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and First Lady Ani Yudhoyono to PT Panarub for a meeting with businesspeople in the international shoe industry.

The meeting lasted from 1pm to 2pm Indonesian Western Time (WIB) this afternoon.

Currently, hundreds of workers are gathered at the Jalan Moh Toha junction, about 500 meters from the PT Panarub Industri complex.

According to Sunarno, coordinator of the Cisadane Workers' Committee, the peaceful action by workers is aimed at showing the government that workers in Tangerang reject State Decree13/2003 and the revision.

"We will try to meet the president face to face today," said Sunarno.

The workers are also demanding that State Decree 12/1964 on Termination of Work and the revised State Decree 22/1957 on Labor Conflict Settlements be improved, and that people's organizations are involved in setting policies.

According to Sunarno, the Manpower State Decree is extremely unfair for workers and does not protect their interests.

Bandung workers protest revised law

Jakarta Post - March 24, 2006

Around 10,000 workers from the National Workers Union in Bandung regency staged a protest Thursday to reject the revision of a manpower law outside the regental administration office.

In their protest, the workers said the revised articles, including those on wages and severance pay, were advantageous to business interests and not to workers.

The demonstration caused heavy congestion around the office since many of the workers marched to the area.

"We want the Bandung Regency Council to deliver our demands to the central government on the revision of Law No. 13/2003 on manpower. If the central government ignores our demands, we will go on strike on May 1 and hold a protest at the House of Representatives," said Ristadi, the union's chairman in Bandung regency.

The revision reportedly includes a chapter which stipulates that a dismissed worker is only entitled to a severance pay of six months instead of nine months under the current law. Other articles were said to relieve companies of the obligation to provide a pension plan and allow companies to set the minimum wage.

"These articles allow companies to pay workers much less than what the companies are capable of paying and favor the employers," Ristadi said.

Similar protests also took place in Cimahi city where around 5,000 workers raised similar demands.

Bekasi workers reject labor law

Jakarta Post - March 24, 2006

Bekasi – Thousands of workers grouped in the National Labor Union (SPN) and the Federation of Democratic Workers took to the streets Wednesday to protest the revised 2003 Manpower Law.

Staging their protest outside the Bekasi Council building, the workers demanded the councillors protect their rights.

"It is time we workers stood up against regulations that diminish our rights to improved welfare and legal protection," said Ngadimin, head of the Bekasi chapter of SPN.

Most workers nationwide have rejected the revised law, which gives employers the right to deny them severance pay.

Council deputy speaker Dadang Asgar Noor said the council would ask the central government to annul the law and was behind the workers all the way.

Government starts crackdown on labor smuggling rings

Jakarta Post - March 24, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – Police have arrested a businessman and an immigration officer at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport as part of a crackdown on a human trafficking ring.

The operation followed reports that thousands of Indonesians, mostly women, have been smuggled out from the country to the Middle East where they work in sweatshops and as prostitutes.

Transmigration ministry migrant workers protection director Marjono, who leads a task force assigned with detecting and eradicating people smuggling syndicates, identified the businessman only by his initial, "J".

"The suspect will stand trial next week and we will have three victims testifying," Marjono told The Jakarta Post here Wednesday.

The name of the immigration official was also withheld. Marjono said the official was accused of issuing fake passports to workers.

The official was arrested last week following a series of complaints from workers deported from Syria, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, where they had worked as housemaids and prostitutes.

Marjono said about 40,000 Indonesians were estimated to be working illegally in Syria, Iraq and Egypt, three countries with which Indonesia has yet to sign bilateral agreements on employment.

"The workers were smuggled to the three countries from neighboring countries, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE," he said.

The government had helped the workers return home after they were arrested and deported as illegal immigrants.

A source at the Foreign Ministry said it had yet to receive a proposal from the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry to formulate bilateral labor agreements between Indonesia and the three Middle Eastern countries.

He said Indonesian embassies in the Middle East frequently received reports on Indonesian workers being abused in the region. Many workers also failed to report regularly to their embassies, meaning their citizenship lapsed.

Indonesian Labor Exporters Association head Husein Alaydrus blamed widespread human trafficking on the government's unwillingness to deal properly with the issue. "The government has taken numerous measures (against human traffickers) during the past few years but it has been ineffective in eliminating (the problem) because it is not serious about implementing the policies," he said.

Many more Indonesians were working illegally in Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Spain and other European countries, he said.

Belawan port drivers seek better conditions

Jakarta Post - March 23, 2006

Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – Truck drivers were back at work in Medan's Belawan port but only halfheartedly, saying they actually wanted to strike longer since the central government only promised to meet one of their many demands.

Many drivers were simply wandering around the port Tuesday, but head of Belawan port's sea transport section, Bambang T., said activities had returned to normal. "No more shipments are piling up in the port," he said.

But the drivers are not happy. Head of the Belawan Truck Drivers Association, M. Ratbaini, said that apart from demanding that the government revoke the controversial value-added tax (VAT) levied on land transportation, the strike also intended to push the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) there to raise drivers' wages.

"Our salary is still below the minimum wage, at an average of Rp 500,000 (US$55) a month. The amount depends on the scale of orders the company receives," said Ratbaini. In Medan, the minimum wage is Rp 737,794 per month.

Truck drivers in four of the country's major seaports in Jakarta, North Sumatra, East and Central Java went back to work Tuesday after going on strike Monday. Authorities said the delay in shipments cost the nation around US$80 million.

They ended the strike after officials from Organda reached an agreement with the central government.

Hurt by high gasoline prices, the strikers had demanded that VAT levied on land transportation in 2003 be revoked. They said the tax breached an earlier law exempting them from paying VAT. Transportation operators also demanded an end to illegal levies imposed on them by unscrupulous port officials.

Organda chairman Murphy Hutagalung said owners and drivers of trailers were confident the government would fulfill its pledge to revise Ministerial Decree No. 527/2003 which imposed VAT on trailers and trucks transporting containers to the ports.

A truck driver in Belawan, Supriadi, was not convinced his quality of life would improve. The 42-year-old driver said his Rp 550,000 monthly income was not sufficient to support his family.

"I feel ashamed since I regularly borrow money from my neighbors. But I have no option since my monthly salary is not enough to feed my family and finance my children's school expenses," said the father of five who has been a driver for nine years.

Ratbaini said that Organda did not care much about the fate of their drivers in Belawan. Organda has promised to raise the drivers' wages and their assistants since September last year but has not done so.

"We want Organda to be fair to us if their demands in the strike have been heeded by the government, then now, it's our turn to take up our demands with Organda. We want Organda to keep its promises. If Organda fails to keep its promises, this time the drivers will go on strike," Ratbaini said.

Secretary of Organda's Belawan chapter, Zulkifly, said the companies paid drivers a salary above the minimum wage but when asked for details on the amount, he said he could not recall it as the data was in his office. "We pay attention to the drivers'

Government/civil service

Dream of being civil servants fades

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Malang – Over 32,000 contract teachers in East Java might have to let go of their dream of becoming civil servants.

Head of the East Java Education Office, Rasiyo, said after a meeting in Malang that based on a 2005 government regulation on the appointment of contract employees as civil servants, the contract teachers might not qualify.

The regulation, he said, rules that, among other things, only those who have been working for at least 10 years – based on the time when the teachers received their letter of appointment as contract teachers – can be appointed as civil servants.

However, in reality, many contract teachers have taught in government schools for years but have only recently received their letter of appointment.

Rasiyo said the problems faced by East Java contract teachers were also found in many other provinces. "Hopefully, the government will review the regulation and immediately resolve the problem to allow all contract teachers to be appointed as civil servants this year," said Rasiyo.

He promised to convey the matter to the National Education Ministry, the Institute of State Personnel Administration and the Ministry of Administrative Reform which have jurisdiction over the matter.

Assistant head of the Malang Education Office, Imam Buchori, had even forwarded three letters to the Minister of Administrative Reform to revise the disputed clause.

"We will continue to make efforts in order that the government review the clause. We hope it will be reviewed this year so that they could sit for the application test and be appointed as civil servants," said Imam Buchori.

Imam gave his assurance that contract teachers who sought clarification on their status would not be dismissed.

Around 100 assistant teachers throughout Malang city had recently converged on the Malang Education Office, demanding an explanation as to why 198 assistant teachers were not appointed as civil servants after taking the recent public service exam.

"I've dedicated 10 years of my life to teaching. But, why have I failed?... The government also says contract teachers shall be given priority to be accepted as civil servants," said Joko Raharjo, 43, a sports teacher at Salahuddin junior high school in Malang.

