News & issues

Indonesia, Britain sign MOU on terrorism

Jakarta Post - April 5, 2006

Jakarta – The National Police signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday with Britain to increase police cooperation between the two countries to combat transnational crimes and terrorism.

Speaking after signing the agreement with National Police chief Gen. Sutanto, British Ambassador to Indonesia Charles Humfrey said the deal followed up a meeting between President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and British Prime Minister Tony Blair when Blair visited Indonesia last week.

The cooperation agreement covers information exchanges, human resources development and equipment.

Council told to build villages

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Kupang – Activists have urged East Nusa Tenggara provincial council to drop plans to spend Rp 16 billion (US$1.7 million) on renovating the council building.

Sarah Lery Mbuik, Director of the People's Initiative Association, an anti-corruption non-governmental organization, said Monday the council building was still fit for use and suggested the money be used to build village infrastructure instead.

"More than 80 percent of the province's residents live in villages and are living under poverty line. The money could be used to build infrastructure to open up the villages from isoltion," Sarah said.

She added that the administration had projects, before deciding to repair the building. The councillors and provincial administration had no conscience, she said.

Money talks for smooth processing of work, stay permits

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – Stop by Floor M of the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry on Jl. Gatot Subroto in South Jakarta to witness a finely honed bureaucratic process in full working order.

The unsuspecting would be surprised to find a crowded hall, resembling the bustle of a traditional market, with long lines of people at cubicles for the processing of expatriate work permits.

It's organized chaos operating according to its own discreet culture, governed by a tacitly understood process of transactions where money but few words are needed.

Most companies who employ expatriates choose to hire agents to navigate the complicated and potentially time-consuming ins and outs of the process.

On a recent afternoon, an agent, accompanied by his Italian client, went from desk to desk to secure five preliminary documents before an expatriate employment permit (IMTA) was furnished. No additional bargaining was needed, because the agent knew the amount needed, including the extras presented for satisfactory service.

The approval for the expatriate employment plan (RPTKA) – defining the role of the expatriate within the institution – costs Rp 150,000 (about US$18), and the IMTA was issued after the officer in charge was presented with an envelope containing Rp 200,000.

It took two weeks, and a total of Rp 1.2 million for the various payments, to secure the two essential documents.

With little supervision and clear overstaffing in the department, many of the employees are available to offer additional help to facilitate the visa processing (the discovery of fake IMTA documents, with falsified receipts for the payment of funds for development, is being investigated by the ministry).

The securing of the work permit is one thing; an expatriate also needs permission to reside here.

The same Italian expatriate paid Rp 800,000 for a temporary stay permit at the South Jakarta immigration office, with the funds used to confirm the expatriate's arrival documentation, pay for the telex to inform the Indonesian Embassy in Rome of the issuance of his permit, to purchase the "blue book", which documents changes in the holder's immigration status, and also to apply for a temporary stay permit (KITAS).

It's possible to get the latter two documents within a few days, depending on the agent's clout and the "recreation" money paid to immigration officers.

Expatriates are allowed to apply for a permanent stay permit (KITAP) after using a Kitas for an uninterrupted five-year period (formerly 10 years). A Kitap costs, with benefits including the right to hold a residence card, costs between Rp 50 million and Rp 100 million.

It took another three months, an additional Rp 3.5 million, for the Italian to secure the KITAS.

Bureaucratic procedures become even more complicated when expatriates extend their KITAS and IMTA, with recommendations needed from the local population office, the National Police Headquarters and the National Intelligence Agency.

"Rachel", an expatriate who has tried to process her own visa, says it has proven time-consuming and costly.

"They will tell you that you need this document, or another one, and to come back another day," she said. "I'm also pretty much at their mercy, because I don't want to and really can't pay extras, so they tell me to bring in presents for them instead."

Document	Issuer	Length of process	Unofficial rate
1. Mandatory report	Population Office	2 days	Rp 200,000
2. RPTKA	Manpower Ministry	7 days	Rp 150,000
3. TA-01	Manpower Ministry	3 days	Rp 75,000
4. Telex	Immigration Office	7 days	Rp 300,000 + US$100
5. Arrival card	Immigration Office	1 day	Rp 100,000
6. Fingerprinting	Immigration Office	1 day	Rp 100,000
7. POA	Police Headquarters	1 day	Rp 50,000
8. Blue book	Immigration Office	3 days	Rp 200,000
9. KITAS	Immigration Office	3 days	Rp 200,000
10. Reentry permit	Immigration Office	1 day	Rp 100,000
11. DPKK	Manpower Ministry	1 day	US$1,200
12. IMTA	Immigration Office	3 weeks	Rp 150,000
13. SKPPS	local population office	1 day	Rp 35,000
14. SKTT	Population Office	1 day	Rp 50,000
15. STM	Police Station	1 day	Rp 25,000
15. SKLD	Police Headquarters	1 day	Rp 75,000

• POA: Monitoring of foreigners
• SKPPS: Recommendation for temporary resident
• SKTT: Recommendation for expatriate resident
• STM: Letter of registration with local police station
• SKLD: Letter of registration with National Police Headquarters

Various sources

Aceh

Government dismisses criticism of Aceh forest concessions

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

Tb.Arie Rukmantara, Jakarta – The government is defending its much-criticized decision to revive issuing forestry concessions to timber companies in Aceh, saying the plan was vital to support the reconstruction of the tsunami-ravaged province.

"The decision is based on the fact that production forests (in Aceh) have the potential to produce timber to support the reconstruction," Forestry Ministry Malem Sambat Kaban said Thursday, after signing an agreement on forest rehabilitation and conservation with Indonesia's largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama.

The move has drawn strong criticism from environmental groups, which said it would only accelerate the deforestation of the province, where more than 30 percent of forests have been lost from land clearing and illegal logging. They suggested the government seek more timber donations from abroad.

The government has granted concessions to five timber companies and the Forestry Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding with the Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) over the deal last month.

Based on the ministry's data, Aceh has 3.3 million hectares of forest areas, including more than 638,000 hectares designated as production forests. Thirteen timber companies have already acquired forest concessions in the province, totaling 500,000 cubic meters a year.

However, the long-running conflict in the region, which ended last year, meant most of the concessions were never developed.

Kaban vowed the government would ensure there would be no violations in the use of the concessions. "Aceh timber can only be used for Aceh's reconstruction," he said.

World Wide Fund For Nature Aceh Program coordinator Nana Firman questioned the government's decision, saying the reason behind it was dubious.

"A timber company will need at least one to two years to resume operations and then produce timber. So how can the government say it is helping to rebuild houses in Aceh, which the BRR has said need to be completed by 2007?"

Environmental groups Walhi and Greenomics have also protested the decision. The BRR says it plans to complete the reconstruction of 110,000 houses in Aceh and Nias by 2007, two years before its mandate ends, for some 67,500 people currently living in temporary housing and tents.

Nana suggested the government source more timber from international aid agencies, which have so far sent only about 2,000 cubic meters of wood for Aceh's reconstruction. "These organizations will buy timber from their countries, which would prevent further deforestation here," she said.

Indonesia annually loses around 2.8 million hectares of forests from land clearing and illegal logging, an area the size of Belgium.

Thousands of Acehnese students demand ratification of draft law

Aceh Kita - April 6, 2006

Armia AM, Lhokseumawe – As a result of delays in the ratification of the Acehnese version of the Draft Law on Aceh Government (RUU-PA), thousands of university and high-school students in the city of Lhokseumawe held a Aceh Peace action at the North Aceh Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) on Thursday April 6.

According to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), the draft law should have been ratified by March 31 but the House of Representatives (DPR) special commission will only begin deliberations on Friday April 7.

In a speech, Aceh Peace action steering committee member Afrizal Karing said that the protest was intended to unite the missions of university and high-school students for the sake of creating a better and more dignified Aceh.

"We are therefore urging the government and the DPR to immediately ratify the Acehnese version of the RUU-PA that has already been submitted [to them] by the Aceh DPRD. And also to urge the Indonesian government and GAM to be more consistent in implementing the points that flow out of the MoU", said Karing.

Karing also said that members of the DPR should be more serious in holding the deliberations on the ratification of the draft law and urged the central government to stop repeatedly betraying the Acehnese people.

"We the Acehnese people need a peace that is real. We are also asking the international community and the AMM [Aceh Monitoring Mission] to continue to monitor the road of peace in Aceh properly and constantly", he said.

In addition to this, Karing said they are also asking the DPR's special committee to keep the promise that it made in a MoU with Acehnese students on March 10.

In the agreement it said that the committee shall be consistent and committed in safeguarding the peace process in Aceh, that it shall include the Acehnese people's wishes in all policy decisions that are related to the RUU-PA, that it shall ratify the RUU-PA in accordance with the wishes of the Acehnese people and that it shall act firmly against groups that wish to thwart the ratification of the Acehnese people's version of the RUU-PA.

Following the speech, the thousands of students held a march through the main streets of Lhokseumawe including Jl. Merdeka, Jl. Perdagangan, Jl. Simpang Pasee and Jl. Baru. They then returned to Hiraq Square that is located in front of the DPRD.

During the march protesters carried banners with messages such as "Ratify the RUU-PA into a law now in accordance with the wishes of the Acehnese people", "Don't create new conflicts in Aceh ratify the RUU-PA now" and "Aceh Monitoring Mission don't go home before the Aceh question is resolved".

Dozens of police were on guard to secure the the peaceful action. Protesters that tried to enter the grounds of the DPRD were blocked by police who quickly closed the gates. Only three representatives of the demonstrators were given permission to enter the DPRD. [dzie]

[Translated by James Balowski.]

Revival of Aceh forestry concessions slammed

Jakarta Post - April 6, 2006

Jakarta – Considering the massive level of deforestation in tsunami-hit Nangroe Aceh Darussalam province over the last five years, the government should review its decision to revive eight forestry concessions there, an environmental organization says.

"It's definitely not profitable, especially when compared to the ecological damage it could cause," Greenomics national program coordinator Vanda Mutia Dewi said Wednesday.

The government recently revived eight forestry concessions to help supply timber for the construction of housing projects for people affected by the tsunami disaster in Aceh. The revival of the concessions is included in a memorandum of understanding signed by the Forestry Ministry and the Aceh and Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) last month on the procurement of timber for reconstruction projects.

The eight forestry concessions have long been inactive due to the armed conflict between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

Vanda said the revival of the concessions would ultimately only cause losses to the state and the local administration.

"Should the government permit the exploitation of the forests in the eight concessions based on a logging quota of 500,000 cubic meters, the government will only earn Rp 43 billion a year," she said. "How big is that?" she asked.

Vanda said the Forestry Ministry and the BRR should therefore seek timber sources in other regions. "The government may, for example, offer incentives such as an increase in logging quotas to companies (in other provinces) that provide timber for the reconstruction of Aceh," she said.

Greenomics also urged the government to create a system to ensure the legality of the timber used in the reconstruction process.

"We have found that many lumber mills are selling timber from indeterminate sources to projects funded by foreign NGOs and even the government itself," she said, adding that Greenomics had surveyed 40 lumber mills in the province.

She also urged the government not provide new plantation land for demobilized insurgents in the province as there were still 84 plantation firms that were now inactive.

A Greenomics study shows that the deforestation in Aceh has reached an alarming level with more than 30 percent of existing forests areas being damaged.

"The revival of the eight concessions will further worsen the deforestation problem," Vanda said.

Illegal charges hurt tsunami reconstruction: Report

Associated Press - April 4, 2006

Jakarta – Illegal levies on trucks carrying relief supplies to tsunami-devastated Aceh province is adding to the costs of reconstruction, and Indonesia must crack down on the practice, the World Bank and the agency in charge of rebuilding said Tuesday.

Trucks must pay around $35 in bribes at dozens of makeshift posts manned by police, as well as at two government weigh stations, on both legs of the journey from Medan to Banda Aceh, a study by both institutions found. Medan is a large port city on Sumatra Island, and the main hub for relief supplies to Aceh.

"Bringing down these costs, and ensuring that fees levied are legal and paid into state coffers, must be a priority," the report said. "These extra costs are having an impact on the tsunami reconstruction process."

The study found that instances of extortion on the highway dropped in the aftermath of a peace deal between rebels and government forces in August that saw tens of thousands of troops gradually withdraw.

However, charges levied at weigh stations increased, and trucks must also pay money to military-linked criminal gangs in Medan before setting off to assure smooth and safe passage, it said. The survey was based on observations of 59 truck journeys from early November last year to February 2006.

The Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami that killed or left missing at least 216,000 people in 11 nations generated some $13 billion in aid – one of the most generous global responses ever to a natural disaster.

Relief organizations in hardest hit Indonesia pledged to carefully audit their funds amid concerns that aid dollars could be stolen by corrupt officials or contractors in the country, which is rated as one of the world's most graft-ridden.

Students hold action supporting draft law on Aceh government

Aceh Kita - April 3, 2006

Misdarul Ihsan, Banda Aceh – On Monday April 3, Acehnese student organisations from the Aceh Peace Alliance (AAD) once again held a demonstration in support of the Draft Law on Aceh Government (RUU-PA) that is currently being deliberated by the House of Representatives (DPR). The two hundred or so students held speeches and distributed leaflets at the Simpang Lima roundabout in Banda Aceh.

In one speech, a protester from the Aceh Student Association of Foster Mothers (Dayah) invited all elements of Acehnese society to launch a revolution if the draft law that is eventually ratified by the DPR is not in accordance with the Acehnese people's wishes. "We are demanding that the DPR be able to quickly ratify the RUU-PA in accordance with the [Acehnese] people's wishes", said the speaker.

During the speech, the student also said that they believe that the delays in the deliberation of the law are because there are certain parties that are playing around in order thwart the rectification of the law. They also said that the Indonesian government has violated the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) because it reneged on the March 31 deadline mandated by the MoU.

Action coordinator Rahmad Jailani called on all elements of Acehnese society to continue speak out to struggle for their wishes to be accommodated in the draft law so that peace in Aceh will be everlasting. He said that if the people's wishes were not fully accommodated, then an even larger conflict would break out with the entire society joining the revolt.

According to Jailani, students will continue to hold actions until the draft law is ratified in accordance with the people's wishes. "[Those here] today are just a fraction of the masses, we will mobilise many more again, as before, if the central [government] betrays the Acehnese people. We will continue to hold actions", he said.

Notes:

In an earlier report on the same day, Aceh Kita said that in addition to Dayah, the other student organisations planning to participate in the action included Student's Solidarity for the People (SMUR), the Association of Islamic Students (HMI) and the Indonesian Islamic High-School Students (PII).

[Translated by James Balowski.]

Human rights court vital in Aceh: Experts

Jakarta Post - April 1, 2006

Jakarta – Uncovering human right abuses in Aceh will likely take time because of strong resistance from the military and police, observers say.

Speaking at launch for the book, Aceh: Damai dengan Masa Lalu - Mengungkap Kekerasan Masa Lalu (Aceh: Peace with the Past - Uncovering Past Violence) by the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM), academics, activists and legislators called for rights abuses in the province to be speedily settled.

Elizabeth Drexler, an assistant professor at the Michigan State University's Department of Anthropology, said some people had argued it was better to let bygones be bygones, rather than uncover the perpetrators of 30 years of violence in Aceh.

"There is a certain kind of discourse, which says the past is the past," Drexler said. However, if the government made it difficult for victims of violence to seek justice, it was also committing a form of state violence, and legal settlements of human rights violations were vital, she said.

Conflict in Aceh between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the military started in 1976, when Hasan Tiro declared the establishment of GAM to fight a guerrilla war for Aceh's independence from Indonesia. The government later began systematically attempting to eradicate GAM by declaring Aceh an area of military operations from 1989 to 1998.

Hope for peace was rekindled after the signing of a peace agreement between Indonesia and GAM in Helsinki, Finland, last year. The agreement offers an amnesty to GAM members and promotes the reintegration of former guerrillas into the community.

It also mandates the establishment of Human Rights Court and a Commission for Truth and Reconciliation for Aceh.

Speaking at the book launch, Komnas HAM's MM Billah said there were strong indications that gross human rights violations had been committed by soldiers and GAM members.

Legislator Ahmad Farhan Hamid, who is a member of the special committee for the deliberation of the Aceh governance bill, said it was imperative a human rights court for Aceh be established.

He said the court should be able to try all human rights violations, past and present.

Ahmad said legislators had yet to talk about establishing the court. However, he stressed the body was an important part of the bill and would not sacrificed as a bargaining tool.

Meanwhile, a coalition group representing NGOs fighting human rights abuses, the Indonesian Advocacy Team for Truth and Justice, said the law mandating the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation was unconstitutional. The group filed a request last Tuesday to the Constitutional Court, asking for a judicial review of the law.

Team coordinator Taufik Basari said some articles in the law were discriminatory and supported giving impunity to perpetrators.

Article 44 of the law states that serious human rights violations settled by the commission cannot be tried again at an Ad Hoc Human Rights Court.

Taufik said the commission should not be used as a substitute for a proper a human rights court.

Article 27 on the compensation and rehabilitation for victims, and Article 1 (9) on the definition of amnesty were also unconstitutional, he said.

West Papua

Hunt for Papuans continues

The Australian - April 7, 2006

The search continues for a boatload of Papuan asylum seekers thought to have mistakenly landed on an island in Papua New Guinea in their quest to get to Australia.

Reports emerged this week that six asylum seekers from the Indonesian province had landed on an island in Australia's north.

Human rights groups said well-known union organiser Paulus Samkakai had fled with his wife and four children from the southern port of Merauke over the weekend.

The Australian Customs Service called off the search for the family after an aerial search and investigations of a number of possible landing sites.

Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday it was presumed they had gone to Papua New Guinea. But Customs Minister Chris Ellison said Australian investigations and surveillance flights were continuing in the Torres Strait area.

The incident had threatened to further strain Australia-Indonesia relations after Australia late last month granted temporary protection visas to 42 asylum seekers from the troubled Indonesian province.

Meanwhile, Indonesian importers have called for a boycott of Australian goods as anger mounts over the decision.

Indonesian Association of National Importers chairman Amiruddin Saud said the planned boycott, which was due to start yesterday, would hurt Australia more.

Governor warns Papua must get justice, wealth

Sydney Morning Herald - April 7, 2006

Mark Forbes, Jakarta – Papua's first directly elected governor has warned Indonesia must deliver "justice, equality and prosperity" or face the prospect of more violence and an exodus of asylum seekers.

In his only foreign interview since Papua's election results were declared this week, Barnabas Suebu told the Herald he wants to urgently meet the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, over the failure of a new special autonomy law and rising separatist tensions. He also demanded the giant Freeport goldmine provide more revenue to Papuans.

Mr Suebu's election has raised hopes in Papua and fears in Jakarta. As a former administrator of the province in the Soeharto era and Indonesian ambassador to Mexico, his stature and links to all sides of Papua's conflicts place him in a pivotal role to address Indonesia's latest crisis.

Mr Suebu rejected speculation he could become the new figurehead for Papuan independence, stating he wants dialogue with Dr Yudhoyono to deliver real, workable autonomy. If Jakarta's neglect and injustices were not addressed, Mr Suebu said, more Papuans were likely to flee to Australia.

"In Papua, if someone is very disappointed they can choose three kinds of solution," he said. "One is they can try and disorganise the system; the second is they can escape from the system; and the third is they can talk, get together and see the solution."

The Papuans seeking asylum in Australia were leaving in response to their feelings of injustice, Mr Suebu said. "The Papuan people are still poor, despite their rich natural resources."

He raised the example of protests against the Freeport mine, which culminated in a bloody student demonstration in Jayapura in which five security officials were bashed to death last month.

"The people of Papua are struggling for justice, for equal distribution of the revenue of Freeport's mining – that's why human rights violations happen. Sometimes they feel there is no way to find justice." Indonesia cannot kill the Freeport "cow". "The problem is how to distribute in an equal way the milk of the cow."

More of the billions Freeport contributes to Indonesia's coffers must be spent in Papua to provide community development, health care, education and housing, he said. Corrupt local government had also diverted some of Freeport's funds, he said, foreshadowing a crackdown within his new administration.

Mr Suebu said some Papuans wanted independence, but "a well- implemented special autonomy law will provide justice, equality and prosperity". "The problem is the special autonomy law does not work properly and consistently, it cannot solve the basic problems we are facing in Papua now."

Mr Suebu attacked Dr Yudhoyono's support for splitting Papua into two provinces, with an unresolved election for the governorship of the West Irian Jaya province last month.

