News & issues

Tibo links synod council to Poso attacks

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2006

Ruslan Sangaji, Palu – Fabianus Tibo, one of three men on death row for their roles in the attacks that killed some 200 Muslims six years ago in Poso, Central Sulawesi, has accused the Synod Council of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church (GKST) of involvement in the violence.

"Most people in Poso know about the GKST's involvement in the violence. It is very strange the police did not investigate them," Tibo told journalists Saturday at the prison in Palu, Central Sulawesi, where he is awaiting execution.

He claimed that whenever members of the council went to "war", they gathered in front of the church in Tentena district near Poso to ask for a blessing. "Several priests who were also synod council members prayed for them," he said.

Tibo demanded police arrest the members of the GKST he accused of being involved in the violence, and release him and Dominggus da Silva and Don Marinus Riwu, who were also sentenced to death for the attacks.

The head of the synod council, the Reverend Renaldy Damanik, denied his organization's involvement in the sectarian violence. However, he acknowledged that some rogue elements within the council might have played a role in masterminding the violence.

"The job of the synod council is dealing with our congregation. We promote peace in the world and campaigned to stop the bloodshed in Poso," Renaldy said.

When Tibo was arrested in 2001, he accused former synod council leader Agustina Lumentut of involvement in the attacks. Tibo told authorities that Agustina had asked him not to reveal the council's involvement in the conflict.

He claims Agustina promised he would be released in three days if he did not tell investigators about the council's role in the violence. However, Tibo was sentenced to death in 2001. Agustina subsequently moved away from Tentena and passed away in 2003.

Tibo also told authorities several other Poso figures were involved in the conflict, including Paulus Tungkanan, Erick Rombot, Limpadeli and Christian Red Troop commander Angki Tungkanan. They were seen at the scenes of the attack, Tibo claimed. "All of these people are still in Tentena and are active members of the synod council board and the Sintuwu Maroso Youth Force."

The Poso Three, as the three men on death row have come to be known, earlier accused 16 men, including some of these local figures, of masterminding the religious violence.

Speaking at the same time, Da Silva urged the police to arrest former Poso regency secretary Yahya Pattiro for his alleged role in the unrest.

"When an attack occurred, he (Yahya) made a call to the GKST church. I answered the phone and he told me he was looking for (Angki) Tungkanan, who was not present," he said.

Da Silva said Yahya then asked him to tell Tungkanan to block off the road to military troops being deployed from Palopo, South Sulawesi. He said this proved Yahya's involvement in the conflict, because he was giving orders to the Red Troop commander.

Heri Mengkawa, who is serving a 12-year jail sentence for his involvement in the Poso violence, also alleged Yahya played a role in the conflict. The former regency secretary has denied on a number of occasions any involvement in the violence.

Central Sulawesi Police chief Comr. Gen. Oegroseno said the authorities had run into trouble trying to find evidence that the 16 men identified by Tibo and the two other convicts had masterminded the Poso attacks. However, he promised to follow up on all allegations and question those identified by Tibo.

Political satire staying on the air as furor fizzles

Jakarta Post - April 12, 2006

Jakarta – It could have been fueled by an overreaction to fears of authoritarianism making a return, or fanned by eager-to-please businesspeople posturing before political leaders.

Whatever the reason, the brouhaha over the possible censoring of groundbreaking political satire show Republik Benar Benar Mabok (Republik BBM) died down Tuesday almost as quickly as it flared up. Both broadcaster Indosiar and the government also stated nobody discussed banning the show. Indosiar spokesman Gufron Sakaril said Republik BBM – literally meaning "drunken republic" and borrowing its name from the acronym for fuel – will continue to air the program.

"We will broadcast it as usual, and there is no intention to tone down the content. There has been no pressure whatsoever upon us to stop broadcasting the show," he told The Jakarta Post. The show aired as usual Monday in its late-night time slot.

Meanwhile, Communication and Information Minister Sofyan Djalil said Tuesday the government was not interested in banning a show critical of the administration. "There is no such thing," he told detik.com news portal.

Sofyan said the government had only asked TV stations to reduce the graphic content of their crime shows. "What the government doesn't want is that our TV has become so brutal and created brutality among people," he said.

The issue was raised when Vice President Jusuf Kalla met Saturday with owners of seven private TV stations. As Kalla asked TV stations to reduce the graphic content of their shows, some of the executives present used the opportunity to slam the show, claiming it crossed the line in poking fun at the country's leaders and went against local cultural norms.

Republik BBM lampoons the country's leaders, down to their physical appearance and gestures. Played with gleeful irreverence by comedians Taufik Savalas and Kelik Pelipur Lara, the show has its president and vice president scrambling in heavy-handed attempts to find ministers for their fictitious Cabinet.

The cast, guests and studio audience also use the opportunity to criticize the running of the state in the 90-minute program.

The show's irreverent look at politics is groundbreaking in Indonesian television, whose stations conducted self-censorship during the Soeharto regime for fear of having their media license revoked.

Navy, residents in war of words

Jakarta Post - April 8, 2006

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Pasuruan – A small shop damaged by a passing Navy tank has sparked anger among hundreds of residents of four villages of Grati district in Pasuruan, East Java. The residents protested Thursday by blocking the major Pasuruan- Probolinggo route using bamboo trees. The blockade led to heavy traffic jams along 20 kilometers of the busy road for nearly two hours.

Pasuruan Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said residents believed the tank driver hit the stall on purpose. "The damage comes against the background of a land dispute between the residents and the Navy," Boy said.

The roadblock ended after Pasuruan Regent Yusbakir Al Jufri, along with the local police chief and the speaker of the Pasuruan Legislative Council, met with the protesters. The Pasuruan regent promised to relay residents' grievances to the Navy.

Meanwhile, Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Slamet Soebijanto said Friday the Navy had asked the residents to move out the area, which was now a military training zone.

"The area has become an armed forces training center, and we have allocated plots of land (for residents) at the edge of the training zone," Antara news agency quoted Slamet as saying after inaugurating four Navy warships in Surabaya.

Navy spokesman Vice Adm. A Malik Yusuf said the damage to the stall was accidental. "Tanks need room to maneuver. The stall was hit by the tank when it was making a maneuver," Malik said.

He added that the Navy had frequently told residents not to build permanent houses in the area, because of the dangers posed by the military equipment deployed during war exercises.

"War exercises are essential for the military. If we are defeated in a war who will be blamed? It will be the soldiers, right? So we want the residents to understand this," he added.

Aceh

Angry tsunami survivors demand split from aid agency

Agence France Presse - April 14, 2006

Pasi – Furious tsunami survivors at this village in Indonesia's Aceh have told an international aid agency that they no longer want their help after waiting a year for them to build promised houses.

British-based Oxfam has since closed their office overseeing Pasi – and the rest of Aceh Besar and Banda Aceh districts – as they investigate what went wrong, but no matter the outcome, fed-up residents do not want Oxfam back.

The unprecedented rejection of promised aid by a community in devastated Aceh, where some 168,000 people were killed by the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, highlights mounting frustration among homeless tsunami survivors.

Some 127,000 houses are yet to be built, the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR) said last month. The cost of building a home has jumped from 28 to 50 million rupiah (about 3,100 to 5,500 dollars).

About 150 of those homes are in Pasi, says village chief Muhammad Hatta, and Oxfam workers first promised in April last year to build half of them. The laying of foundations for 11 houses is the only evidence of progress so far.

"Residents here have agreed to demand a divorce from Oxfam," says chief Hatta, a 40-year-old who lost his wife and three children to the tsunami, as he sits sipping Acehnese coffee at a roadside stall in the desolate area.

Some 315 survivors from both Pasi and nearby Meunasah Lhok – which together had a combined population of just over 1,000 before the tsunami – live here in makeshift tents and huts strung together from tarpaulins and whatever else they have got hold of.

"My people have all agreed they no longer want Oxfam in our village, although they did help us a lot in the past," a tired Hatta concedes.

Oxfam were among the earliest relief groups to provide desperately-needed aid to the area, providing clean water, sanitation facilities and helping residents in cash-for-work projects from February last year, he says.

But for the past few weeks, Hatta has been shuttling to and from Banda Aceh, the provincial capital 63 kilometers (39 miles) away, trying to get the BRR to supervise contractors to build the houses instead.

Sofyan, a 45-year-old villager who has lived in a tent since he came back to his flattened village in March 2005, says he is fed up waiting.

"We can no longer stand living in the temporary hut and tent shelters, even more so since the western winds are blowing. We are very worried that our huts will collapse or be blown away," he says.

Tempers exploded violently in February when a visiting Indonesian Oxfam officer was beaten up by angry villagers.

In a meeting soon afterwards, the residents told Oxfam that they wanted all work halted "so that we do not remain in the status quo and can seek other assistance", Hatta says.

Lilianne Fan, Oxfam's advocacy coordinator in Aceh, says that Oxfam only officially committed to building the houses in June 2005 "but on condition that the problem of land first be settled".

The district chief eventually bought land, former rice paddy about 500 metres (yards) to the rear of the old village, for the new houses on October 17, 2005, she says.

"Maybe residents are not aware that the process of getting the land takes a long time and is complex," she says.

Oxfam spokesman in Banda Aceh, Yon Thayrun, told AFP that it became impossible for Oxfam to use funds earmarked for 2005 to begin construction, due to budgetary procedures, so they had to wait until this year.

Procurement of materials then became difficult, he says, a problem many aid agencies have encountered across Aceh as the massive reconstruction effort gets underway. Still, Fan says it remains a mystery why so little has been done.

On March 13 and after similar difficulties in other parts of Aceh Besar and Banda Aceh districts, Oxfam took the most dramatic action an aid agency has done here since the tsunami and shuttered its office overseeing the area. The agency also uncovered irregularities in the disbursement of funds from the offices administrating the two districts.

"Our headquarters is now conducting an investigation so that hopefully everything will become clear... (about) where and what the problem was," Fan says.

In a press release at the time announcing the suspension in the two districts of its work – other than the provision of essential services – Oxfam apologised to the affected communities. "Oxfam will use every means at its disposal to recover any money found to be missing," it said.

Oxfam, Thayrun says, is prepared to continue its work in Pasi when the investigations are completed, "but if the people have already sought a divorce, what can we do?" In the meantime, Canadian-funded agency GenAssist has met with villagers and promised that it will build the villagers' houses – if they can secure their own funding.

If they cannot, the government's BRR is due at the end of April to release the names of contractors who will start building homes at the beginning of May.

"We don't care who builds the houses. The important thing is our houses be built immediately because we cannot stay any longer in this camp," says Mulyadi, the 28-year-old chief of Pasi's youth group.

Morality police back with a vengeance in Aceh

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2006

Mardiyah Chamim, Jakarta – It was a breezy, sunny day. The Neusu soccer field in capital Banda Aceh was abuzz with positive energy. A dozen or so small boys were playing soccer, while several young men jogged around the field – A happy scene amid the sadness left by the deadly tsunami that killed more than 100,000 people in December 2004.

The idyllic Sunday morning, however, came to an abrupt end when members of Wilayatul Hisbah or morality police arrived at the scene. "All of you, get into the car!" they shouted at the boys and adults on the soccer field.

Ahmad Sobirin, a social worker with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) who was jogging around the field, was also asked to come to the office of the morality police. "Your knees are not properly covered," one officer told Ahmad.

At the office, Ahmad and the young boys received a lengthy lecture on Islamic law or sharia which requires Muslims to cover certain parts of their body in public.

For women, it is the whole body except their palms and face. For men it is their lower body, between the belly and knee. No discussion, no other interpretations allowed.

Last month, I encountered a similar experience when my team and I were conducting a mobile movie screening program in several villages in Aceh.

We were setting up to show the movie Rindu Kami Padamu, directed by Garin Nugroho in front of a wooden barrack. Before the show started, a certain Bapak Anwar asked me to separate the audience into two rows. I knew such a "request" would come up, but people here just wanted to have a fun. They needed to restore their shattered spirits by sitting with their loved ones – husband, wife, grandma, grandpa, mom, dad and cousins. How could we separate them? Thank God, Anwar agreed with me. The show went on smoothly, with people of the opposite sex mingling freely with each other.

At the end of the trip we went to Panti Asuhan Aneuk Nelayan (orphanage for fishermen's children) in Lhokseumawe, North Aceh. Seventy children, aged between five and 18 years old, stay in the orphanage. I already sensed that something was "wrong" when I set up equipment for the show. Come dinner time, only boys were found in the dining room, while all 30 young girls stayed in their rooms, chatting.

"Kakak (elder sister), we will have our dinner after the boys. We are not supposed to be together in one room with the boys," nine-year-old Noni told me. Frankly, as a woman, I was shocked. We all have the same biological rhythm. An empty stomach knows no gender.

Are these the problems linked to sharia? Perhaps. But, these experiences reminded me of the controversial book The Trouble With Islam by Canadian television journalist Irshad Manji.

Many Acehnese are now demanding that the morality police redouble their efforts to ensure people's compliance with sharia. Anyone who gambles, commits adultery or steals must be punished without mercy. "We need strong action. God already punished us. We don't want another tsunami," are the comments frequently heard.

On the other hand, there are also people who expressed fear of being misunderstood. "I do not quite understand Islam. Therefore I am afraid of acting improperly, of getting caught and being whipped by the Wilayatul Hisbah," a woman wrote in a letter published by local daily Serambi Indonesia.

The pros and cons of the implementation of sharia are often discussed in daily conversation. A woman who lives in Banda Aceh, who asked to be identified only as Sari, was not happy when her youngest daughter was forced to wear a jilbab (Muslim headscarf) by the morality police. "She is only 10, she hasn't even had her first period yet. Let her grow up and think for herself what's best," she said.

Sari did not wish to reveal her identity since her thoughts on jilbab are considered heretic. "People will get angry with me," she said, "They will say, this is exactly the thing that invites a tsunami."

As for the jilbab, there are many interpretations about its use. Some say the wearing of the jilbab is mandatory for Muslim women, while some say that the jilbab was worn by Arab women purely to prevent dehydration in the desert.

Indonesian Muslim women have a long history of wearing various headscarves. Cut Nyak Dhien, an Acehnese independence heroine, for example, wore a long, silky, transparent scarf while her hair was done nicely in a small bun. Unfortunately, there is no room for other interpretation of headscarfs.

"I do not like this situation," Sari said after a long pause. "If my daughter wants to wear the jilbab, it has to be her own decision. Besides, who are they to judge? How hypocritical."

She is probably right. The air of hypocrisy is relatively thick in Aceh. The local administration has issued a series of regulations concerning daily activities. One of the rules stipulates that all stores, restaurants and coffee houses are to stop operations during prayer times. So, if you go to Aceh nowadays, you will not find coffee houses that are open during prayer times, especially at noon on Friday, maghrib (sunset) and Isya (night). They are all closed, with front blinds rolled down.

But, take a closer look at those coffee houses and you will find there is always a small door open at the back from which you can go inside. Inside the coffee house, I guarantee you that you will find many people – mostly men – enjoying a cup of coffee.

Where are the members of the morality force? Back in 1999, Jakarta thought that the application of Islamic law would resolve the bloody conflict in Aceh. Then president B.J. Habibie thought that applying sharia would somehow heal the wounds caused by decades of injustice and violence among Acehnese.

Soon after the government officially declared the application of sharia in Aceh, names of stores, offices, streets and schools were all written in Arabic. Headscarf-mandatory areas were declared all over the province.

Then came the catastrophic tsunami in December 2004. The Acehnese and people around the globe went into deep shock. The morality officers had no energy to do their job. Day in and day out, for weeks and months, the Acehnese – as well as thousands of volunteers from all over the world – were busy with humanitarian work. For the moment, the headscarf issue appeared to have taken the back seat.

More than one year after the giant tidal waves, however, the sharia officers are back with a vengeance. The "we-don't-want- another-tsunami" line is often used to justify harsh treatment against people allegedly violating sharia. And obviously, women are the most vulnerable group. Going by a local saying that the ups and downs of a country (province) depends on the "quality" of its women, some have openly accused women of ignoring Islamic law, a sin that triggered the killer tsunami.

There are thousands of important issues that need to be addressed in Aceh. Instead of paying attention to children wearing shorts while playing sport, our energy should be focused on education, taking care of orphans, keeping an eye on the rehabilitation process and so on.

Mashudi SR, is a researcher with Human Right NGO Coalition of Aceh, in his article published online at www.acehinstitute.org, reminds us of the importance of real hard work to build prosperity and social justice if we want to establish an Islamic community.

Abu Bakar, one of Prophet Muhammad's best friends, once said: "if social justice and welfare doesn't exist, then God's law should prioritize public welfare".

Mashudi stressed that forcing and humiliating others is strictly prohibited in Islam as a religion of peace. "It is right that sharia has been made to keep men and women to do things right. But it is totally wrong if we, in the name of sharia, take away all individual rights and impose it upon others. It's against sharia itself."

There is little hope, though. Prof. Ali Yasa, chief of the sharia office, admitted that the morality police officers sometimes take their job a little too far. He promised to evaluate their performance. Islamic law, he said, must be applied with gentleness and compassion. If that happens, then Aceh could really become a darussalam, a peaceful house.

[The writer is a journalist and the author of the book History Grows in Our Village - A Journal of Aceh-Tsunami Hot Zones.]

Transvestites brave Islamic law in Aceh

Agence France Presse - April 12, 2006

Banda Aceh – Her face heavily made-up, 'Bella Saphira' struts a darkened length of cement path along the Krueng Aceh river in Indonesia's Banda Aceh, wearing a loosely flowing dress but no Islamic veil. Elsewhere in the staunchly-Muslim province of Aceh, which has been gradually implementing Islamic sharia law, Muslim women are required to cover their heads – but then, Saphira is not a woman.

She belongs to Banda Aceh's small community of transvestites, who stake their claim on this riverside stretch every weekend after dark in an area where courting couples met before the December 2004 tsunami.

Tonight about 30 "waria" – Indonesian transvestites so named because they have the characteristics of a "wanita", or girl, but are born a boy or "pria" – congregate and chat. Some are in full drag, others wear men's clothing but wear carefully applied make-up.

Wafts of cheap perfume mix with the pungent odour of Indonesia's clove-flavoured cigarettes. Pieces of costume jewellery strategically adorning ears, necks and wrists glint under flashes of headlights from passing cars.

"We're just here to sit and gather together. We're not here to earn money, but to get satisfaction," says a smiling 'Kiki Yohana', whose manly features are barely covered by a thin sheen of foundation.

Kiki, a 23-year-old who works daytimes as a waiter on the outskirts of the provincial capital, wears a T-shirt and jeans.

"Kiki likes it this way. If I dress up, I'm afraid I'd run into relatives. I have a lot of relatives here," she says as she explains that the masculine clothes are not because she fears capture by the sharia police.

The Wilayatul Hisbah regularly patrol the streets of Banda Aceh in search of improperly dressed or unveiled women, as well as gamblers, drunkards or members of the opposite sex being affectionate in public.

More than 200 Acehnese, both men and women, have received public lashings across the province in the past year, paying for infringing the sharia introduced as part of broad-ranging autonomy handed to the province by Jakarta in 2001. Others are given verbal reprimands. But no transvestite has been at the receiving end of the lash.