Too many lawmakers unqualified: Kalla

Jakarta Post - March 23, 2006

Rendi Akhmad Witular, Jakarta – Many legislators are not qualified for their jobs and continue to put their personal interests over national ones, Golkar Party leader Jusuf Kalla says.

"If Indonesia is serious about its commitment to improving the checks-and-balances system and the quality of law making, then we need better qualified legislators," the Vice President said in a keynote speech as Golkar leader to a seminar held by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday.

"I have several times demanded that the recruitment of legislators should be transparent and accountable," Kalla said. With a better recruitment system, he said, intellectuals, academics, bureaucrats and professionals could play a greater role in parties and in the House of Representatives.

"It would be disastrous if the institution (the House) was under-qualified. Legislators would only focus on their personal rights, but neglect their obligations."

Lawmakers in the 550-seat House, which is dominated by Golkar with 129 seats and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 109, have been criticized for their constant demand for pay hikes, although House members are already among the best-paid politicians in the country.

Despite the salary hikes, the House was only able to enact 14 laws from the target of 55 bills last year. This year, the legislators are supposed to pass 77 bills. So far, they have not passed any.

Kalla said many Golkar legislators were incompetent, with only a few having the skills or inclination to scrutinize and deliberate legislation.

During his speech, Kalla warned about the potential for "political exhaustion" if politics was only used as way to win an election, but not as a vehicle to improve national prosperity.

"If democracy is only a goal, every politician will do their utmost to further their personal ambitions during the elections. They are not encouraged to serve the public and make people more prosperous," he said.

"A government is not functional unless the economy is running well. Political designs automatically follow the level of (a nation's) prosperity, meaning that if the people are getting poorer, then there will be a greater demand for political change," Kalla said.

Environment

Greenpeace calls for agreement to stop forest destruction

Agence France Presse - March 29, 2006

Jakarta – Greenpeace Wednesday called on the leaders of Indonesia and Britain to adopt laws to help halt the destruction of Indonesia's last ancient forests, ahead of the arrival of Tony Blair for a one-day visit.

The environmental watchdog said the forests, part of the so- called Paradise Forests of the Asia-Pacific, were disappearing faster than any others on earth, fuelled by demand in the European Union, United States, Japan and China.

In 2004 Britain was Indonesia's largest trading partner in Europe for timber products, importing some 121 million euros (145 million dollars) worth of timber products, Greenpeace said in a statement.

"Prime Minister Blair and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will talk about security threats, but they should not forget that one of the most serious threats to Indonesia is the destruction of our forests from which up to 50 million Indonesians rely for food and livelihood," forestry campaigner Hapsoro said.

"The UK must lead the European Union in putting together legal mechanisms that prohibit the entry of timber and timber products that come from illegal and destructive logging operations in Indonesia," he said in the statement.

Indonesia and Europe have entered into negotiations on a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), which aims to prevent imports of illegally logged timber into the European market from Indonesia, Greenpeace said.

Indonesia and Europe should also address the issue of illegally logged timber being laundered through third countries such as China and Malaysia, which is not dealt with in the VPA and should be, Hapsoro added.

Indonesia has already lost more than 72 percent of its large intact ancient forest areas and 40 percent of its forests have been completely destroyed.

A Greenpeace report released Tuesday said China played a central role in laundering illegal timber from the Asia Pacific, with much of the supply coming from illegally felled logs in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Government rebuked for not suing Freeport

Jakarta Post - March 28, 2006

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Jakarta – Legal experts have slammed the government for not taking legal action against PT Freeport Indonesia over its alleged violations of the country's environmental laws.

The environmental law experts said there was no reason for a delay in legal action, which was mandated in the government's working contract with the US-owned copper and gold mining firm.

State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar last week said Freeport's Grasberg mine in Papua had violated environmental standards on acid drainage and tailings disposal. The company had also not secured a permit to dump its tailings into local rivers, Rachmat said.

The government has said it would give the company time to comply with the regulations and has threatened to sue if Freeport failed to improve its waste disposal standards by the end of the year.

"The findings of the government's environmental audit clearly show that Freeport has violated our environmental laws. It has also violated the working contract," said Andri Akbar, a senior legal advisor to non-governmental organization GreenLaw.

Activists speculated the government was worried a legal dispute with the firm would stop work at the mine, depriving the state of revenue, and might only be settled through international arbitration.

The government and Freeport first signed a working contract in 1967 and extended it in 1991, allowing the company to extract minerals in the province until 2021.

Andri said all working contracts signed by the government and foreign mining companies, including Freeport, contained articles on environmental standards, which firms must abide by.

"Should a company violate the country's environmental law, then it has violated its contract," he said.

Article 16 and 26 of the 1991 working contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Jakarta Post, stipulate that Freeport must comply with by the country's environmental regulations and say the government has the right to halt the company's operations if they are found to have harmed the environment.

Andri said under the 1997 Environment Law, the government could slap administrative sanctions on Freeport, revoke its license to operate or file civil or criminal lawsuits against it.

"The government can even take Freeport to international arbitration for violating the (working contract) agreement," he said.

If managers of the mine are found criminally liable for environmental misconduct, they could face 15 years' jail and a Rp 750 million (about US$82,000) fine.

An environmental law lecturer at East Java's Airlangga University, Suparto Wijoyo, said the 1997 law required the government to prosecute all violators.

Indro Sugiantoro of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law said the government's hesitance to sue Freeport proved it had no intention of upholding the law. "Any act to avoid enforcing the law is a crime in itself," he said.

Freeport executives could not be reached for comment. However, in a statement sent to The Jakarta Post last week, the company reiterated it had complied with Indonesian laws and pledged to cooperate with the government to improve the environmental management of the mine.

US, Japan, EU drive illegal logging

Jakarta Post - March 27, 2006

Jakarta – The United States, Japan and the European Union (EU) are suspected are likely harboring forestry products from China, which came from illegally felled trees, a report by a coalition of international and Chinese organizations alleges.

According to the organizations, the three are the main markets for wood products made in China, much of which is made from wood harvested from countries with poor track records in illegal logging, corruption or human rights violations.

The report is based on five years of research by Forest Trends, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), and the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy and many other Chinese and regional organizations.

In its press statement, CIFOR said that China had become the world's leading importer of wood from tropical, developing countries, such as Indonesia. China has captured one-third of the global trade in wood furniture over the last 8 years.

About 70 percent of all timber that is imported into China is converted into furniture, plywood and other processed products, and then exported. This booming trade, coupled with China's own domestic growth and demand for paper products, is having a devastating impact on forests globally.

"Few consumers realize that the cheap prices they pay are directly linked to the exploitation of some of the poorest people on earth and the destruction of their forests," said Andy White, lead author of the report.

According to the report, imports of forest products from China bound for the United States and EU have increased almost 900 percent since 1998.

The United States now accounts for almost 40 percent of all forest product imports – by far the largest destination of Chinese exports. US demand for all products manufactured in China grew by 24 percent between July 2004 and July 2005 alone.

The report calls on international governments and the forestry industry to increase transparency and accountability procedures and crack down on corruption and money laundering that drives the illegal business.

Health & education

Climate change blamed for diseases across Indonesia

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Jakarta – While poor sanitation, inadequate housing and a lack of decent infrastructure all help infectious diseases spread throughout the country, environmentalists say global warming is beginning to play an increasing role in causing human illness.

"Rising temperatures have affected the world's climate patterns. Such changes will lead to an increase in rainfall and cyclones, and intensify floods. In these conditions, people are more prone to water- and vector-borne diseases," United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) expert Arthur Rolle said at a workshop on climate change here.

More than 70 environmentalists from 43 countries in the Asia- Pacific region attended the five-day workshop organized by the UNFCCC and the Foreign Ministry.

Another expert, Muhammad Asaduzzaman of Bangladesh, said heavily populated countries like Indonesia should pay attention to increasing outbreaks of dengue fever, malaria, diarrhea and cholera. "If the diseases are already there, climate change will only make them worse," he said.

A UN study predicts global average surface temperatures will rise by between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius this century because of human greenhouse gases emissions.

A World Health Organization report says climate-sensitive diseases are among the largest global killers. Diarrhea, malaria and protein-energy malnutrition caused more than 3.3 million deaths globally in 2002, with 29 percent of these deaths occurring in the Africa region, it says.

A senior official at the Indonesian Red Cross, Ujang Dede Lasmana, said although the government had no studies proving a correlation between climate change and an increased rate of disease, there was plenty of anecdotal evidence indicating the link.

"For instance, a study shows that Jakarta's temperature is increasing between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius (annually). The impact is dengue fever, which once occurred in epidemics and now is endemic, affecting Jakartans every year," he said.