"In my understanding this is against the law and against the constitution, the special autonomy law should be for all, for all the people of Papua." Jakarta must sit down with the Papuan administrations "and put this on the table for a resolution". "Papua now needs strong and wise leadership ..." he said.

Howard: Australia shouldn't encourage Papuan independence

Associated Press - April 7, 2006

Canberra – Indonesia's respect for human rights in its Papua province has improved and Australia shouldn't encourage the region's independence, the Australian prime minister said, despite his country's acceptance of refugees from the province.

Prime Minister John Howard sought to defuse an increasingly bitter row with Indonesia over his government's decision to grant visas last month to 42 Papuan asylum seekers who claimed the Indonesian military was carrying out genocide in their province.

Indonesia was furious over the move, recalling its ambassador, and is now demanding that it be allowed to review any further refugee claims by Papuans who flee to Australia, saying it would make sense to allow Jakarta to help verify those claims.

Indonesia's importers association on Thursday urged its members to boycott Australian goods as part of an escalating backlash in a country where many people suspect that Australia tacitly supports the separatist movement in Papua province.

Howard warned Friday that the human rights situation would likely worsen in Papua if it became independent as part of the fragmentation of the Indonesia, and said he had no direct knowledge of human rights abuses in the province.

"I do know there has been a significant improvement," Howard told Melbourne radio 3AW. "Whether it is still satisfactory or not, it's difficult for me to make a judgment."

Howard said breaking up Indonesia would lead to more turmoil and human rights abuses. "I do not think it serves anybody's interests for us to encourage in any way the fragmentation of Indonesia," Howard said.

"Indonesia is an infinitely better, freer, more democratic country now than it's been at any time since it was founded in 1946 and their current president is the best president they've had and he offers the best hope for a stable, prosperous future," he added.

Australia's immigration department accepted the refugee claims of 42 Papuans who arrived by dugout canoe in January and rejected the claim of a 43rd, a man who remains in immigration detention.

"I know it's been an unsatisfactory outcome but it should not be seen as other than the working out of our processes," Howard said. "And not some diplomatic strike against Indonesia, not some expression of disapproval of Indonesia but an adjudication in relation to the individual cases of 43 people."

An embassy spokesman said Friday that Jakarta wants the opportunity to verify the claims of any future Papuan asylum seekers.

"We thought as partners and also as close neighbors that we have been omitted in the process of verifying the claims of the Papuan asylum seekers," embassy second secretary Dino Kusnadi told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio Friday.

"What we are requesting... is that when serious claims about Indonesians are made... that we are also asked to verify those claims," he said. "You would think that if these allegations are aimed at Indonesia, Indonesia would be involved in trying to verify the issues."

Kusnadi, embassy spokesman while Ambassador Hamzah Thayeb remains indefinitely in Jakarta, said Indonesia appreciated Howard's comments against the secessionist movement, but added that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appreciates actions more than words.

Papuan boat people not wanted: Howard

Melbourne Age - April 7, 2006

Michelle Grattan, Canberra and Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin – John Howard says most Australians do not want West Papuans seeking refuge here.

The Prime Minister also expressed relief yesterday that a West Papuan family had apparently landed in Papua New Guinea rather than reaching its destination of an Australian island. "That's a good thing in the context of the relationship between Australia and Indonesia," Mr Howard told ABC radio.

As the Government continued efforts to repair relations with Indonesia, which reacted angrily to Australia granting protection to 42 West Papuans, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson appealed to Indonesia to agree to joint navy patrols to stop illegal arrivals.

Dr Nelson also strongly defended Indonesia's right to send five warships to waters off West Papua to intercept any asylum seekers. He discussed the Royal Australian Navy conducting joint patrols with the Indonesian Navy when he recently met the chief of Indonesia's navy.

"I remain very committed to having the Royal Australian Navy, if it were able to, conduct joint and co-ordinated patrols with the Indonesian Navy," he told reporters at the start of an international military exercise in Darwin that was snubbed by Indonesia.

Dr Nelson wants these co-operative arrangements to start "sooner rather than later".

Government sources said later the patrols would be directed at preventing illegal arrivals and illegal fishing. But the co- operation would not mean having sailors on each other's ships. Nor would joint patrols mean that Australian ships would enter Indonesian waters or vice versa.

Mr Howard issued a blunt, fresh warning to West Papuans to stay at home. "I would say to people in West Papua and – to any people in Australia – who may be encouraging them to come to Australia, that that is not something the Australian Government, or I believe the majority of the Australian public, wants.

"We regard West Papuans as citizens of the Republic of Indonesia and we will not support any kind of independence movement." Mr Howard stressed the history of West Papua was "quite different" from that of East Timor.

While Indonesia had taken over East Timor by force, "West Papua was ceded to Indonesia in the 1960s as a result of a United Nations referendum. Some people, years later, said it was a dodgy referendum – but that was years later."

Defence analyst Allan Behm said Mr Howard's comment about the Papuan family landing in PNG was like saying "it's better to have the stray dog defecating in someone else's backyard than my own".

Dr Nelson denied that Indonesia's decision not to attend the Proliferation Security Initiative exercise, which is aimed at stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, had anything to do with the Papuan visa row.

Danger of miring navy in Jakarta's dirty work

Melbourne Age - April 7, 2006

Mark Baker – It is now evident the chorus of cheers that greeted the Immigration Department's prompt and uncharacteristic decision to grant temporary residence to 42 West Papuan asylum seekers was premature.

Statements by the Prime Minister and senior colleagues in recent days show this was a bureaucratic aberration and Australia is back to business as usual in deciding, as Tampaspeak would have it, who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

It is hardly surprising the Government is scrambling again to slam shut the refugee door in the wake of the angry backlash from Jakarta over the Papuan visas. But the remarks yesterday by Defence Minister Brendan Nelson head Australia into uncharted legal and moral waters.

Nelson has proposed "joint and coordinated naval patrols" with Indonesia to help prevent more Papuan boat people reaching Australia, as well as combating other transnational crime.

It is one thing for Australia to round up boat people on the high seas and pack them off to prisons in Nauru, quite another to join hands with the Indonesian military to help repel Indonesian nationals – a military that a fresh US State Department report this week found to have a "history of repressive responses to separatist activity".

What would Australia's position be in the event that our naval personnel are witness to abuses of boat people by their Indonesian counterparts? What if our sailors are found to have helped send back to West Papua people who are subsequently abused, or worse? What, indeed, if a bilateral boat blockade were to see a repeat of the 2001 SIEV-X tragedy in which 353 Middle Eastern boat people drowned in a failed attempt to reach Australia?

Naturally the Government wants to avoid the diplomatic repercussions of further unscheduled arrivals from West Papua, but the Immigration Department's decision to allow the 42 Papuans to stay acknowledges their legitimate fear of persecution if sent home. Are those who might follow in their wake any less likely to be genuine refugees?

The Royal Australian Navy was scandalously compromised by the Tampa affair. The Government has no right to risk it being mired in Indonesia's dirty work in the troubled waters off West Papua.

The point of no return

The Melbourne Age - April 7, 2006

Andra Jackson – Exiled West Papuan independence leader Jacob Rumbiak is well placed to challenge the credibility of Indonesian assurances that 43 West Papuan refugees could have been safely returned to Indonesian-controlled West Papua.

The Indonesian Government and demonstrators in Jakarta have vented their fury at Australia for granting visas to 42 of the 43 West Papuan refugees, claiming it violates Indonesia's territorial integrity and upholds the refugees' claims of genocide against West Papuans. What they conveniently disregard is Indonesia's track record with returned West Papuan refugees opposed to Indonesian rule.

In pressuring the Australian Government to hand them back, Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin insisted the asylum seekers would be in no danger.

Rumbiak, who has lived in Melbourne since 1999, speaks from first-hand knowledge when he insists that Indonesian assurances cannot be trusted.

As the co-ordinator of the non-violent struggle promoting West Papuans' political rights, university lecturer Rumbiak organised a 52,000-strong independence demonstration in Jayapura, West Papua's capital, on December 14, 1989.

As a result, he says, "I was targeted by the Indonesian military to be killed." He sought refuge in the Papua New Guinea consulate in Jayapura and requested political asylum from the PNG government. Sir Rabbie Namaliu was Prime Minister at the time and the PNG government offered to help Rumbiak cross its border, he says. He then sought a response from Indonesian authorities as his preference was to stay safely in Papua.

On December 28, 1989, a deal was made at a meeting held at the PNG consulate in Jayapura and attended by Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alitas, Indonesia's military commander General LB Murdani and Indonesia's vice president, General Try Sutrisno.

"At this highest level," Rumbiak says, "we signed an agreement promising that they will guarantee my life, freedom and grant me a scholarship to study." Guarantees were also given for the safety of his wife and two children, aged three and one. Military attaches from Australia, PNG, Germany and Japan witnessed the signing.

Five minutes after the foreign officials had departed, Rumbiak and his wife were taken to a military camp. He was imprisoned for the next 10 years.

After Soeharto's downfall, Rumbiak was transferred to house arrest in August 1998. He finally made his way to freedom after the United Nations accredited him to act as an observer during the East Timor referendum in 1999. He was later evacuated to Australia, where he was given a protection visa.

Had the 43 asylum seekers who fled Indonesia by boat in mid- January been returned, "they would have disappeared", Rumbiak says. He cites the exodus of around 25,000 refugees in 1984 across the border to refugee camps in PNG, saying more than 500 were sent back in 1987 by the PNG government at a time of good relations with Indonesia.

"Maybe they believed that Jakarta will protect Papuans, but in reality it did not." Some of those returned "disappeared", Rumbiak says.

Rumbiak claims about 200 people who returned from the border died after being poisoned. He says food such as sugar and rice supplied from government-controlled food stores was laced with formalin.

"They (Indonesian Intelligence) put poison in the food because they said when the refugees came back, we guarantee you a place, we guarantee you food." Many of the refugees were from Merauke and others were from Jayapura, as were some of the 43 West Papuans refugees who applied for protection visas in Australia in January.

Rumbiak recounts other cases. In 2000, large numbers of West Papuans returned from refugee camps across the border in PNG after a guarantee of their safety was given by former Indonesian President Dr Abdurrahman Wahid, "a good man", he says. But a year later, after Megawati Soekarnoputri took over the presidency, "lots of Papuans raised the West Papuan Morning Star flag and were tortured and others disappeared, so those just back from PNG fled again to PNG." The assurances of safety are only "camouflage words", he says.

Among refugees who have disappeared after crossing back into West Papua are members of Rumbiak's family. They and at the same time, give grounds for suspicion on the part of the Indonesian Administration that this was deliberate and ill-meant, thereby impairing neighbourly relations."

Neumann records a slight policy softening in the following years. While not formally granting any requests for political asylum, by 1973 Australia had given permissive residency in PNG to 550 refugees – on their undertaking not to engage in political activities against Indonesia. The refugees included Lazarus Itaar, a member of the freedom fighter group Organisasi Papua Merdeka (Free Papua Movement). He twice crossed the border in fear for his life and was only allowed to stay after his third flight.

Publicly, Australia maintained the fiction that returned refugees were not mistreated, with the minister reassuring Parliament in 1965 that there was no evidence suggesting this. Yet department files "contained references to refugees who had reportedly been beaten, imprisoned or murdered after their return", Neumann found.

In June 1968, Indonesian foreign minister Adam Malik claimed that, under the border agreement between Indonesia and Australia, Australia was bound to return every West Papuan who crossed into Australian territory. As unrest spread, people fled across the border, pursued by Indonesian troops who shot dead two refugees. There was no Australian protest.

A 5000-strong protest in Jayapura in May 1969 calling for a referendum on self determination was accompanied by the proclamation of a National Republic of West Papua. The crowd was dispersed with machine-gun fire and 12 protesters were imprisoned. The leader of the protesters, include relatives from the north coast such as Beny Brawar and Oelamas Rumbe, both in their late 30s, who had been in refugee camps in PNG. "I heard they had returned but... we couldn't find them," he says.

Australia's role in the "hidden" conflict that has been on its doorstep for the past 42 years has been a curious and inconsistent one. A bond was forged during the Second World War when the Japanese invaded Dutch controlled New Guinea (which included West Papua) and the Australian Territories, the present PNG. The highlands in both West Papua and New Guinea were key battlefields in the South-West Pacific theatre.

According to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia: "Papuans often gave vital assistance to the Allies, fighting alongside Australian and US troops, and carrying equipment and injured men across New Guinea."

When Indonesia was granted independence in 1949, West Papua remained under Dutch control. Australian government records obtained by Greens Senator Bob Brown show that Australia initially supported a 1962 United Nations sanctioned agreement between Holland, West Papua's former colonial ruler, and Indonesia, which laid claim to western New Guinea.

Under the agreement, every adult would have a vote in a plebiscite, known as the Act of Free Choice, to decide whether they wanted to be ruled by Indonesia.

Yet Australia seemingly acquiesced when Indonesia subsequently unilaterally changed those terms to a vote by 1026 local elders selected by Indonesian authorities, and dispensed with UN interim rule.

In the lead-up to the 1969 plebiscite, there were protests and arrests, with increasing numbers of West Papuans fleeing across the border into PNG, then still under Australian jurisdiction. In his book Refuge Australia: Australia's Humanitarian Record, Klaus Neumann chronicles how Australia in the 1960s only accepted West Papuan refugees sponsored by the departing Dutch authorities and sent back all others. Those returned included a teacher, Fred Mandowen, who in requesting asylum said "(those) who say they are Papuans and won't acknowledge that they are Indonesians are jailed and shot. If someone keeps the Papuan flag, he is shot."

The Department of Territories drafted a policy statement in 1964 on Australia's thinking on West Papuan refugees that has uncanny echoes in the concerns about the granting of protection visas to the West Papuan refugees on March 23.

Approved by then minister Charles Barnes of the Menzies government, it said: "To allow permanent movement across the border for dissidents to settle in the Australian territory could start migration of such numbers as might burden the people receiving them and create administrative and other problems in our own Territory, Clemens Runaweri, and two others escaped across the border into PNG.

"They were getting ready to get on a plane to go to the United Nations to protest as to what was going to happen and an Australian official was sent by the Government to arrest them, and pull them off that plane," says Melbourne Anglican priest Reverend Peter Woods, who served as a missionary in West Papua from 1978 to 1983.

"They had tickets to go and they were put on Manus Island so that they could not interfere in the (plebiscite)." This Australian intervention is documented in Mark Worth's 2004 film, Land of the Morning Star.

Worth grew up on the then Australian naval base at Manus Island off the east coast of PNG, where his father was an officer. He witnessed the arrival of refugees. Manus Island at that stage held 56 detainees, and was one of three holding camps in PNG where Australia sent West Papuan refugees. Australia still contributes to the funding of the Manus Island detention centre.

Among West Papuan grievances are human rights abuses, the confiscation of land, including farming land, the imposition of forced migration from Java and Sulawesi, and the deal signed in 1969 that gave control of the lucrative Freeport copper and gold mine to American interests, with the bulk of its tax siphoned off to Jakarta.

Church groups estimate that 100,000 people have died under Indonesian rule. Amnesty International Australia says the human rights situation in West Papua remains a concern. According to Amnesty, "reports include extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and ill-treatment and arbitrary detentions in Papua Province, where there is an ongoing struggle for independence from Indonesia."

Rumbiak estimates that there are 25,000 West Papuans refugees in PNG and more than 20,000 in the Netherlands.

Until this year, information about West Papua mainly seeped out through a handful of Australian priests working there, and human rights groups.

But the flight of the 43 asylum-seeking student activists in a seven-metre home-made canoe with outboard rigger drew international headlines and allowed people from West Papua to tell the world their story. Some had been jailed and claim they know of others who have been poisoned. A number witnessed brutalities during pro-independence ceremonies that turned into demonstrations.

The group's legal representative, David Manne, co-ordinator of the Refugee and Immigration legal Centre, says it was deeply concerning that family members of the 43 refugees were being intimidated by direct visits from members of Indonesia's security forces.

As Indonesia dispatched warships off the West Papua coast to intercept asylum seekers this week, Manne rebuffed suggestions that granting the protection visas would trigger further flights. That would depend on complex factors such as "human rights developments in the country and the capacity of people to leave".

Scott Burchill, senior lecturer at Deakin University's School of International and Political Studies, says the decision to grant 42 of the 43 visas might fly in the face of Australia's past stance on West Papuan refugees but was taken "because Immigration have to mind their image. They had no option in the end because the people selected for that voyage were clearly in the category of political activists who experienced intimidation".

Burchill says their arrival on an Australian beach was a huge international breakthrough for the West Papuans. No doubt, he says, Indonesia has operatives here to keep an eye on West Papuans and their supporters. But the international impact of the refugees' flight to safety was one that Indonesian authorities were powerless to stop because they are "very poor at public relations".

The Indonesians' track record on West Papua also does not help their cause.

Rumbiak, now a volunteer researcher for RMIT's Global Institute, says he does not trust Jakarta's undertakings on anything. In 1949, he says, on assuming independence, the Indonesian government said "they wanted to build Papua. And again in 1963 when West Papua was transferred by the United Nations. The promise was repeated in 1969, 1974 and 1982. But nothing..."

Defense minister threatens to audit NGOs manipulating Papua issue

Detik.com - April 7, 2006

M. Rizal Maslan, Jakarta – Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono says that he has the names of six to seven non-government organisations (NGO) that are manipulating the Papua issue. Sudarsono is asking the NGOs to be transparent about their funding sources. If not, they will be audited.

"I am only asking the NGOs to please be transparent and open so that they won't be audited", said Sudarsono following a friendly discussion with journalists at the ministry of defense on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat in Central Jakarta on April 7.

Sudarsono however refused to give the names of the NGOs."I've forgotten their names, but [we] have a list and their addresses", he said.

According to Sudarsono the NGOs must be open about who is providing funding, the total amount received and their ties to the donors."Because NGOs often challenge the government over questions of transparency. So it would be good if they are transparent about their finances", he explained.

Sudarsono said that the government still objects to the 42 Papuans being given visas on the ground that they are being pursued by the military."It's not true. If supposing Howard (Australian Prime Minister John Howard) give visas to [people] seeking the basic necessities of life as economic migrants, the government wouldn't have a problem. I think the issue would be finished", said Sudarsono in an outburst of emotion (aan)

[Translated by James Balowski.]

Supporters of Papuan separatism revealed

Australian Associated Press - April 6, 2006

Parliamentarians, union leaders and academics have been included on an Indonesian government list of prominent Australians supporting Papuan separatism.

The list also contains the names of a swathe of activist groups.

It was prepared by a group of senior Indonesian MPs with input from the country's intelligence agency, known as the Badan Intelejen Negara, or BIN.

Australian Greens senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle, Democrats senators Andrew Bartlett and Natasha Stott Despoja, and former ALP national president Greg Sword head the list.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sydney University and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology also appear on the list, as well as the federal parliament's group on West Papua and the peak Australian Council for Overseas Aid.

Activist groups in Australia named included Australia West Papua Association, the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network, West Papua Action Australia, the East Timor Action Network and the West Papua Project at the University of Sydney, headed by Peter King.

Professor Stuart Rees, who heads Sydney University's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, was also singled out, along with activist nun Sister Susan Connolly from the Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies.

Other prominent Australians included Tasmanian federal Labor MP Duncan Kerr and Barbara Flick, from the Australian section of the International Commission of Jurists.

Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has warned against foreign "meddling" in Papua as the row between Canberra and Jakarta continued over visas for 42 Papuan separatists who landed on Cape York in January.

A group of six MPs representing major parties in the Peoples Representative Council, or DPR, will take the list to Australia next month as part of a protest against the decision.

The group hopes to meet with the Papuans, as well as Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley.

Delegation leader Theo Sambuaga, who heads the powerful foreign affairs commission of the Indonesian parliament, told AAP he would ask Australia to overturn the ruling.

DPR chairman Agung Laksono said the six would deny the 42 Papuans were victims of a campaign of genocide and kidnappings by security forces in the restive province, where a few hundred separatists have waged a low-level insurgency against Jakarta- rule for decades.

While Mr Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer continue to voice support for Indonesian unity and oppose calls for Papuan independence, many senior Indonesians have accused Australia of being a base for separatists.

Senator Nettle was last week banned from visiting Papua on the order of Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono, while several other Australian activists and academics have also been blacklisted and barred from the province. The list was published in major newspapers including Media Indonesia, Koran Tempo and Republika.

La Ode Ida, the deputy chairman of the parliament's second chamber, the Regional Representative Council, said he would also take the list with him during an upcoming visit to Canberra to guest lecture at the Australian National University.

Ida said he would try to meet with several Australian senators during the visit.