"I am not afraid. We are only sitting together here," says Yohana, who has been detained twice by the sharia police but released after getting a thorough lecture on morals.

"They came by earlier, but they didn't say anything," says one of the long-haired waria squatting nearby, wearing a woman's Muslim tunic and pants.

Declining to give her name, she says that on busy Saturdays when the weather is pleasant, about 60 men, including some from outside town, gather here.

"They are very daring in offering their services. Even for 5,000 rupiah (50 cents), they are willing," she says with a giggle. Yohana says she is here not to earn money "but for pleasure".

From pedicab drivers to police, young and old, she says plenty of local men from many walks of life, young and old, frequent the area to pick up the waria, who are otherwise shunned in every day situations.

A local gang provides protection in return for "donations". "If anything happens, they protect us, and we donate money to them," Yohana explains.

Each transvestite gives 5,000 to 10,000 rupiah (about 50 cents to one dollar) each night to the gang members but if they are broke, they promise to buy them drinks when they are cashed up, she says.

Muhammad Natsir Ilyas, head of the Islamic sharia office overseeing the area, says action will eventually be taken against the waria if they are found soliciting for sex.

"We will summon them and provide them with guidance about what they are doing going against Islamic sharia, the very Islamic sharia we are trying to uphold here in Aceh," he says, without giving a time frame.

He says the men will be told to stop dressing as women, but added that "we will also listen to them, what they really want. We will take a persuasive approach because they too are citizens".

Saphira, who has remained quiet, drags from her cigarette and joins a group of friends noisily laughing in one of the empty huts serving as coffee and food stalls during the day. "She has implants," Yohana sniffs. "Others only use towels or even balloons."

As she speaks a tall young waria arrives. Despite a broad chest and crew cut, there is nothing manly about Irfanda's walk or talk. "I just played around with a policeman for about an hour. Ooh, it was good. I really got drunk" (on love), she coos, adding that she wants to go home to get some sleep.

National parties do not want to accept former GAM members

Tempo Interactive - April 13, 2006

Rini Kustiani, Jakarta – The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) believes that the national political parties do not want former GAM members to joint them. "Many of our [former] members have wanted to become members of national political parties, but have been refused", said GAM representative Faisal Putra in a discussion titled "Building a Sustainable Front for Peace in Aceh" that was held in Jakarta today.

With regard to the Draft Law on Aceh Government (RUU-PA), Putra explained the important points that must be contained in the draft include on the authority of the Aceh government, local political parties, economic development and forms of government. "What must unequivocally be regulated in the RUU-PA is the issue of authority", explained Putra.

On the question of the national parties not wanting to accept former GAM members into their parties, Ahmad Farhan Hamid, an Acehnese member of the House of Representatives Special (DPR) Committee on the RUU-PA said he regards this as a problem of causality. "It is just a causal question, and we need to understand what the background to these refusals are", he said. He added that this is because his party (the National Mandate Party, PAN) is ready to nominate former GAM members if indeed they want to be nominated by PAN.

With regard to the formation of local political parties and independent candidates, Hamid explained that most of the fractions in the DPR have responded positively to the formation of local parties. "Likewise with regard to independent candidates, because this is regarded as being in accordance with Law Numbers 2 and 3 an Law Number 18/2001", he explained.

Within the draft there are a number of important points including on Aceh remaining a part of the Indonesian Republic, rehabilitating Aceh's special status and the articles taken from the Memorandum of Understanding between GAM and the Indonesian government signed in Helsinki on August 15 last year.

[Translated by James Balowski.]

Slow rebuilding in Aceh after peace deal

Agence France Presse - April 8, 2006 Tiro – Ibrahim looks out toward what was once his modest vegetable farm in Indonesia's Aceh province, before decades of separatist conflict reduced his fields to little more than mud.

"I would like help to get my garden back that I had in the mountains, beyond the rice fields, so that I could grow more cocoa and onions," he says wistfully.

In August 2005, Jakarta signed a historic peace accord with the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami, but the province, one of the poorest in Indonesia, still bears the scars of war.

On the road to Tiro, the birthplace of former GAM leader Hasan Tiro, many fields remain unplanted. The village school is nothing but charred rubble – it was torched in the fighting.

Tiro did not suffer the ravages of the December 2004 tsunami that killed some 168,000 Acehnese, but years of clashes between government forces and separatist rebels have left the local economy in tatters all the same.

"To develop a field, buy seeds, it costs about 1,500 dollars. Where will they get that money from?" wonders Scott Guggenheim, one of the managers of a World Bank rehabilitation program in Aceh approved last July.

Residents say that although their livelihoods have not yet been restored, security is better in the region, as locals are no longer threatened by rebels when they head into the fields to tend to their crops.

But with the return of former GAM fighters and prisoners following last year's peace deal, unemployment has skyrocketed to 75 percent in some areas and some fear economic pressures will shatter the fragile peace.

"Most of the former combatants have come back to their villages and live with their families, but the reintegration process is still too small in scope," explains Muslahudin Daud, who works as a World Bank facilitator. The bank's 64.7-million-dollar program in Aceh, which is funded through June 2007, is aimed at rebuilding vital infrastructure in some 3,000 villages like Tiro.

"We have fruits but no roads to get to the markets where we could sell them," explains one farmer at a town hall meeting with visiting World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, who is on a fact- finding tour of the region.

"Reconstruction and the peace process are two things that will help each other if each of them is going to succeed," Wolfowitz told villagers.

Guggenheim notes: "We don't need transnational investments to come into Aceh. We need a sort of minimum standard of basic economic dignity for the people." But for the time being, even the World Bank official admits the situation is tenuous at best.

"Once the euphoria of the initial peace process has faded away and the people have gone back, if there is nothing for them to do..." he says, trailing off.

West Papua

Protests grow over group's Grasberg revenues

Financial Times (UK) - April 11, 2006

Rebecca Bream and Shawn Donnan – Freeport-McMoRan has faced a litany of criticism in recent months over the operation of its Grasberg copper and gold mine in Indonesia's remote and conflict-torn Papua province.

Its practice of paying the Indonesian security forces to safeguard the open pit mine – a legacy of Freeport's ties to the regime of former strongman Suharto – has for years prompted allegations of human rights abuses. The policy has also led to investigations by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Justice Department following a request from shareholders.

The company is facing increasing calls from Indonesian nationalists for its contract to be reviewed, and growing protests by pro-independence Papuan students demanding the mine's closure. One demonstration in Jayapura, the provincial capital, last month ended in the deaths of four members of the security forces.

"To us, you take, take, take and never give back. We don't see any benefits coming back to our island... that's why we are out there calling for Free-port to be closed," a Papuan student leader, who asked not to be identified, said yesterday. Adding to those problems, police in February clashed with illegal miners panning for gold in Free-port's tailings and a recent landslide crushed a staff mess hall adjacent to the Grasberg pit, killing three workers.

Meanwhile, Freeport's top two executives have reaped the financial benefits of a global commodities boom.

Between October last year and February this year, James "Jim Bob" Moffett, Freeport's chairman, and Richard Adkerson, president and chief executive, netted almost US$59m after taxes by cashing in stock options. This followed the award of 2005 compensation packages to the pair worth a total of US$77.3m, according to company SEC filings.

It also comes as Freeport faces renewed questions from activists, academics, politicians, and even government officials over the distribution of its revenues. And over whether – in what is a perpetual question for multi-national mining groups operating in the developing world – the indigenous people around its mine are getting their fair share.

Freeport says last year it spent US$64m on community development projects around the mine with US$42m of that going to a "1 per cent [of revenues] fund" established to appease angry local communities following riots in 1996.

But the contrast between that figure and the windfalls enjoyed by its top two executives rankles some.

"When you compare the sorts of salaries and benefits their top two executives have received with the sorts of benefits the community receives, the contrast couldn't be starker," says Chris Ballard, an Australian National University expert on Freeport. Mr Adkerson, Freeport chief executive, says this is "an apples and oranges comparison" that ignores the US$1.2bn in taxes and royalties the company paid Jakarta last year.

The 2005 compensation packages were the appropriate result of a banner year for the company while the pair's disposal of shares was "just a matter of personal financial prudence". "From the terms of performing for our shareholders, which is what our compensation is tied to, I think we've performed," Mr Adkerson says.

"And then if you look at the support we've provided for the Papuan community, it's far beyond what would be expected of a miningcompany in any situation."

He says the company paid the government more in royalties and taxes than would be expected anywhere else in the world: "If it was inCanada, Australia, Chile, Peru, the US, the taxes and royalties would be less than what we pay the government of Indonesia."

Mr Moffett, a colourful 67-year-old mining engineer who served as chief executive until 2003, has faced questions over his pay packet before. But his 2005 compensation, which included a record US$19.4m cash bonus, and his recent moves to dispose of shares, have prompted fresh questions about whether he plans to stay at Freeport.

This has rekindled speculation about a possible sale of the Grasberg mine, a joint venture with Rio Tinto, the Anglo- Australian mining group. One analyst says Mr Moffett has wanted to sell the mine for years but there have not been any buyers: "No one is prepared to take on the political risk ofIndonesia."

Mr Adkerson will say only that "we have not had any announced intention to sell the company, [Freeport], or to sell the Grasberg mine".

Mr Moffett remains a major shareholder. The combined worth of his existing holding and the shares underlying his stock options is at least US$155m at current share prices of about US$60.

Freeport says Mr Moffett remains "actively involved daily in the management of the company" and is under contract until 2008. People close to the company also say, however, that in recent years his involvement in Freeport has waned. His primary residence is now in Austin, Texas, rather than New Orleans, where Freeport is based.

Aceh grapples to preserve indigenous culture

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2006

Pandaya, Banda Aceh – Teen pop icons Raja and Ratu's joint concert turned Banda Aceh upside down last month. The partitions erected to segregate the thousands of boys and girls, as required by the province's sharia law, crumbled as the hysterical star- struck young people jostled to get closer to their idols on stage.

As Aceh becomes part of the global village, the young in the conservative, predominantly Muslim province care more about pop culture than they do about indigenous culture. Concerts by Jakarta rock bands attract a lot more people than local cultural shows.

Sahari Ganie, a senior official with the provincial art and culture agency, mentioned a local cultural show by the Cut Nya Dien group, at which 80 percent of the audience was made up of foreigners working on local projects.

An ethnic arts enthusiast from Jakarta, who recently visited Banda Aceh and ventured as far as Aceh Besar farther west, said he was terribly disappointed by the dearth of local arts and culture.

"When you turn on your car radio, Christina Aguelera and Peter Pan rule the airwaves," he quipped. "When you walk down the street, you don't hear local music from the blaring stereos."

Cultural rebellion? Maybe. But the addiction of young people in Aceh to pop culture is worrying the more conservative local leaders, who see foreign culture as fast eroding local values.

Like other urban centers elsewhere in the country, Banda Aceh is besieged by modern-day symbols. Satellite dishes are common sights in major towns, and even in the tsunami victims' camps in Meulaboh.

Western fast food restaurants have been mushrooming since members of the international community arrived in great numbers to help rebuild Aceh. FM radio stations are on the air the whole day, some relaying news from Jakarta and major cities around the world.

Preserving the local culture is a tough battle to fight. If the provincial budget is a yardstick to measure the administration's commitment to preserving local culture, then it says it all: only Rp 250 million is allocated for the promotion of arts and culture this year.

"The budget is far from sufficient," says Risman A Rachman, manager of the education and cultural promotion section of the BRR (Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency), which contributed Rp 1 billion for a recent arts congress in Banda Aceh.

Despite the small budget allocation, the provincial government and Arts Council have been doing their best to instill a love for indigenous culture in young people, including staging cultural events in the refugee camps and the pesantren (Islamic boarding schools). But the lack of funds and sponsors makes it impossible for them to hold large-scale promotional events.

The heavy presence of expatriates working on humanitarian projects in Aceh has also imported foreign values, both "appropriate" and "inappropriate" by local standards. "In their first days in Aceh, many bule (Westerners) would stroll around the streets after dusk carrying cans of beer as the locals performed their evening prayers," said Ganie. "But as soon as they became aware of sharia, they stopped that." But it is also undeniable that the expatriates show a nobleness of spirit and character that local people both respect and admire.

"The locals have learned a lot of positive things from the expatriates, such as honesty and punctuality," said Ganie. "They no longer consider foreigners and Christians as infidels and enemies of Islam." The peace agreement that the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed last year has rekindled hopes for a revival of local arts and culture after 30 years of bloody conflict.

Despite the lack of money, Aceh hopes to revitalize the meunasah, an Acehnese cultural symbol that has lost its luster due to the prolonged conflict.

The original concept of meunasah meant the village mosque, but in the local social structure it serves as more than simply a place of worship. It is a place where the people meet, chat, study together and make plans together. In short, the meunasah, of which there are more than 600 throughout Aceh, is the center of Acehnese community life.

After GAM and the government became involved in the armed conflict in 1976, the meunasah concept was practically destroyed. The meunasah became deserted because the people were subject to military and GAM harassment whenever they gathered together.

"The meunasah will regain their original functions, where traditional and religious leaders rekindle lost indigenous values," says Ganie.

Hopefully, a lasting peace will allow traditional songs to once again fill the airwaves along with Peter Pan and Christina Aguelera.

Asylum policy condemned by churches, rights groups

Australian Associated Press - April 14, 2006

Saffron Howden and Adam Gartrell, Canberra – The federal government's tough new asylum-seeker regime has been condemned as an act of moral abandonment timed to be obscured by the fallout from the AWB wheat scandal.

The government has announced it is extending its 2001 Pacific Solution following a rift with Indonesia over the decision to grant temporary protection visas to 42 Papuans last month.

Under the changes, anyone entering Australia illegally by boat – whether they made it to the mainland or not – would be sent to one of three offshore immigration detention centres for processing. The government hopes to send even those found to be genuine refugees to a "third country".

But Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone, who yesterday appeared at odds with Prime Minister John Howard on the matter, was today forced to concede some refugees may end up in Australia.

As Australians begin the Easter long weekend, church groups have denounced the new hardline policy. The Uniting Church today described it as an act of moral abandonment.

"It is a sad day for Australia when its government shelves our commitment to uphold the basic human rights of all people," Uniting Church president Reverend Dr Dean Drayton said.

A Melbourne Catholic church made its Good Friday pulpit available to Papuan man Herman Wainggai to recall the trauma he endured before escaping to Australia.

The congregation of St Ignatius Church in Richmond heard his story because it fit with the day's theme of persecution and oppression, the local priest said.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Australia could be in breach of its international obligations if it had one policy for asylum seekers arriving by boat, and another for those who arrived by plane.

"All asylum seekers must be treated equally," the human rights group said. "Australia's commitment under the international refugee convention... is that it will not penalise refugees based on their method of arrival."

Labor, refugee groups, and the minor parties say the new policy is aimed squarely at Papuans.

Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke said the announcement was deliberately timed to coincide with Prime Minister John Howard's appearance at an inquiry into kickbacks paid by an Australian company to Saddam Hussein's regime.

"To leave it right up until the day John Howard fronts the AWB inquiry is a long way from a coincidence," he said. Australia was allowing Jakarta to dictate its immigration policy, Mr Burke said.

"Yesterday, we had one of the most radical changes imaginable to our immigration policy where the government seriously proposed effectively excising, not one more island, but the entirety of Australia from the immigration zone. Our immigration policy is not being run by Canberra. It's being run by Jakarta."

The government today moved to clarify where it wants to send boat people found to be genuine refugees after Mr Howard and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone appeared at odds on the matter yesterday.

Senator Vanstone had indicated the government wanted all boat people to be sent to a country other than Australia after their claims for asylum were processed. But Mr Howard said refugees could end up being settled here as well.

Today, a spokesman for Senator Vanstone qualified the earlier statement. "It's our preference that anyone processed though this would be settled in countries other than Australia," the spokesman told AAP. "However, individuals will be assessed on a case-by-case basis and there may be circumstances where settlement in Australia is judged to be appropriate."

19 still on run over Indonesia mine clash

Agence France Presse - April 14, 2006

Jakarta – Nineteen people are still on the run following last month's riots in Indonesia's Papua province in which six people were killed, police said.

Four of the fugitives described as the "main actors" are suspected of being responsible for the deaths of five security officers in the March 16 riot at a US-run mine, Papua chief detective Paulus Waterpauw said.

"They are the coordinators of the rally and the individuals chiefly responsible for the death of our men. We believe they are still hiding in Papua," he told AFP by telephone.

Hundreds of protestors demanding the closure of a gold mine operated by a subsidiary of US mining giant Freeport-McMoRan clashed with security forces. Four paramilitary policemen, a navy officer and a civilian were killed.

A total of 20 suspects were currently in detention and prosecutors had completed court dossiers for eight of them, said Waterpauw. Those held face various charges, including inciting enmity against the government in public, violence causing death or injury and illegal possession of crude weapons.

The clash followed weeks of protests over the world's largest gold and copper mine, which is one of the Indonesian government's top sources of revenue.

Critics accuse Freeport-McMoRan of not giving enough to the people of Papua in return for the mine, which critics say causes pollution and is responsible for human rights abuses because of the military's protection of the site.

The latest violence has fanned fears of further unrest in the isolated province, some 3,000 kilometres (1,800 miles) from Jakarta, where Indonesia has grappled with a sporadic separatist conflict for decades.

Papua and structural violence

Jakarta Post - April 13, 2006

Max Lane, Sydney – The arrival of 43 Papuan refugees in Australia followed soon after by the violent dispersal of otherwise peaceful student demonstrations in Papua has resulted in two weeks of sustained media coverage of the situation in Papua and its implications for Australia.

The demonstrations in Papua were organized by a coalition of student and activists groups, the most significant of which are the Parliament of the Streets of West Papua (Parjal), the Papuan Students Association (AMP) and the Papuan National Students Front (FMNP).

The demonstrations were demanding the closure of Freeport and a full audit of the ecological and human rights impact of the huge foreign owned mine as well as an assessment of its actual contribution to economic welfare in Papua.

After a peaceful day of demonstrations outside the University of Cendrawasih on March 15 and a peaceful morning of demonstrating on March 16, the police, and then later reinforced my army units, attacked the students.

There was fighting on the campus and 5 police were killed and almost 30 students wounded, including some shot. Another demonstration took place in the town of Timika with more injuries. Since then there has been a police hunt for student activists. Many are still in hiding.

During these demonstrations and in many statements since then, several very clear demands have emerged from these student and community groups.

First, there is the demand for the closure and full audit of Freeport. Second, there is a demand for all Indonesian Armed Forces to withdraw from Papua. Third, there is a demand for a democratic, free and open national and international dialog, involving Papuans, the Indonesians and the "international community". The Papuan groups calling for this dialog are asking for an international presence pointing to the big role foreign interests already play in Papua, through the Freeport mine.

The call for a democratic national and international dialog to discuss how to resolve the Papuan issue represents also a call for the end of repression of Papuans, or anybody else in Papua or Indonesia, who do call for secession.

There can be no democratic dialog without the full range of opinion being able to participate, including from the 35-45 percent of the people in Papua who are not indigenous Papuans.