Ujang said cases of malaria found recently in the Yakuhimo plateau in Papua proved that the eastern part of the country was also getting warmer. "There have never been malaria cases found on such plateaus before because mosquitoes could not survive the cold temperatures there," he said.

To address the issue, a two-pronged strategy was needed, Ujang said. The government should implement policies to discourage the production of greenhouse gasses, giving breaks to companies and individuals who burn less fossil fuels. It should also promote healthy behavior and clean up areas that were a disease-risk, he said.

Meeting seeks bigger health budget for women, children

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Jakarta – Health officials, lawmakers and activists are working together to reduce Indonesia's maternal, infant and child mortality rates, which are among the highest in Southeast Asia.

During a seminar – Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health: Our Shared Responsibility – held at the House of Representatives on Thursday, health professionals, legislators and representatives of local and foreign aid agencies, discussed strategies for increasing health funding to at least Rp 17 trillion (about US$1.8 billion) in 2007.

The extra money would improve the health of women and children and ensure the provision of quality free health care for the nation's needy.

The budget for 2006 stands at Rp 15.6 trillion, or 2.4 percent of the total state budget, an increase of 102 percent from the 2005 allocation for health.

Indonesian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development chairwoman Aisyah Hamid Baidlowi said every hour in Indonesia two women died in childbirth, 10 infants expired within an hour of birth, and 24 children under five lost their lives.

She said it was vital to protect the health of women and children because it was an investment in the nation's future. "All concerned parties must make a serious political commitment to developing effective policies toward the improvement of health services."

House Commission IX on health chairman Max Sopacua said, "it is imperative that policies be established and adequate funds allocated for the improvement of the health of mothers, infants and small children. We are all too aware that the current national health budget is far from the WHO ideal of 15 percent of the annual state budget."

Participants in the seminar expressed hope the nation's allocation for health services would reach about 6 percent of the state budget, or around Rp 30 trillion, before the end of the decade.

Other recommendations made by the seminar were – amendments to the 1992 Health Law to include articles specifically addressing efforts to improve maternal and child health; the need for assurance health allocations for 2006 were used transparently and in an accountable manner; and public access to quality health care should be guaranteed at state and private sector health facilities.

Islam/religion

House of worship decree more restrictive: NU

Jakarta Post - March 28, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – The odds are stacked against non- Muslims who want to build places of worship because the new joint ministerial decree on their construction is actually more restrictive than its predecessor, a religious figure says.

Hasyim Muzadi, chairman of the country's largest Muslim organization, Nadhlatul Ulama (NU), said too many interests had been accommodated in the decree, although he did not agree with allegations that it restricted religious freedom and was thereby unconstitutional.

"We previously warned church figures against revising the old joint decree because of fresh fears a more restrictive one would emerge in view of the numerous interests of religious communities. What we most feared is a reality. Now, we can do nothing because it is already in place," he said Monday at a gathering of alumni of modern Islamic boarding school Darussalam Gontor in Ponorogo, East Java.

Despite the restrictions, Hasyim said the NU would aim to bring about increased cooperation with other religions in an effort to mediate with authorities and the Muslim community in the construction of their houses of worship.

"The NU will help create field conditions in which non-Muslims face no difficulties in obtaining building permits and no security problems in constructing churches, temples or other houses of worship. That is how important it is to create harmony among religious communities," he said.

According to joint Ministerial Decree No. 1/2006, which was issued by Religious Affairs Minister Maftuh Basyuni and Home Minister Moh. Ma'ruf last Tuesday, both administrative and technical requirements must be met before a building permit for a house of worship is issued.

Ninety people must sign a statement expressing their intent to worship at the new building and 60 locals put their names to a statement saying they have no objections to its construction. Written recommendations must also come from the regency office of the religious affairs ministry and the Joint Forum for Religious Harmony.

The decree, which met strong opposition from Christian communities and more than 40 legislators, replaces joint ministerial decree No. 1/1969, which required at least 100 signatures of locals before a permit was issued for the establishment of a church, or a temple, in a certain region.

The chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly, Hidayat Nur Wahid, and Deputy House Speaker Zainal Ma'arif are optimistic the new decree will create religious harmony in society.

"Such a restrictive regulation is also made in predominantly Hindu or Catholic countries, and it is needed to avoid sectarian conflicts among religious communities," said Hidayat.

Zainal was surprised by criticism of the decree, saying it was not unconstitutional.

Community opposition and raids on residences and schools where religious services were held in the past year have highlighted the difficulty of establishing Christian houses of worship.

Indonesia was included among countries listed in the United States' 2005 State Department Report as breaching freedom of religion.

The decline of political Islam in Indonesia

Asia Times - March 28, 2006

Andrew Steele, Jakarta – Islam maintains a more visible place in secular Indonesia than it has in years. New mosques are popping up everywhere, while more and more women wear jilbabs, or Islamic headscarves, than before. That rising tide of Islamic expression in daily life, however, is not translating into greater support for the country's many mushrooming Islamic political parties, particularly the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, or the PKS.

The PKS's impressive showing in the 2004 legislative election, in which the party increased its representation in Indonesia's main legislative body, the DPR, to 45 seats from the seven seats it won in 1999, caught many political pundits off guard. Questions arose about whether Indonesia's move toward more democracy would steer the country in a less secular, more Islamic, direction.

The party's "clean and caring" campaign message struck a chord with many voters who had already grown tired of the ineffectiveness of Indonesia's better-known political parties, including former president Suharto's old guard Golkar, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle, or PDI-P, and former president Abdurrahman Wahid's National Awakening Party, or PKB.

However, voters have always been suspicious that the PKS would eventually push for sharia law and other pieces of conservative legislation that would move Indonesia in the direction of a more pro-Islamic state. True to form, the PKS has recently thrown its legislative weight behind an outrageous anti-pornography bill which aims to push secular Indonesia in the direction of the intolerant, fundamentalist regimes seen in the Middle East.

Shifting its focus from corruption-busting to promoting a more Islamic fundamentalist agenda in Indonesia's secular society has affirmed fears that the party was all along masquerading behind anti-corruption issues to push forward their hardline religious views.

Public opinion polls, academics and former PKS supporters say the party in its current manifestation is falling out of favor with the more democratic-minded Indonesian electorate. Widespread perceptions that the party is consumed with internal disputes and petty power struggles have greatly undermined the party's credentials for affecting political, economic and social change.

In fact, there are growing indications that the party is losing, rather than expanding, its popular support base. A recent survey by the Jakarta-based Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI), an independent polling agency, points to a party in peril. LSI conducted a year-long survey in 2005, asking Indonesians which political party they would chose if legislative elections were held that day.

The trend line shows an unmistakable and steady decline for the PKS, running from a January, 2005 high of 10.1% to a dismal 2.7% by year's end, the second-lowest rating for any major political party. The quantitative results are eye-opening, particularly considering the still prevalent impression among Jakarta's political pundits that the PKS is actually growing in numbers.

Significantly, PKS campaigned in 2004 on an anti-corruption ticket, hoping to attract voters to its self-professed squeaky clean image. Disenchanted by former strongman Suharto's corrupt and abusive 32-year rule, that message resonated soundly at the polls. Since being elected, however, the PKS has not yet uncovered any major corruption scandals, analysts note.

Although President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's popularity has dropped in recent months, the fact that no major corruption allegations have surfaced against him or his government has shifted popular attention toward jump-starting the economy, spearheading education drives and improving access to health care.

On all those fronts, the PKS doesn't bring much to the legislative table, according to Indra Piliang, a researcher at the Jakarta-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS. "What is the PKS's contribution?" He added that the party was increasingly beginning to resemble Indonesia's many other opportunistic political parties.

Marriages of convenience

Indeed, the PKS has failed to sustain or commit to any broad- based political ideals, and increasingly party leaders seem bent on mere survival. According to PKS's own internal data, the party has entered at least 54 different political coalitions supporting particular governor, mayor or regent candidates across the archipelago. Among them, analysts say, there is no discernible common political or social thread among the PKS's mishmash of coalitions.

On Bali, for example, it backs the mayor of Denpasar in a coalition consisting of Golkar, PAN, the obscure PKPB and PKB party. In South Kalimantan, PKS supports the regent of Balangan alongside PPP, PDI-P, PD and the PKB. The PKS-backed Riau Governor Ismet Abdullah, a Suharto-era New Order holdover, causing some analysts and others to question whether PKS's standards have completely diminished.

"People are starting to see PKS as just another party because they are supporting anyone who might get into power," Indra said. "Their affiliation with regional governments and their participation in coalitions will make it hard for them to maintain their clean and caring message."