Mr Howard, speaking after the failure of a Papuan family to reach Australia after their boat ran short of fuel and was diverted to Papua New Guinea, is appealing to activists in Australia not to encourage separatists to seek asylum in Australia.

"The relationship is under strain because of this issue," he told ABC Radio.

"I would say to people in West Papua and I would say to any people in Australia... who may be encouraging them to come to Australia that that is not something that the Australian government or, I believe, the majority of the Australian public wants."

Indonesian importers urge Australian boycott

Associated Press - April 6, 2006

Indonesian importers have called for a boycott of Australian goods as anger grows over Canberra's decision to grant temporary visas to 42 Papuan separatists who arrived in Cape York in January.

Indonesian Association of National Importers chairman Amiruddin Saud said the planned boycott would continue until the Papuan's visas were withdrawn."This boycott is not a bluff, this is really serious," he told reporters.

The boycott, he said, would hurt Australia more than Indonesia, because Jakarta was currently Australia's 10th largest export market for merchandise worth more than $A3.4 billion.

"We won't suffer because we can look for other import sources from other countries," Amiruddin said. "Don't worry, Indonesian people won't suffer a loss."

Australian-made products are prominent on Indonesian shop shelves and in supermarkets, where dairy products, cereals and canned goods often carry Australian labels. Other major exports include crude petroleum, cotton, live animals, unprocessed sugar, wheat, vegetables, fruit juice and metals such as aluminium and copper.

Amiruddin said his group had around 200 members importing Australian products who, if they were nationalists, would follow his boycott directive. "From today, we will not depend on Australia," he said.

But other major business groups have urged Indonesia's government not to let the Papua row spill over into a trade war. "We're afraid of the possibility of economically harmful actions, such as boycotts, in both countries," Thomas Darmawan, the chairman of the Association of Food and Beverage Industries, told the Jakarta Post newspaper.

His fear was shared by Indonesian Retailers Association chair Handaka Santosa and Flour Producers Association chief Ratna Sari Lopis.

Separately, small business minister Surya Darma Ali said Indonesia would also bar imports of Australian cattle breeding stock, but denied the move was linked to the Papua visa row. Surya said Jakarta would stop granting breeding cattle import licences to help Indonesia's beef industry compete. Indonesia currently imports around 70,000 live cattle from Australia each year, some to improve the quality of local herds.

Papuans 'within their rights' to seek asylum

Jakarta Post - April 6, 2006

Abdul Khalik and Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – Indonesia may end up breaking its own laws if it keeps trying to secure the return of 42 Papuan asylum seekers recently granted temporary visas in Australia, an official says.

The chairman of the Working Group on ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, Marzuki Darusman, said Wednesday that Indonesia had no reason to be incensed by the Papuans seeking asylum because they were exercising rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the 1999 Human Rights Law.

"The visa granting has nothing to do with our sovereignty, given that we have the Constitution and a law guaranteeing their right to seek political asylum anywhere (they choose)," the former head of Indonesia's first national human rights body told The Jakarta Post.

Article 28G of the amended 1945 Constitution rules that every individual has the right to political asylum in another country, while Article 28 of the 1999 law stipulates that an individual may seek asylum to gain political protection from another country.

Article 1A (2) of the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees defines an asylum seeker as a person who, "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country..."

Australia has ratified the conventions on refugees and asylum seekers, although Indonesia has not.

The legislator from the Golkar Party said if Indonesia continued to prod Australia to cancel the visas for return of the Papuans, it could be considered to have contravened the Constitution and the law.

The Papuans, who accused Indonesia of conducting genocide in the resource-rich province, were granted temporary visas by Canberra last month.

The move sparked anger in Indonesia, with Jakarta calling home its ambassador to discuss the matter and legislators urging the severing of ties. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Monday relations with Australia, including joint efforts to stop people smuggling, would be reviewed.

Theo L. Sambuaga, also a Golkar legislator who was among those who included the right to seek asylum in the amended Constitution, acknowledged that people with justified cause had the right to seek asylum.

"We only regret that Australia granted visas to them so easily, as if they accepted the accusations that we conducted genocide that led to them living in fear," he told the Post. Theo will lead a group of legislators on a visit to Australia next week to express Indonesian concerns.

Meanwhile, AFP reported that a spokesman for Australian Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone confirmed Wednesday there had been reports of more Papuans arriving in Australia, but refused to comment further.

TNI spokesman Rear Adm. M. Sunarto acknowledged Wednesday there were several points along the country's borders that were prone to illegal migration, and the establishment of more military posts was vital.

In Papua alone, the military has 73 posts where about four battalions of troops are stationed to guard the 770-kilometer- long coastline in the south, Sunarto said.

"Last week, the military installed a radar in Biak for aerial safety purposes, but locals will prefer the sea passage to reach neighboring Papua New Guinea and Australia, while we have only two to three patrol boats to monitor that vast sea territory."

Refugee warns on Papuan genocide

The Australian - April 4, 2006

Michael Davis – The leader of a group of Papuan refugees granted interim asylum in Australia fears a genocide similar to East Timor if the international community does not intervene to break the rule of the Indonesian military.

Herman Wainggai spoke as the 42 Papuans – including two little girls clutching their dolls – arrived in Melbourne from Perth after being granted temporary protection visas two weeks ago after a two-month detention on Christmas Island.

Mr Wainggai, 32, wants diplomatic international pressure brought to bear on the Indonesian Government "to restore basic human rights in West Papua".

Jailed for four months in 2000 and for two years in December 2002, he had seen his best friends and members of his family "shot in front of my own eyes" by the Indonesian military. "Me and my friends are safe. This is a great day for me and my friends but our work has just begun," he said.

The group stood behind the Morning Star flag of Papuan secessionists and sang their anthem as they stepped off their plane at Tullamarine. They had been waiting for a week to make the trip from Christmas Island to Melbourne, their journey delayed by Cyclone Glenda. Normally, their flight would have been diverted through Jakarta. "That was not exactly a suitable option in the circumstances, to say the least," said their lawyer, David Manne.

The Immigration Department has granted 42 of the 43 Papuans who landed near Weipa in January three-year interim protection visas. They were staying at a private hotel in a secret location last night.

Mr Wainggai said he could not say if more West Papuan boat people would follow but he urged the Australian and Indonesian governments to "stop arguing" with each other and to work together "to achieve a peaceful solution to the problems in my country."

The 43-year struggle has claimed more than 100,000 lives, according to separate studies by Amnesty International and the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Mr Wainggai said the figure did not include those who have died from broken hearts. "For me and activists like me, a lot of people die because their hearts cry for independence from the Indonesian Government. We have evidence of that."

Paris Aristotle, spokesman for Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, said the refugees would be provided with a range of services from authorities to help them settle into Australia.

"Initially we will be paying a great deal of attention to their healthcare and, through our staff, ensuring that anyone who requires counselling for past experiences of trauma and torture will receive that counselling," he said.

Reprisals ongoing in Papua: minister

Australian Associated Press - April 2, 2006

Jane Bunce – An Australian Anglican minister says at least 10 people have disappeared in military reprisals since a violent demonstration in Papua.

The Victorian clergyman, Reverend Peter Woods, was speaking at a Free West Papua rally in Melbourne today. He said he fled the demonstration against the US-owned Freeport gold mine earlier this month soon after Indonesian police and military began exploding tear gas and firing into the air.

Mr Woods, from St Andrews Church, Somerville, said he went to Papua to address church meetings, and stumbled on the demonstration while visiting a lecturer at the university in Abepura, outside capital Jayapura, on March 16.

He said local leaders told him police were killed in the ensuing riot and many other people had since disappeared in subsequent military repression. "In the anger and uncontrolled manner of the police and the milliary since that time, there have been reprisals," he said.

Mr Woods said eight men from the mountains of Wamena had disappeared, along with the head of university students in Puncak Jaya. And, on March 28, a 28-year-old student was taken during a lecture at the University of Technology, which was closed down in protest, he said.

On the same day, a 27-year-old man was shot at a family gathering to celebrate his graduation and rushed to hospital where the bullet was removed, MR Woods said.

"The bullet was taken by his father, and despite the efforts of the police and the milliary to get that bullet, that bullet was taken to Jakarta and has found to be associated with the police and the military," he said. "These detainments that are occurring are continuing now and we must speak up."

About 150 people attended today's midday rally in central Melbourne, while others were held in Perth, Sydney and Brisbane.

The rally was calling for Papuan independence from Indonesia and was also held to welcome 42 Papuans who landed at Cape York in January and were last week granted protection visas.

The visa row has strained Australia's relationships with Indonesia, but Prime Minister John Howard said the decision would stand. He said Australia fully supported Indonesia's sovereignty over the province that borders Papua New Guinea.

The area is known by Indonesia as Papua, but was formerly known as Irian Jaya, or West Papua.

Greens Senator Bob Brown today repeated his position that Australia's failure to intervene in Papua was tantamount to racism. "As with East Timor, it will be the Australian people that will change the Australian Government and the Opposition out of their turning of backs on the West Papuan people," he said.

Howard tells Indonesia he does not want Papua

Associated Press - April 2, 2006

Canberra – Prime Minister John Howard assured Indonesia Sunday that he does not support the separatist movement in Papua after an Australian newspaper crudely lampooned the Indonesian president over the restive province.

Both countries condemned The Weekend Australian cartoon Saturday which scorned President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's treatment of the province nearest to Australia where separatists are struggling for independence. Canberra's embassy in Jakarta fears a public backlash, the government said.

The cartoon and government responses underline the furor between the neighboring countries since Canberra accepted a group of Papuans as refugees last month.

The cartoon depicts Yudhoyono as a male dog copulating with a concerned-looking Papuan who is also represented as a dog.

Howard described the cartoon as "tasteless" and Yudhoyono as "a wonderful man."

Howard also used a national television interview Sunday to assure Indonesians that Canberra did not support the separatist movement in Papua, also known as West Papua.

"Accept my assurance that Australia has no designs at all on West Papua and we don't want West Papua to breakaway from Indonesia," Howard told Network Ten television. "We fully accept and endorse Indonesian sovereignty."

That claim was contradicted by a cartoon that appeared in an Indonesian newspaper last week that portrayed Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as two copulating Australian wild dogs, known as dingoes. Howard, depicted in the Rakyat Merdeka newspaper on Wednesday as the male, tells Downer: "I want Papua."

Downer on Saturday issued a statement Saturday condemning the Yudhoyono cartoon and saying newspaper editors have responsibility to consider the consequences of what they publish.

Australia's embassy in Jakarta, which was targeted by a suicide bomber in 2004, was also worried about that cartoon, Downer said.

"They have concerns that there will be a negative reaction by the Indonesians to material like this which is extremely offensive," he told reporters Saturday.

Indonesia has protested Australia's move to grant asylum to 36 adults and seven children who arrived from Papua by boat in January and claimed they faced persecution if they returned.

Jakarta withdrew its ambassador from Canberra two weeks ago over the controversy, which has rekindled memories of strained relations in 1999 when Australia supported East Timor's ballot for independence.

Jakarta protested to the newspaper editor that the cartoon "is not helpful and has no value in terms of reducing public tension between the two countries," the Indonesian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

Indonesia says Australian cartoon "in poor taste"

Agence France Presse - April 1, 2006

Jakarta – Indonesia has described as "tasteless" a caricature in an Australian newspaper depicting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a dog.

The publication of the cartoon in the Australian daily followed a similar drawing in an Indonesian daily portraying Prime Minister John Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as copulating dingoes.

The cartoon war comes amid tensions between Jakarta and Canberra over Australia's decision to grant refugee visas to 42 asylum- seekers from Indonesia's restive Papua province.

Presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng said Yudhoyono had not seen the Australian caricature but the president "laughed" when told of the depiction.

"It's in poor taste. Sometimes the media, both in Indonesia and other countries, resort to poor taste, which actually demonstrates the level of their quality," Mallarangeng told AFP.

The Australian caricature cartoon, drawn by award-winning cartoonist Bill Leak, shows Yudhoyono as a tail-wagging dog mounting a startled-looking Papua dog and saying "don't take this the wrong way". The caption under the cartoon reads "no offence intended".

On Monday Indonesian tabloid Rakyat Merdeka ran a front-page caricature showing Howard being mounted on Downer with the prime minister saying: "I want Papua!! Alex! Try to make it happen." Howard dismissed the Indonesian cartoon, although Downer described it as grotesque and "way below standards of public taste".

Downer responded to the latest cartoon by saying the Australian government in no way condoned it.

"Editors have responsibility to be mindful of the consequences of what they publish, particularly when they knowingly publish material that is likely to be found offensive in some quarters," Downer said in a statement.

Indonesia has been stung by the decision of Australia's immigration department to issue three-year visas to the group of Papuans, including prominent separatists and their families, who arrived by boat in northern Australia in January.

In response, Indonesia has recalled its ambassador to Canberra, postponed an agreement on jointly fighting bird flu, and angry Indonesians have protested outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta.

Since the decision, Howard has repeatedly stated his support for Indonesian sovereignty over Papua, a former Dutch colony taken over by Jakarta in the 1960s.

Military ties

Indonesian, Australia military cooperation to remain normal

Antara News - April 4, 2006

Jakarta – Indonesian Defence Forces (TNI) chief Marshal Djoko Suyanto said military cooperation between Indonesia and Australia would remain normal despite the souring of Indonesia-Australia relations following Canberra's action in granting temporary visas to 42 Papuan asylum-seekers.

"We can express our displeasure and dismay over Australia's policy but it should not destroy the foundations of the two countries' bilateral relations in a wider sense," Djoko said after attending a get-together with active and retired servicemen here on Tuesday.

He said Indonesia and Australia had been actively stepping up their bilateral relations and cooperation in various fields, including in education and the taging of joint military exercises.

"We have to be realistic and note that we have cooperation with Australia in various fields. Therefore, we should maintain the existing cooperation without ignoring our feelings of displeasure and dismay over Australia's policy," he noted.

The TNI chief said military cooperation between the two countries was conducted within the framework of "Indonesian-Australian Defence Strategic Dialog (IADSD)" and the TNI-Australian Defence Force cooperation forum in the form of high level talks and exchange of soldiers and students.

The objective of the cooperation, he said, was to step up the profesionalism of the soldiers through education and trainings.

Besides, defence cooperation between the two countries is also implemented in the form of joint operation, while the coordination patrol at both countries' territorial waters is not conducted for the time being because of the worsening relations.

On the occasion, Djoko also asserted that there would be no addition in the number of military personnel in Papua, because the problem in the province is related with political matter, not security one.

He said the presence of TNI personnel in Papua was limited to the security affairs at the mining area of PT Freeport and the border area between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Kopassus to rejoin US conference

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

The Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) is to join the annual Pacific Area Special Operation Conference for the first time since a military embargo was imposed on the country by the United States in 1998.

On Monday, Kopassus chief Maj. Gen. Syaiful Rizal told Antara: "The return of the (Indonesian Military) TNI, in this case Kopassus, to PASOC 2006 is an indication that military cooperation between Indonesia and the United States has gradually improved after the revocation of the embargo in November last year."

This year's PASOC will be held in Hawaii from April 3-8.

US lifts ban on sale of lethal arms to Indonesia

Asia Times - April 1, 2006

Jim Lobe, Washington – Moving with unusual speed, the administration of US President George W Bush officially normalized military relations with Indonesia on Wednesday when the State Department posted a formal notice permitting the sale of lethal military equipment to Jakarta for the first time in seven years.

The announcement in the Federal Register came just two weeks after Condoleezza Rice made her maiden visit as US secretary of state to the Indonesian capital, where she called for closer ties

with the military as part of an expanded "strategic partnership" with the sprawling Southeast Asian nation of more than 200 million people.

It also follows the State Department's announcement last November that it intended to waive congressionally imposed human-rights conditions on military aid and sales to Indonesia in appreciation of Jakarta's "unique strategic role in Southeast Asia".

"This marks the final legal step to open up the arms flow to the Indonesian military," John Miller, director of the East Timor and Indonesian Action Network (ETAN), said of the Federal Register notice. "It remains for Indonesia to draw up a shopping list of items they want to buy."

ETAN, along with several other major rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, has strongly opposed the restoration of full military ties with Indonesia until the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono makes much greater progress in asserting control over the country's armed forces (TNI) and prosecuting officers responsible for serious abuses, particularly in East Timor.

They have argued that normalizing military relations now gives the army a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" that will in effect encourage it to resist reforms that would make it more accountable to civilian authority and improve its human-rights practices.

"The thing about the renewal of the military relationship is that it gives a political boost to the army and makes it more likely that they will stave off pressure for reforms," said Daniel Lev, an Indonesia expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. Yudhoyono, he said, "is pushing very hard for reforms, but none really has to do with the army, which is the core of the problem".

The US Congress first imposed military-related sanctions against the TNI in 1991 after a widely reported massacre against unarmed protesters in East Timor, a province that had been invaded and subsequently annexed by Suharto's New Order regime in the mid- 1970s. Over the next eight years, Congress gradually added restrictions on the military-to-military relations because of evidence that the army's human-rights performance had not improved.

In August 1999, the TNI and TNI-backed militias went on a deadly and destructive rampage in East Timor after its inhabitants voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence in a United Nations- backed plebiscite. Congress responded by severing virtually all military ties, making their restoration conditional on a number of mostly rights-related reforms, including the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for the mayhem in East Timor.

But the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, changed the mood in Washington. The Bush administration began pressing Congress to exempt from the ban certain kinds of military assistance, such as "anti-terrorist" training and equipment, joint military maneuvers, and the supply of some "non-lethal" military equipment.

This was despite overwhelming evidence that the TNI was not only refusing to cooperate in efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of the East Timor violence, but was also engaged in serious abuses on other islands, including Aceh, West Papua, and the Malukus.

After the tsunami disaster of December 2004, the administration accelerated the pace toward normalization. In February, it lifted the ban on Indonesia's participation in its International Military Education Training (IMET) program and in May, it exempted from the ban on military sales certain kinds of "non- lethal" military equipment.

Congress nonetheless remained skeptical and last November extended the ban on certain kinds of financing for military equipment and training and on licenses for the export of "lethal" military equipment until the secretary of state could certify that three conditions are being met by Jakarta and the TNI.

They included the prosecution and punishment of TNI members "who have been credibly alleged to have committed gross violations of human rights"; cooperation by the TNI with civilian judicial authorities and international efforts to resolve gross abuses in East Timor and elsewhere; and implementation of reforms "to improve civilian control of the military".

The bill, however, also provided that the administration could waive these conditions in the interests of "national security". Unable to certify that Jakarta was indeed meeting these conditions, the State Department decided to waive them in late November, although in doing so, it stressed that it remained "committed" to the fulfillment of Congress' conditions and would only approve sales of "lethal equipment" on a "case-by-case basis". The latter assurance was included in the Federal Register's announcement on Wednesday.

Between November and this week, however, Washington made no secret of its eagerness to normalize ties fully despite the emergence of new evidence in January that the TNI had been involved in the murders of two US teachers in Papua in 2002.

In its budget request for 2007, the State Department increased Indonesia's IMET allocation by 50% and asked Congress to approve more than US$6 million dollars to aid Indonesia's purchases of military equipment – a nearly sevenfold increase over the previous year.

At the same time, Admiral William Fallon, commander of the US Pacific Command, publicly urged a "rapid, concerted infusion of assistance" to the Indonesian military.

Washington's major strategic interests in Indonesia relate to its status as, in the words of the State Department, "the world's most populous majority-Muslim nation" and "a voice of moderation in the Islamic world" at a time when Washington is engaged in its "global war on terror" against radical Islamists. In addition, its proximity to and control over some of the world's most important sea lanes has long given it a special cachet with the United States.

Indonesia has also long been seen as a potential ally in US efforts to "contain" China in Asia and the Pacific, a theme that dominated Rice's tour in the region this month, which climaxed in a meeting with her Australian and Japanese counterparts.

The Pentagon reportedly is most eager to upgrade Indonesia's maritime forces to help it secure the strategic sea lanes against potential threats, which include piracy, terrorist operations, and, presumably, China's efforts to build a blue-ocean navy. In addition, Indonesia's navy is considered the least problematic of the country's armed forces from a human-rights perspective.

The TNI, according to analysts, has placed a higher priority on upgrading and securing spare parts for its fleet of aging fleet of warplanes, some of which have been used for counter-insurgency operations.

(Inter Press Service)

Popular resistance

Pedicab drivers protest unfairness

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Bandung – Hundreds of pedicab drivers in Bandung protested outside the office of civilian guards on Monday after the alleged beating of a driver on Saturday.