Clearly this democracy will be impossible while the army remains a significant presence in Papua, with its own agenda. Since it has been forced into the background, first in Indonesia as a whole after the fall of Soeharto, and then more recently in Aceh, Papua remains its last remaining "sphere of influence".

This demand for a free, open dialog should be supported even though it goes further than some of the calls from more moderate sections of Papuan society who are concentrating on trying to get a renegotiation with Jakarta on the Special Autonomy Law, an end to Jakarta's efforts to divide Papua into three provinces and more economic benefits for Papua.

A democratic atmosphere free of all repression will be the best way to allow Papuans to debate out and form a clear vision of what they want and is a fundamental necessity for the conduct of the kind of dialog that they are demanding.

In relation to this, some recent announcements by the Australian government are totally counter-productive. The majority of Indonesian and Papuan opinion has consistently identified the enemy of democracy in Papua and as the "security approach".

This is the attempt to try to control and resolve political issues through the use of the security apparatus – the police and army. Australian Minister of Defense, Brendon Nelson's suggestion of joint naval patrols and PM John Howard's suggestion that refugee visa processes be revised for Papuan refugees both reinforce this "security approach" strengthening military and bureaucratic control rather than democratic political struggle.

If Papuans try to come to Australia by boat, it will be above all a political statement they are making about the lack of freedom in Papua. Capturing them with naval patrol boats when they are simply using their right to leave their country just compounds this lack of freedom.

Of course, nobody can predict absolutely what the outcome of dialog between Papuans, Indonesians and international representatives will be if carried out in genuine free and democratic atmosphere. Whatever path it leads to: An autonomous province, self-government within Indonesia, some other similar formula, or a referendum and independence, the fundamentally decisive factor will be the opinions of the people for whom Papua is home.

[The writer is lecturer in Indonesian Studies, University of Sydney.]

Papua, asylum and decision-making follies

Jakarta Post - April 13, 2006

Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, Jakarta – It is naive to think that the country's top circle of political-security decision makers could so easily lead the nation into folly.

But Indonesia's impulsiveness in recalling its ambassador from Canberra after Australia granted temporary visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers remains a crude and unnecessary response.

Not only was the decision rash – given the lack of clear objectives or an exit strategy – but it was also mistaken, as seeking political asylum is a constitutional right.

Defense and diplomacy are spheres which shed light upon an organization's decision making. In deciphering this decision making process we may find profound, albeit not necessarily justified, reasons which spurred such a decision.

It can be further understood within the context of the persistent claims by authorities, not least those made by Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo AS on Tuesday, of the involvement of "outside elements" in unrest in Papua.

The initial bent to recall the ambassador does seem to have come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who were, according to sources, "responding to domestic pressure to take a tougher stand against Australia".

The proposal was taken to the Coordinating Meeting on Political and Security Affairs the next morning.

The most interesting development is how swiftly that meeting thrust itself into a judgment which undid the painstaking efforts of the past year to forge better ties with an often difficult neighbor. But informed sources suggest that the asylum issue may just have been the catalyst for a decision framed under an immense fear of perceived external influences in various Papuan unrest.

The mindset was apparently formed months earlier when intelligence reports, presented to officials in Jakarta, suggested that plans were afoot, perhaps with assistance of foreign volunteers, to radicalize a student demonstration in mid-March.

Officials high up in Jakarta anticipated the event by ordering security forces to refrain from arming themselves when controlling the protest. Despite the precautions, the March 16 demonstration in Abepura ended in bloodshed and claimed five lives.

The preparedness of protesters, many of whom were said not to be students, was noted in the International Crisis Group's latest report, which alleged that "there was a minivan full of rocks apparently deliberately collected for use by rioters".

The March 16 protest itself may also have been an escalation of the unrest sparked by discontented Papuan pro-independence elites angry at the trickery used to arrest a guerrilla fighter suspected in the 2003 shooting of Freeport employees.

Hence, when these factors are taken into account, one can understand the prevailing reaction among top security circles when they were suddenly presented with the news that Australia had granted visas to Papuan asylum seekers.

The decision to withdraw the ambassador may have nothing to do with Australia itself. Instead it was part of a plunge towards action based on fuzzy intelligence, stereotyped suppositions, the fickleness of public opinion and a failure to see choices as part of a larger context.

One can immediately see the potential for a "groupthink" mentality within this circle. Simply put, a collective process characterized by the uncritical acceptance of a point of view where outsiders are negatively portrayed, bizarre policies rationalized and contradictory evidence is discredited.

Perhaps the most notorious global example of groupthink of late was the US intelligence community's assessment of the threat of Saddam Hussein, which ultimately led to the invasion of Iraq.

Beyond the spur of conspiracy fears, the decision, which jarred relations with Australia, could also be a simple case of classic deception. The aim being to divert attention away from international pressure for Jakarta to implement special autonomy in Papua.

Former US Secretary of State George Marshall – the man whose policies paved the way for western Europe's post-war reconciliation and reconstruction – once noted that "action should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative".

Tragically the recall is doing neither, and is instead a folly creating more dilemmas.

Muffled cry of freedom falls on deaf ears

Sydney Morning Herald - April 12, 2006

John Martinkus – I was last in Papua early in 2003, reporting on the rise of Islamic militia groups aligned with the Indonesian Army on the PNG-Papua border, the intimidation and attacks on human rights workers by the Indonesian military and the outrage of Papuan leaders at the insincerity of the government in Jakarta in honouring the 2001 autonomy law.

In the intervening three years these issues have remained the main concerns for Papuans. The only difference now is that the Indonesian authorities have got better at keeping the information out of the Western media and the people of Papua are more desperate to be heard.

The Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club confirmed in February that in the previous 18 months not one foreign correspondent had received permission to travel to Papua. As for visiting journalists, I had direct experience of the new restrictions in May 2003 when I received my temporary press card in Jakarta. Stamped across the front of the card was: "Not for visits to Aceh Papua or Maluku." That was then introduced as the standard for visiting journalists.

In an odd twist, the man who authorised my restricted accreditation back then, M. Wahid Supriyadi, is now consul- general for Indonesia in Melbourne and penned an opinion piece published by both The Age and the Herald Sun this week in which he stated that we were in an age of global communications, when not a single untoward death in Papua could possibly go unnoticed in the world's media. An interesting comment from a man who had the job of keeping foreign journalists out of Papua for the past three years.

But journalists are only one of many groups and organisations being kept out of Papua. The ban has extended to academics, church groups, non-government organisations, human rights monitors and even an ambassadorial-level European Union delegation last year. Human rights organisations in Papua have come under very real and direct threat from the Indonesian military and are very restricted in what information they can gather and what they dare report publicly.

One of the most chilling interviews I had in Papua on my last visit was with Johannes Bonay, the director of Papua's only functioning human rights organisation, ELSHAM. He told me how his wife and daughter were seriously wounded on December 28, 2002, when unidentified gunmen ambushed the car in which they were travelling between the border posts of Papua and PNG.

The police investigation identified Indonesian military as being present when the shooting occurred. If we analyse the reports made by the people and the investigation made by the police we can divine that Kopassus was behind this, Bonay told me at the time. Back then he was receiving none-too-subtle threats with recordings of someone being tortured being repeatedly left on his answering machine. He has since left Papua.

It is in this information-poor environment that Papuan protests against the division of Papua and rejection of the 2001 autonomy law have taken place largely unnoticed by the press in Australia. Last year, on August 12, 10,000 people marched for 20 kilometres into the capital, Jayapura, to protest against what they called the total failure of the autonomy law. This law had as its centrepiece the formation of a Papuan People's Assembly as a representative body for Papuan leaders.

Concerned that the proposed assembly would become a vehicle for independence support, the former president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, ordered a restructuring of the administration of Papua into three provinces, basically rendering the autonomy law unworkable. The current President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has endorsed this with last month's elections for the new province of West Irian Jaya going ahead, to the dismay of Papuan leaders.

Canberra and Jakarta can talk all they like about implementing autonomy, but the people of Papua have firmly rejected it. Whether that rejection is reported or not, that is what is driving events on the ground, not, as our Prime Minister implies, the encouragement of supporters of independence in Australia.

Maybe Canberra doesn't know what is happening. As a US State Department official told me in Papua in 2002, Australian embassy officials in Jakarta showed no interest in events there, and they didn't want to be caught out by knowing too much, as they had been in East Timor. [John Martinkus is the author of Quarterly Essay 7, Paradise Betrayed: West Papua's Struggle for Independence. He also wrote Indonesia's Secret War in Aceh (Random House, 2004) and A Dirty Little War: An Eyewitness Account of East Timor's Descent into Hell 1997-2000 (Random House, 2001).]

Hunt goes on for Papua attackers

Jakarta Post - April 12, 2006

Tiarma Siboro and Nethy Dharma Somba, Jakarta/Papua – Security authorities suspect "outside elements" may have been involved in Monday's deadly attack on a military post in Papua, with the hunt continuing for the killers.

The government said in Jakarta that it would not send reinforcements to Papua, but would intensify intelligence operations to arrest armed civilians blamed for the incident in which four people, including two soldiers, died in Wembi village, Keerom regency.

"We haven't decided to deploy more troops to Papua because, for now, we will step up intelligence operations to find the mastermind of the attack," Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo AS said Tuesday after chairing a meeting on the issue.

Widodo said security forces identified the separatist Free Papuan Movement (OPM) as being behind the incident. He added, however, that "outside elements probably could have supported the act".

He did not identify the latter, but noted last month's violent rally near the Cendrawasih University campus in Abepura, as well as the recent awarding of visas by the Australian administration to 42 asylum seekers from Papua.

Also at the meeting were Indonesian Military commander Air Chief Marshall Djoko Suyanto, chief of the State Intelligence Agency Maj. Gen. (ret) Sjamsir Siregar, secretary-general of the Defense Ministry Lt. Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin and Papua acting governor Sodjuangan Situmorang.

Worried health-care students from Jayapura had their work experience program cut short Tuesday after witnessing the attack.

A representative of Jayapura polytechnic administration, Chrisman Silitonga, said the decision to pull hundreds of students from the area came at the request of parents and students following the violence in Wembi.

"The students have been traumatized by the experience of the violent clash. Initially, we planned to only halt the program in Wembi village, but due to security fears, we decided to bring all 190 students back to Jayapura from across Keerom regency," Silitonga told reporters on Tuesday.

The three-week-long health service program provided for locals in Keerom regency was scheduled to end April 30.

Keerom Police chief Sr. Comr. Robert Kennedy said people were going about their daily activities and the situation was back to normal.

Monday's violence began when a group of about 30 armed men attacked soldiers monitoring a health program in Wembi. Denaweng Diaz Allocmabin, among the group of 22 students helping out at the health center, said the incident happened at midday as the students ate lunch.

"Suddenly I heard the sound of gunfire, followed by a horrible scene. It was a soldier, with wounds all across his body, running through the military post, while some men wielding machetes chased after him. The soldier fell to the ground.

"Soon after that, another soldier whose arm had been cut off ran across the post. In trying to save his life, he attempted to reach a bathroom, but he died before he got there," Diaz said.

The military post is located about 15 meters from the local health center.

"I saw the attackers of about 20 armed men brandishing axes, arrows, machetes and other sharp weapons," Diaz added. "Just as soon as they attacked the military post, they fled and disappeared."

The bodies of First Sgt. Achmad Basori and First Pvt. Sukarno from the 509th battalion of the Army's Strategic Reserves Command were flown to Lampung and Jombang respectively to be laid to rest.

The clash also claimed the lives of two of the attackers. They were identified as Tinus Wenda and Edi Pagawak. Their bodies were buried at Arso public cemetery.

Meanwhile, another soldier, Second Corporal Sugihardjo, and a student, Joseph Timisela, suffered serious wounds. They are undergoing treatment at local hospitals.

Mimika's tribes lacking in basic rights

Jakarta Post - April 12, 2006

Markus Makur, Timika – The National Commission on Human Rights urged Mimika regency administration and mining company PT Freeport Indonesia to pay more attention to tribal communities in the regency.

The head of the commission's economic, social and cultural affairs subdivision team, Amidhan, said the regency's residents currently had limited access to basic services such as education, food and healthcare.

Amidhan, who met leaders of Kamoro and Amungme tribes', as well as representatives of traditional miners in Mimika on Monday, said that such problems might lead to violence.

Based on information from around 25 tribal leaders and women activists, Amidhan added, human rights violations were frequent in the regency and were conducted by the Mimika administration, while the regency council had not performed as expected over the last two years.

"Members of the community, represented by tribal and community leaders, said Freeport's programs of empowerment and compensation had not been run well," Amidhan said.

He said the commission was in town to find out if the company was being responsible towards the tribal community in Mimika and its other programs for residents.

"(We also checked on) how the one percent fund was being managed by the seven tribes," he said. The commission will also meet the regency's officials, council members and Freeport representatives to gather data related to the 1999 Law on Human Rights.

When asked whether there were any violations of residents' human rights by security personnel, he said there had been.

"But this information will need detailed facts. This team has no authority to gather data on violations conducted by security personnel against the people. But we'll deliver the information to the government. This information needs facts because this is related to crime," Amidhan said.

He said in the meeting, the seven tribes and traditional miners had demanded the central government include them when renewing the contact with Freeport, saying the earlier contract had only involved the central government and Papua provincial administration.

The controversy over Freeport's existence in Papua escalated last month when five security personnel were killed in a bloody clash against protesters in Abepura. The protesters claimed the company's presence was not beneficial to the local community.

However, the government said it would honor the contract it signed with the giant US company but would conduct a financial audit of the distribution of funds to the local community to determine "whether the company does not benefit the local community" as charged.

Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo AS previously said that Freeport ran its operation based on an amended contract signed with the government in 1991, while the first contract was signed in 1967.

Under the amended contract, the company provides funds for community development programs. In 2005 alone, it allocated Rp 400 billion (US$43.7 million) for this purpose, including Rp 5 billion each for the Amungme and Komoro tribes, the biggest tribal groups in Papua.

Solidarity with West Papua

Green Left Weekly - April 12, 2006

Sarah Stephen – Soon after the federal government's decision to grant 42 West Papuan asylum seekers temporary protection visas, an April 2 national day of action in solidarity with West Papua welcomed the decision while urging the government not to ignore the human rights situation in West Papua.

One-hundred-and-fifty protesters participated in a West Papuan flag-raising ceremony in Sydney, and heard from Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, Sister Susan Connelly from the Mary MacKillop Institute and John Collins, an Australian soldier who was stationed in Merauke during WWII. West Papuans holding a "Free West Papua" banner led a march through the city.

Nick Chesterfield from the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) reports that 200 people turned out for the Melbourne protest. Speakers included: Sixta Mambor, a student from West Papua; Greens Senator Bob Brown, who called for a referendum to enable self-determination in West Papua; Anglican priest Peter Woods, who witnessed the March 16 shootings in the West Papuan town of Abepura, and Asia-Pacific solidarity activist Vannessa Hearman.

The Brisbane rally of 80, organised by the Refugee Action Collective, was addressed by representatives of AWPA, the Greens, the Democrats and Labor for Refugees. From Perth, Anthony Benbow reports that the rally of 150 was opened by songwriter and activist Kelly Newton-Wordsworth who performed "Song for West Papua", which she wrote shortly after the asylum seekers arrived on January 18. Peter Stewart from the Christian Centre for Social Action and Phil Chilton from the Refugee Rights Action Network also spoke.

On the same day, a West Papuan family of six was rumoured to have left Merauke in a boat headed for Australia. PM John Howard expressed relief when they were eventually located in PNG, saying it was a "good thing". On April 6, he told the media: "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."

However, as Nettle noted in an April 5 media release: "The Australian government must explain the contradiction of recognising the repression West Papuans face [by granting the 42 visas] and yet continuing to support the people that inflict this repression – Indonesian authorities."

Students lead escalation of struggle

Green Left Weekly - April 12, 2006

Max Lane – On April 5, the Papuan People's Assembly (MRP) issued a resolution calling for the closure of the huge Freeport mine, a demand that had been raised by student protesters at a March 15- 16 demonstration and at protests earlier in the year in both Papua and other parts of Indonesia.

It is student activists and community groups that have been spearheading the deepening political struggle in Papua. They accuse Freeport of damaging the environment, being involved in human rights abuses, collaborating with an abusive military and of not channelling any of the wealth generated by the mine to people in Papua.

The MRP was formed under a 2001 Autonomy Law and is representative of the broad Papuan bureaucratic, business and social elite that developed during the Suharto years.

The April 5 MRP memorandum was framed in moderate terms, calling on the Indonesian government to begin negotiations with the US government and Freeport over the mine's closure. It called for negotiations with the traditional owners of the area if closure could not be achieved, and for the withdrawal of Indonesian security forces from around Freeport and the institution of a community-based security system.

According to the Papuan National Student Front (FMNP), at least 24 students were injured during a March 15-16 anti-Freeport demonstration at the University of Cendrawasih. Five suffered gunshot wounds. Five Indonesian security officers were killed at the protest.

The demonstration was initiated by the Parliament of the Streets of West Papua (Parjal) and leaders of the United West Papua Popular Struggle Front (PEPERA), which is probably the broadest activist coalition in Jayapura.

The protest began on March 15 when about 300 students gathered outside the University of Cendrawasih in the town of Abepura, near Jayapura. According to an FMNP report, the elite mobile brigade police were on hand but no clashes took place.

The next day students began preparing to blockade the two-lane road in front of the university using tyres and tree branches. At 9am, the police arrived again. Around noon, after negotiations with student leaders, additional security forces arrived.

There were no incidents until 1pm, when the police began tearing down the street barricades, firing tear gas to clear away the students. Students retreated while throwing stones back at the police. When the police started detaining some student leaders, protesters went on the offensive, using bottles, rocks and sticks.

The police responded by throwing rocks back at students and firing. At around 3pm, police entered the university compound and charged at the students. It was during this clash that the security officers were killed and scores of others, both police and students, were injured. At 4pm, army units arrived and managed to force the students to retreat, some fleeing into the mountains behind the university.

During the evening, police units roamed the streets beating up young people they suspected of being students. By the following day the streets had calmed down, however there are still reports of police and army units hunting for students they believed were involved in the protests, and protesters were still in hiding. According to a statement by the Papuan Students Alliance (AMP), those detained include Selfius Bobi, PEPERA secretary-general.

The University of Cendrawasih demonstration followed other anti- Freeport protests in Timika (a town near Freeport) and at the mine itself. For a few days in February, the mine closed due to a protest blockade and solidarity demonstrations were held in several Indonesian cities.

On March 16, the People's Democratic Party (PRD) issued a statement supporting the Papua protests. The statement supported the "Papuan people's demand for the closure of Freeport" and said that the mine should not be re-opened without permission from the Papuan people. It also called for full transparency in all legal procedures after the demonstration and laid full blame for the incident on the police for violently dispersing the student demonstration. The Indonesian environmental organisation, WALHI, an affiliate of Friends of the Earth International, has also supported PEPERA.

In a statement issued on March 17, the AMP issued three demands: the closure of Freeport and a full audit of its record in the realms of democratic rights, environment and human rights; a full investigation of those responsible for the attacks on the student protesters; and a national and international dialogue to "resolve the Papuan and Freeport problems". PEPERA, together with Parjal, issued a similar statement and also called for the withdrawal of all Indonesian army soldiers from the area around Freeport.