More significantly, the PKS's once clean image has recently been tarnished by corruption allegations surrounding its senior members. In Depok, which lies just south of Jakarta, PKS candidate Nurmahmudi Ismail recently won a fiercely contested mayoral race, in which the Indonesian Supreme Court finally ruled in PKS's favor after rival Golkar challenged the integrity of the results.

Nurmahmudi, who campaigned on the party's anti-corruption message, has been questioned since in two high-profile graft cases. The most recent case involves a suspect permit he issued for a 1 million hectare palm oil plantation in East Kalimantan while he served as forestry minister in 2000-01 under then- president Abdurrahman Wahid. The inquiry into the permit involves allegations that only 2,000 hectares are being used for palm oil, while the remainder of the area was illegally logged.

On March 14, Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission, or KPK, called the mayor in for questioning. While he has not been charged or declared a suspect, his political opponents are demanding an explanation. Nurmahmudi has remained silent on the case, while the PKS's head in Depok said the questioning was a "normal process", according to news reports.

Innocent or guilty, the allegations have not been lost on Depok residents who backed the PKS precisely for their corruption- busting credentials. "The PKS has started to play," said one PKS supporter, signaling his perception that the PKS is no longer a party of corruption fighters.

PKS has been widely recognized as one of the best-organized political parties in Indonesia. At the same time, it also lacks strong candidates and a well-developed political support base across the country. "Their organizational structure is among the best," Indra explained. "But to get mass support they are not that good because they have a very limited market – like Muslims in the cities and college campuses."

Democratic bellwether

Political analysts are looking forward to the Jakarta governor race, most likely to be run in late 2007, as an important litmus test measuring the popularity of PKS and other Indonesian Islamic parties. For the PKS to be a democratic force, analysts agree that it must first get its house in order – and fast.

A spiraling internal dispute between the party's non-secular members, who control the spirit and core of the party, and a smaller, more moderate secular faction that joined after becoming disenchanted with the corruption in other political parties, threatens to derail its future election hopes.

There are some indications that party elders understand the political necessity to tone down its increasingly hardline message. Information recently surfaced that the party is considering fronting former Indonesian TV star Rano Karno as its candidate in the Jakarta gubernatorial race – hardly the face of fundamentalist Islam.

But if the latest LSI poll is any indication – and historically its research has been – it's going to take more than cosmetics to reinvigorate Indonesia's largest, floundering, Islamic party.

[Andrew Steele is the Managing Editor of the fortnightly Van Zorge Report on Indonesia based in Jakarta. He may be reached at asteele@vzh.co.id.]

Mob forces church to shut down in Bogor

Jakarta Post - March 27, 2006

Jakarta – Violence against religious freedom continued Sunday in West Java when a group of some 200 self-styled religious vigilantes forced Christians to close their church in Bogor.

Police were at the scene during the incident, but did not stop the angry mob, which purportedly consisted of residents from the Griya Bukit Jaya housing complex and other nearby residents.

Besieging the Pentecostal Church located in the complex, the Muslim mob forced about 190 Christians, who were inside the church for regular Sunday service, to leave and close it. The anti-church mob claimed that the church violated a 1999 decree by the West Java governor that requires the approval of local people to build houses of worship.

Last Wednesday, a meeting was held between church leaders, Muslim leaders and administration authorities to discuss the issue of church closures. However, the church ministers rejected the demands to close churches and went ahead with their Sunday services.

The minister at Pentecostal Church, Fekky Daniel Yengki Tatulus, was deeply upset by the incident at his church. "They (the local authorities) should have found a better solution, which did not lead to this intimidation and threats of violence," he told The Jakarta Post.

Fekky demanded that the police act firmly against those involved in the forceful church closure, saying the incident could further disrupt religious harmony.

He emphasized that the revised decree on the establishment of houses of worship jointly issued by the religious affairs minister and the home minister should have been a solution to the problem.

The decree rules that a new place of worship must have congregations of at least 90 people and its establishment is approved by 60 people of different faiths and local administration. "I think I would be able to meet the requirements by getting a petition from local residents," Fekky said.

Similarly, Indonesian Communion of Churches leader Nathan Setiabudi also expressed his regret over the incident, saying it was "anarchic" and against the law.

Quoted by Antara, he said the forcible closure could incite "sensitivity" among religious groups amid the controversies over the implementation of the new decree that revised the one issued in 1969. "Never let the incident be used by certain groups to annul the joint ministerial decree. We must remain wary of this," Nathan said.

Whether or not a connection between the new decree and Sunday's church closure was evident, he suggested the government suspend the implementation of the decree to prevent further conflicts because of misperception.

With Christians making up only about 8 percent of the nation's 230 million people, the decree has made it difficult for them to build churches.

In the past two years, 23 churches in West Java have been shut by various Muslim groups, purportedly for a lack of permits. The most recent reported incident occurred in Bekasi in November 2005.

Those opposed to the new decree and other critics have said the regulation can sow widespread religious disharmony.

Several Ahmadiyah and Christian leaders planned to seek a judicial review with the Supreme Court because the decree contravenes the Constitution and disregards human rights.

Faiths take joint stand against new decree

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Hera Diani, Jakarta – Christian leaders and members of the Ahmadiyah group presented a united stand Friday in opposing the revised decree on places of worship, and threatened to ignore it unless it is changed to meet their demands.

The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), meanwhile, is also dismayed by what it considers the disproportional accommodation of other religions.

Several Ahmadiyah and Christian leaders announced Friday they planned to seek judicial review with the Supreme Court because the decree contravenes the Constitution, disregards human rights and would sow religious discord.

"The decree can pit people of different religions against each other," said Alma Shephard Supit of the Peace Forum, a grouping of Catholic, orthodox and Bethel Pentecostal Church leaders with representatives of Ahmadiyah.

He said the country's Constitution does not recognize a joint ministerial decree. "We urge the government to scrap it altogether. We may well call for (acts of) disobedience," Alma said.

Religious Affairs Minister M. Maftuh Basyuni and Home Minister M. Ma'ruf signed the revised joint ministerial decree Tuesday, which replaced one issued in 1969.

The former decree was controversial because it required consent of local administrations and a large number of residents in the areas to build houses of worship.

Minority religions complain the decree has been used to discriminate against them. In the past two years, 23 churches in West Java alone have been forcibly shut down on the grounds that the buildings lacked permits.

Critics worry the new decree's requirements will make it even more difficult for them to worship, and contend the state has no right to regulate the basic right to practice one's faith.

The decree rules that new places of worship must have congregations of a minimum of 90 people, and receive consent of 60 people of other faiths living in the area. There also is a requirement to obtain permits from the local administration and the Communication Forum for Religious Harmony.

Daniel Biantoro of the Orthodox Church said the decree heightened mistrust among people of different religious faiths. "We used to live in perfect harmony in a neighborhood. But now we are suspicious of each other," he said.

Mubarik Ahmad, spokesman for Ahmadiyah which is considered a heretical strict by Islamic organizations, said the requirement on the minimum number of congregation members was ridiculous.

"In Islam, as few as three people are considered enough to hold a mass Friday prayers. And every religious group has their own logic. We won't build a large building if we have a small congregation," he said.

MUI, a staunch advocate of the old decree, said the government had given in to minority demands. "We proposed the minimum congregation of 100 families. But then it was reduced to 100 people, and now it is 90 people. Who is satisfied? Of course, we want more than that," the council's fatwa commission head Ma'ruf Amin told detik.com news portal Thursday.

The council also objected to the stipulation which mandates the government issue a temporary permit for a place of worship in an area where the number of the congregation is below the minimum. Ma'ruf added the MUI was resigned to accepting the decree, because it was formulated from input from all religious groups.

Muslim scholar Azyumardi Azra asked the public to allow for the implementation of the decree, which he believed was needed to maintain religious harmony. "It doesn't mean that people don't have the right to worship their religion," said the rector of Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State University.

Doubts dog revised decree on places of worship

Jakarta Post - March 24, 2006

Hera Diani and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta – The government is ready to publicize the revised ministerial decree on places of worship but Christian leaders still have reservations about the controversial law.

Religious Affairs Minister M. Maftuh Basyuni and Home Minister M. Ma'ruf signed the joint ministerial decree Tuesday, replacing the one issued in 1969.

The old decree was controversial because it required the consent of local administrations and a large number of residents living in areas to construct new houses of worship. The decree meant minority Christians in predominantly Muslim areas often had problems getting the go-ahead to build churches.

Benny Susetyo of the Indonesian Archbishops Conference (KWI), said the government's familiarization campaigns must be clear and thorough and ensure there was no space for different interpretations of the decree. "Some existing regional regulations must be revoked and revised to be in line with the new decree," Benny said.