Pedicab driver Agus Sarifudin said the protest had not been planned. "It's spontaneous," he said.

Agus Suparman, 34, claimed he was suffering from head injuries after being beaten by about five guards when he was watching a raid of sidewalk traders in the Dalem Kaum area on Saturday. He has since reported the case to the police.

On Monday, the pedicab drivers met the head of Bandung city's Transportation Office, Timbul Butar Butar, and the guard's chief Priana Wirasaputra, who promised to let the police handle the case and would act against his officials.

Sutet protesters homeward bound

Jakarta Post - April 3, 2006

Jakarta – Two men who participated for nearly a month in a hunger strike protesting the installation of super high voltage towers ended their fast on Saturday.

Rasjad bin Casmin, 42, and Tarjono bin Carman, 36, residents of Brebes, Central Java, agreed to return to their hometown after being visited by their village chief.

"We came here to show our sympathy to the protesters but we also plan to bring them home," the Limbangan village chief, Tarjono, said to Detikcom.

The protesters, who are holding their strike on Jl. Diponegoro, Central Jakarta, are demanding the government pay higher compensation to residents living under high voltage towers. They have stitched their mouths shut and shunned food and water during the protest, which has been going on for almost three months.

Protest coordinator Mustar Bona Ventura said there would be another six people from Central Java and West Java joining the hunger strike on Monday.

Currently, only Maksum, 27, resident of Cirebon, West Java, remains on strike.

Pornography & morality

Tame Playboy sparks excitement in Muslim Indonesia

Reuters - April 7, 2006

Jerry Norton, Jakarta – Playboy magazine may no longer rate on the sexual cutting edge in some places, but the first edition in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, caused a stir on Friday.

Although the pictures inside showed less skin than US issues 50 years ago, copies were being passed from desk to desk in Jakarta offices, high demand was reported, and newspapers and broadcasters dwelt at length on the Indonesian issue.

A leader of one militant Islamic group threatened to use force, if necessary, to get the magazine withdrawn.

Like the iconic original, the Indonesian Playboy included a serious interview, in-depth articles and color pictures of women, including a fold-out. But no nipples were exposed in the photos, let alone anything approaching full nudity.

"I didn't see any surprising thing in this magazine. It depends on how people interpret it. For me, no problem," Alex, a white- collar worker who did not want to give his full name, told Reuters Television.

A 40-year-old housewife, Maya, disapproved. "Surely it is against the new anti-pornography law," she said.

Condemnation also came from Chamammah Soeratno, head of the women's wing of major Muslim moderate group Muhammadiyah.

"Everyone knows it's a pornographic magazine. The first edition may not have any nudity. That's a very clever move by the publishers," she told Reuters.

Indonesia's parliament is debating a law to significantly tighten control of media as well as public behavior in an effort to reduce what its proponents see as pornography.

Threat to editors

Indonesia has many magazines on news stands that go further than the new Playboy in the sexual content of their articles and at least as far in their pictures.

In fact, magazine and newspaper agent Azis, 41, told Reuters Playboy was not different enough from an existing upscale Indonesian men's magazine, Matra.

But even months ago the Playboy image and its Western origin had sparked protests at the mere news of plans for the Indonesian edition, despite promises of a tame version.

Around 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam. Although most are moderates, there is a growing tendency toward showing Islamic identity and conservative attitudes.

The government is officially secular and tolerant of other religions, and pressure to make laws more in line with orthodox beliefs has been a regular source of controversy in recent years.

Some militant groups have taken things into their own hands on occasion by, for example, attacking unlicensed churches and bars selling alcohol during the Muslim fasting period.

"I am afraid to sell the first edition because it has been reported that the Islamic organizations would be on alert," said newsstand owner Ronni, 30, who operates near the headquarters of a hard-line Muslim group, the Islamic Defenders' Front (FPI).

Tubagus Sidiq, a senior leader of FPI, told Reuters: "FPI opposes (Playboy) in whatever form. According to our commitment, if they don't withdraw it then we will act in our own way, the forceful way. Our crew will clearly hound the editors... We even oppose the name Playboy." The government took a different view.

"The laws that we can use in this case (are) whether there is a publication that violates decency. So, we need to check the content first. Just using the name is insufficient to ban it," Information Minister Sofyan Djalil told reporters.

Bambang Kuncoko, a national police spokesman, said at a news conference that "the public should follow the law and must not take arbitrary actions. If that happens, the police will absolutely take legal actions."

Late on Friday afternoon about 20 FPI protesters, outnumbered by journalists covering them, showed up at the Playboy publishers offices, and local news radio said a representative team met with the magazine's editors.

Despite regular campaigns against pornography, many sidewalk vendors in Indonesia stock sexually explicit movies and the country has a flourishing sex industry.

Founded in 1953, Playboy has about 20 editions around the world that cater to local tastes.

Buttoned-down 'Playboy' to hit newsstands today

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – People from religious groups readying to protest the first edition of Indonesia's Playboy, which hits newsstands Friday (today), might want to read the magazine first.

The first copy of the "adult" entertainment publication carries no nudity and little that most people would judge obscene. The only danger – for the publisher – is that it may be too tame in a market already saturated with soft-porn titles.

Publisher PT Velvet Silver Media has apparently made good on its promise to display fully clothed women models and focus on more "literary" subject matters.

In the first edition, seen by The Jakarta Post on Thursday, all female models are clad in modest body-fitting outfits and pictured tastefully.

The bulk of space in the magazine is devoted to sober articles on the country's economic outlook for 2006, an interview with Indonesia's literary giant Pramoedya Ananta Toer and a feature story on Japanese carmakers' domination of the American market.

Religion also get a mention. In an apparent move to appease the indignation of religious groups, the magazine carries a story about the country's faiths, penned by Pantau magazine writer Agus Sopian.

There is also a short story from fiction writer Dewi Lestari. In total, only 18 of the magazine's 160 pages are devoted to pictures of female models.

Chief editor Erwin Arnada told the Post that Playboy's first tame outing had nothing to do with religious groups' campaigns against its publication.

"It is part of our compliance with the Press Law, which bans all obscene publications. It is also part of our agreement with our owners, the US Playboy magazine," Arnada said in an interview at a secluded location in South Jakarta.

Several religious groups have staged a series of street demonstrations since last year to protest the magazine's planned publication. Muhammadiyah leader Din Syamsuddin has vowed to muster other national religious leaders to demonstrate against the magazine when it hit newsstands.

Speculation is rife that Velvet Silver Media has cut a deal with the groups to get its product printed, which Arnada denies.

However, he does not anticipate fresh protests once the magazine is published. "We don't take that (the possibility of protests) seriously. We are just focusing on how to produce a quality magazine and get it out first," he said.

And unlike other magazines here, which generally have big launch parties, Playboy Indonesia has no plans to officially kick off the publication.

If there is any commotion about the magazine it will likely be at the newsstands. Velvet Silver Media has printed 100,000 copies of the magazine, which will sell at outlets throughout the country for Rp 39,000 each.

One of the world's best-known brands, Playboy was founded by Hugh Heffner and his associates in 1953.

The advent of competitors such as FHM and Maxim in the US prompted Playboy Enterprizes Inc to look for new markets in Asia and it took only two months for Velvet Silver Media to secure the local publishing rights.

Japan already has a local version of the magazine and India will be the third Asian country to publish it after Indonesia.

NU youths, leaders at odds over bill

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Jakarta – Defying the stance taken by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) leaders, moderate young activists from the nation's biggest Muslim organization say they oppose the controversial pornography bill.

Grouped in the NU Youth Forum, the activists said the House of Representatives should address issues more urgent than the much- debated legislation.

The forum urged the NU to carefully consider its support of the bill, which the critics have said does not take into account Indonesia's cultural, religious and ethnic diversity and its tradition of secularism.

In a statement, the activists accused the NU leaders of straying from the organization's original mission of promoting nationalism and human rights by supporting the bill.

"Morality does not only include religious values but also the development of society," NU Youth Forum coordinator Zuhairi Misrawi told The Jakarta Post on Monday. He said a person's moral values were personal and should not be enforced by law.

Earlier, NU central board leader Hasyim Muzadi joined the chorus of support for the bill from conservative Muslims, saying the draft legislation should be passed soon. "We must not sacrifice morality in the name of diversity, but we also cannot be too strict about morality," he said.

Hasyim said exceptions must be made in implementing the bill to accommodate tourism and other cultures. "We need to create an equilibrium of perceptions between morality and diversity."

The forum, meanwhile, called on the government and the House to prioritize efforts to resolve crucial national problems. Starvation, rampant corruption, and the state's inability to ensure people's access to an affordable education, were far more important than a morals bill, it said.

Perceptions of pornography depended on a person's individual values, the activists said. "That's why the matter should be dealt with through the education system and by religious organizations, not through laws imposing certain values on others."

The Criminal Code, the Child Protection Law, Domestic Violence Law and regulations on broadcasting, the press and films, all had articles dealing with the problem, they said.

Women were targeted of the bill because they could be arrested for how they dressed, forum member Abdul Moqsith Ghazali said. "Those who are already victims of exploitation in the pornography (industry) will undergo further scrutiny due to this law," he said.

Moqsith, who is also a member of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL), said the bill did not deal with people creating and distributing pornography.

Former NU chairman and president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid said the legislation would curb people's freedom of expression, which was protected by the Constitution. "If the bill is passed into law, I will start and lead efforts to amend the law because it would violate our Constitution," he said.

Kissing ritual gives porn bill the kiss-off

Jakarta Post - April 1, 2006

Denpasar – Legendary dangdut singer Rhoma Irama and others intent on beefing up the moral fiber of Indonesian society would probably have been scandalized by Friday's spectacle in downtown Denpasar.

In the age-old tradition of omed-omed or med-medan, hundreds of youths braved the rain to warmly hug and kiss anybody they met on the streets in Banjar Kaja, Sesetan. The tradition is performed on Ngembak Geni Day, the day following Nyepi, or the Hindu Day of Silence, which fell on Thursday.

The public display of youthful affection carried new meaning this year, with the porn bill currently being debated in the House of Representatives. Bali was the first province to formally reject the bill, with strong opposition to what local people see as potential constraints on their cultural traditions, as well as to the tourist industry on the resort island.

Despite the lashing of the city by tropical cyclones, crowds lined the streets to observe the sacred ritual. Young women waited shyly, while the boys, many from local Hindu youth organizations, seemed impatient for it to get underway.

Their wait went on, with a number of obligatory rituals to be performed, including a stunning performance of the Barong mythical lion dance. When the dancer was in a trance, it was taken as a sign of the gods' blessing of the omed-omed ritual.

The boys then set off in pursuit of the girls, with some shy pecks on the cheek or, for the bolder types, a kiss on the lips.

Local elders say the ritual dates back to the Oka Sesetan royal family, and the order of one of its ailing members for the local community to keep quiet on Nyepi. The people relaxed and enjoyed themselves instead, and the nobleman found that their unabashed merriment also lifted his spirits.

The tradition has not always been to the liking of outsiders, said community elder Pekak (grandfather) Item. "The Dutch colonial government banned the tradition, as did the Indonesian government soon after independence," the 90-year-old said.

In the 1970s, local authorities also put a stop to the ritual. Locals say strange occurrences began after the ban, such as widespread outbreaks of illness. Villagers believed the gods were angry and the omed-omedan ritual was revived.

"Here, we are having fun with all the village members," said Ketut Wiryani, a participant in the ritual in her youth. "Now, I have two children and the younger residents must keep up the tradition."

Political Porn: Autonomy means repression against women

Jakarta Post - April 1, 2006

Julia Suryakusuma and Tim Lindsey, Jakarta – Reformasi promised to unravel the New Order and its legacy of state control, social repression and intermittent violence. One of the key mechanisms for this was, of course, decentralization and the grant to the regions of various levels of autonomy.

The wave of local elections through to late 2005 has brought with it some of the most radical change Indonesia has experienced in decades. Of the 219 local elections conducted to date, some 40 percent or so resulted in the removal of incumbents and the rise of new elites, cementing a broader social process that has been underway across the archipelago since 1998.

We say "new" elites but in many cases they are, in fact, the old elites redux, that is, traditional leaders pushed to one side under the New Order, reasserting themselves three decades later. Often they are male and often they draw their authority from traditional local sources, including adat and religion.

In other words, new local leaders tend to look for their legitimacy to conservative and socially-regressive value systems linked to local identity. In many regions these groups have begun to replace the old Jakarta-endorsed bureaucrats, most of whom had a strongly secular nationalist bent and some level of commitment to a modernizing agenda. These old-for-new elites are influencing local policy right across the country, even where they haven't won office.

In realpolitik terms, many local heroes want to differentiate themselves from the past and to strengthen their local support. One way to achieve this is to support or even lead local agendas sponsored by conservative social groups, often religious in nature.

The result has been a wave of attempts to introduce conservative interpretation of adat (custom) or, more often, syariah-derived moral norms through regional regulations (Perda). This has occurred most obviously in Aceh, but social disruption has not been so significant there, as many of the norms underpinning that province's new Qanun (Islamic law) were long ago internalized by most Acehnese.

It is more disruptive in other areas with greater religious and social plurality such as Tangerang, Cianjur, Padang and South Sulawesi, to give just a few examples of regions where "Islamising" Perda have been proposed or introduced.

That some of these new regulatory regimes are inspired to some extent by Muslim hard-liners is clear. The drafting of the Acehnese Qanun, for example, drew inspiration from the radical and very controversial codes introduced by PAS in Kelantan and Trengganu, Malaysia.

Undeterred by failure at the national level, hardliners renewed efforts to introduce legal grounds for shariah implementation at the local level, with some success. But regional moral conservatism is now no longer isolated, if indeed it ever was. Its reflection at the national level is the huge controversy over the Anti-Pornography Bill (RUUAP). This is, in a sense, the Perda writ large.

Like the Perda, the RUUAP seeks to ban modern behavior that offends traditional and religious cultural norms. If it is passed in its original form it would prohibit forms of expression that its supporters consider pornography or pornoaksi and is very focused – like most of these Codes – on the expression of sexuality and women's behavior.

The pornoaksi ban (which may now be dropped by the Bill's supporters) would prohibit people from public displays of affection (such as kissing and holding hands), or exposing "sensitive" body parts such as breasts, thighs, belly, but also hair, shoulder and legs.

The Anti Pornography Bill is thus not really about pornography. It is about denying women and sexuality public space. It uses pornography as an excuse, equating expression of sexuality outside the marriage bed – even the very presence of women outside the home – with obscenity and criminality. And it would lock up artists and writers who present these themes, as do many artists in most societies, including Indonesia.

The irony is thus that reforms intended to give democracy and the right to a voice to millions of Indonesians silenced for decades under Soeharto may now strip away from half of them some of the few rights they enjoyed under his rule – take for example, the recent case of three Christian women teachers jailed in West Java for proselytizing to Muslims by teaching at a Sunday School. While decentralization may deliver political democracy to the regions it may also deny social democracy – at least for women and non-Muslims.

In a broader sense, although created by some of the key beneficiaries of the end of the New Order, that is, legislators and Muslim leaders (both tightly controlled groups under Soeharto), the new laws now threaten to strip away much of the freedom of ideas, expression and political participation fought for so hard by the opponents of Soeharto.

If the RUUAP is passed, will that mean that Art. 28 of the (amended) Constitution and Law no. 7/1984 on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, with their guarantee of rights against discrimination – including on gender grounds – become dead letters? We think that this is a question that will eventually end up in the Constitutional Court, just as some of the Perda will surely eventually face formal review as well, but few would have much faith that the courts or government will be the solution.

The real fate of these laws will most likely be decided in the streets, as demos and protests continue unabated. The last time the question of private morality, religion and the state was debated in the legislature with this degree of public response was in 1974, when the secularizing Marriage Bill sparked huge demos that forced a major backdown on the Bill's content. The RUUAP may go the same way.

[Julia Suryakusuma is the author of Sex, Power and Nation. Tim Lindsey is Professor of Asian Law at the University of Melbourne.]

Human rights/law

Attorney General raps police over Munir probe

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – The attorney general has questioned police for failing to investigate Maj. Gen. Muchdi Purwoprandjono, a former deputy chief of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), in connection with the murder of human rights campaigner Munir.

Abdul Rahman Saleh raised the concern during a closed-door meeting Thursday with Munir's widow Suciwati at the Attorney Generals' Office, said Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence coordinator Usman Hamid.

"We asked the attorney general to take the initiative to investigate Muchdi because we need decisive legal action against him," said Usman, who attended the meeting with other human rights activists.

During the meeting, Usman presented a printed record from state- owned telephone operator Telkom, which showed regular communications between Muchdi and Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, both before and after the Sept. 7, 2004 murder.

The transcript was used as evidence by the Jakarta District Court, which convicted Pollycarpus of playing a role in the crime. At the trial of the convict, Muchdi denied any involvement in the poisoning.

"A total of 41 phone conversations between Muchdi and Pollycarpus were made before and after the murder. Isn't that strange? What's their relationship. Even a close friend would not have made such frequent calls," Usman said after the meeting. He said Abdul Rahman pledged to continue requesting help from the Dutch authorities to provide more evidence and data related to the murder.

Pollycarpus was sentenced in December last year to 14 years' jail. The court also ordered police and prosecutors to expose the masterminds behind the murder.

However, the police probe appears to have led nowhere and Muchdi and other former BIN officers suspected of involvement in the case remain untouchable.

However, a police source said they had set up a new team led by Brig. Gen. Anton Carlian in January 2006. In its second meeting with the activists in February, the team "promised to arrest Muchdi" for the case. "But, we have seen no progress to date," Usman said.

Munir, who was a staunch critic of the government and military for their poor human rights records, was found dead aboard a Garuda flight. A Dutch autopsy found a lethal dose of arsenic in his body.

Muslim figures back stay of execution for Poso 3

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

Ruslan Sangadji, Palu/Jakarta – Representatives of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and the country's largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama are calling for a stay of execution for three Poso death-row convicts until the men's claims of innocence can be fully examined.

Their stance contradicts the demand of several Muslim student groups in Central Sulawesi, who are seeking the quick execution of the three Christians convicted of masterminding the killing of 200 Muslims during vicious sectarian violence in 2000.

The Supreme Court this week dismissed a second case review for the men because their avenues of legal recourse had been exhausted, including an appeal for a presidential pardon turned down last year.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has yet to respond to a second plea for clemency filed on the men's behalf.

MUI North Sulawesi chairman Arifin Assegaf, accompanied by Palu parish head Melky Toreh and his Tentena counterpart Jemmy Tumakaka, visited Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus da Silva and Marinus Riwu at Petobo penitentiary here Thursday. The men contend they fought for Christian militants but did not orchestrate killings.

Arifin said the men deserved the chance to bring their evidence – alleging that 16 others were the masterminds – before a court of law. Some contend high-ranking military personnel stoked the unrest by supplying arms to both sides.

Arifin urged the government to postpone the execution until more eyewitness accounts were heard and their claims were fully investigated. "I believe a full investigation into these 16 people will result in fresh findings about people who've put Poso in conflict. My data shows there are other people besides the 16," he said.

He was later joined by MUI Central Sulawesi chairman Saiyid Saggaf Aljufrie, who agreed with Arifin about the imposing of a stay of execution. "I think what he said is more than enough. I agree with what he said," said Aljufrie.

In Jakarta, NU leader Masdar Farid Mas'udi urged the President to intervene to prevent the executions until there was incontrovertible evidence of the men's guilt. "Although in legal terms the case has been settled, many clouds still hang over it that must be revealed. The accusation of three people murdering over 200 others is hard to fathom," he said.

Masdar warned that the inflammatory religious and ethnic issues of the conflict could be revived by the men's execution. "A hasty decision will only exacerbate (problems of) religious relations in Poso. A death penalty is irreversible, so it's best avoided when there are still doubts," he said.

Central Sulawesi Prosecutor's Office head Yahya Sibe said the government would press ahead with the executions. "It's a fixed decision... a mandate of the law," he said, adding that he would not make a prior announcement of the time and place of the executions by firing squad.

Government told to pursue justice in Tibo case

Jakarta Post - April 5, 2006

Jakarta, Palu, Kupang – The government should delay the execution of three men on death row for inciting sectarian conflict in Poso, Central Sulawesi, to ensure justice was done, legal experts say.

Gayus Lumbuun warned if prosecutors followed the book and went ahead with the executions of the three without considering new evidence, the decision could represent a serious miscarriage of justice.

National Commission on Human Rights chief Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, meanwhile, warned an immediate execution could set off renewed conflict in the religiously divided area.