There are now many activist groups in Papua struggling around a range of issues, most under the slogan of Papua Merdeka (Free Papua). PEPERA has emerged as one of the most militant groupings. Student groups such as FMNP and AMP are part of PEPERA, as are other activist organisations.

The group was formed on September 30. It was the product of a process that began in October 2004, when students mobilised against a military operation in the mountains trying to capture a Free Papua Movement (OPM) guerrilla commander.

The militarisation of the province was accompanied by wide- ranging human rights violations against the civilian population in the Puncak Jaya area. Students radicalised through a series of street protests and formed Parjal.

Later, other organisations developed, including the Papuan Students Association, the Papuan Students Committee and the Coalition for the Struggle of the Fundamental Rights of the Papuan Civilian People (KPHARSP).

These organisations continued protesting, especially against the Autonomy Law passed in 2001, throughout 2005. As the protests drew in more people, the idea of a coalition gathering all of these forces together was discussed and a conference was held in September at which PEPERA was formed. Later, however, some of these organisations, including Parjal, left the front.

Elite opinion in Papua is channelled through the Papuan Presidium Council (DPD), established by the 2001 Papuan People's Congress, the Papuan Customary Law Council (DAP), also established by the People's Congress, and through mainstream parties and community groups elected or appointed to the provincial parliament or the MRP.

On August 12, the DAP called a demonstration that symbolically handed back the Autonomy Law and the MRP to Jakarta. Called with the authority of traditional leaders, it attracted tens of thousands of people. All of the organisations that later formed PEPERA participated. However, while it rejected the Autonomy Law, the DAP was criticised by the students for proposing no next steps for the movement.

After PEPERA formed, it issued a statement with its own demands that summed up the views of the militant wing of the movement:

• The holding of a broad, democratic and open "national dialogue" to be prepared by the Indonesian president and ministers for the purpose of resolving the Papuan political issue.
• The formation of a special commission on Papua by the Indonesian House of Representatives.
• The repeal by the House of Representatives of the Autonomy Law and the regulations regarding the formation of the MRP.
• The disbanding of the Papua House of Representatives parliamentary committees on the Autonomy Law and on the MRP. - The statement declared that the Autonomous Government of Papua was no longer valid, as the Papuan people handed back autonomy at the August 12 protest.

PEPERA argued that the Autonomy law had been a failure, pointing to the continuing miserable economic condition of the Papuan people, 90% of whom are categorised as poor, and continuing military repression. At that time PEPERA threatened to call for a general strike and occupation of government offices as part of a preparation for a campaign to demand a referendum if these demands were not met.

If repression and refusal to negotiate on the demands raised by PEPERA, including the demand for a closure of Freeport, and by demands from the more moderate elite for a renegotiation of the region's status continue to be rejected, the current struggle may escalate to a campaign for a referendum on the region's future. Even the moderate MRP raised the possibility of moving in that direction, if only in passing, in a memorandum it sent to Jakarta at the beginning of this year.

At the moment, both moderate and radical wings of the movement are supporting the call for an open dialogue on the future of Papua, the withdrawal of the TNI (the Indonesian army) either from Papua altogether, as with PEPERA, or from around Freeport and the closure of the Freeport mine. These are also demands being supported by most of the radical democratic forces in Indonesia.

[Max Lane is a lecturer in Indonesian studies at the University of Sydney and the convener of Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific.]

Military provokes violence in Papua: Papuan leader

Agence France Presse - April 11, 2006

Jakarta – The Indonesian military is stirring up unrest and intimidating residents in the remote province of Papua, an independence campaigner charged.

The security forces were trying to provoke "horizontal conflict" or violent reactions from students and other civilian groups in Papua, alleged Willy Mandowen, from the Papua Presidium, a group campaigning peacefully for Papuan independence.

"Some elements of the military are still playing a role in contributing to horizontal conflict as a way to maintain their operational budget," Mandowen told a gathering of foreign journalists.

Military units stationed in regions fraught with separatist or sectarian violence, such as Papua, are routinely given greater budget allocations.

Intimidation by the security forces was also widespread, forcing many Papuans to flee their villages, or to flee over the border to Papua New Guinea, or to Australia, said Mandowen.

The allegations come as Indonesia strongly disputed claims by 42 Papuan asylum-seekers that Indonesian forces are committing genocide in the province. Last month Canberra granted them temporary visas, a decision which has sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries.

"The 42 asylum-seekers are genunine asylum seekers because there are intimidation and threats," Mandowen said of the Papuans who left for Australia on an outrigger canoe in January. "Last year alone in Puncak Jaya, 5,000 people were displaced because of military intimidation," he added, referring to people who reportedly fled their remote village in the highlands of Papua.

Mandowen also called on Jakarta to lift a de facto ban on foreign reporters entering the province, to improve the "humanitarian situation".

"Should we need a tsunami like in Aceh, that anyone can come to Papua?" he asked, referring to Jakarta's decision to lift a ban on foreign reporters in the former war-torn province of Aceh after it was battered by the tsunami.

Presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng denied there were ongoing violations, saying that Indonesian forces operating in Papua were under instructions to avoid any violence.

It was this sensitivity to human rights which had caused the death of four security officers in violent student protests in the Papuan capital of Jayapura last month, said Mallarangeng.

A small armed guerilla force, known as the Free Papua Movement (OPM), has been fighting Indonesian forces since the 1960s when Indonesia assumed control of the former Dutch colony.

Dismissing OPM as "never a serious security threat", political analyst Sidney Jones said Jakarta's biggest headache was not the guerrilla movement but student and civilian groups who – disappointed with the government's offers of political autonomy – were now backing independence.

"There is by all accounts a growing radicalization of the Papuan elite and not just in Jayapura," said Jones, from the International Crisis Group.

She called on Jakarta to give greater power to a Papuan tribal council, established as part of an autonomy deal, and negotiate with Papuans leader in a bid to lessen support for independence.

Papua was incorporated into Indonesia after a 1969 referendum which was widely criticized as a sham.

Indonesian military rules West Papua, not Jakarta

Canberra Times - April 11, 2006

Bruce Haigh – For as long as the Indonesian army administers West Papua, abuses will occur toward the indigenous Papuan population. The raison d'etre of the military is to hold the archipelago together – an archipelago inherited by the Javanese from the Dutch after a guerilla war. The Indonesian Republic came into being on December 27, 1949. West New Guinea as it was known remained with the Dutch. Indonesia pressed the Dutch to hand over West New Guinea, including the threat of force.

The hand-over from Dutch to Indonesian administration occurred in 1963. It was the same year as Indonesia's President Sukarno launched a program of confrontation (Konfrontasi) against the new Malaysian Federation.

Australian troops were deployed in support of Malaysia, and as a result found themselves in action against Indonesian troops in Borneo. That was 42 years ago. In 1969, a UN supervised Act of Free Choice was held to determine if the Papuans wanted independence or incorporation into the Indonesian Republic. The Indonesians hand-picked Papuan delegates who agreed to incorporation. The basic tension in the relationship between Australia and Indonesia over the past 42 years has been the Indonesian army and its role in the region, particularly with respect to maintaining control of the archipelago.

After the collapse of the Suharto regime in late 1997, the military was forced to accept a reduction in power and influence. Elections were held which on the face of it further reduced the power of the military. But in fact the reduction in power was only in terms of the ease of direct and immediate access to civilian politicians in Jakarta. The role and prestige of the military in holding the archipelago together remained unchallenged.

Then came East Timor. The elected civilians in Jakarta undermined the military – indeed humiliated the military through the terms negotiated over the exit of East Timor from the republic.

However, it was easier for the military to blame Australia for its interventionist role than to get stuck into Indonesian politicians who had decided to quit East Timor. The military has not given up its blueprint to regain East Timor, and nor its desire to hang on to West Papua despite the limited nature of the claims of the Indonesians over the territory.

The Indonesian army administers the archipelago with an iron fist. It does not tolerate dissent and has an economic imperative for maintaining tight control. If John Howard wants to bring about change in West Papua he must address himself to the Indonesian army, not the Indonesian Government.

The politics of Indonesia are that the civilian politicians of Jakarta can't change or influence a thing in West Papua. It is a military-controlled province. The government of Indonesia exercises little power or authority outside Jakarta. Whatever authority or power it enjoys in the provinces is at the discretion and interpretation of the army.

The protest coming out of Jakarta at the moment from Indonesian politicians and commentators is directed as much at the military as it is at Australia. They have to appear tough in order to try and influence the army to take them seriously while at the same time seeking to pass a message to the army to soften the brutal administration of West Papua in order to avoid international scrutiny that might force another, and this time properly conducted, Act of Free Choice.

The Government in Jakarta has little leverage over the army. For some time the army has been applying pressure on the Government to increase their power to the level they enjoyed under Suharto. Whether they achieve this by undermining elected representation to the point of rendering it ineffectual or by engineering the collapse of the electoral process does not overly concern them. The aim of the army is to directly control the affairs of Indonesia and to have control over policy.

If John Howard and Alexander Downer want to reduce tension in West Papua they must address themselves to the army. For it is the army that runs and controls West Papua.

Its indigenous population do not believe they are part of Indonesia. They believe they were tricked by the Act of Free Choice into giving up their sovereignty. Every day of brutal and oppressive administration by the Indonesian army only reinforces that belief. The continued suffering of the West Papuans increases the prospect of civil war and refugees.

If Howard and Downer are to develop a relationship with Indonesia that has a measure of strength and durability, they should learn from the mistakes of Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Evans. They must talk directly. They must highlight, address and discuss the problems as they see them with the government and the army. They must not talk out of both sides of the mouth. The must not sweep the problem of West Papua under the carpet where it will only fester. They must not bend to the old Jakarta appeasement lobby in Australia.

[Bruce Haigh is a retired Australian diplomat who served in north and south Asia and the Middle East.He was also director of the Indonesia section of DFAT. He has written a book on Indonesian/Australian relations, The Great Australia Blight, and another on regional defence, Pillars of Fear. He is also a former soldier and now farms near Mudgee, NSW.]

Autonomy a better deal for Papuans

Sydney Morning Herald - April 11, 2006

Hugh White – Australia's debate over Papua in the past fortnight has fallen into the ruts worn in our national consciousness by East Timor. We hear of principles on one side, and pragmatism on the other. But that is a false dichotomy, as we all should have learned from East Timor. Unless we can rethink the issue in new and clearer terms, we will have little hope of avoiding another tragedy.

Both sides have reoccupied their old positions unthinkingly. On one side there are the supporters of moral principle, who are back arguing that Australia's values should place us squarely on the side of independence.

On the other are the advocates of pragmatism, who are telling us again that our interests in good relations with Indonesia require us to acquiesce in what they seem to accept is the serious oppression of some of our nearest neighbours.

Strangely enough, the Government itself seems to accept this way of seeing the issue, and to have abandoned the language of principle to their opponents. For the past fortnight, Canberra has talked about Australia's policy on Papua in purely pragmatic terms. Its first priority has been to uphold its reputation for being tough on illegal immigration. Its second priority has been to keep relations with Indonesia in order. The welfare of the people of Papua seems to enter the Government's equation as a distant third, if at all.

But John Howard must know that a policy which elevates pragmatism over principles cannot be sustained. After a while, pragmatism starts to look like appeasement. That was one of the lessons of East Timor. As Howard said seven years ago, on the day after Australian forces landed in East Timor in 1999, "national interests cannot be pursued without regard to the values of the Australian community".

Jakarta understands this lesson from East Timor better than Canberra does. It realises events in Papua could easily put irresistible public pressure on Howard to live up to his principles, abandon pragmatism and support Papuan independence. But that, too, would be an unsustainable position, for a simple but very important reason.

Australian support for independence cannot deliver freedom to Papua, but it would make it much harder for the Papuans to find a better life within Indonesia. Those who urge that Australia can force the pace on Papuan independence are also drawing a wrong lesson from East Timor, based on an inflated view of Australia's role in 1999. East Timor's independence was an Indonesian decision. Australia's role was in the end more marginal than most Australians (and many Indonesians) like to admit.

There is no reason to expect that Indonesia can be persuaded to let Papua go, and very little Australia can do to force the issue. On the other hand, Australia can have great influence on the way Indonesia deals with Papua. This influence is mostly negative.

Australian support for Papuan independence would poison the political waters in Jakarta, scupper hopes for special autonomy, and quiet probably provoke a more brutal conflict in Papua which we would be powerless to abate.

These risks need to be carefully considered by Australian supporters of independence. Those who believe they have principles on their side still have an obligation to consider the likely consequences of their proposals. There is no high moral justification for ill-informed decisions and ineffectual gestures that end up doing more harm than good.

So where do we go on Papua? There must be better options for Australia than a stale choice between the Government's unsustainably amoral pragmatism and the high-principled but feckless adventurism of the pro-independence lobby.

To find better options we need to reframe the debate. We should start by affirming that our foreign policy must uphold our principles. That means we need to put the welfare of the people of Papua firmly in the centre of the policy frame. We need to ask what, pragmatically, in all the circumstances, is the best achievable outcome for them.

The answer is surely the effective implementation of the special autonomy package which has been on the table in Jakarta since 2001. We then need to ask what Australia can do to promote special autonomy.

Most likely the best thing Australia can do is to neutralise the false arguments of autonomy's opponents in Jakarta. We need to make clear that Australia does not and will not support independence for Papua.

To do that the Government has to start arguing forcefully and effectively in favour of special autonomy against those here in Australia who advocate a pro-independence posture. And it needs to argue on the basis of principle, not pragmatism.

Finally, we need to remind ourselves that Australians have legitimate and morally important interests in this situation, too.

It's not mere pragmatism for the Government to want to preserve good bilateral relations with Indonesia. The consequences for Australia of a hostile relationship would be very serious, and could affect the welfare of individual Australians deeply. There is nothing immoral in weighing up these factors in the policy balance alongside the welfare of the Papuans. As it happens, Australia's interests and theirs converge on special autonomy.

[Hugh White is a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute and professor of strategic Studies at ANU]

West Papuans are happy to be Indonesians

Melbourne Age - April 10, 2006

M. Wahid Supriyadi – The granting of temporary protection visas to 42 West Papuans has given new ammunition to anti-Indonesian activists.

Old issues such as genocide, human rights abuse and the legitimacy of the Act of Free Choice (whereby West Papua became a part of Indonesia) have once again reared their heads thanks to the arrival of 43 Papuan asylum seekers in Australia. Let me set the record straight.

In 1935, the population of West Papua was about 700,000. By 2000, however, the population was 2,220,034. Between 1980 and 1990 the average population growth was 3.34 per cent, well above the national level of 1.74 per cent. From 1990 to 2000, population growth of 3.22 per cent was recorded in West Papua, still well above the national level of 1.49 per cent for the period. It is true that migrants account for a significant slice of this increase in population, but that is the national trend throughout Indonesia.

How can anyone accept claims that genocide has been occurring when the facts so obviously indicate otherwise? Let alone when we remember that we are living in the 21st century, in an age of global communications, when not a single untoward death in West Papua could possibly go unnoticed by the world's media.

The recent general election in West Papua province was relatively peaceful. About 1.1 million people, or more than 90 per cent of those eligible to vote, took part in the election that saw Barnabas Saebu become Governor-elect with roughly 30 per cent of the vote. This result indicates that, despite allegations to the contrary, the vast majority of West Papuans independently choose to exercise their right to vote without any government or military pressure.

Since the downfall of Soeharto in 1998, Indonesia has been steadily transforming itself into the world's third-biggest democracy. In 2004 general elections were held in a peaceful and democratic fashion and, for the first time, the nation directly elected its president. Since its democratic transformation, Indonesia has established its own Commission for Human Rights, empowered to ensure that human rights are upheld throughout Indonesia. Any claims of human rights abuses by the 43 Papuans recently landed in Australia could be addressed through this independent body.

Allegations that the "Act of Free Choice", by which West Papua became part of the Indonesian nation, was somehow illegitimate are also without merit. The act was a historic political exercise, involving a series of consultations with tribal councils over a period of several months during 1969, whereby 1025 Papuan tribal chiefs voted for their territory to be reintegrated into Indonesia.

This approach was selected as being the most appropriate given the logistical difficulties created by the region's geography, and local political circumstances that dictated that tribal chiefs spoke for and expressed the will of their native communities. The exercise drew extra credibility from the fact that it was carried out in accordance with the New York Agreement struck between Indonesia and the Netherlands. The final seal of legitimacy, however, came from the United Nations' decision, based on a report by the UN Secretary-General, to recognise West Papua as a part of Indonesian territory.

Accusations that the absence of a "one man, one vote" referendum on decolonisation made this process of determination invalid are entirely spurious.

Finally, the inclusion of West Papua into Indonesia also accords with the principle of international law "uti possidetis juris" that holds that the boundaries of post-colonial states conform with their pre-colonial borders.

As to the argument that West Papua's Melanesian population makes it intrinsically dissimilar to the rest of Indonesia, it is important to recognise that Indonesia is home to about 12 million Melanesians, only about 1.4 million of whom live in Papua. Indonesia in fact boasts the largest Melanesian population of any country in the world. Moreover, almost all of the world's nations are comprised of different ethnic groups. Australia is home to people of more than 140 different ethnicities, yet ethnic difference per se does not generally imply a separate and distinct political identity either here or in Indonesia.

In response to aspersions that West Papua is the target of a deliberate policy of Javanisation or Islamisation, I feel it is imperative to point out that the majority of Papuans still hold to their traditional beliefs, while Christianity and Islam are both embraced by significant numbers and have been since before the republic was established. Religious life in Indonesia has long been characterised by tolerance, despite the fact that 87 per cent of the population are Muslim.

It is true that West Papua has absorbed significant numbers of transmigrants, as have other parts of Indonesia such as Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi. However not all these transmigrants have been Javanese, with many originating from Bali and Sulawesi. And there is nothing sinister about this policy; Java is a tiny island about a quarter of the size of West Papua, yet it is home to 140 million people, hence the pressure to move can be considerable.

To look at the question from a different perspective; significant numbers of those living on Java are not Javanese, yet there's been no talk of ethnic groups from other islands "invading" Java.

Given all this information, claims that the people of West Papua are subject to systematic oppression by the Indonesian Government are clearly fundamentally without merit, reflecting in certain instances the political designs of a small, self-serving minority.

[M. Wahid Supriyadi is consul-general for Indonesia.]

Australia signals tougher line on refugees

Agence France Presse - April 9, 2006

Sydney – Australia Sunday has signalled a tougher line on refugees from Indonesia's troubled province of Papua as it faced what the foreign minister called a "crisis" in relations with its giant Islamic neighbour.

The two countries are locked in a diplomatic row over Australia's granting of temporary protection visas to 42 Papuans. Jakarta has recalled its ambassador from Canberra. "We are talking through the full issue of this crisis, and looking to see what we can do to take things forward," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a television interview.

The refugees, including several independence activists and their families who accused the Indonesians of committing "genocide" in Papua, arrived by boat on Australia's far north coast in mid- January.