With the revised law, local governments can no longer escape from their obligation to provide houses of worship for religious minorities, regardless of local residents' objections.

The decree rules that new places of worship must have congregations of a minimum of 90 people. A minimum of 60 people of other faiths living in the area must also give their consent for the building. There is also a requirement to obtain building permits from local administrations and the Communication Forum for Religious Harmony (FKUB).

However, unlike in the previous decree, if locals object to places of worship but consent is granted by administrations and the FKUB, local bodies are obligated to find an alternate space for the churches.

"Article 14 stipulates that if the minimum congregation requirement is met and permits are issued, but locals' approval is not given, local administration are obliged to provide a facility for the congregation. That should be clearly stated," Benny said.

The decree also says congregations numbering less than 90 people can obtain two-year temporary permits to observe their faiths in a house of worship. Administrations must also protect and assist existing houses of worship, which have yet to obtain permits.

Weinata Sairin of the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI), however, said he was dissatisfied with the decree. The PGI had wanted minimum congregation numbers lowered to 60, with only 40 locals of other faiths needed to obtain building permission, he said.

"(However) it's not simply a matter of numbers. The freedom to worship is clearly stated in the Constitution so this decree is not actually needed. But now the most important thing is the implementation (of the decree) in the field, because people's levels of freedom, education and the quality of religious harmony varies in the regions," Weinata said.

Meanwhile, 42 legislators – most of them Christians – filed a petition rejecting the decree with the House of Representatives leadership. Constan Ponggawa of the Prosperous Peace Party (PDS) said the decree had caused tension between followers of all religions in the country.

House deputy speaker Muhaimin Iskandar of the Nation Awakening Party (PKB) said the issue would be discussed in the House leadership meeting. Muhaimin said he personally believed the government should not interfere too much in people's religious activities.

Data released by the Indonesian Committee on Religion and Peace shows that more than 1,000 churches nationwide have been destroyed or vandalized since the 1969 decree was issued because they failed to meet the strict requirements.

Maftuh said Muslim minorities also faced difficulties erecting mosques in areas where they were outnumbered.

"Hopefully, this decree can stop the conflict between religious groups, which has occurred in the past. This decree does not give room for multiple interpretations and people of low education will understand it well," he told Antara.

Mining & energy

Four treated after being shot over Newmont attack

Jakarta Post - March 29, 2006

Panca Nugraha, Mataram – Four suspects in an attack on an exploration camp run by US mining giant Newmont in Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, are being treated at separate hospitals after being shot by police Sunday after they resisted arrest, police said Tuesday.

Two of the four victims are being treated at Kemala Hikmah Police Hospital in Mataram, while the other two are at Sumbawa General Hospital in Sumbawa Besar regency, West Nusa Tenggara Police spokesman Adj. Sr. Comr. HM Basri said.

Basri said the two victims being treated in Mataram had been identified as Kasim and Asmaun. Though the two are being treated for gunshot wounds to the chest, Basri denied reports they are in critical condition.

Kasim was admitted to the hospital Sunday, while Asmaun was transferred there Monday evening, Basri said.

"No one is allowed to take photos of the patients so as not to incite anger in Sumbawa. Their condition is improving," he said, adding that the two victims treated in Sumbawa Besar had been identified as Ali and Syamsudin.

Basri said Monday that after questioning a number of witnesses about the March 19 attack, police sent summonses to dozens of people believed to have been involved in the incident. When the summonses were ignored, police went to pick up the suspects, including several in Lebuin village.

Police detained up to 12 suspects, but when they attempted to take others into custody hundreds of residents attacked officers with bows and arrows, spears and stones, Basri said, adding that a clash could not be avoided.

"The police officers were forced to fire warning shots. However, when the angry residents failed to heed the warning, officers were forced to shoot the four suspects," Basri said.

Four police officers were also injured during Sunday's action on Sumbawa island, he said. One was injured by an arrow, while the three others were hit by rocks thrown by the villagers.

Two other key suspects escaped arrest during a raid on Ropang village, near the exploration camp that was attacked, according to AFP.

The attack and torching of the Newmont camp, located around 60 kilometers from the company's main gold and copper mining site, led to exploration work being suspended but mining continued as usual.

The company had received reports of the planned attack so had evacuated its 135 workers. No one was injured.

Press reports have said that local residents were demanding Rp 10 billion (US$1.1 million) from the company for community development programs.

Muslims oppose Exxon on Cepu block

Jakarta Post - March 25, 2006

Surakarta – A group of Muslims representing several Islamic boarding schools in Surakarta staged a rally at the Gladag traffic circle here Friday over the takeover of the Cepu oil block by ExxonMobil.

They asserted that the United States and other foreign forces were engaging in a new form of colonization through the domination of economic assets.

"America has intimidated Indonesia to control the Cepu Block and Freeport," said coordinator of the protest, Mudzakir. The protest was apparently inspired by the bloody incident in Abepura, Papua, on March 16.

In the case of gold and copper exploration by PT Freeport Indonesia for instance, he said that there was inequity in profit sharing between the Indonesian government, the local community and the US firm.

"The community development fund is ambiguous, thereby leading to systematic poverty of people living around the mining site. They have never tasted prosperity at all," asserted Mudzakir.

He urged the government to immediately review the working contract with Freeport which he said was of no benefit to the nation.

Business & investment

Sluggish investment holding back economic growth

Jakarta Post - March 31, 2006

Jakarta – Indonesia's economy may grow more slowly this year than in 2005 as private investment remains sluggish and only likely to pick up during the second half of 2006, the World Bank said in a report released Thursday.

In its latest economic update for the East Asian region, the Washington-based lender foresees Indonesia's gross domestic product (GDP) growing at only 5.5 percent for this year, or at the low end of its previous projection of between 5.5 and 6 percent.

This is slightly lower than the 5.6 percent growth to produce a GDP of Rp 2.79 quadrillion (US$310 billion) that Indonesia managed to achieve last year.

"Growth is expected to bottom out in the first or second quarter," the bank said in the report. "The deceleration of private investments is expected to be more severe than previously envisaged."

World Bank country director for Indonesia Andrew Steer had previously said that growth in 2006 might only reach 5 to 5.5 percent if consumption and investment continued to be affected by the recent high inflationary and high interest rate environment after last year's double fuel price hikes.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, meanwhile, said Monday that growth would likely reach 5.9 percent this year, lower than the government's previous 6.2 percent target, on concerns about slower investment and export growth.

The budget deficit could also widen to Rp 35 trillion, or 1 percent of GDP from the previous estimate of 0.7 percent, as the government will have to spend more on keeping state power firm PLN afloat after canceling plans to hike electricity prices.

Growth in private investment, along with consumption, experienced a severe slowdown last year at a time when the government was trying to create a more sustainable investment-driven economy from a consumption-driven one.

Investment grew by 2 percent during last year's fourth quarter compared to more than 9 percent in the previous one, figures from the Central Statistics Agency show.

If the government manages to maintain high public development spending and macroeconomic stability throughout 2006, the situation not be so bleak for Indonesia, the report added, saying that private investment and consumer spending could pick up in the second semester as inflation and interest rates come down.

For the region, the Bank sees the economies of East Asia growing at a slower 6.6 percent this year, after 6.8 percent last year and 7.5 percent in 2004, as the impact of high oil prices continues. It is, however, projecting that Southeast Asian economies will grow by 5.3 percent in 2006, faster than last year's rate of 5.1 percent.

Indonesian coal a family affair

Asia Times - March 25, 2006

Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Indonesia's bountiful natural resources are generating massive corporate deals, a signal that one of the region's sickest post-Asian-financial-crisis economies is finally reviving. In the process, so too are some of the business families that ruled the roost under former president Suharto's New Order regime.

In one of Indonesia's largest ever corporate takeovers, Bumi Resources, the country's biggest coal exporter, was sold last week for US$3.2 billion to a group of investors led by Borneo Lumbung Energi, an affiliate of Jakarta-based investment bank Renaissance Capital, and the Marubeni Corp, Japan's fifth-largest trading company. The groups bought 95% of Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC) and 100% of Arutmin Indonesia and IndoCoal Resources Ltd at a whopping 54% premium on the company's current market value.

Marubeni is expected to cover up to 50% of the purchase and plans later to build a coal-fired power plant in Indonesia. The Japanese concern said it needs more coal to supplement supplies from its mines in Australia and Canada to meet the steep rise in demand for coal used at power plants at home and in China.