Prosecutors have announced they will soon execute three Christians – Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 54, and Dominggus da Silva, 43 – who were found guilty by a series of courts of masterminding attacks in Poso that killed some 200 Muslims in 2000.

However, lawyers for the three men have tabled new evidence in the case that suggests 16 other men, some members of military and intelligence forces, are the real masterminds of the attacks.

Last week, the men's legal team filed a second request to the Supreme Court to review their conviction and to the President to pardon them.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rejected a first clemency plea for the convicts last November after the Supreme Court turned down their first case review request.

The law normally only allows for one case review and one clemency request. However, legal experts say the discovery of new evidence allows the courts and the President to revisit their decisions.

"Yes, there is (normally) only one chance for a case review, but we know that there are other people who are important culprits in the attacks," Gayus said.

"With the new evidence produced, it's only appropriate that police and prosecutors probe, take the case to court and see what happens. In the meantime, it's logical that prosecutors delay the execution of the death sentence," he said.

Komnas HAM's Garuda Nusantara said capital punishment should be delayed until all avenues were explored. "In this case, the police and prosecutors should pursue the new evidence. What if this evidence resulted in a different verdict? It could set off massive disorder," he said.

Gayus urged people to question why the prosecutors were so keen to carry out the executions. "Cases where verdicts have been issued long before this case are now idle. Are there any vested interests protecting the people who were the real brains (behind the killings)?" he said.

Presidential spokesmen Andi Mallarangeng said the President had received a letter from Tibo's family, which contained some requests and a message.

A lawyer for the three men, Alamsyah Hanafiah, said Tuesday he had sent statements by public figures and former state officials supporting pleas for a stay in the men's executions to the President and Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh.

AGO spokesmen Masyhudi Ridwan said the office would not consider any new evidence because the proper legal processes had been followed. "All new evidence should've been produced in the first review... We will carry out the execution after everything is ready," Masyhudi said.

He said four firing squads of 44 men were undergoing mental and physical training to prepare them for the executions, which had been stalled by administrative problems.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people took to the streets in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara and Palu, Central Sulawesi, Tuesday to call for a stay in the men's executions. They said the three were key witnesses who could reveal the real masterminds of the attacks. Legal processes against the 16 men mentioned should begin soon, they said.

The Sulawesi coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, Edmond Leonardo Siahaan, said an immediate execution would be a miscarriage of justice and shut the door on attempts to find out the truth behind the violence.

About 1,000 people died in the religious conflict in Poso during 2000 and early 2001.

Police probe allegations by death-row trio

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Ruslan Sangadji and Yemris Fointuna, Palu/Kupang – Two of three men on death row in Poso, Central Sulawesi, told police Monday they were advised by their legal counsel not to reveal the names of 16 men who masterminded a wave of sectarian violence.

Fabianus Tibo, who was branded the commander of the "red group" of Christian militants, said he only decided to tell investigators the names after the three were sentenced to death for "masterminding" the conflict.

"I was asked by my former lawyer, Robert Bofe, not to mention the 16 names. I followed his advice even though I didn't know the reason why," the 60-year-old said. "But after the judges decided to sentence me to death, I had no other choice but to reveal the 16 names as the real masterminds."

Apart from Tibo, police investigators, led by Central Sulawesi Police detective chief Sr. Comr. I Wayan Suharsa, also questioned Marinus da Silva about the allegations.

Tibo, da Silva and Marinus Riwu were sentenced to death in March 2001 by the Palu District Court for their role in the killing of about 200 Muslims in 2000.

Immediately after the panel of judges delivered the verdict, Tibo presented a handwritten list of 16 names of alleged masterminds. He identified them as Janes Simangunsong, Paulus Tungkanan, Angky Tungkanan, Lempa Delly, Erik Rombot, Yahya Pattiro, Sigilipu, Ladue, Obed, Sarjun, Herry Banibi, Guntur Taridji, Ventje Angkaw, Theo Mandayo, Son Ruagadi, and Bate Lateka.

However, neither the provincial court nor higher courts had taken Tibo's declaration into their legal consideration in upholding the verdict.

The police's move to question Tibo and da Silva comes amid hectic preparations by the Central Sulawesi prosecutor's office for the execution.

If the police decide to proceed with the statements of the two men, there may be a stay of execution to allow them to testify in any criminal proceedings against the 16, despite a statement Sunday from the Attorney General's Office there would be no more delays.

Last week, lawyers for the three filed a second plea for clemency with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, after their first appeal for a pardon was turned down last December.

High-ranking officials in the province – including head of Central Sulawesi prosecutor's office Yahya Sibe and police chief Brig. Gen. Oegroseno, Palu Mayor Rudy Mastura – held a closed- door meeting Monday on the planned execution.

It was the second in as many days after several top officials, including Oegroseno, met Sunday night. Present at Sunday's meeting was local Christian leader Rev. Renaldy Damanik and human rights activists.

Local religious leaders say they fear the executions will incite fresh violence in the area, which is home to equal numbers of Christians and Muslims.

"The government has never put on trial the perpetrators in some other conflict-prone areas nationwide, such as Aceh, Papua, Ambon, Sampit (in Kalimantan). Why is it only here, in Poso, that the common people must die for something they never did?" Damanik said.

No reprieve for Poso 3, officials say

Jakarta Post - April 3, 2006

Ruslan Sangadji, Palu – Prosecutors insisted Sunday the death sentence for three men convicted for their role in the sectarian conflict in Poso, Central Sulawesi, would be carried out soon despite mounting calls for a stay of execution.

Central Sulawesi Prosecutor's Office head M. Jahja Sibe said technical difficulties were holding up the execution of Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 54, and Dominggus da Silva, 43, three Christians who were convicted of masterminding a series of attacks on Muslims in Poso in 2000.

"I need to reaffirm that the executions have not been carried out because the preparations are incomplete," Sibe was quoted by Antara newswire as saying.

Last week, lawyers for the three filed a second plea for clemency with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, while demanding the prosecution of 16 men they said were the real masterminds of the Poso unrest.

"We will press ahead with the execution process of the three convicted men despite their second appeal for a presidential pardon," Sibe said, adding a convict could only make one appeal for presidential clemency.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Masyhudi Ridwan also said Saturday that "technical reasons" forced prosecutors to delay the execution although he did not explain the difficulties.

The office previously said the men, currently detained in a Palu penitentiary, would face the firing squad by the end of March after their appeal for a presidential pardon was turned down last December.

Local Christians and some Muslims have backed the demand to delay the executions until the three men have been given the opportunity to testify in any future trial of the people identified by the lawyers.

Thousands of Christians held a mass prayer gathering Saturday in the Central Sulawesi town of Tentena to show their opposition to the executions. There were tearful prayers asking for the salvation of the men.

Local Christian leader Rev. Renaldy Damanik, who led the prayer, expressed concern the executions could trigger a new wave of sectarian hostilities in Poso.

"I can't imagine about what will happen after the execution, as hundreds of emotional Christian people would carry the three men's coffins along the 200-kilometer-road connecting Tagolu village to Poso and Beteleme in Morowali regency (all mainly Christian areas," said Damanik, who was released from police custody in 2004 for alleged involvement in the turmoil.

Damanik also said the execution would "bury the truth" of who orchestrated the two-year conflict in Poso.

Other local Christian leaders have said Tibo, Da Silva and Riwo were scapegoats in a scenario contrived by the political elite.

In an effort to maintain calm before the executions, local police and religious leaders held a meeting Sunday evening, an activist said. However, Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Oegroseno claimed the situation in Poso was "under control". Damanik also urged Yudhoyono to visit Poso to hear the local community's opposition to the executions.

The three men were sentenced to death in March 2001 by the Palu District Court for masterminding a series of attacks that killed a total of 200 Muslims in 2000.

Labour issues

Labor cranks up pressure on government

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat – Manpower and Transmigration Minister Erman Suparno gathered with top aides in a daylong meeting Thursday, amid increasing signs the government may bow to pressure to scrap planned revisions to the 2003 Labor Law.

Ministry spokesman Djoko Mulyanto told The Jakarta Post here the closed-door meeting was held in response to the massive labor rallies blanketing major cities and industrial hubs in Sumatra and Java over the last two weeks.

"The all-day meeting is being held to prepare raw materials to be used by the President in a dialog with labor union leaders at his presidential office on Friday," he said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to announce the government's decision on the planned revisions. Djoko refused to confirm reports Wednesday the President summoned Erman and informed him the revisions would be dropped.

Labor unions denounced the revisions which include more flexible rules on contract-based employment and worker dismissalsas diminishing their rights and welfare. Employers argue the revisions are necessary to reinvigorate the sluggish economy and increase competitiveness with other countries in the region.

Workers have left their jobs to demonstrate against the draft law, and have garnered the support of local administrations. Labor unions, who organized a rally of 50,000 workers Wednesday in Jakarta, say they plan a massive nationwide protest on May 1, Labor Day, and a national strike if their demands are not met.

Worker absenteeism has paralyzed many industries and reportedly caused billions of rupiah in losses to business.

Some protests also have been marred by violence. On the island of Batam, an industrial zone in Riau Islands province, demonstrators were involved in clashes with security personnel Thursday. Wednesday's huge rally in Jakarta, the second in as many days, also included incidents of vandalism of public property.

The law is one of several to be revised under Presidential Instruction No. 3/2006, issued to attract foreign investors and improve the business climate.

Erman has emphasized the revisions are not final and could still be changed according to labor demands. "We are ready for dialog but not to negotiate workers' rights," the deputy chairman of the All-Indonesia Workers Union Federation, Syukur Sarto, said in confirming Friday's meeting with Yudhoyono.

"We will only accept a revision as long as it does not omit even a dot of workers' rights from the current law." He added workers agreed to temporarily halt the rallies after the minister agreed to review the planned revisions.

"If a revision is needed, we want the government-prepared draft law to be dropped and the three main stakeholders will sit together to discuss which chapters of the law need revising," he told The Jakarta Post.

He said labor unionists would not back down from their position in their meeting with Yudhoyono, and warned rallies would resume if workers' rights were reduced.

The secretary-general of the Indonesian Employers Association, Djimanto, said his members would also maintain their position on the necessity of revising the law. "What we are fighting for benefits not only the business sector but also the national economy and millions of job seekers," he said.

Plywood workers stage protest

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

M. Azis Tunny, Ambon – Three thousand workers of Djayanti Group's Seram Plywood employed at PT Artika Optima Inti in Seram regency, Maluku, staged a rally for a second day Thursday to protest against the management's decision to lay off 2,589 of its workers.

The protesters said they strongly opposed the decision as it was taken without consulting them. Moreover, wages of thousands of company workers have not been paid over the past five months, they said.

During the rally the protesters demanded that the company pay the workers' wages due to them and severance pay in line with the law on layoffs. They also demanded that the company pay the workers' social insurance and also their dues from the cooperatives.

Yance, one of the protesters, said that the decision to lay off the workers was the company's right, but it had to meet its obligations to the workers.

The company also had to abide by the existing regulation by providing severance pay, Yance said, adding that the company owed about Rp 4 billion (US$432,432) to its workers in the form of unpaid social insurance. "We will continue staging rallies if the company fails to meet our demand," Yance said.

In its resolution, signed by members of the board of directors – Roni Sikap Sinuraya, Jonson Sihombing and Jefri Yunus – the company decided to lay off 2,589 of its 3,320 workers as the company was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Hendrik Burian, PT Artika Optima's lawyer, said that the layoffs were unavoidable as the company had suffered losses amounting to Rp 47 billion.

Despite the hardship, however, the company tried to meet its obligations to the workers, Hendrik said, adding that as soon as the company was back in business, it would employ all the workers again under a contract scheme. "The company will fulfill all its obligations to the workers by paying them in installments over a period of 15 months," he said.

During the first rally Wednesday, a small clash occurred in which three protesters and four police officers were injured when pelted by stones.

Ahmad Silehu, an official of the Western Seram regental administration met 25 of the protesters, who demanded that they be allowed to meet the Maluku governor to convey their grievances Friday in the Maluku capital of Ambon.

Labor rallies spread, business counts cost

Jakarta Post - April 6, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – Labor unions pooled their resources Wednesday in stepped-up protests nationwide against planned revisions to the labor law, with worker absenteeism due to demonstrations of the past two weeks causing mounting losses to industry.

Rallies have spread from Jakarta and provincial capitals in Java and Sumatra to industrial areas on the two main islands.

Workers in industrial zones in North Sumatra, Riau, South Sumatra, Jakarta, West, Central and East Java left their workplaces to demand the dropping of the planned revisions.

The Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) criticized the government for its failure to take a constructive approach to calming the protests, which they say are causing billions of rupiah in losses to their members.

"The labor demonstrations have cost investors Rp 32 billion in West Java and Rp 52 billion in East Java," the association's secretary-general Djimanto told The Jakarta Post.

He added that many companies in the manufacturing sector would likely miss their schedule to meet foreign orders because of the millions of hours of lost productivity due to the demonstrations.

He insisted, however, that the revisions – including reducing severance pay for retrenchment and extending contract work periods – were needed to improve the business climate.

"It is impossible for employers to go back on these because all the things we proposed in the revisions are substantial in nature. All stakeholders should be rational in assessing the current condition, otherwise a worse second crisis will hit the country," he said.

In Jakarta, an estimated 50,000 protesters, hailing from Bekasi, Cimahi, Bandung, Tangerang, Serang, Cilegon and other industrial estates near Jakarta, rallied in front of the Vice President's office on Jl. Medan Merdeka Selatan, Central Jakarta, as well as the Presidential Palace.

Some demonstrators took part in a convoy of open trucks and motorcycles that traveled along the city's turnpikes. Several worker representatives met with Kalla, who told them the revisions needed further discussion.

David C.H., chairman of the All-Indonesian Workers Union, the largest labor union in the country, said the meeting with Kalla had not changed the group's resolve to continue protests until the government met their demands. The rallies, he added, were expected to reach their peak on Labor Day on May 1.

There were pockets of unrest among the protesters, with vandalism of streetlamps, bus shelters and a bus on the busway. Police personnel, outnumbered by the protesters, did not intervene.

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Firman Gani, who made an inspection of the rally, said protesters informed the police several days before of the mass rally, but emphasized it would not be "anarchical".

The chairwoman of the Democratic People's Party, Dita Indah Sari, said that despite the many differences of opinion among labor unions, they were united in their opposition to revisions they claim impinge on worker rights.

"We are carrying out cooperation with many labor unions in all parts of the country. So far, all of them are ready to mobilize their people," she said.

"We are going to continue holding rallies against the revisions." She said she was invited to a tripartite meeting of the government, Apindo and labor union representatives, scheduled for April 12, to discuss the issue.

The operational unit chief of the city police, Sr. Comr. Komang Udayana, said his officiers encountered no major problems in dealing with the thousands of protesters. Police said they would remain on alert for more protests in the next few days.

Workers walk to reject labor law change

Jakarta Post - April 6, 2006

Jakarta – Thousands of workers in the country's main cities took to the streets Wednesday to voice their objection to the proposed revisions to the 2003 Labor Law.

The workers decried the controversial revisions which they claimed were pro-business while sacrificing workers' rights. The revised law is scheduled to be submitted to the House of Representatives for deliberation next week.

At least 5,000 workers coming from various groups in Malang city and regency in East Java demonstrated in front of local government offices. Through street theater, the protesters illustrated how "the workers have had to bend to the government and businesspeople's demands".

According to Tasman, of the All-Malang Workers Alliance, the revisions would not protect workers. "The revisions will only profit businesses. The revisions are only to legitimize the repression of workers," he said.

In Central Java, some 200 workers in Semarang and Kudus regency aired similar opposition to the revisions which they claimed robbed workers of their basic rights.

"We reject the revision. Under the 2003 Labor Law, we've already lived in misery. If the government goes ahead with the revision, it will bring destitution," a protest coordinator said in his speech in Semarang.

In Batam, Riau Islands province, some 2,000 workers from the All-Indonesia Workers Union (SPSI) protested against the revisions, demanding the city administration support workers by rejecting the revisions.

While meeting Batam Mayor Ahmad Dahlan, Batam's SPSI chairman, Edwin Harjono, voiced workers opposition to the revised bill, saying the revisions were simply made to satisfy capitalists.

"We also demand the Batam City Council and the House of Representatives maintain workers' rights, protection and welfare," Edwin said, threatening that workers would hold a massive protest if the government ignored their pleas.

Workers in tourism sector in Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, said they were against the revisions, especially the one which allows foreigners to work in the human resources department of companies. "They (the foreigners) might try to get rid of local workers," charged Bambang Sumedi, a protester.

The protests had forced at least 140 out of 600 textile companies in the West Java towns of Bandung and Cimahi to temporarily stop operations.

Chairman of West Java's Indonesia Textile Association, Ade Sudrajat, said Wednesday some companies closed to avoid financial losses in case the protesting workers went on a rampage. The companies, he said, would meet to decide when they would resume operations.

The closure was responded to coldly by workers, with secretary- general of the National Workers Union (SPN) in West Java, Edi Antara, conceding the owners right to do so. "They can go ahead (with the closure), it's their right, but we're fighting for our rights," Edi said.

Responding to the closure, chairman of the Indonesian Business Association in West Java, Dedi Wijaya, said the association's members did not want to experience the same losses caused by a sudden halt in their factories' operations last week.

"Last week's protest forced 90 percent of (textile) companies in West Java to halt operations and the total losses were estimated at Rp 70 billion (US$7.7 million)," he said.

He expressed hope that the government would pay attention to the workers' protests since the ongoing protests might disrupt orders received by the companies. "We appreciate the workers' right to protest or go on strike but it would be better not to disadvantage the factories," Dedi said.

In the East Java capital of Surabaya, protests by hundreds of workers caused massive traffic jams along main roads connecting Surabaya and Sidoarjo.

PT Maspion's human resources director Andi Tjandra said he hoped the government would immediately solve the labor problems. "We don't want these matters to continue, we want to get back to work."

Kalla takes it easy with worker reps

Jakarta Post - April 6, 2006

Tony Hotland, Jakarta – Vice President Jusuf Kalla adopted a soothing approach Wednesday to a seething labor protest outside his office in Central Jakarta.

Kalla sat down with 10 labor union representatives after an estimated 60,000 protesters gathered to denounce controversial changes to the 2003 Labor Law.

"It's still a draft because we have to talk with labor unions and the House of Representatives. We will seek a balance between the interests of labor and the businesspeople," he said after the one-hour meeting with the officials from Jakarta, Banten and West Java.

Kalla, himself a leading businessman, said revisions were needed to reinvigorate the business climate in the country, and thereby the welfare of workers.

"We don't believe the rumor the draft would take effect in May. It's still a draft and it takes at least six months to discuss it with workers, the business community and the House," he said.

Protesters had grouped at Kalla's office after finding out that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was out of town.

Kalla walked the representatives out of his office at the end of the meeting, only meters from the thousands of protesters carrying banners and chanting slogans against the revisions. He stopped twice to wave to them as he returned to his office.

The head of the Bekasi labor confederation, R. Abdullah, said the group expressed strong opposition to changes which it said would undermine workers' rights and welfare.

"We don't want to see any revisions. We don't want to be made the scapegoat for the government's failure to bring in new investment. There are seven problems the government is facing (in attracting investment), and labor is only the last one."

The protesters, who had waited for more than two hours under a baking sun, were not satisfied when Abdullah told them the Vice President said he would try to come up with a law meeting the needs of workers and businesspeople.

They began burning cloth banners and hurling plastic bottles into the Vice President's office compound, as a line of about 25 security personnel assumed a ready position.

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Firman Gani, who accompanied Kalla in the meeting, said the rowdy rally was always under control, with about 4,000 of his personnel deployed. "Pak Kalla was good and responsive in handling the rally," he said.

Conflict mounts over proposed labour laws

Radio Australia - April 5, 2006

Conflict is mounting in Indonesia over proposed changes to the country's labour laws. A bill to amend the current manpower act is due to be tabled in the House of Representatives next week. The changes would allow investors to put workers on limited contracts and would reduce severance payments for sacked employees. Some see the changes as necessary to revive the country's flagging investment climate. But the workers say they're being scapegoated and they're threatening to call a national strike if the bill goes through.

Presenter/Interviewer: Marion MacGregor

Speakers: Dita Sari, Chair of National Front for Indonesian Labour Struggle; Alan Boulton, director of the International Labour Organisation in Indonesia; Bomer Pasaribu, Indonesia's former minister for manpower.