The decision to grant them temporary visas to pursue refugee claims has angered Jakarta, which fears the move signals Canberra's support for Papuan independence.

Downer's comments were the latest in a series apparently aimed at both appeasing the Indonesians and discouraging other Papuans from attempting to reach Australia.

Justice Minister Chris Ellison said boats carrying Papuan asylum seekers could be turned back in future.

"We've put in place measures for dealing with people who try to enter our country illegally, and you've seen what we've done in the past and our policy has not changed," he told national radio Sunday.

Asked whether boats carrying Papuans would be forced back to Indonesia, Ellison replied: "Well, it will depend on the circumstances in which we intercept these people, but certainly they will be dealt with as we would deal with any other attempts at illegal entrance into Australia."

He denied a suggestion that forcing refugees back to a place where they could face persecution was a breach of international laws. "The international law that we're upholding is our sovereignty in that we're maintaining our borders," he said.

Prime Minister John Howard on Friday repeated his support for a united Indonesia and the leadership of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, saying the government would review how visas are granted to boatpeople from Papua.

He linked the efforts to maintain good relations with Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country, to the fight against Islamic militancy and terrorism.

Howard's remarks were seen by the leader of the Australian Greens opposition party, Bob Brown, as indicating the government would try to intercept asylum seekers at sea – an interpretation strengthened by Ellison's comments.

"What the prime minister is aiming to do is to exclude West Papuans from Australia's migration law by closing the coastline and West Papuans who attempt to come here will be intercepted by Australian or Indonesian naval patrols," he said.

Indonesia won sovereignty over Papua, formerly a Dutch colony, in 1969 after a referendum widely seen as a sham.

Papuans have long accused Indonesia's military of violating human rights in the province and complained about the bulk of earnings from its rich natural resources flowing to Jakarta rather than themselves.

In the national interest: Howard takes tougher line

Sydney Morning Herald - April 8, 2006

Louise Dodson, Mark Forbes in Jakarta and Craig Skehan – The Immigration Department may be forced to consider Australia's interest, not just humanitarian concerns, when deciding who is allowed asylum.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has ordered a review of the asylum process and yesterday warned Papuans thinking of fleeing to Australia: "Do not imagine for a moment that we want you to come to Australia."

But as Mr Howard tried to appease Indonesia – after Australia granted asylum to 42 refugees from Papua – Jakarta suspended plans for a new broad security treaty with Australia.

Indonesia wants Australia to guarantee it will take a tougher response against any Papuans fleeing its eastern province to Australia. It also wants a reassessment of the "one-sided" decision to grant asylum. Asked about the treaty, which Australia hoped to sign this year, the Indonesian Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, said: "I think we have to wait and see further developments."

Although the final decision on granting asylum will still lie with the Immigration Department and be taken in line with international rules, officials may in future have to take into account the views of the countries applicants are fleeing.

Seeking to reassure Indonesia over the Papuan affair, Mr Howard said that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the "best president" Papuans had ever had and that human rights abuses could be far worse if the troubled region seceded.

"If you encourage a process of fragmentation of the Republic of Indonesia, you're going to end up with a lot of turmoil and inevitably human rights abuses and deprivation of liberty than would otherwise be the case," he said.

Mr Howard told radio 3AW that while human rights abuses would still be considered, this did not mean "we shouldn't take a broad, reasonably hard-headed approach about what is in this country's best interests and in the best interests of a longer- term relationship".

Government sources told the Herald that the immigration officials who granted protection visas to the Papuans last month had taken into account a US State Department finding last year of human rights violations by Indonesian security forces. The report said the forces were continuing to commit "unlawful killings of rebels, suspected rebels, and civilians in areas of separatist activity" in Papua.

Senior officials from the Immigration, Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister's departments are looking at ways to change the protection visa process.

These include the Immigration Department being required to seek a formal report on foreign policy implications from the Foreign Affairs department, security implications from intelligence agencies and greater involvement of the Prime Minister's department.

The process may also allow for Australia to seek assurances on human rights from accused countries. Mr Howard said any changes made would be consistent with Australia's international obligations.

At present immigration officers decide whether to grant asylum. They interview applicants and take into account country information from a variety of sources including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and sometimes the Foreign Affairs Department.

The Professor of International Law at Sydney University, Don Rothwell, said that taking diplomatic considerations into account when assessing asylum claims could breach the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees.

"If Australia is going to consult with the country they have left, you are opening the process to political influence. That would be an appalling situation."

Mr Juwono said further treaty discussions would need to be held with Indonesia's Foreign Ministry. Indonesian Government sources confirmed the treaty, which will strengthen military ties, was now in doubt.

"We are in a waiting mode until we have a clear understanding of the reaction of the Australian Government in the future," one said. "We want to know what the response would be if a second wave of Papuans arrived."

Papuan activists say that hundreds of separatist supporters now plan to flee to Australia.

A far cry from freedom

Sydney Morning Herald - April 8, 2006

Tom Allard – In the sad, bloody history of Papua, there have been fleeting moments of optimism, the last of which, dubbed the Papuan Spring, occurred in 2000.

Ferra Kambu remembers it well. A devout Christian and health worker, she joined the separatist movement under the leadership of Theys Eluay, a tribal chief.

In this post-Soeharto thaw in tensions, the Morning Star flag was allowed to fly, a Papuan legislature formed and Jakarta's elite was engaging with the indigenous population and its grievances.

"It was a good time. We thought we could speak freely then," Kambu, one of 42 asylum seekers granted visas for Australia, says.

As special autonomy legislation was drawn up, giving Papuans a measure of control over their own affairs and a majority share of royalties from the vast natural resources, hopes flourished.

Eluay was invited to a dinner party by the Indonesian special forces, Kopassus, at their military barracks as guest of honour. He never returned home. He was killed by his hosts, and the detente between Jakarta and the Papuans ended as abruptly as the life of Eluay.

"From this time on, things went bad for me. I had been outspoken and became aware of being a target for assassination," Kambu says. "They had maps identifying the houses and the intelligence services had lists. We were No. 4 on the list."

Married to Herman Wainggai, the nephew of a prominent figure in the Papuan separatist movement, Kambu says she was constantly on the move around the country. Her husband was jailed and communication with supporters occurred only under the guise of prayer meetings.

"When I gave birth to my children in the hospital, there are police there posing as medical people," she says. "They wanted me to have an operation but I refused. I was very frightened."

Radicalised by her time in the remote Papuan Highlands, Kambu says, in her role as a health civil servant, she had witnessed the results of countless rapes, mutilations and murders of village women by hit-and-run squads of Indonesian soldiers.

"They would rape them in front of everyone, in front of the parents. They would dump the bodies in the lake, and the parents' bodies too," she says.

HIV-AIDS was running rampant, Kambu says, and she blames the deliberate introduction of prostitutes from other parts of Indonesia.

Her claims, along with other allegations of beatings and extrajudicial killing made by her fellow asylum seekers, are alarming but impossible to independently verify. Certainly, the Indonesian Government rejects them entirely.

But there is no shortage of contemporary reports that underscore serious concerns about human rights violations in Papua.

Lawyers for the asylum seekers relied heavily on the findings of a US State Department report released this year to persuade immigration officials of the refugees' case.

"Security forces murdered, tortured, raped, beat and arbitrarily detained civilians and members of separatist movements, especially in Aceh and to a lesser extent in Papua," the report said. Alleged abuses were not properly investigated and seizure of private property by the military and police was common. The security forces used torture to obtain information.

If it sounds like a reprise of East Timor, there are some similarities.

Senior police and military commanders who had been in charge in the former Indonesian province during the terrible days leading up to its autonomy vote were moved to Papua from 2000.

The notorious Timorese anti-independence militia figure Eurico Guterres also moved, forming Laskar Merah Putih (Red and White Warriors) in Papua in 2003 and reportedly building a membership of hundreds from his base near the controversial Freeport mine.

A UN report this year confirmed there had been 180,000 civilian deaths in East Timor at the hands of authorities under Indonesian rule.

In the interests of stability and relations with Jakarta, Australia and the new East Timorese Government decided not to pursue most of the perpetrators of the abuse.

In the end, the problem of human rights violations, at least in part, shifted to Papua and, with the arrival of the asylum seekers, the Australian Government now has to deal with the consequences.

Decades later, a familiar syndrome of complicity

Sydney Morning Herald - April 8, 2006

Hamish McDonald – Thirty years ago I met a Papuan man called Imser in a place called Valley X, high in the mountainous spine of the Indonesian half of New Guinea.

First contact with the outside world had come only a few years earlier, when the French documentary filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau parachuted into an open patch of grassland, escorted by some Indonesian special forces troops under a young captain named Faisal Tanjung. Gaisseau had traversed Western New Guinea by land and river in 1958, when it was still held by the Dutch.

After pressure from the US, the Dutch had reluctantly transferred the territory to Indonesian control in 1963, after a brief United Nations interregnum, and a manipulated "act of free choice" in 1969 had resulted in a decision to stay with Indonesia.

Outsiders followed quickly into Imser's domain. Baptist missionaries from America set up a post in a valley nearby and cleared a simple airstrip, and were busy saving souls for Jesus.

A huge earthquake hit the area in 1976, creating a risk of famine, as the villages' taro gardens had simply slipped into the ravines.

The humanitarian need got me, a Jakarta-based correspondent, through the normal ban on reporters, and I flew in with the missionaries' air service.

Handily, some German academics were at work in Valley X, and could interpret Imser's words about the disaster that had hit his little community.

The lack of food had made the population at least temporarily dependent on the missionaries. Some of them thought it funny that their new flock saw the earthquake as the wrath of Jesus and were fearfully handing over or burning carvings and totems.

Later, I heard from the Germans that Imser was killed not long after by a new landslide. What has happened to the other people of Valley X has long intrigued me, but I fear I would not be welcomed either by the Indonesian authorities, or the missionaries, who waged a long open-letter campaign and complained to various embassies over what I wrote about them.

What strikes anyone reading 30 years later about what we now call Papua is that its indigenous Melanesians are still unreconciled to being part of Indonesia.

The seeds of separatism were planted by the Dutch, who kept Papua out of the surrender of the East Indies in 1949, and started preparing it for self-rule with its own legislature and later, plans for independence in 1972.

The Dutch, who had been backed by Australia's Menzies, had abruptly dropped their resistance to a mounting Indonesian campaign of armed infiltration and attack, after John F. Kennedy's US administration bluntly warned them that Indonesia and the rest of South-East Asia would go communist unless Jakarta was appeased.

The subsequent "act of free choice" has been convincingly discredited by a British scholar, John Saltford, in his 2002 book Anatomy of a Betrayal, exposing the willingness of the UN to go along with a process whereby Indonesia's Opsus, a dirty-tricks intelligence outfit that figured in the 1965 anti-communist coup, bribed and intimidated 1022 selected representatives into a unanimous pro-Jakarta vote.

Last year, declassified US documents and a 740-page study by the Dutch historian Pieter Drooglever, commissioned by the Dutch Foreign Ministry in 2000, confirmed the vote was a sham.

Indonesian rule has only watered the plant of separatism with blood – Drooglever says tens of thousands have been killed by Indonesian soldiers - and rapacious resource extraction.

This goes not only for the once Dutch-influenced people in the towns but also the larger population of the less-malarial highlands, which, like Imser, was fresh human clay for nation- building when Jakarta took over.

Opsus and its agents, meanwhile, went on to orchestrate the subversion of East Timor in 1975. The officer who escorted Gaisseau into Valley X, Faisal Tanjung, became the powerful general fingered as controller of the militias that tried to stop East Timor going independent in 1999.

Papua is now a test of the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a notorious fence-sitter. Pressing hard on him is a claque of noisy nationalist MPs and newspapers. Whatever the Papuans thought about it, the idea of Indonesia stretching "from Sabang [in Aceh] to Merauke [in the south-west corner of Papua]" is etched deep.

Their hardline solution is "divide and repress": hiving off the oil-rich western end of the territory as a new province, basing 15,000 troops there to cow local Melanesians and those in Papua New Guinea, and telling outsiders to mind their own business.

The alternative is wider autonomy, improving governance and deepening respect for human rights – accepting that this might snowball into stronger separatism and gradual foreign recognition.

Already Australia is coming under emotional blackmail by Indonesian hardliners, who blame our fragmented activists – churchmen, trade unionists, academics – for what their own misrule has created.

The Howard Government is sliding into a familiar syndrome of complicity, with the Defence Minister now calling asylum seekers "illegals" – despite their real risks of being bumped off like many other Papuan activists – and offering joint navy patrols to keep them bailed up inside Papua. History is being distorted, with the Prime Minister saying Papua has "always" been part of Indonesia.

Do we have to go down this road again? I'd like to learn one day that Imser's children and grandchildren enjoy security, dignity and some of Papua's wealth. Whether they wave Indonesian or Papuan flags is secondary.

'Papuan asylum seekers are traitors'

Antara News - April 9, 2006

Jayapura – Papuans seeking for political asylum in Australia are a bunch of traitors, a Papua youth leader said Sunday.

"If they have internal problems, why didn't they made a report to the authorities. It is puzzling to see why domestic problems have to be reported to others," said Nico Maury, chairman of West Irian Liberation Youth Communication Forum. "The authorities, be it civil administration, the police or the military, are able to solve the problems faced by the residents," he said.

Australia decided to grant a three-year temporary protection visa to 42 Papuans – while refusing the visa to the a man – who claims they were persecuted by local authorities and accused Jakarta of a "genocide" in the easternmost province.

Indonesia recalled its ambassador to Canberra T.M. Hamzah Thayeb on March 24 as a strong protest.

Many Indonesians believe that Australia has an interest in Papua and wants it to secede from Indonesia. Although Canberra has officially denied such allegations, it is difficult to forget Australia's role in the process led to the break of East Timor from Indonesia in which Australia had a very active role.

Nico also urged the government not to allow Papuans who have resided abroad for years to return as they might provoke others.

"The government should be strict and bar Papuans residing in Australia, the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea and the United States from returning to Indonesia. These people incite residents to cross the border and seek political asylum as well as fanning separatist issues," he said.

How will Canberra deal with this new diplomatic tension?

Melbourne Age - April 9, 2006

Tom Hyland – "There is sensitivity in Indonesia about her sovereignty over West Papua, a sovereignty which Australia has never disputed and a sovereignty which Australia fully respects and fully supports." - John Howard, March 30.

John Howard is a bit of a history buff. He used his Australia Day speech this year to chastise our schools for the way they teach Australian history. Too often, he complained, history was shoved aside in a crowded curriculum, which meant any objective record of Australian achievement was questioned and repudiated.

For a politician who wants our history teachers to get the facts right, he shows a curious ignorance – perhaps it's convenient amnesia or repressed memory syndrome – about our diplomatic history. His unequivocal assertion about Australia's record on what is now the Indonesian province of Papua is a case in point. He has his facts wrong. Howard is not the only one who earns an F for history. Australia's US ambassador, Dennis Richardson, should join him at the back of the class for his comments in a Washington speech last month, when he said: "Papua is part of the sovereign territory of Indonesia and always has been."

The Prime Minister and Richardson shouldn't need reminding of the record of Sir Percy Spender, the diplomat, Liberal politician, minister in the Menzies government, international jurist and key architect of the ANZUS Treaty.

Half a century ago, as external affairs minister, Spender was a central player in a major diplomatic and strategic dispute over the future of Papua, which at the time was Dutch New Guinea and which the Netherlands and Australia were determined would not be handed over to Indonesia. Instead, Australia and the Netherlands argued it should be groomed for independence.

"The Australian Government does not consider that Indonesia has any valid claim to Dutch New Guinea, the future of which is of vital importance to the Australian people," Spender said in 1950.

At the height of the Cold War and under the weight of pressure from the US, which was desperate to have Indonesia as an anti- communist ally, Australia was forced to abandon its position and by 1962 it accepted Indonesia's claim to the territory. Fifty years on, Papua is back at the forefront of diplomacy, but there's no sign that Canberra has a policy to deal with what is emerging as a major crisis in its relationship with Jakarta.

Repeated assertions by the Federal Government that it recognises Indonesian sovereignty do not amount to a policy – nor do they reassure Indonesian officials who may have a better grasp of Australian diplomatic history than our politicians and diplomats do. Yet this is all we're hearing from Canberra.

Pressed in an interview to explain how Canberra intended to deal with the new tension sparked by the arrival of asylum seekers from Papua, Alexander Downer's response effectively amounted to "Trust me, I'm a diplomat".

"The wise thing for Australia to do is just to play this calmly and let's see what happens," he said. "I think the wise approach – and speaking with a bit of experience here – is to just let the storm blow through. And when we're out of the centre of the storm I think it'll be easier for both sides to look at ways we can move forward." In the meantime, Downer said it was simply a question of "managing it day-by-day".

But while our diplomats can try to "manage" colourful side-shows, such as the one sparked by offensive newspaper cartoons, there's no public evidence that the Government is willing to acknowledge the core issues in the Papua dispute – the profound disenchantment in Papuan society with Indonesian rule, and the Jakarta Government's failure to deal with Papuan grievances.

The differences between Jakarta and the Papuans seem irreconcilable. Jakarta's promise of "special autonomy" to Papua has instead produced a "legal and political quagmire", according to the International Crisis Group, a Brussels organisation that works to prevent deadly conflict.

There are no easy answers for the Federal Government in the Papua mess. Indonesia, still smarting from what it perceives as Australian duplicity over East Timor, will be suspicious of any advice from Canberra. This suspicion is compounded by a sense of betrayal over the Papuan asylum seekers. After all, Indonesia had acted on Canberra's urgings to stem the flow of Middle Eastern asylum seekers. Jakarta officials now perceive a double standard, with Papuans apparently given favoured treatment.

There are some things we can do. Privately, we can warn President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that real autonomy, such as that given to Aceh in an effort to prevent it breaking away, offers the only hope of Jakarta retaining control of Papua. Jakarta should be urged to listen to Papua's leaders instead of side-lining them.

Australia should call on Jakarta to allow Papuans to exercise the democratic freedoms that the rest of Indonesia's citizens enjoy. And we can encourage any international efforts at mediation. Along the way, we should get the history right.

[Tom Hyland is a senior reporter.]

Casualties of a secret war

Melbourne Age - April 9, 2006

Tom Hyland – Papuan refugees given asylum in Australia claim they are victims of a secret war carried out by undercover Indonesian forces aimed at destroying the independence movement.

In testimony that helped them win Australia protection visas, they alleged persecution at the hands of Indonesian soldiers operating out of uniform who make no distinction between armed rebels and civilian activists.

They alleged persecution by Indonesian security and intelligence agencies, which also are partners with Australia in the fight against terrorism.

The refugees' accounts of secret operations by undercover troops are in line with standard Indonesian military tactics for dealing with independence movements, say intelligence and security analysts. Such tactics give military and government leaders the cloak of deniability.

David Manne, lawyer for the 42 Papuans said some of his clients alleged abuses were carried out by armed, disciplined groups of men in plain clothes. The Papuans believed at least some of the soldiers were members of Kopassus, Indonesia's elite special forces unit.

The alleged role of Kopassus is potentially controversial in Australia, given the Federal Government's decision to resume counter-terrorism exercises with the Indonesian unit and Australia's SAS regiment.