Bumi's decision to sell the lucrative mines comes at a time when surging demand in China and India have helped to buoy global commodity prices. Mining activities account for roughly 10% of Indonesia's gross domestic product, but the industry is still highly underdeveloped. At the same time, multinational resource companies are encountering a growing series of protests, attacks and nationalistic confrontations from various Indonesian interest groups.

The sale also represents the second-biggest divestment ever for an Indonesian company, topped only by last year's $5.2 billion sale of the country's second-largest cigarette producer, HM Sampoerna, to US tobacco giant Philip Morris International by the high-rolling Sampoerna family.

Bumi, affiliated to one of Indonesia's oldest and biggest conglomerates, Bakrie & Brothers Tbk, better known as the Bakrie Group, started life as Bumi Modern in 1973 and later became a major player in the hotel and tourism sector. The family company had close ties to Suharto, and like many Indonesian companies fell on hard times in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. In 1998, citing adverse economic conditions, the Bakrie family shifted its core business from domestic-oriented hotels to export-oriented oil, natural gas and mining.

The move paid off handsomely. Sources close to the deal said the Bakrie family and other members of the consortium put $750 million into the kitty, with the remaining $2.5 billion pledged from debt instruments arranged by Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB). Last year Bumi successfully sold $600 million in dollar- denominated bonds, which were backed by cash flows generated at Arutmin Indonesia and Kaltim Prima Coal.

The deal has a notable political component, harking to the New Order days. Aburazil Bakrie, who until December served as senior economics minister and is now the coordinating minister for social welfare, is one of Indonesia's richest officials, with a declared personal wealth of $121.9 million. Last year he ran for the Golkar party leadership. Though he didn't win, his standing in Suharto's old party is strong, and Golkar is still popular in the regions, notably where most of the country's energy projects are.

Bakrie has been rumored to have links to Renaissance and its Recapital Asia subsidiary – though the family is on record denying any connection. Recapital Asia has been at the center of many recent blockbuster debt-restructuring deals. Edwin Soeryadjaya, son of the founder of Indonesia's national car company Astra, and Sandiaga S Uno, chairman of the Young Indonesian Entrepreneurs Association, jointly own Recapital Asia, which was previously known as Rifan Financindo Advisory.

Before establishing Renaissance, Samin Tan, Surjadinata Sumantri and Dessi Natalegawa were all partners at the Jakarta office of accounting firm Delloite Tohmatsu. To date the finance company's reputation in capital markets has been top-rate, and it has successfully secured international financing for restructuring several indebted Indonesian-owned enterprises. Its prowess in lobbying with the government's asset-management company, Perusahaan Pengelola Aset (PPA), and its current chairman Mohammad Syahrial is the envy of other Jakarta finance houses.

Market watchers say Renaissance can broker funds into deals that many lenders would not touch, allowing it to leverage big deals with little capital. With Renaissance up front, but not obviously linked, the Bakrie Group would not fear any stigma of recently being one of Indonesia's biggest indebted conglomerates and today one its most financially active, some insiders suggest.

Renaissance's Tan and Sumantri also jointly own Borneo Lumbung Energi, 75% and 25% respectively. Tan recently commented, "We will not sell Bumi again for the time being," a seeming admission that Renaissance has not only bought the two Bumi mines through Borneo Lumbung Energi, but is also calling managerial shots at Bumi.

Others behind Renaissance, like the founders themselves, had been leading executives in Chandra Asri, the first and only olefin (hydrocarbon) complex in Indonesia. Controversial from the outset, the $1.5 billion megaproject, awarded through the patronage networks of Suharto's New Order era, swallowed up vast amounts of money, suffered extraordinarily unfortunate timing, and highlighted the financial woes many Japanese trading companies suffered in their dealings with the then-ruling family's business associates.

"If Bakrie really is behind Renaissance, it would be a silent comeback for the family after losing control over Bank Nusa Nasional, one of the banks that merged [under government supervision] into Bank Danamon," said Yosef Ardi, a business editor at Bisnis Indonesia.

Back from the dead

In 2001, Bumi paid $140 million for its 80% stake in Arutmin from Australia's BHP Billiton. At the time, analysts were skeptical about the previously indebted company's ability to raise the funds needed to make the purchase. The deal was highly controversial given Bakrie's debt-restructuring exercise earlier that year, in which the company swapped $1.1 billion in debt for new equity, and was legally prohibited from making any new acquisitions. The deal went through nonetheless.

Bakrie's creditors then owned 95% of the diversified conglomerate, including a 20% stake in Arutmin. Two years later, Bumi bought the entire stake in KPC for $500 million, including assumed debt, from Anglo-American energy giant BP Plc and Anglo- Australian mining conglomerate Rio Tinto. The government estimated KPC's value at $822 million at the time.

Analysts noted that Bumi's debts at the time of the KPC acquisition were three times as high as its capital, with a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.2:1. In such a position, any banks following prudential banking principles would have been unlikely to offer the company new loans – hence there are many unanswered questions about the KPC deal.

The divestment process had been delayed for years, partly because of a dispute with the local administration. The deal was made at a time when the team, set up by Laksamana Sukardi, the state minister of state enterprises, was in the process of finalizing talks with the East Kalimantan administration. Sukardi had warned of "strict measures" against KPC if the company did not comply with Article 26 of the contract, which stated that KPC, like Arutmin, should only sell its shares to the Indonesian government, other Indonesian-owned institutions or Indonesian individuals.

By then, the two multinational resource giants had grown weary of the protracted squabble. Insiders say Bumi approached BP with an offer that persuaded the British energy giant to depart the local mining industry altogether. Rio Tinto, clearly averse to being left as the underdog in Indonesian hands, was quick to follow suit and agreed to the deal.

There was still unfinished business, however. Under the nationalistic 1982 Coal Cooperation Agreement, struck between the central government and individual companies, mines had to be 51% locally owned on the 10th anniversary of beginning operations. KPC was obligated to divest 51% of its ownership, with the first divestment scheduled for October 2003. Based on the purchase agreement between Sangata Holding, Kalimantan Coal and the Regency Government of East Kutai, 18.6% of KPC's shares were to be given to the regency, through Kutai Timur Energi, a district- owned company, leaving the to-be-divested stake at 32.4%.

Bumi offered this to a number of local companies through a tender. Little-known mining-service company Sitrade Nusaglobus won through a $399.98 million bid and in August established a new subsidiary, Sitrade Coal. The Bakrie Group at the time denied rumors that Sitrade was part of its holdings, but Bumi later purchased 99% of Sitrade Coal from Sitrade Nusa Globus for Rp7 billion ($700,000).

Revisiting the costs and the receipts from asset sales, Bumi's total outlay for the two mines was just short of $251 million, earning it an apparent net profit of just under $3 billion from the recent sale.

The company is expected this month to post 2005 earnings of about $237 million, and its shares rose 5.4% to a record Rp980 per share on news of the sale. Trading was later suspended by the Jakarta Stock Exchange pending further details of the transaction. (Trading resumed on Wednesday.) The current share price gives Bumi a market capitalization of Rp19 trillion ($2.08 billion), meaning that the sale price was an eye-popping 54% over the company's market value.

Why sell?

Last year Indonesia produced 155 million tons of coal, making it the world's second-biggest coal exporter after Australia. KPC and Arutmin are Indonesia's second- and fourth-largest coal producers respectively, and account for some 29% of national coal production. Combined, they generated $1.1 billion in net sales in 2005, with an operating income of $2.93 million. The mines have combined proven and probable marketable reserves of 959 million tons, according to energy analysts.

The Bumi mines hold contracts with several major Asian utility companies, but demand for coal will increase in Indonesia because of the planned construction of coal-fired power plants to meet spiking domestic electricity demand, which is growing by some 7% a year. The government has said it wants to speed up the construction of power plants fired by fuels other than oil amid high crude prices and fears of power shortages in Java, home to about 60% of Indonesia's 238 million people.

Bumi said in a statement that the sale, subject to approval from Bumi's shareholders, would allow the company "to realign its focus into the energy and natural resources sectors which management believes have greater long-term potential for Bumi".

Some of the money will be used to build plants that produce diesel from coal and crops such as oil palm. Another Bakrie family business, publicly listed Bakrie Sumatera Plantation, is planning to expand its oil-palm and rubber plantations in Sumatra and Kalimantan over the next three years to tap the growing demand for the commodities worldwide.

Nationally, Indonesia is also seeking to increase the use of other sources of energy such as natural gas and coal in the face of rising crude prices and declining domestic production. Within five days of the statement announcing the mines' sale, Bumi had publicly indicated its plans to build an 80,000-barrel-a-day coal-liquefaction factory in South Sumatra to help reduce petroleum use.