MacGregor: Wages may be low in Indonesia, but with workers guaranteed entitlements to things like parental leave and time off for religious holidays, things could be worse. The trouble is, they may be about to get a lot worse, if changes to the current labour laws are approved by the Parliament.

While the details of the revisions haven't yet been made public, Indonesia's trade unions are already seeing red. On Tuesday, thousands of people protested in major cities across the country.

Seasoned activist Dita Sari, who heads the National Front for Indonesian Labour Struggle, was among the demonstrators. She says the workers are being scapegoated for the government's failures.

Sari: Substituting the real issue by blaming the workers for having too much protection that creates less investment. Well we think it's not fair, because the real problem is not the workers, it's the government's policy. The government's economic policies are creating very high economic costs. Recently they increased the fuel price by 108 percent and Indonesia's electricity price is the most expensive in Southeast Asia.

MacGregor: The changes to be submitted to the house of representatives next week would allow investors to implement five year contracts, outsource all their work, and hire expatriates to manager-level positions.

They'd also see lower severance payments for sacked workers. Dita Sari doesn't hold much hope that the Parliament will support the trade unions' position.

Sari: We don't think that the House of Representatives will be on our side.

MacGregor: So will this be fought out on the streets then, with more demonstrations by workers?

Sari: Yes we are trying to do that. And also we're trying to convince employers that we should fight together against the economic policies of the government.

MacGregor: Dita Sari.

It was she who three years ago, campaigned for provisions to be included in the current labour laws, giving women two days' paid menstruation leave a month. That provision as well as a number of other benefits was passed into law.

Alan Boulton, the director of the International Labour Organisation's office in Indonesia, was involved in drafting that Act.

Boulton: The law of 2003 was much much better than the laws that it replaced, and it did address the challenges in a modern economy of providing some sort of employment protections and standards. It remains good law, the changes that are being talked about are not changing the substance of the laws, it's changing the particular entitlements because it's said that these entitlements may be too high compared to countries that Indonesia is competing with in the ASEAN bloc.

MacGregor: With the revisions going to Parliament next week, the trade unions may be pessimistic.

But Bomer Pasaribu, Indonesia's former minister for manpower and now chair of the Legislative Council in the Parliament, is also concerned about the process. He wants to see thorough consultations with unions, employers' organisations and the government first, before the changes are submitted to the Parliament.

Pasaribu: We can receive the bill if a tripartite consultation has consensus about that. That is why we ask the government, we ask trade unions, we ask employer associations: 'discuss it first, make a consensus building first before you send the bill to the Parliament or to the president'.

Village heads throng Jakarta for better pay

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Jakarta – Thousands of village heads from around the country staged a street rally in Jakarta on Monday to push for better pay.

The demonstrators from Java, Lampung and East Nusa Tenggara also urged the central government to revise regulations banning village chiefs from joining political parties and limiting their terms to only two periods of six years. Earlier, village heads were allowed to serve in office for life.

Wearing their official green uniforms, the protesters gathered outside the Home Affairs Ministry and the adjacent Supreme Court building in Central Jakarta, blocking the street in a noisy but peaceful demonstration.

Speaking during a meeting with several provincial governors Home Affairs Minister M. Ma'ruf ordered all regional administrations Monday to enforce the 2005 government circular, which gave the chiefs monthly salaries of at least the amount of the minimum regional wage.

Last month, Ma'ruf issued a circular ordering all regencies and mayoralties to allocate 20 percent of their regional incomes to village units.

The minister also met the House of Representatives Commission II on domestic affairs to seek approval for the chiefs' demands that their elections be government funded.

Village heads grouped in the Parade Nusantara association had earlier staged similar protests about the issues in Jakarta in February and March.

Protest coordinator Sudir Santoso said Monday Ma'ruf must issue a ministerial decree on the pay issue because his circular had been defied by many regional heads.

"A lot of village leaders receive only Rp 100,000 a month while minimum regional wages are generally more than Rp 600,000," he said.

Ma'ruf said the chiefs' demands to be allowed to take part in political parties and have their terms extended from six years to 10 was a matter for the House.

During Monday's protest, Parade Nusantara filed a plea to the Supreme Court asking it review the 2005 government regulation, which forbids village heads from involvement in political parties and limits their terms.

Sudir said the association hoped the court would prioritize the judicial review. Ma'ruf said regional administrations must communicate more with village heads to accommodate their aspirations.

Thousands rally against Indonesia labor bill change

Reuters - April 5, 2006

Telly Nathalia, Jakarta – Thousands of Indonesians rallied across the world's fourth-most-populous country on Wednesday to protest against a parliamentary move to revise employment laws.

Employers have complained that Indonesia's 2003 labor bill gave workers so many benefits and so much freedom to organize and strike that it dealt a blow to the country's economic competitiveness and its attractiveness to investors.

The 2003 bill was a product of the country's first democratic parliament after the 1998 fall of autocratic President Suharto. Suharto had kept unions on a tight leash, but the business community says the new law went too far the other way.

Around 10,000 workers marched on major streets in Jakarta on Wednesday in protest against the planned revisions, creating traffic congestion and blocking the capital's special lanes for public transport.

One slogan on the banners unfurled by the protesters, who included bank employees and workers at foreign-owned factories, read: "Hey, businessmen and leaders who have the hearts of devils, cancel those revisions."

The current parliament, elected in 2004, plans to amend the bill to give employers more flexibility, curb strikes and soften regulations on severance payment for dismissed workers.

Trade unions argue the revisions ignore the plight of workers and have vowed to keep protesting to pressure parliament into leaving the law unchanged. The protesters passed out pamphlets saying the revisions could allow "employers to fire workers without reason."

The march stopped in front of Vice President Jusuf Kalla's office and a small group of protesters was allowed to meet him. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was on a trip outside Jakarta.

Some of the rally participants dispersed in various directions after the talks, worsening the already bad traffic, while others channeled their anger into turning over large flower planters along median strips and pelting stones at parked cars.

A few protesters also burned an Australian flag, which was hoisted on Jakarta's main boulevard among flags of other countries attending an international conference in the capital.

Indonesia and Australia have been in a row over the latter's granting of asylum to refugees from Papua province, where separatist sentiment is a simmering problem for Jakarta.

Vice President Kalla told reporters after his meeting with the protesters: "We want to find a good solution for the workers and the business world in Indonesia. We do not intend to pressure the workers and make their lives difficult." But rally leaders were not satisfied with their meeting.

"Up until now, there has been no firm statement. We will only say we are satisfied if the government pulls back the proposed revisions," said Abdul Gani, a union leader from the industrial city of Tangerang.

Similar rallies with thousands of participants were staged in at least five other cities in Indonesia, including on the industrial island of Batam, near Singapore, where protesters showered a government office with rocks.

Group calls for labor protection, system reform

Jakarta Post - April 3, 2006

Jakarta – Social study centers and an NGO focusing on labor rights have proposed the government focuses on reforming the bureaucratic system with its legal and "illegal" taxes rather than reducing labor rights.

Their research paper, titled Promoting Fair Labor Regulations in Indonesia: A Study and Advocacy of Improving Local Level Investment Environments in Tangerang and Pasuruan, stated that the legal and "illegal" tariffs and donations regulated by each region were a larger burden than fulfilling minimal labor rights.

"What everyone needs, employees and employers, are strict and certain regulations," said Akatiga Center for Social Analysis researcher Indrisari Tjandraningsih, before presenting the report in Jakarta last week.

She said it was urgent that the government managed and controlled the regions with consistent regulations in order to decrease employer expenditure on legal and illegal taxes.

"The workers are the ones most prone to being 'modified' because they are the lowest part of the system," said sociologist Hari Nugroho from the University of Indonesia's Sociology Department.

He then explained the two main expenditures which were dealt with by companies: market pressure costs and political costs.

"The situation is complex because although the government can demand an increase in the economic environment through its national regulations, the final decision is still up to the regions," said Others believe that the true conflict is not worker against employer, but worker-employer against the government.

"It is important for all workers and their employers to devise and share their strategies in facing the government," said Trade Union Rights Center director Surya Tjandra. "The labor fight used to be for the increase of labor prosperity, now it has become a fight for labor existence," said Surya.

The study suggested that the government apply strict regulations on substantial matters, such as the interpretation of tariffs, limitations, and legal sanctions.

It also requested the creation of a fair medium capable of accommodating the best interests of both employers and employees, adding that in the context of regional autonomy, the workers and their employers must form "strategic alliances" in order to respond to any issues which they felt to be a burden.

The study also reminded labor unions to strengthen their ranks and performance in order to create a base for workers which would have the same bargaining power as employers.

One of the most discussed and feared issues being revised in the 2003 Labor Law is the matter of outsourcing personnel.

The 2003 law limits outsourcing to three job categories: security, cleaning services and catering.

The revision however, which was formulated by the government and the Indonesian Employers Association (APINDO), now permits outsourced personnel to be placed in fields directly connected to the production line as well as staff positions.

The researchers said that this policy had come about because outsourced personnel, due to their short-term contract work system, could be paid below the minimal rate and would automatically have minimal relations with labor unions, thus creating a fragmentation in the labor forces.

They felt this revision was a further negative turn in a labor law which was already regarded as being inconsiderate of labor rights.

Sanyo workers accept terms, back at work

Jakarta Post - April 1, 2006

Depok – Employees of electronics manufacturer PT Sanyo Jaya Components Indonesia returned to work Friday after a two-day strike.

"The company agreed to give us a raise," said an executive of the workers union, Iswan Abdullah, as quoted by Tempointeraktif.

The work stoppage was in response to the delay of a Jan. 1 pay rise.

"There will be a 16 percent pay increase for the component division, though the company initially agreed to 13 percent," Iswan explained, adding that, for the digital solution division, the company had agreed to a 16.54 percent raise.

Corruption/collusion/nepotism

Many officials defying law on reporting wealth

Jakarta Post - April 6, 2006

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – Of the more than 100,000 state officials nationwide required by the Anticorruption Law to report their personal wealth to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), only half have complied, the commission says.

A new KPK report says that of the 107,144 state officials who must submit wealth reports, only 57,419 or 53.5 percent had done so by March 24.

Members of the judiciary represent the largest percentage of officials evading the obligation, with only 42 percent of 18,020 divulging their wealth. Many members of the judiciary are believed to be notoriously corrupt, and reform at the institution has moved at snail's pace.

Second to the judiciary in the non-compliance stakes, are the executive branches of government, with only 49 percent of 57,828 government officials submitting reports to the KPK.

The most surprising finding, however, is the level of compliance shown by state officials at state and regional companies, bodies notorious for being ridden with graft. Of 7,089 officials working at numerous state companies, an impressive 69 percent have reported their personal wealth.

Lawmakers at the House of Representatives and local councils, meanwhile, have submitted the most wealth reports. Of 24,207 lawmakers in the country, 16,439 or 67 percent have sent documentation to the KPK.

The general election law requires all candidates vying for seats at legislative bodies to submit the reports to be eligible to run for office. The 2002 Corruption Law, meanwhile, gives the KPK the authority to require all powerful government officials to report their wealth.

The law, however, does not set a deadline for the reports. Nor does it stipulate any penalties, should the officials fail to make the reports. Unsurprisingly, compliance has been less than stellar, and a large number of ministers and officials from previous administrations have yet to submit the information.

To complicate matters, the Office of the Minister for Administrative Reforms recently issued a regulation requiring state officials at all levels, including low-paid village heads, to submit reports.

There are now additional 37,000 officials required to send the reports to the KPK, creating another potential paper mountain for the commission.

Of the thousands of documents received by KPK, it has completed probes on 15 of 59 reports it said contained irregularities. However, the KPK has only launched full-scale investigations into two dubious explanations.

The commission has also completed its investigation of five officials alleged to have received gifts worth more than Rp 10 million (US$1,113.2). About Rp 83 million in cash has been confiscated from the officials who received the gifts.

KPK deputy chairman Erry Riyana Hardjapamekas said the reports would not instantly help the government's antigraft drive. "However, they will be very valuable for prosecutors once the principle of shifting the burden of proof (onto corruption suspects) is made law," he said.

Official memos a window on cronyism, corruption: Experts

Jakarta Post - April 6, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – The recent memo-writing scandal involving Cabinet Secretary Sudi Silalahi shows that a culture of corruption is still deeply rooted in officialdom, despite the efforts of the government to rid itself of the scourge, observers say.

Two letters bearing Sudi's signature were sent to Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda early last year. They recommended Hassan appoint an Indonesian-based company with a Korean-sounding name, PT Sun Hoo Engineering, for a job to renovate the Indonesian Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.

The proposed renovations never took place and the company supposed to carry out the job does not seem to exist as an entity in Indonesia.

During the Habibe presidency, another scandal involving memos took place when a letter written by former state secretary Muladi was leaked to the press. That memo, which was distributed to a series of Cabinet ministers, "recommended" a frequency license was granted quickly to a group of Muslim businessmen for an operation which eventually became Global TV.

Muladi and the former cofounders of the TV station were previously in the Indonesian Muslim Intellectual Association (ICMI).

The station was supposed to produce Islamic-oriented educational programs but strapped for cash, it ended up in other businessmen's hands and became the commercial television station it is today. It seems highly unlikely the would-be broadcaster would have been granted a license had it gone through the proper channels.

Muladi continues to deny the memo he sent was an improper use of his position. He was never forced to resign from his post.

In neither case was there explicit evidence of graft taking place but observers say this does not mean no crime or violation was committed.

In Sudi's case, antigraft activists say the letters' existence indicates a clear abuse of power, whether Sudi wrote them or they were altered by his underlings.

Memos are usually unremarkable documents with a mundane but explicit purpose; they are useful tools to enhance coordination among state officials; the oil in the cogs of government. As long as this letter writing deals with matters inside the writers' job description, there is no problem.

Conflicts arise when officials write those "other kind" of memos; ones clearly outside their sphere of influence, recommending companies for government projects or individuals for lucrative jobs. These bits of paper get officials involved in affairs they should have nothing to do with.

Then the memo becomes a far more interesting document, a window on a world of corruption, collusion and nepotism.

Todung Mulya Lubis, a coordinator of Transparency International in Indonesia, believes many state officials, including those in the inner circle of the Presidential Palace, still try to use their positions to enrich themselves and their supporters.

"During the New Order era, president Soeharto frequently issued presidential decrees and ministers used memos to get special treatment for their cronies. Today, such a practice is qualitatively deceasing because of stronger public controls and the influence of the anticorruption movement. But I am not saying that corruption is also decreasing."

The lack of transparency in government and the enforcement of clear guidelines on official behavior meant only "stupid" officials were getting caught using government letterheads to push for their personal interests, Todung said.

The more savvy ones kept their communications oral or used SMS text messages to rob the public purse, he said.

H.S. Dillon, a former coordinator of the Partnership on Governance Reform in Indonesia, concurs. While improper use of memos in the State Palace had drastically decreased, Dillon said the practice was still common in the offices of regional elites in line with the decentralization of power under regional autonomy.

"The (inappropriate) memos are now frequently sent between members of the local elite and the business sector since a large part of public projects have been decentralized to the regions," he said.

Many regional heads had frequently used memos to favor their cronies in government projects, improperly ordering the recruitment of civil servants and job promotions outside of procedural guidelines, he said.

If the President wanted to end this abuse of power, he should start from the top, Dillon said. This meant removing corrupt staff from the State Palace and barring his aides from doing anything outside their job descriptions.

Transparent job tendering and appointments were also essential, he said. State officials found to have been involved in abuses of power should resign or be fired even if what they had done did not constitute a criminal offense, Dillon said. This would ensure that people continued to have faith in the government's anti- graft drive.

ICW deputy coordinator Danang Widoyoko noted that corruption was as much about standards of ethical behavior as it was about causing material losses to the state.

Violators should face strong criticism in the media and be condemned publicly as this social disgrace would also serve as an important deterrent, Danang said.

Current antigraft legislation was too simple and was unable to strike at the root of corruption because it only sanctioned wrongdoing that caused material losses to the state, he said.

Attorney general defends exemption for bad debtors

Jakarta Post - April 5, 2006

Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh said Tuesday he simply followed orders in the decision to drop criminal charges against several delinquent debtors from the Bank Indonesia Liquidity Support (BLBI) program.

He said his office implemented the directive of Coordinating Minister for the Economy Boediono and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati in March.

Abdul Rahman said his task was to find the legal basis for the ministers' decision, which would exempt eight debtors from prosecution in return for the repayment of misused funds.

"I met with the coordinating minister for the economy and the finance minister who said the alleged misappropriators of BLBI funds were willing to provide financial settlement of their case before the end of the year, on the condition that any criminal charges are dropped. I said, 'alright, we will find a legal basis for it'," he said.

He emphasized he only agreed to it if the BLBI debtors did not cause losses to the state. "But if the Attorney General's Office finds the debtors guilty of stealing funds, then we will pursue an investigation of them," he said.

The decision has been criticized as overly lenient toward debtors. It harks back to the release and discharge policy of the previous administration of Megawati Soekarnoputri, which freed major debtors from prosecution in exchange for the settlement of their debts.

Government dragging feet on recovering stolen state assets

Jakarta Post - April 5, 2006

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – A leading corruption watchdog lambasted the government Tuesday for its failure to recover the bulk of taxpayer money stolen by corrupt businesspeople and officials.

Coordinator of Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) Teten Masduki rated as poor the performance of each agency enlisted to pursue people accused of corruption and seize their assets.

Teten said ICW data showed that of the Rp 5.3 trillion (US$588 million) the Attorney General's Office targeted to collect in 2005 from officials convicted of corruption, it only managed to recoup Rp 2.7 trillion as of November 2005.

An initial report from Attorney General's Office, dated Sept. 1, 2005, and cited by the ICW, put the figure of recovered state assets at Rp 500 million, before it was increased to Rp 2.7 trillion.

The ICW also found the state has reclaimed only Rp 8.8 trillion of funds embezzled by 10 major corruption figures, including timber baron Mohammad "Bob" Hasan, the former owner of BHS Bank Hendra Rahardja, who died after fleeing abroad, former Riau Islands regent Huzrin Hood and owner of defunct Modern Bank Samadikun Hartono.

The most striking example of the state's powerlessness in recouping its assets concerned the 20 percent recovery rate from bankers who misused Bank Indonesia Liquidity Support (BLBI) intended to support their institutions.

Up to the disbandment of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) in February 2004, it managed to recover 27 percent of the assets of failed banks. The government spent in excess of Rp 650 trillion to help the country's ailing banks cope with massive runs during the economic crisis of the late 1990s.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) also was taken to task for mediocre performance. In its three years of existence, the commission has recovered Rp 16 billion and $139,000 from 11 corruption cases.

Teten, who won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Human Rights in 2005, attributed the lackluster showing of the agencies, especially the Attorney General's Office, to the penchant of unscrupulous officials to either mark up or mark down assets seized from suspected corruptors.

"There is also no a standard procedure that calculates the state losses, the cost for assets recovery and the amount of assets that can be taken over," Teten told a seminar here.

Lawmaker Dradjad Wibowo of the National Mandate Party (PAN) agreed that the government still had a long way to go to recover a healthy amount of the embezzled assets.

"The Attorney General's Office and the judiciary better get their act together or we will suffer more losses, as we went through with IBRA," he told The Jakarta Post.

Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh responded to Teten's statement by saying that it was the judiciary that should be held responsible for only focusing on incarcerating convicted corruptors.

"We have drawn up dossiers, complete with punishment and the obligation for the defendant to return their ill-gotten assets to the state coffers should they be found guilty. But, most of the judges forgo giving a verdict about the financial obligations," Abdul Rahman said. He also noted many accused corrupt officials had been freed by judges despite the weight of evidence against them.

Environment

Villagers' wells filling up with fuel

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Jakarta – Residents of a village in Rawakalong, Depok, have filed a lawsuit against a textile factory, saying their wells are filling up with diesel fuel from its leaking pipes.

Babakan village residents reported the case to police Monday after attempts to solve the problem in an amicable manner failed. They demanded the company fix the problem and compensate them for their losses.

One of the residents, Tuti Margiyani, complained that, since January, clean water had been hard to come by in the village. Previously, one well produced enough drinking water for at least 10 households.

"The wells are now filled with diesel fuel instead of clean water. My neighbor once even tried to use it for his truck and it worked, proving that it is real diesel fuel," she said.

Residents believe the fuel is from PT Rajabrana, a textile factory located nearby.

Early in February, they discussed the matter with Cimanggis district officials, who arranged for both parties to meet later that month. "But the company was represented only by its security guards. We have never met the company's head directly," one man told The Jakarta Post.

Another resident, who has been living in the village for 15 years, said one of the company executives conceded their underground boiler pipes were leaking, causing the fuel to seep into the soil.