The Papuans also allege persecution at the hands of members of the State Intelligence Agency, known as BIN. Australian Federal Police and intelligence agencies such as ASIS share information with BIN in the fight against terrorism.

Mr Manne refused to disclose specific details of abuses alleged by individual Papuans, on the grounds of client confidentiality. But he said some of their asylum claims referred to "abuses carried out by armed people operating out of uniform".

Handed over by the big boys, to brutal rulers

Sydney Morning Herald - April 8, 2006

Mike Carlton – Some background for you on the story of those 42 refugees from Papua who were given asylum in Australia last month, provoking that torrent of protest from Indonesia.

In 1969 I was the ABC's Jakarta bureau chief and one of a handful of foreign journalists permitted to visit West Irian, as it was then called, before the much ballyhooed United Nations Act of Free Choice which cemented Indonesian rule there.

A suave Bolivian diplomat, Fernando Ortiz-Sanz, had been dispatched by the UN to run the show. Ostensibly, there was to be a plebiscite in which the Papuan people could vote either for independence or for integration with Indonesia. What ensued was a diplomatic swindle of shameful hypocrisy. The TNI, the army of Indonesia's Soeharto regime, already ruled Irian with an iron fist.

The Netherlands, the former colonial power, had washed its hands of any responsibility. The other foreign governments involved – the Nixon gang in Washington and the John Gorton coalition in Canberra – were mesmerised by the Vietnam War and, with cynical realpolitik, were disposed to let the anti-communist Soeharto do whatever he liked as long as he did it quietly.

A cable from the US embassy in Jakarta to the State Department in May 1969 put the thing in stark perspective: "The Act of Free Choice (AFC) in West Irian is unfolding like a Greek tragedy, the conclusion pre-ordained," it read.

"The main protagonist, the GOI [Government of Indonesia] cannot and will not permit any resolution other than the continued inclusion of West Irian in Indonesia. Dissident activity is likely to increase, but the Indonesian armed forces will be able to contain and, if necessary, suppress it."

Indeed. This was more than good enough for the secretary of state of the day, that champion of democracy, Henry Kissinger. And, as obedient as ever, Canberra shuffled into line.

With the hapless Ortiz-Sanz looking on, the Indonesians rounded up a bunch of Irianese "community leaders", exactly 1022 people from a population of about 1 million who, not surprisingly, voted unanimously to join Jakarta.

The UN rubber-stamped this travesty and the world went away – save for the American Freeport mining company, whose predators set up a vast copper and gold mine which wrought, and continues to wreak, environmental and cultural havoc in Papua. After a decent interval, Freeport quietly hired the odious thug Kissinger as a consultant. Deal done.

The small island of Biak squats off the northern coast of Papua. Its airport was once a staging post on the old KLM Dutch airlines route north from Australia.

There, in 1969, I stepped down from a Garuda airlines DC3 with a squad of TNI minders. A coal black Melanesian airport worker ran towards me across the tarmac, hands outstretched in welcome, grinning broadly and shouting "Oom, oom", the Dutch word for uncle but also a term politely used to address the former colonial masters.

"Orang gila, a madman," one of the minders assured me as some Javanese soldiers frog-marched him away to God knows where and what fate.

Later, in my hotel, a waiter whispered in my ear that he was OPM, a member of Organisasi Papua Merdeka, the Papuan Freedom Organisation. Around midnight, he came to my room and spirited me out a back door, then down a tangle of alleys to a grubby shack where, by the light of a kerosene lamp, I found a small circle of OPM activists, grave and passionate young men who, in Indonesian, Dutch, and broken English, told of arrests and beatings and killings.

Bitterly frustrating for a reporter, I was asked to swear, literally on a Dutch Bible, that I would not reveal that I had met them. If word got out, they would be hunted, tortured and shot, they said. Instead, they gave me letters – a tragic, desperate cry for freedom – and begged me to carry them to the Australian and Netherlands embassies in Jakarta. Which, two weeks later, I did.

I assume those letters disappeared forever into a diplomatic black hole. Carelessly, unforgivably, I have lost the copies I made.

Biak, and Papua, would never be free. Thirty years later, in 1999, the Herald correspondent Lindsay Murdoch filed a story which began thus: "An independent investigation has confirmed a Herald report that Indonesian soldiers massacred Irian Jaya demonstrators and dumped others at sea on the island of Biak last year. The investigation team found at least eight people were shot and 37 others hurt when troops opened fire on unarmed people after they had raised the West Papua independence flag, and that 32 bodies recovered at sea were also victims of military atrocities."

Last Thursday, John Howard lowered his own flag. "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," he told ABC radio.

What an infinite bloody tragedy.

Talks move on Papua peace

Melbourne Age - April 9, 2006

Tom Hyland – Efforts are under way to start peace talks aimed at settling the growing dispute over control of the Indonesian province of Papua.

As tensions in the territory spill over into a diplomatic row between Jakarta and Canberra, an umbrella organisation of Papuan independence groups is seeking the talks, with an Australian academic acting as intermediary.

If successful, the talks could see Papuans drop their claim for full independence, in return for substantial autonomy within Indonesia.

Associate Professor Damien Kingsbury, of Deakin University, is approaching a Finnish conflict resolution group is see if it can mediate in the talks, as it did in negotiations that led to a peace settlement in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is believed to be open to the prospect of negotiations as a way out of the diplomatic and political impasse his Government faces in Papua, where Jakarta confronts widespread resistance to its rule.

Dr Kingsbury is in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, this weekend to talk to officials of the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), a non-government group that works on crisis prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation.

It played a key role in brokering last year's peace settlement that ended decades of separatist conflict in Aceh.

Dr Kingsbury, who advised the Aceh separatist movement in those negotiations, said he was talking to CMI on behalf of the Papuans "about the possibility of them acting as mediators".

"I'm working with the West Papuans in a recognised capacity," he told The Sunday Age. "I've been in close contact with representatives of an umbrella organisation of West Papuan groups and believe it's possible for talks about a negotiated solution, proposed by West Papuans, at some time in the not-too-distant future.

"The Papuans want to know if CMI would be in a position to act as mediators for negotiations, if a request was made."

Any involvement by CMI would require financial and diplomatic backing by the European Union.

The Sunday Age believes President Yudhoyono privately has indicated interest in involving CMI. A diplomatic source said Jakarta would move slowly on the issue so as not to alarm security hardliners in the Indonesian military or nationalist elements in Parliament.

At the same time Dr Yudhoyono has made repeated public comments about his desire to resolve the conflict in Papua, where widespread and entrenched political and community opposition has surpassed a guerilla movement as a major challenge to Jakarta's control.

On a visit to the territory last week, he declared: "I want to stress again that I want to solve the problem in Papua in a peaceful, just and dignified manner."

He used similar language leading up to the Aceh settlement, signed last August, in which the Free Aceh Movement dropped its demand for independence in return for limited self-rule.

Internationally mediated talks would be an acknowledgment by Jakarta that its current offer of "special autonomy" for Papua has failed to ease tensions between Papuans and the central government.

Military ties

US criticized for cozying up to Kopassus

Paras Indonesia - April 14, 2006

Roy Tupai – A human rights group has criticized the US government for inviting the chief of the Indonesian Army's elite Special Forces (Kopassus) to a recent regional military conference aimed at combating terrorism.

The New York-based East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) says the participation of Kopassus chief Major General Syaiful Rizal in the Pentagons annual Pacific Area Special Operation Conference (PASOC) was a "bad precedent and a setback for efforts at reform and accountability".

Kopassus has long been accused of human rights violations in East Timor, Aceh, Papua and elsewhere. Analysts say Kopassus often operated in an illegal manner and some feel there is little evidence it has changed its ways despite reforms within the Indonesian military since 1999.

This years PASOC was held over April 3-7 at the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort in Honolulu, Hawaii. The theme of the conference was Disrupting the Conditions that Assist Terrorist Networks. It was the first time Indonesia had participated since 1998.

"Kopassus participation in PASOC is yet another indicator of the unwise approach the Bush administration is taking toward Indonesia's military.

They may see the Kopassus as an ally against terrorism, but Kopassus itself often acts like a terrorist group, attacking civilians for political ends," ETAN coordinator John M. Miller said in a statement released April 6. "There can be no doubt that Kopassus will portray participation in PASOC as an exoneration by the US. By publicly anointing the Kopassus commander, the US has gravely undermined the struggle within Indonesia to end impunity," said ETAN advisor Edmund McWilliams.

"This is a devastating betrayal of Indonesian human rights advocates and their efforts to reform the military and its most notorious command," added McWilliams, who headed the political section of the US Embassy in Jakarta from 1996 to 1999.

"With Indonesian security forces still engaged in atrocities in West Papua and continuing to deny their role in crimes against humanity in East Timor and elsewhere, President Bushs rush to engage the military is counterproductive to advancing democratic change in Indonesia," said Miller.

The US State Department last month provided formal notice that it will consider provision of lethal military equipment to Indonesia.

According to Damien Kingsbury, an Australian expert on the Indonesian military: "Kopassus has murdered and tortured political activists, trade unionists and human rights workers. It has also trained, equipped and led militias in East Timor, West Papua and Aceh, and Kopassus members trained the notorious Laskar Jihad Islamic militia, which stepped up conflict in the Ambon region, leaving up to 10,000 dead. It was Kopassus that murdered Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay in 2001."

While some analysts feel that its vital for Western nations to include Kopassus in the fight against terrorism, Kingsbury has said the unit should be disbanded. "My well stated opposition to Kopassus stems from having seen it first hand perpetrate myriad abuses in a range of places, and Im not against countries having a military as such – of course, everybody needs to defend themselves. But Kopassus really, its culture is so deeply entrenched that really, even the former US ambassador has said that its impossible to reform it. It's an organization that really needs to be thrown out and if you want that sort of special services unit, you have to start again," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in December 2005.

PASOC Delegates from about 25 countries participated the 13th annual PASOC, which was hosted by the US Pacific Commands Special Operations Center.

The PASOC website said the conference "significantly contributes to the Global War on Terrorism by bringing together international SOF [special operations forces] military leaders from Pacific Rim nations to exchange ideas, develop multilateral methods and procedures in combating terrorism, and establish professional contacts for crisis response".

PASOC's key objectives involve developing potential operational approaches through multilateral cooperation to counter/alleviate underlying conditions that support terrorism.

The countries invited to this years PASOC were: Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Comoros, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, Thailand, UK and Vietnam.

Kopassus chief Rizal welcomed Indonesias return to PASOC, saying it indicated that bilateral military relations were improving further after Washingtons decision to lift an embargo on arms sales to Jakarta in November 2005. "In addition, it is the start of renewed efforts to explore possibilities of cooperation," he was quoted as saying by state news agency Antara.

Training: From Australia To Yemen

Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono last week said Kopassus would teach Yemens Special Forces how to uphold security and combat terrorism.

He made the announcement after a meeting with Yemeni Ambassador Abdulrahman Alhothi in Jakarta on April 5 but did not specify when any training would take place. "The Yemeni Special Forces has heard a great deal about the Indonesian Army's elite force and become interested in learning from it," the minister was quoted as saying by Antara.

Long-serving Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh formed his country's Special Forces unit in 1999. The unit is led by Salehs eldest son Ahmad. Kopassus has reportedly provided training to Cambodias special forces in the past.

The Australian government recently ended a seven-year ban on training Kopassus soldiers in Australia, with the holding a joint counter-terrorism exercise in the West Australian capital of Perth.

The decision to resume the training was announced in December 2005 by former defense minister Robert Hill, who claimed no troops with past records of human rights abuses would be involved. He said Canberra decided to lift the ban to "further strengthen the regions ability to tackle terrorism" and because Kopassus forces "might one day save Australian lives in Indonesia". Exercise Dawn Kookaburra took place over two weeks in Perth in February 2006, with members of Kopassus Unit 81 training alongside members of Australias Special Air Service Regiment. "Exercise Dawn Kookaburra focused on specific skills that would be required for counter hijack and hostage recovery operations," said an Australian military spokesman. "For operational security reasons, we will not be specific about the number of personnel training in counter hijack and hostage recovery skills," he added. Australia has said further joint training will take place next year.

Critics such as Kingsbury argued that the training was unwarranted because the Indonesian police, not the military, have been the most active and successful in combating terrorism over recent years.

Asmara Nababan, executive director of the Institute for Human Rights and Democracy Studies, concurred that the police are playing the lead role in Indonesias war against terrorism. He questioned the relevance and urgency of training Kopassus, saying that Australia had merely resumed the training as a reward for improved ties with Indonesia.

Nababan also questioned whether Kopassus had undertaken meaningful reform and warned the force could commit more rights abuses in the future.

Some nationalist Indonesian legislators expressed reservations over the training for Kopassus, claiming Australia might exploit the program to intervene in Indonesias domestic affairs.

Indonesia, US to restore joint military training

Antara News - April 13, 2006

Jakarta – Indonesia and the United States will restore their joint military training programs, especially for elite forces, after they were halted due to the US military embargo imposed on Indonesia for alleged gross human right violation in East Timor in 1999, an Indonesian military official said.

"Gradually, we will revive our joint military training programs," General Commander of the Army's Elite Forces (Kopassus), Maj. Gen. Syaiful Rizal, said after a visit of Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono to Kopassus headquarters in Cijantung, Thursday.

The decision to restore the joint military training programs was made in the Pacific Area Special Operation Conference (PASOC) 2006 held in Hawaii, USA, on April 3 to 8, in which the Kopassus participated after being absent following the US military embargo in 1999.

"Military cooperation, especially between Kopassus and the US elite forces, used to run well but it was halted because of the US embargo," Syaiful said.

He reiterated, cooperation between the two elite forces would be recovered including in joint training that would begin next year. The joint training is expected to enhance bilateral military ties after the revocation of military embargo in mid November 2005.

On the focus for the joint training, Syaiful said, it would be started with program to increase soldiers' capability in administration of operation. "It's not yet in a joint training that involve a lot of troops in the field. It would be gradually," he added.

The Kopassus participation in PASOC 2006 was evidence that military ties between Indonesia and the United States had begun to recover following the lifting of the embargo.

The annual conference of PASOC is a forum for exchange of experience through joint training and exchange of information especially on special operations to combat terrorism.

Popular resistance

Mob sets fire to Lombok police station

Jakarta Post - April 11, 2006

Panca Nugraha, Mataram – Hundreds of people vandalized and set fire to the Labuapi Police station in West Lombok regency Sunday, injuring two officers.

The incident was caused by news that police had shot and killed a resident of Karang Bangkot, which is located about 15 kilometers from the West Nusa Tenggara provincial capital Mataram.

West Nusa Tenggara Police spokesman Adj. Sr. Comr. HM Basri said the attack on the station had caused at least Rp 50 million (US$5,494) in damages. "We're still investigating who was involved in the attack," he said Monday.

Basri said police arrested Karang Bangkot resident Sanggar, 35, Sunday morning on suspicion of vehicle theft. During questioning, Sanggar reportedly gave police the names of others involved in stealing cars. "Sanggar mentioned the name of Adur, his neighbor. So police officers asked him to show them where Adur lived. But on the way to the house, Sanggar attempted to escape," he said.

Basri said the eight officers accompanying the suspect fired several warning shots, but when Sanggar failed to stop the officers were forced to fire on him. "He was shot three times, twice in the legs and once in the back." Sanggar was taken to Kemala Hikmah police hospital but passed away.

When the suspect's family and neighbors in Karang Bangkot received word of his death, about 500 of them vented their anger on the nearby Labuapi Police station.

Basri said at the time of the attack there were only eight officers in the station, and two were injured when the mob began hurling stones. "The crowd then used gasoline to set fire (to the station)," he said.

Officers from the West Lombok Police and the West Nusa Tenggara Police's paramilitary unit arrived at the scene at around 7 p.m. and were able to restore calm. "The situation is now under control," Basri said.

Sanggar's body was taken by his family Monday for burial.

Students launch hunger strike at State Palace

Detik.com - April 11, 2006

Jakarta – Protesting government policy, around 200 students are planning a hunger strike in front of the State Palace – although they will not be doing anything dramatic like sewing their mouths shut.

The students from the National Student League for Democracy (LMND) started the action at 1pm on April 11 at Radio Indonesia 1, which is located on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara in Central Jakarta.

"This action is to criticise government polices that are regarded as damaging and only deplete out natural energy resources for the interest of a small fraction of people", said LMND chairperson Iwan Dwie Laksono when contacted by Detik.com.

Laksono gave as an example PT Freeport Indonesia that operates in Papua, which should be able to provide free education for all Papuan people. "Not only that, they (Freeport) should be able to provide free healthcare to all Papuans", he asserted. During the action later, LMND will not be sleeping in front of the palace but will take advantage of the trees in the vicinity of the palace for cover.

Laksono explained that the hunger strike would not be like those by victims of high-voltage transmission lines that sowed their mouths shut. "We will not be using heroic or dramatic methods like that, just a normal [hunger strike]", he added. (kem)

[Translated by James Balowski.]

Pornography & morality

Drunks and sex workers knocking on regency's door

Jakarta Post - April 13, 2006

Multa Fidrus, Tangerang – Barflies and ladies' men of Tangerang regency had best live it up while they can.

The regency is considering adopting the ordinances on prostitution and the sale of alcoholic drinks that were set forth in Tangerang municipality last year.

The bylaws have been a great success in Tangerang municipality, said regency council speaker Endang Sudajana. "But the sex workers and alcoholic drinks sales have moved from the municipality to our doorstep," he said last week.

"Therefore, we should have similar local ordinances so the entire region is free from liquor and prostitution," he said.

The council is seeking suggestions from the public, police and public order officers in drafting two ordinances along the lines of the municipality's.

Three months after the ordinances came into effect, Tangerang Mayor Wahidin Halim stepped up efforts to enforce them.

The municipality bans the distribution and sale of alcoholic drinks, except in three- to five-star hotels and designated restaurants for on-the-spot consumption.

Tangerang also bans people in public places, places visible from the street or in red-light districts from persuading or coercing – either through words or gestures – others into acts of prostitution.

It also bans physical intimacy, hugging and/or kissing between two people of the opposite sex – for more than five minutes – in public places or places visible to the public, such as hotels, restaurants, entertainment centers or red-light districts. Violators of either ordinance could face up to three months' jail or a Rp 15 million fine.

Jayusman Muchtar, head of Selembaran Jaya subdistrict in Kosambi complained of an influx of sex workers from Tangerang municipality to Dadap, which is one of the regency's red-light districts. "I have voiced my complaints and urged the council to come up with ordinances like Tangerang municipality's," he said.

Meanwhile, the head of Sawah Lama subdistrict in Ciputat, Usman Affandi, also complained of the growing number of sex workers in Tegal Rotan, near Pondok Aren Barat tollgate in Bintaro.

"I am sure the population of sex workers increased after Tangerang municipality banned prostitution and liquor. We can't do anything about it because we don't have a law to get them out of here," he said.

Muslims rally against proselytization of porn

Jakarta Post - April 9, 2006

Wahyoe Boediwardhana and Blontank Pour, Malang/Surakarta – Thousands of Muslims staged a rally in Malang, East Java, strongly opposing the publication of the Indonesian edition of Playboy on the grounds that it would promote pornography in Indonesia.