The company is also in discussions with South Africa's Sasol, the world's top producer of synthetic fuel, which converts coal or natural gas to liquid fuel without the generation of crude oil as an intermediary product. Eddie Soebari, Bumi's finance director, estimates that 48,000 tons of coal can be converted into 80,000 barrels of synthetic oil a day. To secure coal for the new project, Bumi plans to pay as much as $3 million for Sumatran company Pendopo Energi Batubara, which has estimated resources of more than 1.5 billion tons of low-energy coal.

Jeffrey Mulyono, head of Berau Coal, Indonesia's fifth-largest coal producer, and chairman of the Indonesian Mining Association, notes that if crude is above $26 a barrel, it makes economic sense to convert coal.

Shortly after the news about Sasol surfaced, Bumi officially confirmed its planned July merger with Energi Mega Persada (EMP), Indonesia's second-largest privately owned domestic oil-and-gas company with interests in eight exploration blocks and proven reserves of 319 million barrels. This will create Indonesia's biggest private energy company, with combined assets worth more than Rp21.1 trillion ($2.3 billion).

"We have opted for a share-swap deal... to keep costs down," Bumi president Ari Saptari Hudaya said, adding that the company planned to use its capital to expand into new businesses.

Eye to eye visions

Bumi's plans are strikingly in line with the government's designs for the sector. Vice President Yusuf Kalla this week gave an upbeat assessment to potential international investors about future energy-oriented investment projects: "Please keep in mind that our country is so rich in resources. This will be an advantage for any industry in developing its business here. China and India have less resources compared to us."

Kalla also claimed that the government would make Indonesia's energy prices the lowest in the world by 2008 through the conversion of some 1,000 megawatts of oil-fueled power plants into gas, coal and geothermal plants. The combined capacity of state electricity utility power plants is currently 25,000MW, of which oil-based fuels generate 10,000MW.

The government projects are estimated to cost as much as $6 billion and the government has encouraged foreign investors to participate – though that invitation has not yet been put to the nationalistic test.

Foreign direct investment grew by 14% in 2005 to $12.1 billion, and the government hopes for another 15.2% increase this year. A draft investment bill is being debated in the House of Representatives, which, if passed, would turn the common 150-day or more process for finalizing investment permits into a one- stop, 30-day registration process.

Foreign investors would also have guarantees against any future nationalization – no small point given the recent concerted attempts by local protesters and opportunistic politicians to paint US mining giants Freeport McMoRan and Newmont as bogeymen in Indonesia. Kalla recently said the government should revise the profit-sharing contract with Freeport to give Indonesia a bigger slice of the revenues.

There have also been nationalistic rallies staged against the recent deal between state-owned oil company Pertamina and ExxonMobil Corp to jointly operate the country's largest untapped oilfield, known as Cepu.

But there could be bigger systemic troubles in the pipeline for foreign investors. Yogo Pratomo, director general for electricity and energy, revealed this week that the government is now reviewing existing regulations that would enable the government to scrap tender offers and directly appoint contractors. "It would take at least a year for the projects to get off the ground if we did it by tender."

Should this measure, which smacks of a return to Suharto's tendency to award contracts strictly to favored local businessmen, actually be implemented, Indonesian nationals would likely trump foreign suitors based on the quality of their connections rather than their business models or technical expertise. And, if that's the case, expect Bumi and the Bakrie family to get their fair share of the action.

[Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has been in Indonesia for 20 years, mostly in journalism and editorial positions. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis related to Indonesia.]

Opinion & analysis

Mike Steketee: Vanstone shows a fairer hand

The Australian - March 30, 2006

David Manne is a refugee advocate who has been a fierce critic of Australia's harsh policies towards asylum-seekers, someone the Howard Government would have dismissed not so long ago as a usual suspect.

So his latest comments are worth noting. Manne is co-ordinator of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre in Melbourne and was the senior lawyer representing the 43 West Papuans who came by boat to Australia and have been accepted as refugees, with the exception of one whose case is still being processed.

Manne says: "Their treatment and the due legal process provided by the Australian Government and the Department of Immigration has been fair, reasonable, just and decent, refreshingly so."

Would he extend such high praise to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone? Yes, says Manne unhesitatingly: "Credit where it is due and it is due. I think there was a straight bat played on this."

Manne had cause to be apprehensive on behalf of his clients. There are some big issues in play, such as Australian-Indonesian relations, which John Howard has been working hard to repair in the wake of the East Timor crisis of 1999. Despite strenuous denials from the Government and Opposition, the refugee decision feeds Indonesian conspiracy theories that Australia is covertly backing independence in West Papua.

The economic stakes are much higher than in Timor, mainly because of the revenue Jakarta gains from Freeport, the world's largest goldmine.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rang Howard to offer a guarantee that the Papuans would not be harmed if Australia returned them. Yet apparently neither Howard nor Vanstone intervened in the immigration department assessment of these cases under the Refugee Convention, despite an outcome that found there was a chance the refugees would have suffered serious harm if forced to return.

Moreover, the decision was made quickly, with the applications granted less than two months after they were lodged. That is in contrast to the years it took to process many of the Iraqi and Afghan boatpeople while they were locked away in remote detention camps and even though 90 per cent were ultimately accepted as refugees.

But the starkest comparison is with the more than 1300 people who fled East Timor after the massacre in Santa Cruz cemetery in 1991. So scared were the Keating and Howard governments of offending Indonesia that they refused to process their cases for 10 years, leaving them in limbo in Australia and relying largely on churches and charities for support. Only after East Timor gained independence did the Government grant them permanent residence and then only because of public outrage at attempts to force them to go back. As Manne says, "It was one of the most scandalous misuses of the system in recent times."

Of course, the Government was in a bind over the West Papuans. They had attracted a great deal of publicity and Australia would have been rightly condemned if they were persecuted on their return. Even if the presidential guarantee of their safety is well intentioned, there is no effective civilian control over the Indonesian military, particularly in West Papua.

Abuses of human rights in the province are numerous, serious and becoming more frequent. The US Department of State's recently released report on human rights is more restrained than other studies. But it documents gross violations in West Papua, including murder, assaults, torture, the razing of villages and forced displacements. It notes that indigenous people suffer from widespread discrimination. It says four people were convicted of treason for raising the separatist Morning Star flag and given jail sentences of four to 15 years.

This was the same crime that resulted in one of those Australia has just accepted as a refugee, Herman Wanggai, being jailed for a year. By contrast, the leader of the Kopassus team that assassinated tribal leader Theys Eluay in 2001 received a three- year sentence. Indonesia has restricted the entry of UN and other human rights representatives, as well as academics and journalists.

Indonesia has increased troop numbers in the province. In January, a demonstration turned into a riot after police fired shots into the crowd. Four policemen and a security officer were killed, and at least one protester killed and others injured.

If this sounds like a replay of the years of violence in East Timor that culminated in the carnage and destruction after the independence vote, then that is all the more reason to encourage Indonesia to negotiate the kind of settlement it has reached in Aceh.

The Government's decision on the West Papuans comes in the context of a much improved system of handling asylum applications following the changes forced on Howard by Liberal dissidents led by Petro Georgiou. Children have been released from detention and most of the asylum-seekers who were initially granted temporary protection visas are now allowed to stay permanently.

There is still unfinished business, including the TPVs. These are a reminder of the bad old days, when they were invented as a grudging form of recognition that we were obliged to accept refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan. They turn refugees, including the West Papuans, into second-class citizens, denying them the rights to travel overseas or bring family members to join them in Australia.

Critics argue that the Government's compassion has come too late and only because the political heat has gone out of the boatpeople issue. But sometimes we should suspend cynicism. Credit where credit is due.

Why Jakarta is so sensitive about independence movements

The Australian - March 28, 2006

Richard Chauvel – Indonesia's extreme sensitivity and depth of feeling about Papua is reflected in its decision to recall its ambassador.

Papua's economic importance to Indonesia is symbolised by the controversial Freeport gold and copper mine, which is Indonesia's largest corporate taxpayer, worth $US1.2 billion ($1.7 billion) last year.

Indonesian president Sukarno's statement in 1963 that his country was not complete without Papua conveys something of Papua's importance in Indonesian nationalist thinking. Sukarno successfully used the incorporation of Papua as a focus in the struggle for national unity. It remains thus.

There are no significant (non-Papuan) Indonesian leaders or parties that support Papuan independence and there are many who have grave reservations about any form of autonomy.

The Indonesian parliamentarians' protests and criticism of the granting of visas for 42 Papuans have come from across the political spectrum, not just from the outspoken nationalists.