"Therefore, after our first complaint in January, they installed a pipe to run clean water from the company's water tank to residents here," he said.

Villagers, however, are hesitant to use the water for cooking and drinking. "We use the water only for bathing and washing but not for consumption because we're not sure whether the water is really clean although it's clear enough," the longtime resident said, adding that he preferred to buy bottled water.

The company also installed five water pumps and machines in the neighborhood in February. The water quality, however, was even worse, according to Priyono, another villager.

"The color is brown and it still smells like diesel fuel. The main problem here is the water has (already) been polluted due to the leaking pipes. So, although they've installed more pipes and pumps, the water quality remains bad," he said.

Jakarta Police will summon the company for questioning.

Illegal sawmills back in operation near Lampung park

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

Oyos Saroso H.N., Bandar Lampung – Dozens of illegal sawmills around Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in West Lampung, which had stopped operating during the past several months, are again processing timber from the park and nearby community-owned resin plantations, environmentalists say.

Resin plantation owners are reportedly selling their trees to the sawmills because of financial hardships and the impacts of modernization.

Environmental groups including the Lampung chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Worldwide Fund for Nature, Watala and Lampung Conservation Watch (LCW), have blamed the sawmills for much of the damage in the national park, and have urged the government to shut them down permanently.

LCW director Joko Santoso said the sawmills in West Lampung were operating illegally, and there was no reason not to close them. He said the head of the Lampung Forestry Office had ordered the closure of the sawmills on Nov. 15, 2005, because their licenses had expired.

"The facts show that 12 sawmills are still operating in West Lampung as of today. The timber that they process is without a doubt derived from illegal logging in the park," said Joko Santoso on Thursday.

Sawmills in Krui and Lemong districts near the park reportedly obtained permits from the Lampung Cooperatives, Trade and Industry Office.

A 2004 forestry ministry decree stipulates that the governor has the authority to issue permits to timber companies producing less than 6,000 cubic meters of timber per year, while the Forestry Ministry must issue permits to companies producing above that volume.

"I'm sure every sawmill in Lampung is illegal, because none of them have acquired permits from the governor or the minister. This is ironic because the West Lampung regent, as well as several other regents in Lampung, have signed a moratorium on logging," said Joko.

The director of the Lampung office of Walhi, Mukri Friatna, said that sawmills and forestry documents had been exploited to legalize illegally felled timber.

"The timber is taken from the park but is then made 'legal' because timber businessmen have legal forestry documents and permits for exploiting timber from community forests," he said.

According to Mukri, there are several reasons why sawmills in Lampung are exploited to legalize illegal timber.

First, the only legal source of timber in Lampung is community forests, and their varieties are limited.

"However, high-quality timber, such as merbau, tenam and kruing, which are no longer found in community forests, can be bought at shops selling timber," Mukri said.

Second, legal timber in Lampung has become very limited. However, the province is known to regularly send timber to other provinces.

Of the 115,284 cubic meters of timber produced in West Lampung from January to June, 2005, Banten acquired 44 percent, followed by West Java with 32 percent and Jakarta with 11 percent. "Only 7 percent of the timber was sold in Lampung," Joko said.

Meanwhile, an activist from the Resin Farm Owners Group, Kurniadi, said the impact of illegal logging in West Lampung had extended to community resin farms.

According to him, illegal loggers have started buying resin trees from residents at cheap prices. Timber from the resin trees is then sold at higher prices.

"Sawn resin timber is actually used to trick the authorities when offenders are transporting illegal timber. They usually place the resin timber at the back and on top of a truck, hiding the illegal logs inside. This way, they can transport illegal timber out of Lampung because the trade in resin wood is legal," Kurniadi said.

Big flooring firms selling illegal Papua timber, report says

Jakarta Post - April 5, 2006

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Bogor – The massive illegal logging of Papuan merbau timber is being fueled by five giant international flooring companies, which are neglecting to check whether they have bought legal timber, a new report says.

The investigative study by the Bogor-based Telapak and London- based Environment Investigation Agency reveals that five companies, which dominate global sales of wood floor products, are heavy consumers of illegally sourced timber, mostly from Papua.

Behind The Veneer: How Indonesia's Last Rainforests are being Felled for Flooring, which was published Tuesday, identifies the five as US-based Armstrong/Bruce, Danish company Junckers, Germany's Tarkett, the Swedish Kahrs and Canada's Goodfellow. These brand-name flooring firms were unable to prove their merbau wood came from legal sources, the report says.

Merbau floor products supplied by the companies are sold across Europe and North America, including in the famous Home Depot and Lowe's home-improvement chain stores in Europe and North America.

"Merbau can only be found in large amounts in Papua's pristine forests. It is obvious these companies have used timber coming from the province that is mostly illegally cut," Telapak coordinator Arbi Valentinus told The Jakarta Post.

Last year, Telapak exposed the world's biggest timber racket, a US$900 million dollar a year trade involving massive illegal logging and smuggling of 300,000 cubic meters of merbau timber every month from Papua to China and India. The trade involves high-ranking Indonesian security officials and international financial backers.

Merbau is one of the most valuable timber species in Southeast Asia, costing between US$200 and $270 a cubic meter on the global market.

The latest report, which was based on an investigation conducted from 2005 until February 2006 in Europe and North America, said two of the companies were supplied from a Malaysian firm, which allegedly backed illegal logging in Indonesia.

"Meanwhile, the Indonesian supplier of one of the major flooring companies admits to paying bribes to obtain seized illegal merbau logs," the report says.

Arbi said the findings contradicted environmental assurances given by the companies to their customers. "We urge these companies to cease manufacturing, distributing or selling illegally sourced merbau," he said.

Despite a government crackdown on illegal logging last year, Papua remains now one of the worst-logged areas in the country, contributing to Indonesia's estimated deforestation rate of up to 2.8 million hectares annually, and depleting a resource worth an estimated Rp 30 trillion to the country.

European Commission Forestry Project officer Thibaut Portevin said no laws existed to punish the companies for buying questionable or uncertified timber.

"We acknowledge that such practices exist and that the commission is negotiating a voluntary partnership agreement with wood- producing countries and companies to ensure the legality of the timber trade," he said.

Health & education

Education, funding the cure for Indonesia's health woes

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

Hera Diani, Jakarta/Serang/Chiang Mai – For nearly three decades, Slamet Rahayu, 58, has worked in the fight against tuberculosis by finding and monitoring TB patients in neighborhoods in Central and East Jakarta.

Slamet, who is employed at a government health clinic, says despite his efforts, the disease is still prevalent in the area. "There are often cases where whole families are infected," he said.

Also handling the clinic's administration and campaign activities, Slamet works six days a week and earns Rp 900,000 (around US$100) a month with allowances, an amount he says is barely enough to cover expenses for his six children.

He had thought about looking for other work but found it was difficult as an elementary school graduate: "I'm grateful just to just have a job," he said.

Slamet's colleague, laboratory technician Kristiana Tobing, said the pair's basic salaries were lower than city's minimum wage of Rp 700,000.

Unlike Slamet, Kristiana graduated from an X-ray technicians' academy in North Sumatra, but was later trained to work at the clinic's lab. "Maybe the clinic couldn't afford to hire a (proper) lab technician," said the 32-year-old, who moonlights as an X-Ray technician at Mediros Hospital in East Jakarta.

While the two work hard, they say the number of people they are expected to serve means they can make little impact on the spread of TB in the area.

Experts say Slamet and Kristiana's circumstances illustrate the poor state of the country's health services. Underfunding and a shortage of qualified human resources means Indonesians have far less health workers serving them than in neighboring countries.

There are only around 50,000 doctors in the country, or only 22 per 100,000 people, compared to a world average of 42. The 52 medical schools in the country produce around 7,000 to 8,000 health workers annually, of varying quality.

"Aside from limited the 'production', out of the medical schools, only 15 to 16 (schools) have programs for specialists. Many schools don't even have professors," Health Ministry head of human resources development Muharso said.

With most doctors living in big cities, mostly in Java, provinces like Papua, Maluku, East Nusa Tenggara and Southeast Sulawesi experience shortages.

While about 30,000 nurses graduate every year from some 411 nursing academies and 14,000 midwives graduate from 216 schools, only around 5,000 are recruited by the 452 government hospitals in the country. Others go to the 626 private hospitals, 112 military hospitals and the 7,500 community health centers.

Banten's Serang General Hospital head of nursing Sri Lestari said many graduate nurses could not find jobs because their qualifications were not recognized by hospitals.

"The last time, we advertised jobs for 38 nurses, but had 400 applicants. It was still tough to find the quality ones." she said. Around 70 percent of nurses nationwide come from vocational high schools. Only some 20 percent of them hold nursing diplomas while only 5 percent hold bachelor's degrees, according to last year's data from the University of Indonesia's nursing faculty.

Inadequately trained nurses result in poor medical services and poor overall community health. In rural areas nurses are often only junior high school graduates.

Under regional autonomy, local administrations were given control of health services and now they are blamed – rather than central government – for health underfunding.

"It's difficult to convince (regional) councillors to give doctors incentives to come and work in the regions. The result – in the nearby regency of Pandeglang, doctors are very few because the rate of incentives for them there is at only 19 percent, whereas it should be at least 50 percent," Sri said.

Unsurprisingly, the country comes off second best when its health statistics are compared to its neighbors.

Indonesia's infant and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the region, with 48 deaths per 1,000 live births and 470 deaths per 100,000 births respectively. The nation has the world's third highest TB infection rate, has endemic malaria and dengue and problems with diarrheal infections, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS.

Speaking at a recent workshop in Chiang Mai, the World Health Organization's Southeast Asia director, PT Jayawickramarajah, said countries in the region could learn from Thailand, which had made good political decisions when it came to funding health human resources.

WHO's Prakin Suchaxaya said the Thai government's emphasis on education, had greatly benefited the health sector.

"We have training for teachers, and strong educational system. All nursing education is in university level and nursing is regulated by a body. We also reach out to everyone, establishing family care units in every village," she said.

The country's 750,000 people working for volunteer organizations could also be mobilized to work against specific health threats, like avian flu, she said.

Paying health workers properly recognized the work they did, she said. It also helped give them prestige, which attracted more people into the sector.

Illiteracy a growing problem in Lampung

Jakarta Post - April 3, 2006

Oyos Saroso H.N., Bandarlampung – As many as 393,952 people in Lampung, or 8.5 percent of the population over the age of 15, cannot read or write, recent data from the province indicates.

The figure was based on research conducted in Lampung's five regencies with the highest rates of illiteracy, but did not include Bandarlampung city and Way Kanan and North Lampung regencies, which could possibly take the number of illiterate people in the province to 450,000.

Head of the Lampung Education Office, Hermansyah Singagerda, said that there were six regencies in Lampung where illiteracy was prevalent – East Lampung (79,633 people), South Lampung (77,482), Central Lampung (62,045), Tulangbawang (53,504), Tanggamus (46,566) and Metro (6,725).

According to Hermansyah, the illiteracy rate correlates with the poverty level in Lampung.

In its campaign to eradicate illiteracy in Lampung, the provincial education office has established the Education Priority Program and is setting up basic literacy groups in the regencies.

Besides illiteracy, the number of early school leavers and students likely to drop out of school in Lampung is also high. A total of 3,337 students failed to complete high school in 2005, and the figure is projected to rise in 2006.

Data from the Lampung provincial administration shows that there are 124,600 poor students studying in elementary, junior and senior high schools, while according to the education office the number is much higher, at around 226,000.

"Although scholarships are being offered to poor students, the school drop out rate is still high because their parents are uninformed of such opportunities. We have even predicted that the drop out rate this year will be higher than last year's," said chairman of the Indonesian Teachers Prosperity Forum (FMGI), Gino Vanolie.

According to Gino, a grant allocated from the provincial budget of Rp 20 billion (US$2.1 million) for school scholarships, in addition to fuel subsidy compensation funds reaching tens of billions, are more than enough to save the thousands of students who are in danger of leaving school before completing their studies.

However, Gino said that the contradicting data on the number of potential early leavers had deprived needy students of the scholarships, while students from more affluent families had been advantaged by the discrepancies in the data.

"We are not yet sure of the exact number of elementary school students who are likely to discontinue their studies. Circumstances like this are prone to irregularities," said Gino.

Gino expressed concern that available grants allocated for needy students could not prevent them from dropping out of school.

"With funds of Rp 30 billion per year, it would be inconceivable that there were still elementary school students who became street kids and scavengers," said Gino.

Apathy and negligence on the part of education bureaucrats in obtaining exact data could lead to unfair scholarship distribution, he said.

Gino mentioned the findings of the People's Coalition on Education in Lampung in 2004, which alleged the misappropriation of retrieval scholarship funds amounting to Rp 4.62 billion.

The block grant from the central government was initially intended for 4,620 elementary school graduates who could not afford to continue their studies in junior high school, with each student to receive Rp 1 million.

However, since the Lampung Education Office had no exact data on eligible recipients, more privileged students received the scholarships instead.

In March this year, two former heads of the Lampung Education Office had been accused of misappropriating education funds. Both suspects were eventually acquitted by the Tanjungkarang district court. Three Lampung Education Office officials who were allegedly involved in misappropriation of retrieval scholarship funds amounting to Rp 4 billion are currently being tried at the Tanjungkarang district court.

Business & investment

ADB forecasts growth slowdown due to high inflation

Jakarta Post - April 7, 2006

Urip Hudiono, Jakarta – Indonesia's economy is expected to continue slowing down this year, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Thursday, with high inflation and interest rates still battering consumption and private investments.

The forecast of 5.4 percent growth, which is lower than the 5.6 percent achieved last year, puts Southeast Asia's largest economy slightly behind the region's projected 5.5 percent average, and Asia's 7.2 percent.

The government is expecting growth to reach 6.2 percent this year and 6.4 percent in 2007, while Bank Indonesia (BI) sees 2006's full-year growth between 5.0 and 5.7 percent, with 4.58 percent growth during the first quarter.

"Growth in the first half of 2006 will be constrained by soft private consumption demand owing to interest rate increases, high inflation and a likely rise in unemployment," the Manila-based lender said in its annual Asian Development Outlook (ADO) report.

Exports are expected to remain slow as well, ADB local economist Amanah Abdulkadir added, with limited new investments curbing manufacturers from increasing their capacity, productivity and competitiveness in the global market.

Significant amounts of investments – particularly for infrastructure development – are essential if Indonesia wishes to reach higher growth, ADB chief economist Ramesh Subramanian said, suggesting the government should improve the country's financial sector to tap the potentially large investment resources from the private sector in insurance and pension funds.

Although Indonesia's investment climate has been improving, it is still deficient, the ADB noted in its report, as it urged the government to implement its own investment policy package to reduce legal uncertainties.

The ADB in December forecast Indonesia's gross domestic product (GDP) to be able to grow between 5.8 to 6 percent as overall consumption – which slumped after last year's fuel price hike – recovered amid easing inflation and higher public spending.

It revised the figure down because it expects inflation in the first half of 2006 to remain high because of implemented or planned increases in administered prices, minimum wages and government employee salaries.

The bank projected inflation at around 14 percent, although it may moderate to 8 percent by the end of the year, with the effects of the fuel price hike wearing out, and to further slow in 2007.

With this slower inflation, along with easing interest rates, the ADB predicted Indonesia's economic growth would be able to reach 6 percent in 2007.

Fiscal policy also is expected to counteract weaknesses in growth through increased public spending, a shift in spending to regions and the move away from fuel subsidies to better-targeted public spending.

"The main generator for growth in 2006 and 2007 will be domestic demand, stimulated primarily by fiscal measures," ADB said.

"The increased fiscal spending allowed by the reduced fuel subsidies will have both direct and multiplier effects on growth, whose size depends on the availability and condition of infrastructure in the regions, and the effectiveness of local governments in implementing projects."

Indonesian economic outlook 2006-2007:

	2004	2005	2006	2007
GDP growth (%, year-on-year)	5.1	5.6	5.4	6.0
Inflation (%, year-on-year)	6.5	17.1	14.0	7.5
Current account balance	1.2	1.1	1.0	0.9

(% of GDP)

Source: Asian Development Bank (ADB)

Exports up on high CPO, rubber demand

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Jakarta – Robust demand for Indonesia's crude palm oil (CPO) and rubber helped push up the country's total exports for the first two months of the year by nearly 19 percent from the same period last year, offsetting a drop of more than 10 percent in oil and gas exports in February.

Indonesia's total exports in February amounted to US$7.35 billion, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported Monday – a 2.19 percent decline from the January figure, but still up 15.18 percent from February last year.

Non-oil and gas exports, which account for more than three quarters of the country's total exports, rose 0.38 percent to $5.72 billion from January, with the main markets being the 25 nations of the European Union, and the US and Japan.

Indonesia's oil and gas exports, meanwhile, dropped by 10.24 percent to $1.63 billion in February, due to both lower export volumes and prices for the two commodities on the global market, BPS chief Choiril Maksum said.

Counting January's $7.51 billion in total exports, Indonesia's exports during the first two months of this year are still rising steadily, coming in at a total of $14.86 billion, up 18.79 percent from the same period in the previous year.

Of February's non-oil and gas exports, exports of animal fats and vegetable oils, which include Indonesia's main export commodity, CPO and its derivatives, enjoyed the biggest increase, booking a combined value of $471.8 million, as compared to $365.7 million in January.

Following CPO, exports of rubber and rubber products rose by 21 percent to $421.2 million. However, exports of steel and iron products fell by almost 42 percent to a combined total value of $381.7 million.

The report also revealed that Indonesia imported a total of $4.51 billion-worth of goods in February, up 5.64 percent from January, with the main component consisting of machinery from Japan, China and the US. Overall, the country had a trade surplus of $6.08 billion in the first two months of 2006.

The government expects Indonesia's total exports to grow by between 7 and 13 percent this year, Trade Minister Mari E. Pangestu has said, from last year's record high of $85.6 billion.

Indonesia urgently needs to increase its exports, not only to boost its foreign exchange reserves but also to spur economic activity and growth, which last year slowed amid high inflation and interest rates. Net exports currently account for less than 10 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP).

Quarantine stymies footwear exports

Jakarta Post - April 1, 2006

Jakarta – Indonesia's slow bureaucratic processes once again appear to be preventing an industry from achieving its full potential in the global market.

The length of time required for the release of imported finished leather – a main raw material for footwear manufacturers – from quarantine could potentially impede industry players from making the most of wide-open markets for footwear in the European Union.

"The fumigation process for finished leather can take up to one month when it should take only a couple of days. Firms will have difficulties in increasing their production if they don't have secure supplies of raw materials," Indonesian Footwear Association (Aprisindo) supervisory board chairman Anton J. Supit said.

The industry is still highly dependent on imported leather, with more than 50 percent of its raw materials being sourced from China, South Korea and Argentina.

Indonesian footwear manufacturers, Anton explained, were currently seeking to increase their output to meet the demand from the European Union (EU) market.

The EU will start limiting imports of footwear from China and Vietnam starting in April. The restrictions could reduce these countries' current export values of US$5 billion and $2 billion respectively by up to 20 percent following a finding that both were guilty of dumping.

"With these quotas, importers and producers are looking for alternative production bases. They are thinking of quickly moving to Indonesia," he said.

German footwear giant Adidas, for example, has opened two new factories here under the names PT Poong Won Indonesia and PT Spotec, while global brand Puma will commence production here again.

"We cannot take the opportunity for granted and not try to overcome the problems we are facing. If we continue to suffer from these problems, the investors could easily opt for Cambodia instead," Anton stressed.

Aprisindo urged the Agriculture Ministry, which is responsible for quarantine procedures, to set time limits for fumigation.

Trade Minister Mari E. Pangestu also forwarded a similar request to the Agriculture Ministry.

The footwear industry could be one of the rare subsectors to see a revival this year with new market opportunities opening up and investments coming in.

The labor-intensive industry currently employs about 400,000 workers, excluding those working for suppliers in the plastics, leather and molding industries. Before the 1998 financial crisis, the industry employed some 850,000 workers.

Exports of footwear are expected to reach almost $3 billion this year if domestic manufacturers can make the most of the new opportunities in the EU.

Opinion & analysis

Cartoonists are not in the foreign service

The Australian - April 6, 2006

John Birmingham – What was Bill Leak thinking last weekend? There he was, a senior diplomat, respected authority on Australian foreign relations, widely known to have the ear of John Howard and the autonomy to pronounce on government policy without fear of contradiction, and in a fit of madness he throws it all away just to... Oh, sorry. That's right. He's none of those things. He's a cartoonist. In other words, a professional heretic blessed with artistic flair, a sense of humour and no respect for hypocrisy or privilege. Far from being the voice of Canberra, he is an implacable and pitiless mocker of almost everything that happens there.