In a related development at least 30 members of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) launched a sweeping operation against Playboy in a number of bookstores in Surakarta, Central Java, Saturday, even though they did not find a single copy of the magazine there.

The massive rally in Malang was conducted in the city square in front of the office of the mayor and legislative council, where protesters gave speeches condemning the magazine's publication.

The rally was attended by representatives of at least 11 Muslim organizations, including MMI, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah and the Indonesian Ulema Council. They also marched the streets, crying out, "Allahu Akbar (God is Great)." "Pornography in Indonesia will mushroom with the publication of Playboy," Mus'ab Abdulrachman, a rally spokesman said.

Besides condemning the publication of Playboy, the protesters also urged the government to pass the pornography bill, currently being deliberated at the House of Representatives, into law as soon as possible.

Mus'ab said he did not believe that the Indonesian version of Playboy would not to publish indecent pictures, even though its maiden edition had none.

He believed that as a franchise, the magazine will change its strategy in stages to be more in line with its principal publisher. That is why all Muslim organizations strongly oppose the publication of the magazine, Mus'ab said.

In Surakarta, six to eight protesters were assigned to enter bookstores in search of Playboy magazines, while dozens of others demonstrated amid heavy rainfall.

"We will continue monitoring the distribution of the magazines in Surakarta," Kholid Saifullah, the leader of the protest, said. Saturday's sweeping was the second ever held by the group in Surakarta.

Meanwhile, Eko Bimo Sutopo, a manager of Gramedia bookstore in Surakarta, said that it was already the policy of Gramedia management not to sell the magazines.

However, he admitted that he could not prevent any tenants from selling them in their store. "We rent part of the store so it is not within our authority to prohibit the tenants from selling the magazines," he added.

Similar opposition was also expressed by noted political figures and government officials in Batam in Riau Islands, Makassar, South Sulawesi, and Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara.

Chairman of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) Tifatul Sembiring said Saturday in Batam that he strongly opposed the publication of Playboy magazine in Indonesia as it would ruin the nation's culture and morals, especially among the young people.

The magazine's insistence on going ahead with the publication despite strong protests is feared may spark an even stronger reaction from the public, Sembiring said as quoted by Antara.

Muslim hardliners attack Playboy building

Reuters - April 12, 2006

Jakarta – About 300 hard-line Indonesian Muslims vandalized a building housing the office of Playboy magazine on Wednesday in a protest against its publication in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Clad in white shirts and skull caps the protesters threw rocks at the front lobby, breaking the windows of the building in the south of Jakarta several days after the magazine hit news-stands for the first time.

Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), the protesters also ripped apart several copies of the Indonesian Playboy, which unlike the US original does not show any nudity.

Despite being a much tamer version, the magazine sold out very quickly, partly thanks to controversy surrounding its publication and protests from some Muslim groups.

Apart from Playboy, Indonesia already had its own versions of men's magazines Maxim and FHM, as well as homegrown publications, which feature color pictures of women in minimal clothing.

Members of the hard-line Muslim group that organized the demonstration, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), are known for taking laws into their own hands, for example by attacking bars selling alcohol during the Muslim fasting period, and massage parlors.

Dozens of police were on the scene when the militants carried out the attack but did not make any arrests.

South Jakarta police chief Wiliardi Wizard told Reuters he would question the leader of the group in relation to the incident and detain the perpetrators. "If they can hand over the perpetrators then that's good. Otherwise we'll have to hunt them," he said.

[with additional reporting by Telly Nathalia.]

Human rights/law

New law to bring issuance of local taxes into line

Jakarta Post - April 13, 2006

Urip Hudiono, Jakarta – The government, in another effort to improve the country's investment climate, has completed a new bill prohibiting regions from arbitrarily imposing local taxes. The draft regional tax and user charges law, which was submitted to the House of Representatives for deliberation last month, also strictly regulates existing local taxes, particularly on their maximum rates. "The law is expected to close any loopholes for regions to issue other 'problematic' taxes," head of the Finance Ministry's Economic, Financial and International Collaboration Studies Agency (Bapekki), Anggito Abimanyu, said Wednesday.

"We therefore expect it to help improve the investment climate as well, because we know such taxes have been the main discouragement for investors." Anggito explained that local administrations would no longer be able to impose local taxes or user charges without providing the legal basis for them through related local regulations.

The regulations must be submitted to both the Finance Ministry and Home Ministry for review and approval, with the central government having the right to impose sanctions on local administrations refusing to revoke taxes deemed unfit or with higher rates than the new law allows.

"Sanctions will be related to a region's general allocation funds," Anggito said, referring to the funds allocated to local administrations from the central government's annual state budget.

Anggito said the bill also would try to strike a balance in maintaining adequate local revenue for the regions, with high revenue-generating taxes on motor vehicles and street lighting still allowed.

"A new environmental tax also will be introduced, while certain taxes, such as the underground water tax, will be delegated from the provinces to regencies and city administrations," he said.

According to a draft of the law obtained by The Jakarta Post, the tax on automobiles will be reduced from the current 5 percent to between 1-3 percent, with items of trains and heavy equipment, among others, exempt from taxes. The underground water tax is set at a maximum 20 percent and the environment tax at 0.5 percent of production costs.

The Home Ministry revoked last month 537 out of a 5,054 local regulations submitted for review by the Finance Ministry. The total regulation reviewed is, however, still only 37 percent of the 13,520 regulations issued by 30 provinces and 370 regencies throughout the country.

The business community has long complained about local taxes and user charges imposed on them after the introduction of the autonomy law in 1999, which has fueled a high-cost economy.

The World Bank's recent Doing Business in 2006 report puts legal uncertainty resulting from regional autonomy – including a surfeit of local taxes and user charges – among the top factors discouraging investors.

The central government also faced difficulties in setting a time frame to review and annul controversial bylaws deemed controversial.

Leading legal aid group head ousted over internal dispute

Jakarta Post - April 11, 2006

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – A rift within the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), which used to be dubbed "locomotive of democracy" has peaked with its chief being fired last week.

This time the conflict is between executive chairman Munarman and veteran lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution, who chairs the foundation's powerful supervisory body.

It is the second time so far this year LBH has been shaken by conflicts involving its top leadership. In January, there was a rift between Munarman and senior lawyer Daniel Panjaitan, who heads the foundation's legal advocacy department over a volunteer recruitment issue.

The second rift, had actually also began in January, when Munarman refused suggestions of his seniors at the supervisory body to accept donations to renovate the YLBHI office from Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso and politically well-connected businessman Tommy Winata for reasons of integrity.

The case, however, did not surface until Buyung issued a letter on March 27, in which he claimed that the decision was taken on recommendations of senior officials.

"In the letter, Bang Buyung (as Nasution widely known) requested me to voluntarily resign due to leadership and behavioral problems," Munarman told The Jakarta Post.

Also in the letter, Nasution accused Munarman of moonlighting at another non-governmental organization which provides legal advocation for Indonesian workers. The organization was set up under the banner of the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry.

Nasution also accused Munarman of supporting radical Islamist group Hizbuth Tahrir Indonesia, whose partisan agenda is against YLBHI's policy guidelines.

"I must say that the accusation is baseless. Yes, I assist workers with legal advocation, and I have informed YLBHI top leaders of this, including Bang Buyung. They had no objection, but why suddenly are they raising this issue against me," Munarman asked.

"My relationship with members of the Hizbuth Tahrir began as we were asked by a Muslim activist to be their legal advisers. At that time, the government began to introduce the antiterrorism law targeting Muslim activists who once traveled to Afghanistan," Munarman said, referring to the period between 2004 and 2005 when families and relatives of Muslim activists filed complaints with police over alleged maltreatment by security officers.

"I sympathized with their cause because we have the same perspective in viewing the US-led global antiterrorism campaign," Munarman said.

Internal rifts have marred the foundation since its establishment in 1970, on the initiative of several young idealistic lawyers and Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin. YLBHI now has 15 representative offices nationwide; with Riau being the latest to be established.

Internal bickerings pushed put activists who later became prominent lawyers, such as Todung Mulya Lubis, Bambang Widjoyanto, and Luhut M.P. Pangaribuan, and also the current Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh.

Military sticks to guns on tribunals for soldiers

Jakarta Post - April 8, 2006

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – The government is sticking to its guns in the debate over whether the military court should be the only court to try soldiers.

Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono said Friday the demand for the military to try soldiers who had committed crimes unrelated to their profession in a civilian court had no legal basis. "We are still in the transition period and we will stick to the system," he said.

Juwono's comment has come at a time when the deliberation of the military court bill at the House of Representatives has stalled over the issue. Reform-minded politicians have demanded that soldiers committing crimes unrelated to their work be tried in civilian courts, something the military fiercely rejects.

Legal observers charged Friday that the military was dragging its feet. They said that sticking to the former law would mean the military wanted to maintain a legal system that permitted impunity for soldiers.

Juwono, however, promised that soldiers would not be made "untouchable" as many fear because the legal system allows for the establishment of a joint civilian-military tribunal to hold hearings over criminal cases implicating both servicemen and civilians. "The joint tribunal mechanism has been introduced to remove the legal loopholes," he said.

Legislators are locked in a rigorous debate over the revision of a 1997 law on the military tribunal, with some of them defending the authority of the tribunal to try military lawbreakers, regardless of the 2000 People's Consultative Assembly decree on military reform.

According to the decree, soldiers facing criminal charges, such as murder and corruption, should be tried before a civilian court, leaving the tribunal with the jurisdiction to merely try soldiers who break military regulations.

The decree has been made in a bid to eradicate impunity among soldiers, as well as to scrap the legal privileges that have long been enjoyed by the military.

The revision bill displays few differences to the 1997 law because it acknowledges the authority of commanders to take legal action against their subordinates. While the authority to investigate criminal charges lies with the police. Many say the rivalry between the military and the police forces has complicated the problem.

Military analyst Andi Widjajanto from the University of Indonesia said legislators should be more serious in deliberating the amendment of the military law because it would be a stepping stone toward legal reform inside the military.

"The bill should scrap any possibility of the military enjoying impunity, because the principle has made it impossible for legal institutions to process crimes committed by soldiers," he said recently.

Human rights activist Donny Ardyanto from the Legal Aid Institute warned the government and lawmakers of tougher future challenges if they did not insist on having soldiers tried in civilian court for criminal cases.

"Let's see in 2009, when soldiers can exercise their political rights. If the servicemen violate the election laws, then who will be authorized to try them? The military tribunal or the General Elections Commission?" Donny asked.

Labour issues

Kalla pleads with workers not to go on strike in May

Jakarta Post - April 15, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat and ID Nugroho, Jakarta/Pacitan – Vice President Jusuf Kalla called on workers Thursday to cancel a plan to hold a national May Day strike. Kalla said workers' concerns about the planned revision of the Labor Law were being heard.

A tripartite dialog between employers, workers and the government has been planned to seek a solution to the labor dispute. After a wave of rowdy demonstrations, workers are now taking a wait-and- see stance.

"The government doesn't want to see any more labor protests because an agreement has been reached between unionists and employers to discuss the law revision in a tripartite dialog," Kalla said after opening a meeting of the Association of Indonesian Alm Managing Institutions.

In addition, he said, the government has asked five state universities to study the current law and give their comments to the forum.

Major labor organizations have planned a strike on International May Day to attract the world's attention to labor conditions in Indonesia.

The Indonesian Trade Unions Congress (ITUC) said workers would suspend the strike if the government was committed to meeting workers' demands.

ITUC vice president Khoirul Anam said, "The five universities have to start working immediately to recommend whether it is necessary to revise the Labor Law. If it is necessary, they also have to prepare an academic draft to be discussed in the tripartite dialog.

"Third, the government should reform the social security programs with an additional plan providing compensation for dismissed workers."

Deputy Chairman of the Confederation of All-Indonesian Workers Union (KSPSI) Syukur Sarto said his organization had suspended demonstrations to see if the government would work to improve labor conditions.

"Unless the universities soon start reviewing the Labor Law, the investment climate and social security reform, workers will go on national strike on May 1," he said.

Rekson Silaban, chairman of the Confederation of Indonesian Prosperity Labor Union (KSBSI), said May Day would be a golden opportunity for a national strike. "So far, there has been no agreement among unionists to suspend the planned national strike," he said.

In a related development, during a visit to his hometown Pacitan, Central Java, on Friday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appealed to businesspeople to treat workers as partners, not as mere production tools.

"Only then will the two parties be able to create better communication that will benefit both companies and workers," he said while officiating Partners in Cigarette Production, a partnership scheme initiated by cigarette maker Sampoerna.

Workers resume protests, snub government talk offer

Jakarta Post - April 13, 2006

Jakarta – About 5,000 workers from one of the country's largest trade union organizations swarmed the streets Wednesday in Jakarta and Surabaya to reject the government's proposal to revamp revisions to the labor law.

In Jakarta, protesters from the Indonesian Trade Unions Congress (ITUC) marched from the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta to the nearby State Palace and adjoining government offices. Bambang Wirahyoso, who coordinated the demonstration, said his organization was not among the labor unions who accepted the government's offer to discuss the draft.

The government announced Saturday it would arrange tripartite talks of its representatives, labor unions and the business community to discuss the changes. Workers claim the changes kowtow to business interests at the expense of their welfare, while the business community counters they are vital to reinvigorate the stagnant economy.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, responding to more than two weeks of labor rallies that paralyzed industry and caused huge losses, said Saturday the government would enlist five state universities to evaluate the current law and give their opinion to the tripartite forum on preparing a representative draft law beneficial to workers and employers.

Unlike previous protests, which were marred by vandalism, participants dispersed peacefully Wednesday after presenting their demands to officials.

"It is not the right time to revise the two-year-old law and the latter is not the main hurdle to the entry of foreign investment into the country," Bambang said, adding the tripartite discussions also should be scrapped.

ITUC vice president Khoirul Anam told The Jakarta Post separately his organization would accept the government's offer if it carried through with its plan to enlist the universities to evaluate the urgency of the revisions. "Otherwise, the ITUC will join forces with other major unions to stage a national strike in the observance of May Day," he said.

University of Indonesia economist Ichsanuddin Noersy said the universities would evaluate the importance of revising the labor law to effect economic recovery. "I'm afraid that the problem is not in the labor law. The main problem lies in the absence of clean corporate governance, the corrupt and complicated bureaucracy, double taxation system, poor infrastructure and the rigid investment laws," he said.

Former manpower and transmigration minister Bomer Pasaribu said the government should adopt an active labor market, instead of a rigid or flexible one, in drafting the bill.

"The rigid labor market is pro-neoliberal while the flexible labor market benefits workers. We should use the active labor market to benefit both sides," said Bomer, also chairman of the Center for Labor Development Studies and a lecturer in the postgraduate program at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture.

Medan workers camp out in protest

Jakarta Post - April 13, 2006

Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – Hundreds of workers in Medan are camping out in front of the North Sumatra provincial council building to protest alleged abuses at the furniture company they work for.

The employees of PT Cipta Mebelindo Lestari began their protest March 16, accusing the company of intimidating workers and denying them their basic rights under the Labor Law.

Protest coordinator Rudianto, 27, said 800 workers were taking part in the demonstration, with about 100 a day camping out in front of the building in tents.

Rudianto said the protest was organized in an effort to secure the council's support in their dispute with Cipta Mebelindo Lestari.

"We have been repressed. The company failed to meet our basic rights for two years. We protested to the company several times but all we received was intimidation," he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He claimed one employee, M. Salman, was physically assaulted by thugs hired by the company, adding the incident was reported to the police last month.

The workers want the company to pay them the regional minimum monthly wage and provide them with insurance, days off and an Idul Fitri bonus.

Rudianto, who has worked at the company for five years, said the employees simply wanted what they were entitled to.

"Our wages are still below the minimum wage and we don't get insurance, an Idul Fitri bonus and there are no holidays," he said. Rudianto added that he was paid Rp 600,000 (US$66.60) a month, far less than the provincial minimum wage of Rp 796,000.

He said the protest would continue until the company met their demands. "We are not camping out here looking for pity or to ask for money from the council. We just want the council members to fight for us," Rudianto said. He added that since the protest began, the company had proposed laying off 447 workers, starting in April this year.

When contacted by the Post, a member of Cipta Mebelindo Lestari's personnel department, Tina, said she was not authorized to discuss the matter, and that there was no one in the office who could answer questions.

The deputy chairman of the provincial council's commission E on welfare, Rafriandi, said the council was discussing the issue and that the company was studying the workers' demands.

"We hope this dispute between the workers and the company can be resolved soon so they do not have to continue camping out here," Rafriandi said.

The protest comes as the central government has agreed to rethink a planned revision to the controversial 2003 Labor Law – which includes lower severance pay and more flexible rules on contract-based employment and worker dismissals – following massive demonstrations across the country.

Scheme for fired workers welcomed

Jakarta Post - April 12, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – The business community and labor unions agreed Tuesday to support the government's plan to insure dismissed workers through state-owned insurance firm PT Jamsostek.

Manpower and Transmigration Minister Erman Suparno said earlier Jamsostek would be asked to handle a severance payment program for laid off workers after the government chose to delay revisions to the Labor Law following massive labor protests across the country.

Severance pay is among the most contentious issues in the proposed revision to the law, which has been rejected by labor unions. The proposed draft of the new law also would allow companies to outsource all of their work to other companies and employ expatriate workers in all strategic positions.

Syukur Sarto, deputy chairman of the All-Indonesian Workers Union Confederation, hailed the special program by Jamsostek, saying it would provide certainty for workers.

"The government and employers should understand workers' rights if they want the bill accepted. Labor conditions are very poor. Most workers are paid in line with regional minimum wages. The proposed revisions do not give workers certainty of their rights if they are fired. There is no job security," he said.

Confederation of Indonesian Prosperity Trade Unions chairman Rekson Silaban also praised the plan, and said Indonesia's social security programs for workers were among the worst in Southeast Asia. Rekson said the majority of workers could not enjoy retirement because their pensions were so small and health care was not guaranteed by the social security programs.

Indonesian Employers Association secretary-general Djimanto said his organization had long proposed the idea of setting up a program to help fired workers, but the government was slow to respond to the proposal.

"Employers are able to pay 10 percent of their workers' wages into the special scheme. This will help not only dismissed workers until they get new jobs but also employers, instead of having to pay a maximum of 32 times workers' monthly salaries in severance pay," he said.

He said that besides the financial benefits of the special program through Jamsostek, laid off workers also will receive severance and service payments, which will amount to less than the payment levels set by current labor laws.

Jamsostek director of operations Tjarda Muchtar said the company was ready to deal with the special scheme, which would be separate from its current social security programs to provide financial benefits for fired workers at the cost of their employers.

"Jamsostek has no objections if it is entrusted to carry out the special program, on the condition that it must be separated from our current four social security programs," he said Tuesday.

He said the government should sit down together with employers and labor unions to discuss the financing for the program and issue a regulation on it.

"Jamsostek cannot set the percentage of premium employers should contribute to the special program. That has to be determined by employers and workers or labor unions. The main point is that massive labor dismissals will not disturb employers' cash flow since it will be covered by Jamsostek," he said.