One of the reasons for Indonesia's sensitivity about Papua is the confusion surrounding Jakarta's policies in Papua. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has made numerous statements about his Government's commitment to find a political solution to the Papua conflict on the basis of the 2001 special autonomy law. The successful negotiations about Aceh have given the commitment to resolve Papua credibility and momentum.

He received strong support in Papua in the 2004 elections. His election generated considerable optimism among Papuans. However, Yudhoyono has done little to clarify the confusion, contradictions and divisiveness in the Papua policy he inherited from Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Is his Government committed to the implementation of special autonomy or will it continue Megawati's policy to create two or more provinces in Papua?

Megawati's decision to partition Papua was motivated by a fear that if the special autonomy law was implemented, it would empower a Papuan elite in Jayapura that would use it as a basis for a further step towards independence.

The Yudhoyono Government's policy decisions of the past couple of months have made a political resolution more difficult. The decision to hold elections for governor in the newly created province of West Papua indicates that the Government is determined to pursue the partition of Papua. This decision undermines and marginalises the Papuan People's Assembly, the institutional centrepiece of special autonomy, which the Government established as the representative forum for Papuans. The decision disregarded the assembly's recommendation in March this year that the election for governor not proceed as the assembly had found there was little Papuan support for the new province. The assembly appealed to the Government for a comprehensive and open dialogue to resolve Papua's problems.

Senior government officials from Jakarta, including the Security Minister Widodo, who visited Jayapura the day after the Abepura riots (March 15-16), refused to hold substantive discussions with members of the provincial parliament and Papuan religious leaders.

This supports the argument in last week's briefing update from the International Crisis Group that the Government is shutting down dialogue with Papuans.

Relations between the Papuan elite and the Jakarta Government have never been easy, but Papuan trust in Jakarta is at a low point. The brutal killing of five members of the security forces in the Abepura riots reflects something of the depth of feeling among Papuans, their desperation and the degree of alienation from Indonesia.

Canberra's decision to grant Papuan asylum-seekers visas has exacerbated the Indonesian Government's anxieties about Papua and heightened suspicions about Australian interests and intentions. Jakarta's statement notes that: "The [visa] decision justifies speculations that there are elements in Australia that support separatist movement in Papua and in this regard the Government of Australia has not done anything to them."

The head of the National Intelligence Agency, Syamsir Siregar, alleged that non-governmental organisations involved in the riots in Abepura earlier this month had links in Australia.

It is not only the alleged activities of Australian NGOs that are suspected by Indonesian officials. The head of the armed forces, Djoko Suyanto, suggested that the asylum-seekers could not have reached Australia without the assistance of Australian patrols and that asylum-seekers from the Middle East are treated differently.

These Indonesian suspicions relate directly to Australia's role in the 1999 international intervention in East Timor. Many Indonesians, inside and outside the Government and the military, believe, mistakenly, that an independent East Timor was the preferred strategic outcome for Australia.

They suspect that Australia has the same objective with respect to Papua. Frequent and definitive Australian government statements of support for Indonesian sovereignty in Papua evoke the Indonesian response: "That's what you said about East Timor."

Australia has a vital interest in Indonesia peacefully resolving the conflict in Papua. Indonesians and Papuans need international support to help reduce Indonesia's dependence on violence in its governance in Papua and to accommodate Papuans, their interests and values in the government of the province. The agreement on Aceh is a model of what is politically possible.

[Richard Chauvel, a senior lecturer at the school of social sciences at Victoria University, is author of Constructing Papuan Nationalism: History, Ethnicity and Adaptation.]

Editorial: Visas hit their limit

The Australian - March 25, 2006

When 43 Papuan separatists washed up on Cape York last January in a 25m outrigger canoe and demanded asylum, they opened up the biggest rift in Australia-Indonesian relations since East Timor – one that has led to the recall of Indonesia's ambassador to Jakarta for "consultations".

The granting on Thursday of temporary protection visas to 42 of the 43 asylum-seekers – some of whom had previously done time in Indonesian jails for hoisting independence flags and committing other crimes of "rebellion" – has infuriated Jakarta. With Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone's decision to issue the visas comes a tacit acknowledgment by Canberra that these separatists hold legitimate fear of facing persecution were they to be returned to their home country.

And indeed this is almost surely the case: those involved in separatist activities on the resource-rich island province of eastern Indonesia have faced summary beatings and arrests, while the US State Department's human rights assessment of Indonesia speaks of extrajudicial killings, torture and the arbitrary detention of activists.

But while Indonesia's human rights record in Papua may be troubling, and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs may have rankled Jakarta by granting the visas – Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono even telephoned Prime Minister John Howard to lobby against the decision – this should not be allowed to upset the increasingly close and vital relationship between the two nations.

The situation in Papua today is quite different to that in East Timor years ago. And Indonesians, from Mr Yudhoyono on down, must understand that the decision to grant these 42 visas was administrative, not political (even if this logic is slightly disingenuous), and that Australia has no interest in an independent Papua or the balkanisation of our northern neighbour.

This was underlined earlier this month by Australia's US ambassador, Dennis Richardson, who told a US-Indonesia business lunch, at which Indonesia's US ambassador was present: "Papua is part of the sovereign territory of Indonesia and always has been.

As far as Australia is concerned, Papua is an integral part of Indonesia." We have too many common interests with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and a functioning democracy that has lately made great strides against corruption – from illegal fishing to people-smuggling to terrorism – to let the relationship be sidetracked by this one issue. Despite its bluster, Jakarta should get this.

In repairing relations with Jakarta, it will be important for Canberra – and indeed all players – to accept the decision as made in Amanda Vanstone's office and not John Howard's. Of course, the visas would never have been granted without the Prime Minister's approval, but this fact is one that, if quietly ignored, will let all parties save face.

And there is a sense Jakarta is willing to play the game. When the Indonesian Department of Foreign Affairs announced it was summoning the Australian ambassador to Jakarta in for a not-so- friendly chat on Thursday, the statement referred to "the decision by (DIMA)" – not the decision by the Howard Government.

This may seem like hair-splitting semantics, but it's the sort of language that opens the door for a repair of the relationship at the highest levels.

Of course, it would be best if the Papuans and the central Government in Jakarta could sit down in an atmosphere of mutual dialogue in the same way the Acehnese did after the Boxing Day tsunami, carving out a fragile peace.

But until that happens, Indonesia must understand that acknowledging rights abuses and calling for independence are two separate things. The relationship between our two countries is too important to be sidetracked by this one issue.

Greed, guns and gold

Sydney Morning Herald Editorial - March 23, 2006

The giant Freeport gold and copper mine is carving a scar so vast and deep into the remote forests of Papua that it will soon be visible from space. Downstream, a swelling bruise of a billion tonnes of mine waste has rendered wetlands inhospitable for aquatic life. The stupendous profits generated by the world's largest copper and gold mine largely pass the indigenous Papuans by. That the mine has become the violent flashpoint in their dogged campaign for independence is unsurprising.

Democracy in Indonesia has, rightly, raised expectations for accountability. The reckless polluters of Freeport, the abusive military units stationed in Papua and the civilian government in Jakarta are on notice: the bad old days of impunity are over.

Under the former authoritarian president Soeharto, foreign mining companies in Indonesia enjoyed cosy deals. The US-operated Freeport mine barricaded itself behind a security cordon and built an industrial city in the middle of one of the world's pristine, and most fragile, natural environments. A recent New York Times investigation revealed Freeport has made $US20 million in direct payment to Indonesia military officers – protection money to ensure Indonesian troops do the dirty work of keeping the ragtag Free Papua Organisation, with its spears and few rusty guns, away. Freeport employs 18,000 people and has pumped $US33 billion into the Indonesian treasury since 1992, contributing almost 2 per cent of gross domestic product. But like the oil and gas riches of Aceh, little wealth has been returned to the province, and local complaints are met with violence, intimidation and abuse.

Last week, thousands of angry Papuan demonstrators set upon and killed four Indonesian security officers. The murders, and the rage that sparked them, shocked many Indonesians. But as The Jakarta Post noted: "The reasons for the protests in Papua are obvious." If Papuans lose all hope for change the "situation could become more dangerous", it warned.

Australia does not support independence for Papua, but with 43 Papuan asylum seekers being processed, Canberra cannot ignore the new unrest.

There have been many empty promises of autonomy and demilitarisation for Papua since Soeharto's fall in 1998. Indonesia's military, with its vested interest, is undoubtedly frustrating change. The Bougainville copper mine in Papua New Guinea provides a warning. It provoked such a violent campaign for self-rule that it was abandoned in 1989. Almost a decade of conflict followed.

The glare of the international spotlight on Aceh following the tsunami forced a peace deal there. Papua deserves the same attention.