Yet, watching the "two dogs" fiasco unfold this week, you could be forgiven for thinking that Leak is some high official who has somehow betrayed us all and plunged our relationship with Jakarta into desperate crisis.

Lost in all the huffing and the puffing are a few uncomfortable truths. This is merely the latest episode in what will be a never-ending series of "oh no" moments with our impossible neighbour to the north. And as much as we have to learn about managing that relationship, Jakarta has an even longer road to travel before it comes close to understanding the nature of its impossible neighbour to the south.

Still, a close examination of the two dogs affair could lead you to imagine that perhaps they understand our political class only too well.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who at first was reported to be amused by Leak's cartoon, did not reveal himself to have been deeply wounded by it until our Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, had rushed out to perform a pre-emptive buckle by deploring the illustration the day it had been published.

Doubtless many hours of weekend overtime went into determining the precise extent of the buckle, the number of twists and turns, and the degree of difficulty involved, but perhaps a moment's consideration could have been given to whether one was even necessary.

Of course, Yudhoyono didn't feel the need to apologise when The Rakyat Merdeka ran the original cartoon of Howard and Downer as humping dingoes, and neither of the naughty puppies in question looked particularly upset by it. Unlike Leak's response, the Indonesian cartoon was neither very well drawn nor particularly funny, but it made what would have been seen as a valid point in Jakarta, after Australian immigration officials granted protection visas to 42 West Papuan asylum-seekers.

When Leak sat down to frame his full colour, and slightly off- colour, reply, he was simply doing what he does as well as any editorial cartoonist in the world, spinning a witty and – ahem – penetrating joke off a developing news story. Leak's role is not to further Australian national interests, to salve wounded egos or to make life easier for the likes of Howard or Yudhoyono. (That's what Greg Sheridan gets paid for.)

Leak has one job, six days a week. Humour for Dummies would probably explain that he has to distil the essence of a story into a caricature that will make most of the people who read it laugh, most of the time. They laugh because in the real world the issues Leak deals with are usually tense, even threatening.

Like all satirists, he finds the absurd within these situations and exposes it, releasing some of that tension. Like the best cartoonists, Leak is able to work on more than one level. Downer's rush to make an apology that was never his to deliver betrays a number of anxieties, some specific and some free floating.

More generally, Downer was acting in accordance with a longstanding practice of Australian diplomacy, which is to treat the sensitivities of regional powers like sweating gelignite. Specifically, however, he knew Jakarta was alive to any suggestion that Australia might not be 100 per cent committed to Indonesian sovereignty over its Papuan province.

Leak's crime was not just to draw Yudhoyono in the same fashion as his colleague on The Rakyat Merdeka had drawn Howard and Downer. It was to make obvious in a brutal and graphic fashion the subtext that there exists in Australia a significant body of opinion that Indonesia has been screwing Papua for decades.

Yudhoyono is an intelligent, sophisticated man who will use a variety of means to pressure the Australian Government on the Papuan issue. His response to the cartoon should be seen in that context.

In that way, Downer's hasty apology played right into his hands, allowing the Indonesian President to appear as the aggrieved party when in fact he is the leader of a state that has responded to an intricate and difficult question of nation building with ham-fisted violence, duplicity and folly.

For what can it be but folly to repeat in Papua the same tactics that failed so spectacularly in East Timor?

While Downer's fumble can perhaps be explained by the distraction of the AWB scandal, there can be no excuse for the breathtaking sanctimony of The Sydney Morning Herald (see The Australian's Cut & Paste yesterday).

Earlier this week, the Fairfax publication flayed poor Leak for being tasteless, unfunny and "consciously more offensive" than The Rakyat Merdeka's man, "since the dog is regarded as a particularly unclean animal by Indonesia's Muslims". This po- faced example of witless cultural relativism was surpassed only by the paper's statement: "It is hard to think of any other world leader being depicted the same way as the cartoon did Yudhoyono."

Apparently, in the course of coming over all a-tizz about the unspeakable Leak, the Herald's editorial writer completely forgot about the original Indonesian cartoon. Or perhaps it is just that in urbane, cosmopolitan Sydney, bestiality is the sort of thing our Prime Minister is supposed to just shrug off with a giggle, which, to his credit, he did.

While the political actors were merely playing their roles with varying degrees of ability, I'm at a loss to explain the Herald's fit of the vapours, other than as a cheap shot at a competitor. They cannot seriously imagine that Leak, and by extension his colleagues at Fairfax such as Alan Moir or Michael Leunig, should restrain themselves from lampooning the likes of Howard and Yudhoyono too harshly. That would be a handy result for the horny dingoes but a great loss for the rest of us.

[John Birmingham, author and former defence department researcher, wrote the 2001 Quarterly Essay piece Appeasing Jakarta.]

Both sides must face it - Papua problem is not going away

Sydney Morning Herald - April 5, 2006

Peter King – The fracas between Indonesia and Australia over West Papuan refugees may blow over, but the underlying issues won't go away anytime soon.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has put his own credibility on the line by following the lead of Indonesia's baying nationalists in parliament. Why does Yudhoyono insist all is well in Papua except for the nefarious activities of "separatists" and their international backers, who reputedly include the Australian Government?

He has a point, of course. The Australian Government collaborated with the Indonesian Government's pretence of good faith right up to the mayhem that followed the independence referendum in East Timor. Things are apparently going to be different with Papua.

Does the decision to grant asylum to West Papuans mean the Australian Government could finally be taking the Timor lesson to heart – the Australian people will not tolerate another Timor in Papua; another collusion with Indonesia all the way to a bloody showdown?

Certainly, John Howard and Alexander Downer must realise they have doubled the clout of Australia's West Papua independence lobby by allowing the 42 highly political (even the children) Melanesian seafarers to settle here, however temporarily.

Whatever the underlying reasons for the Australian Government's action, the Indonesian response has been as "incorrect, one-sided and unrealistic" as Yudhoyono tells us Australia's decision was. Dozens of Indonesian non-government organisations and Papua support groups have been telling the Jakarta elite loudly and clearly, for the past eight years, about "reform", that Papua is being betrayed again, as it was under the Dutch and under Indonesia's Soeharto regime.

Why? Papua is difficult, the Indonesia lobby in Canberra tells us. Papua is far from Java; Indonesia has trouble focusing on it, but reform will eventually prevail under Yudhoyono. This is nonsense.

Indonesia's problem is military ill will, a nationalist lack of will, and reformers' paralysis of will – above all, in Papua. For the Indonesian President to contest refugees' claims of persecution and offer guarantees for their safety is a futile exercise so late in the day. All the Papuan abuses that "reformasi" was supposed to tackle continue to flourish – military manipulation, mayhem and rapacity, including protection of illegal logging and devastating mining.

The Papuans have symbolically given back the former Indonesian president Gus Dur's half-wanted gift of special autonomy, as the revenues that were promised have disappeared. The unwelcome province splitting done by another former Indonesian president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, has not been undone by Yudhoyono, either. The determined escalation of Papuan political demands this year, including the closing of the Freeport mine, is the predictable outcome of this stand-off.

Peace is now a possibility for Aceh, after the tsunami and massive international intervention. Must we wait for a political tsunami with disastrous human consequences in Papua?

While Papua was under the Dutch, Australia took an active interest in its future. It supported self-determination and even contemplated the two halves of New Guinea achieving independence asa united Melanesian entity.

Among other things, Downer must overcome the amnesia on Papuan history within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He said a few years ago that Australia had always supported Papua's incorporation in the Indonesian republic, while Australia's ambassador in Washington, Dennis Richardson, has recently informed the world that "Papua is part of the sovereign territory of Indonesia and always has been".

Recent Papuan history, it seems, begins in 1962-63, when the Dutch got out, leaving the field to Soekarno's and Soeharto's generals. Papua has been in Australia's too-hard basket for 43 years. It is time to take it out. Yudhoyono's outburst may signal, however indistinctly and indirectly, that Australia has become an important dialogue partner in resolving an issue that is not going to go away – the future for the Papuans, Indonesian or otherwise.

Working with Indonesia on the matter may be the way to advance the interests of both countries – while helping to extricate the Papuans from their impasse.

[Peter King is convener of the West Papua Project at Sydney University and the author of West Papua and Indonesia since Suharto: Independence, Autonomy or Chaos? (UNSWPress).]

Get facts right and focus on the real problem

Jakarta Post - April 4, 2006

Damien Kingsbury, Melbourne – In asking the question, is Papua in danger of becoming another East Timor, Ahmad Qisa'i does little more than highlight a number of misunderstandings about East Timor, Papua and Australia (Jakarta Post, March 29).

To start, the Australian government did not change its policy regarding East Timor in the late 1990s or following the fall of Soeharto. That change only came after the East Timorese voted for independence.

This is not to say that prior Australian policy was morally correct – in supporting Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, it had been complicit in the many crimes against the East Timorese people committed by Indonesian forces.

But that policy did not change until, by Indonesia's own agreement, East Timor chose to separate from Indonesia, and in light of TNI and its proxy militia destroying most of East Timor's infrastructure and murdering a further 1,400 of its people. It is also worth noting that the UN-sponsored intervention in East Timor included a number of other countries, including New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan and others, and had the strong support of the United States. That is, the post-ballot intervention under the auspices of the UN involved many countries, not just Australia.

That is now history, and if some Indonesians choose not to let it go then they will only remind others of how badly Indonesian forces behaved from the moment they invaded East Timor in 1975 until their departure in 1999.

But Papua is not East Timor, and the circumstances of the events of 1999 and now are very different. Just as Australia accepts all other people requesting asylum who can demonstrate a legitimate case of fleeing actual or potential harm, the decision by Australia to accept 42 of 43 Papuan asylum seekers was not a political decision by the government. It was an administrative decision by an independent body. This operates under the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary, which Indonesia also follows.

In highlighting this case, Qisa'i succeeds only in raising the question; why were the Papuan asylum seekers granted asylum? The answer is because there is a long and well documented history of human rights abuses by the Indonesian Military (TNI) and police in Papua against indigenous people, and these asylum seekers were able to show that they had been and were again likely to be victims of such abuses. There was no "pretext of harassment"; there was well documented abuse.

Indonesian government promises that the asylum seekers would not face prosecution if they returned meant little when the TNI and police continue to act outside government purview in Papua. I am sure the government did not condone the murder of Theys Eluay either, but it still happened.

Australia's administrative decision to accept the asylum seekers makes no comment one way or the other on any sympathy that might be felt for Papuans in Australia. The Australian government continues to reaffirm its commitment to the sovereign unity of Indonesia, as it should under conventional diplomatic protocol, and Qisa'i would struggle to find any evidence that official and indeed unofficial policy in any way differed from that.

In so far as many private Australian citizens are concerned over human rights abuses in Papua, this is their legitimate right to do so. Australia is a free country in which its citizens can hold whatever political views they like about domestic or international issues.

To be concerned over human rights abuses wherever they occur is to recognize the universal value of human rights rather than to be concerned about the specific and sometimes narrowly conceived interests of those who wield power in a particular country. That is, universal human rights expresses concern based on the general quality of being human, not on the specific quality of being Indonesian, or Australian, or Papuan.

Like some others in Indonesia, Qisa'i is concerned about Australia's "insensitivity" towards Indonesia over Papua. One might better ask what about insensitivity towards the indigenous people of Papua who are, after all, the primary victims in this sorry mess.

In so far as Papua represents a "delicate problem", the way Papuans are treated in their own land is a long way from delicate. Perhaps a refusal to acknowledge the truth of what has been happening in Papua does raise the tricky question of how to reconcile contradictions between perspective and fact. But sometimes we just have to face facts, and "sensitivity" has to adjust to reality, or else we just end up deluding ourselves.

But perhaps Qisa'i is correct when he says the Indonesian government should act positively to avoid Papua breaking away from Indonesia. To that end, the government should give very serious consideration to fully and properly implementing genuine autonomy as a way of placating the legitimate grievances of the Papuans.

For this, it must be prepared to talk openly and honestly with Papuan leaders, who do exist and who have a common, united view, despite some views in Jakarta that this is not the case. It must listen to them, and find a settlement based on negotiation and agreement, not imposition.

The government of Indonesia did reach a reasonable outcome to the conflict in Aceh. Everyone who cares about peace and the future of Indonesia as a united country hopes this is now honored in the required legislation. Perhaps a similar outcome is also possible in Papua.

The administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has demonstrated with Aceh that unity and peace can only be achieved through shared civic values, in which all Indonesian citizens are treated with equality, respect and dignity.

Perhaps, then, those "nationalists" who are concerned about the future of Papua should focus their attention on the real problem, which is not in Australia, but in Papua. Perhaps, then, this problem could be resolved.

[The writer was adviser to the Free Aceh Movement in the resolution of the Aceh conflict and he is director of International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne.]

Editorial - Testing times in Papua

The Australian - April 5, 2006

Cartoonists might make light of it, but the view from Jakarta of separatist unrest in Papua is anything but funny. Papua is many times larger than East Timor and Aceh combined. Its complex Melanesian tribal society has a long list of legitimate grievances against Jakarta including a massive transmigration program, the giant Freeport copper and gold mine and Indonesia's failure to fully implement a special autonomy law of 2001.

Papua also has a long and porous border with Papua New Guinea, which is hardly in a position to prevent separatists using its territory as a sanctuary.

Any full blown push for independence is likely to be long and bloody and it won't be limited to bows and arrows. The view from Canberra is just as serious. As in East Timor, it would take very little effort for Jakarta to encourage local militias to harass or kill separatist leaders and their supporters. The number of boat people making the journey to Australia would skyrocket and the local pro-Papua lobby would become hard to ignore. Were this to occur, Australia would be forced to shoulder the burden as it did in East Timor, but multiplied many fold.

At stake for Australia is an important bilateral relationship based on shared concerns such as combating terrorism and stopping people smuggling.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's decision to review ties with Australia is regrettable given that it is in both countries' interests to work together to ensure stability in our region. While Dr Yudhoyono surely had one eye on his domestic constituency when he branded Australia's decision to grant asylum to 42 Papuans "inappropriate and unrealistic", he must understand Australia will not compromise on the law governing the rights of asylum-seekers.

If Dr Yudhoyono wants to maintain the status quo, he should understand that sovereignty comes with obligations. So far there is little to indicate that policy-makers in Jakarta are looking seriously at the problem of Papua and how to prevent nationalists from getting the upper hand. Years of civil unrest in Aceh and East Timor should be a reminder that a heavy-handed military response is not the answer.

Nor is it productive to perpetuate the myth that Canberra is somehow gunning for Papua's independence. If a butterfly beats its wings in the offices of an NGO, the windstorm does not blow through the Indonesia desk of DFAT. Dialogue that promotes transparency and understanding in Indonesia's treatment of Papua is far better than hiding behind hurt feelings. Dr Yudhoyono must ensure Indonesia does not return to the dark days of the Suharto era when dealing with minorities.

Yet given the underhanded method by which Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 and how little in common there is between the people of Jayapura and Java, it is hard to imagine Papua remaining a part of Indonesia without more autonomy. Jakarta and Canberra may each have their respective views regarding their fate, but the aspirations of the Papuans will not go away – and will one day have to be dealt with.

Bark of the Lapdog

Sydney Morning Herald Editorial - April 4, 2006

The late Adam Malik, long Indonesia's foreign minister and later vice-president, was called the "kancil" after the mousedeer which, in his country's folktales, uses cunning and humour against bigger predators. In one story Mr Malik's admirers used to tell – not one found in illustrated children's books – the mousedeer evades a tiger by running into a hollow log. The tiger gets its head trapped, whereupon the kancil exits the other end of the log and mounts the tiger from behind. Indonesians enjoy a ribald animal yarn as much as anyone.

But what to make of the recent dog-mounts-dog cartoons published in two newspapers? First, the Indonesian popular tabloid Rakyat Merdeka shows John Howard and Alexander Downer as humping dingoes, somehow related to an alleged Australian wish to take over Papua. Then The Weekend Australian, a newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, responds with a cartoon showing the Indonesian President, Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, in formal black headcap, as a dog mounting a four-legged Papuan with a bone in his nose. "No offence intended" was the caption.

Actually, the cartoon could hardly be calculated to offend more. The Rakyat Merdeka drawing was not particularly funny or on- target, aside from being tasteless, so was easy for its targets to shrug off. The Murdoch newspaper's cartoon is consciously more offensive, since the dog is regarded as a particularly unclean animal by Indonesia's Muslims. It is hard to think of any other world leader being depicted the same way as the cartoon did Mr Yudhoyono.

Indeed, by sharp contrast, the same newspaper had just set what may be record levels of sycophancy in its coverage of visits by Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair and Wen Jiabao. When another of its cartoonists depicted the former president Soeharto as an orang- utang swinging nonchalantly through the jungles, during the 1997 forest-fire haze and economic crisis, its editors were soon on a plane to grovel in Jakarta. See-sawing between adulation and reckless offence hardly reflects well on editorial judgement. Sentiment in the Muslim world is inflamed enough. It's a time to do what you do with rutting dogs: bring out the hose.

Meanwhile, the failings of Indonesia's rule in Papua are apparent enough. They go back many years before Mr Yudhoyono became President, and he seems willing to break with the past as he did in Aceh. Though not happy about the cartoon, he seems willing to let it pass and is damping down any movement among his officials to react on his behalf.

As Adam Malik used to say: the dogs may bark, the caravan moves on.

Poso Three and justice

Jakarta Post Editorial - April 4, 2006

Some people following the case of the three Christians awaiting execution for their alleged involvement in the Poso violence in 2000 have no doubt recalled the movie In the Name of the Father, based on the real-life story of the Guildford Four, who were wrongly convicted for an IRA bombing.

The three men in Poso were jailed in April 2001 for allegedly inciting clashes between Christians and Muslims that left some 200 people dead. The men were to be put to death in late March but the executions were delayed due to "technical difficulties", according to Central Sulawesi Prosecutor's Office head M. Jahya Sibe. No new date has been given for the executions.

Numerous voices from different sections of society have been raised to call for the death sentences of Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 39, to be delayed or overturned. This despite the three men's clemency appeal to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono being rejected in December.

This vociferous opposition to the executions of the three is in itself an interesting part of this story.

The convicts earlier gave authorities the names of 16 people they believed were the true masterminds of the three-year sectarian conflict in Poso, which began in 1999 and left more than 1,000 people dead. It must be remembered that scapegoating and victimizing the weak is not unheard of in the history of violence in the country.

Opponents to the executions staged demonstrations demanding the state review the death sentences. Even some Muslims in Poso have joined the chorus demanding a delay of the executions until the three have been given the opportunity to testify in any future trials of the 16 alleged masterminds.

Opposition to the executions has caused concern among some people that maybe the wrong people have been arrested and imprisoned, which is the story of In the Name of the Father and the Guildford Four, who were scapegoated by police eager to put someone in jail for a bombing that outraged the public. Any evidence that did not fit the police's version of the bombing was ignored, until the convictions were overturned thanks to a public campaign by people who refused to allow the injustice to stand. The movie version is a powerful portrayal of the weak being victimized by the strong.

We sincerely hope what is happening in Poso is not about victimizing the weak, even though the parallels are tempting. The three men awaiting execution are poor farmers. Although peace largely has returned to Poso after the signing of the Malino peace deal in 2001, there are still occasional security disruptions. A bomb exploded March 22 in the village of Toini, the eighth bomb explosion in the area this year. There was a series of killings last year, including the gruesome decapitations of three Christian schoolgirls last October.

The purpose of bringing the Guildford Four into the discussion is to make absolutely sure there has been no miscarriage of justice in Poso. There is still time to ensure that justice is served, because postponing the executions for just two or three months would not make that much of a difference.

Those who oppose the executions claim the three are scapegoats of Poso's political elite, which engineered the sectarian conflict.

It does no harm, in our view, to listen to these people more closely. The legal trials may have been exhausted, a second appeal to the President for clemency may have been ignored and new evidence allegedly found by lawyers for the three may not have been heeded, but compassion for someone facing death knows no limits.

We believe such compassion can be found in the President and senior judges, although the Supreme Court earlier refused to hear the men's case and the President has rejected their pleas for clemency. We urge all those involved to give the three men, their lawyers and supporters one last opportunity. They have some convincing arguments that the three men awaiting execution were not the masterminds of the violence. We believe their views should be considered. By doing so, we might be able to avoid punishing the wrong people.