Often disregarded workers need their fair share

Jakarta Post - April 12, 2006

B. Herry-Priyono, Jakarta – For a few months in 1981, I was a casual worker at a pharmaceutical factory in Central Java. Then between 1992 and 1995, I had the privilege of working among the urban poor, including industrial workers, in Greater Jakarta. It was a period when the confidence of the New Order regime was at its peak. In the span of 15 years I witnessed the gradual process that has led to the present condition of labor.

It is the memory of those years that haunts me these days. A week ago the streets of Central Jakarta were hit by traffic congestion due to massive protests against planned revisions to the 2003 Labor Law.

By April 7, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his staff promised to reformulate the law based on three interests: "Protection of the rights and welfare of workers, business growth in the country and economic expansion." (The Jakarta Post, April 8, 2006)

Reconciling these three interests may appear uncomplicated when one has never had any experience with the day-to-day plight of workers. Even more, the task is greatly assisted by the current grammar of mainstream economics. Nowhere in the current parlance is economic expansion conceived as coming from the protection of workers' rights and welfare. In any case, expansion is conceived as a direct outcome of business growth, with the caveat that the term "business" has little to do with small enterprises, but rather with big or giant firms.

Indeed, there is already a built-in bias in the grammar of mainstream economics that runs against workers' rights and welfare. It is therefore heartening to learn that the three-party forum on the new Labor Law will consult five academic communities, i.e. Gadjah Mada University, Padjadjaran University, University of Indonesia, Hasanuddin University and University of North Sumatra.

But the built-in bias embedded in current economic thought should forewarn us against any assumed impartiality. The danger is to claim the built-in bias as scientific impartiality. If this is how the redrafting of the Labor Law will be done, there is no point in consulting experts, for we know in advance that it has nothing to do with impartiality.

Part of the bias is rooted in the well-known process in which financial capital has gradually assumed primacy over labor. This was done by attaching prices to capital. The price of capital is identified with the waiting time, and the longer the gestation period involved in the working of capital, the higher the returns to be claimed by capital.

It is through this process that labor, let alone manual labor, is conceived as a mere appendix to the powers of capital. Coupled with the law of scarcity applied to the prices of capital against the abundant reserve of labor, the priority of investors over workers is bound to have an appearance of necessity.

This bias has nothing to do with scientific judgment, be it economics or something else, but with the dictates of power. Since "dictates of power" is too heartless a term, many would shyly use "realism principle", but in fact the term "realism" is a mask for the brute dictates of power. It is through this process that we are all now at the mercy of investors.

No wonder that the main policy instrument to solve unemployment is conceived of in terms of all imaginable favors to investors. It is indeed urgent to remind us that from the very start there has been an unequal footing in the relationship between investors and workers, and this inequality is reinforced by an academic bias in favor of the former.

It is against this backdrop that even a modest advocacy for workers' plight is deemed as ideological, while the dictates of investors' power is perceived as scientific. There is no doubt that we need higher economic growth. For policy makers, growth is understood in terms of reducing unemployment.

For investors, however, unemployment is beside the point, for surely they invest not to solve the unemployment problem. Since employment is a noble idiom in policy making, the unemployment rate is then turned into a deadly weapon by which investors compel policy makers to meet their demands.

In mechanistic terms, 1 percent of economic growth absorbed about 400,000 new job seekers before 1994, but between 2000 and 2004 1 percent growth absorbed only 215,000 new job seekers. After 2004, that figure had dropped further to 178,000 job seekers. Again, this fall has also been turned into a deadly weapon in the form of an argument that the only way to halt the drop is to make the labor market flexible.

Flexible labor market is a face that wears many masks. If it is a way to increase worker discipline and productivity, no thoughtful person will oppose it. But in real terms, it is often simply a license to fire workers more easily, regardless of their Spartan discipline. If this sounds inconceivable, ask many ordinary workers in Tangerang or other industrial belts. They will share flesh-and-blood stories about such practices, which surely are never heard during seminars at five-star hotels.

With a flexible labor market at work, investors are expected to be bolder in hiring more labor, which, like magic, will reduce the unemployment rate. If this is how things work, there will surely be a nirvana, at least for policy makers.

But with the widespread practice of easy layoffs under the rubric of flexible labor market, what may take place is simply rotating employment and unemployment among job seekers. It is here that the mechanistic way of thinking about the solutions to unemployment hits its limits.

For those without access to the handsome powers of investors, the initial condition has always been characterized by unequal footing. This unpleasant fact cannot but be taken seriously by the drafters of the new Labor Law. And, hopefully, the academic communities that will be consulted will not confuse the dictates of power with scientific judgment.

Otherwise, what is claimed as scientific judgment will further breed, to borrow the poignant title of a book about the current conditions of labor, La Mishre du Monde (the misery of the world).

[The writer, a postgraduate lecturer at Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta, holds a PhD from The London School of Economics.]

Business bemoans decision to review labor law changes

Jakarta Post - April 11, 2006

Jakarta – The business community warned Monday the government's decision to review proposed changes to the labor law at the urging of workers would jeopardize investment prospects amid still high labor costs.

"We have to admit we are disappointed with the government's decision," Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) secretary- general Djimanto told The Jakarta Post. "It will be a setback for the implementation of the government's own policy package to improve the investment climate."

The government officially put on hold Saturday its plan to submit the bill to the House of Representatives, following more than two weeks' of massive protests by workers that brought industry to a standstill. Labor unionists have decried the bill, revising the 2003 Labor Law, as pro-business and diminishing their rights and welfare.

The government said the content of the bill should be thoroughly rehashed in a three-party forum of employers, represented by Apindo, labor unions and the government.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also asked independent experts to give their opinions, expecting the deliberation to address the protection of workers through the enhanced role of state workers insurance firm PT Jamsostek. He also hoped it would help ease unemployment through higher business growth and economic expansion.

The revision, which includes lower severance pay and easier outsourcing schemes, is part of the government's package of policies to create a more flexible labor sector to improve the investment climate.

As the revisions were scheduled for deliberation this April, with implementation to follow within the year, Djimanto said any delay would be a setback, especially when the content had already been discussed and agreed upon twice – in January and November last year.

Labor union leaders have denied agreeing to the revisions, claiming they felt sidelined from the earlier three-party talks.

Djimanto said the revisions were crucial, because continual minimum wage increases and similar severance pay schemes for all salary ranks exerted a significant financial burden on business. Subcontracting workers outside a company's core business was also to comply with the antimonopoly and business competition law, which forbids upstream-to-downstream businesses.

"Many companies are facing insolvency due to these high labor costs, discouraging business start-ups and investments." He urged the expert consultants to analyze the issue from corporate finance's point of view and compare Indonesia's labor sector with China, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, all of which are considered more competitive.

Indonesian Textile Association chairman Benny Soetrisno hoped the review would bridge the interests of employers and workers to create a more productive labor sector.

Economist Revrisond Baswir, meanwhile, urged the government not to sacrifice the welfare of the labor sector to attract foreign investment. "We actually have potentially large domestic and government investment resources," he said. "The problem is they have been sapped by a chronic high cost economy climate and for paying our foreign debts."

Referring to a recent World Economic Forum survey, Revrisond said labor was only seventh on the list of deterrents to investment, below such problems as the red-tape bureaucracy, corruption and illegal fees. "The government has, however, always opted to attract foreign investment at the expense of the lower-bracket society, including this time in labor," he said.

Dita Sari: The presidents' promise, workers and investment

Kompas - April 12, 2006

After triggering a wave of protests, the government's version of the draft revision of the labour law has been canceled.

Following the tripartite meeting at the State Palace on April 7, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that Law Number 13/2003 on Labour (UUK) would be improved through a national tripartite mechanism. It is hoped that this forum can produce an outcome that will bring relieve to workers, employers and the government.

There is an important point that needs to be noted here. The cancellation of the draft revision can actually be viewed as the genuine position taken by the government in looking at the labour problem. The president's decision to cancel the draft represents a compromise that was a consequence of the pressure of recent worker demonstrations, not because of any other considerations.

Democratic mechanisms

Deliberations of the UUK within a tripartite mechanism are in accordance with the procedures for resolving labour problems. However, bearing in mind that the UUK and its revisions (if it had been implemented) would have brought with it massive changes for workers, it would be best to give an opportunity to trade unions not directly involved in the tripartite forum to present recommendations.

The economic situation that will become more and more difficult in the future will place workers in a correspondingly week bargaining position. The UUK and its revisions will become a normative regulation that will be binding on workers for years and years into the future. It is because of this that trade unions need to collectively agree on the maximum level of compromise that can be tolerated, particularly over principle issues such as contract systems, outsourcing, wages and severance pay.

Government responsibility

The president also views China and Vietnam as appropriate examples of how to overcome labour problems. China and Vietnam are seen as being able to significantly attract the interest of investors to enter these countries because they have a more flexible labour policy.

There is however something important here that is not being stated. Although wage levels in China are not very high, the government's involvement in meeting the social needs of its people are. Newsweek Magazine (December 2005) for example explained that the Chinese government has recently increased the budget for higher education seven-fold while the Indonesian government has actually withdrawn operational funding for tertiary education. Fifty-five percent of Chinese citizens of student age can now obtain at lease one type of tertiary education. It is similar with regard to government assistance for healthcare. Thus although workers' wages are not very high, their purchasing power and welfare levels is not as low as is the case in Indonesia. Conversely, every year in Indonesia education and healthcare funds must succumb to the obligation to pay the debt. It is not surprising therefore that workers are making every effort to defend high levels of severance pay because it is impossible for them to hope that the government can finance the cost of education for their families after loosing a job. Workers continue to demand wage rises because their purchasing power is incapable of meeting the needs of a reasonable life. If these factors are regarded as being unproductive to investment, it is not workers that should be challenged, but the government. The business world's charges against workers over issues of productivity are clearly misdirected.

The president's reference to Chinese and Vietnamese models of labour flexibility should not be touted as a justification on the part of the government to cut into the remaining rights of workers. The decline of industry and human resources is not because we have failed to adopt the Chinese and Vietnamese approach to labour. Rather it is a consequence of the government's neoliberal policies of increasing the price of goods and social services so they are out of reach of workers, business and the majority of the people. Overcoming the problem of deindustrialisation by making the protection of workers more flexible is the same as putting workers in the position of the victims as well as the accused.

Discussions over the UUK therefore, need to be accompanied by a system of reference that is healthy and honest with regard to the macroeconomic situation. Those from academic and university circles that have been asked to provide input into this issue need to totally discard the paradigm or way of thinking that cites the protection of workers as the reason for the failure to create employment opportunities.

Aside from discussing the UUK, the other pressing agenda items for workers and business is to call in the government's promises to protect domestic industry. High interest rates, low purchasing power, numerous forms of illegal payments, bureaucratic fees, dependency on imported raw materials, the destruction of the domestic market, the low level of productivity and technology – who's responsibility is this? Why must workers bear the burden of the crisis? Why has the president forgotten his promise?

[Dita Indah Sari is the general chairperson of the People's Democratic Party (PRD). Translated by James Balowski.]

Governmnet delays labor law deliberation amid protests

Jakarta Post - April 9, 2006

Rendi Akhmad Witular, Jakarta – The government has officially postponed its plan to submit the controversial draft of the labor law amendment to the House of Representatives following waves of massive, rowdy street protests across Indonesia.

"We will not submit the draft in the near future. We will rewrite it and accommodate workers' demands," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in a press conference Saturday.

The review of the pro-business bill drafted by the government and business leaders will involve employers, labor unions and the government as well as independent experts.

The University of Indonesia, Padjajaran University, Gadjah Mada University, North Sumatra University, and Hasanuddin University have been appointed by the government to contribute ideas for the amendment.

"We should review contentious issues such as severance pay and insurance, as well as the role of (state social insurance firm) Jamsostek in promoting workers' welfare," said Yudhoyono.

Labor unions launched massive protests across the country in response to the proposed revisions to the law, paralyzing industries for the past weeks. The unions claim the draft in its current version favors employers at the expense of the rights and welfare of workers.

Yudhoyono met labor union leaders and representatives of the business community Friday, resulting in a decision to form a three-party forum to seek a resolution to the dispute.

The forum will factor three elements into its deliberations: the protection of the rights and welfare of workers, business growth in the country and economic expansion.

"We will have intensive discussions with full commitment to reformulate what is best for the nation. Various suggestions are needed to determine what is best suited for the revision," said Yudhoyono.

Job security, not law revision, workers say

Jakarta Post - April 9, 2006

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – Welfare-based job security could be a win-win way of settling the current the industrial conflict between workers and employers and repairing the investment climate in the country.

Clearly, the country's current social security systems needs to be reformed to provide certainty and humane treatment for dismissed workers, the unemployed and the retired. It also calls for a political commitment to offset the widening remuneration gap and adopting workers' fundamental or normative rights to the labor law to promote industrial harmony.

The strong opposition (from workers and labor unions) to the proposed bill to revise Law No. 13/2003 has a lot to do with the absence of a humane social security system, fair remuneration system and pro-labor economic policy, all of which would guarantee job security for workers.

Workers and employers have been at odds over the government- proposed bill, which is yet to be submitted to the House of Representatives (DPR) for deliberation, since it fails to accommodate the interests of both sides.

The last two weeks saw waves of labor rallies in major cities and towns on Sumatra and Java, the face of a massive labor union movement that almost disrupted political stability and demanded the government shelve its plan to revise the law.

The workers even threatened to stage a national strike in observance of May Day to attract international attention to the poor labor conditions in the country.

On the other hand, employers have proposed a more radical concept than the government has proposed in the bill. Besides demanding the labor market be liberalized, they also proposed a flexible implementation of contract-based employment and outsourcing and a cut of at least 50 percent of severance and service payments for dismissed and retiring workers.

The Confederation of All-Indonesian Workers Union (KSPSI) and the Confederation of Indonesian Prosperity Labor Union (KSBSI), two largest trade unions in the country, have no objections to the planned revisions as long as the draft law offers a win-win solution to workers and employers. "What the government and employers have proposed in the draft law is negotiable. The most important things workers need are job security, that their rights are respected during their employment, fair compensation if dismissed and humane treatment at retirement," KSPSI Deputy Chairman Syukur Sarto told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

He said workers would feel secure in their workplace if a fair remuneration system was adopted and the social security system provided fair compensation for dismissed workers and health and pension benefits for retired workers.

Workers will have no objections to the proposed unilateral dismissal by employers of workers, said Syukur, or the cuts to the severance and service payments for dismissed workers, provided the social security programs, which are run by state- owned PT Jamsostek, give fair compensation to dismissed and retiring workers.

"Employers should enroll all their workers with Jamsostek and both sides can improve the payroll by increasing the basic insurance premium at least to 20 percent from the current 13 percent," he said.

To provide severance pay for dismissed workers and guarantee life-time healthcare and maximum pension benefits for retiring workers, the government should amend Law No. 3/1992 on social security programs. It should also enforce Law No. 40/2004 on the national security system to provide financial aid to the unemployed.

In terms of social security programs, Indonesia is ranked last in Southeast Asia. There are no life healthcare programs or dismissal benefit funds, and workers receive a pension benefit into which they and their employers have paid just seven percent of their monthly wage during their employment.

Malaysia pays 23 percent of its workers' monthly salary into the pension program, Singapore 44 percent and Vietnam 23 percent, allowing their retired workers to enjoy security in their old age.

Syukur also said the widening salary gap between the lowest- ranked workers and those in the managerial level had prevented employers and a majority of workers from paying a higher premium on their social security programs.

"The current wage ratio could be 1:150. If the ratio is reduced to, say, 1:50, the lowest-ranked workers could be paid around Rp 3 million monthly, enabling them to pay a higher premium to Jamsostek," he said, adding the wage ratio in welfare countries such as Japan, France and South Korea was 1:30.

Rekson Silaban, chairman of KSBSI, concurred and said the government should also control price stability through its economic policy to maintain workers' purchasing power.

"The current remuneration system and the economic policy which supports market liberalization have weakened workers' purchasing power. The government's economic decision to increase oil prices twice last year and the soaring prices of basic commodities and transportation tariffs have overburdened a majority of low-paid workers," he said.

Djimanto, secretary general of the Indonesian Employers' Association (Apindo), said employers have long proposed a fundamental reform of the social security programs in an effort to repair the investment climate, but the government had been slow to take the initiative.

He said it would be difficult to adopt a better remuneration system because almost 70 percent of the 103 million person work force were unskilled high school drop outs. "Employers have an interest in improving the quality of human resources. The government and parents have to play their role in improving the education system and to provide training programs to produce ready-for-employment school graduates."

Environment

Suspend sales of Papua forests: NGO

Jakarta Post - April 13, 2006

Jakarta – More than 25 percent of the natural forests in Papua have been sold in concessions to timber firms exporting to Japan, the US, the European Union and China, said the director of Greenpeace in Southeast Asia, Emmy Hafild, on Wednesday.

She said the government needed to immediately make moratorium deals with timber companies in a bid to stop or at least slow deforestation in the resource-rich province.

Data from the Forestry Ministry shows the government has sold 11.6 million hectares of forest in Papua to 65 firms.

For timber trade, many routes lead through Singapore

Washington Post - April 9, 2006

Ellen Nakashima, Singapore – A Singapore timber trader boasted that the cargo he had sent to India was a hardwood known as merbau, prized for its use in elegant flooring and door and window frames. The species has been so heavily logged in Southeast Asia that conservationists consider it threatened. But the trader stressed in a recent telephone interview that the logs he ordered were from Papua New Guinea, where log exports are legal.

Environmentalists who investigated the 2005 deal, however, said the timber was probably smuggled out of neighboring Indonesia, where all log exports are banned. And a Papua New Guinea customs official who looked at the documents accompanying the shipment concluded they were forged.

Like many cases in the murky world of timber trade, the deal involved businessmen in different countries sending money and wood across many borders.

Sometimes, illicit wood ends up as furniture and flooring in the homes of unsuspecting Americans. And the transaction lines often run through Singapore, which has become a vital physical and financial hub in the Asian timber trafficking trade, according to environmentalists.

In just two months last year, the Indonesian navy seized 314 containers of timber and pulp in the waters between Sumatra and Singapore, which lie on opposite sides of the 40-mile-wide Malacca Strait. The boats and barges were headed to Singapore, Indonesian police said. They carried false documents listing the cargo as wood moldings, when they were actually carrying sawed timber, which Indonesia has banned for export, officials said.

An Indonesian government crackdown on illegal logging last year resulted in more than 1,200 arrests, but many of the major alleged criminals remain at large, including more than 10 individuals in Singapore, Indonesian national police said.

"They feel secure there," said Anton Bachrul Alam, the national police spokesman, noting that the two countries do not have an extradition treaty. The Singapore government stresses that it does not condone illegal activity. People who break Singaporean laws will be prosecuted, officials said.

Illegal wood, even without forged documents, often makes it out of Indonesia and into or through Singapore and other ports, despite Indonesia's ban on sawed timber and log exports. And even if the timber is logged illegally, there is nothing illegal about importing it into another country unless that country bans the imports.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, cranes at the ports here lift hulking containers onto waiting ships, waterborne couriers moving 60,000 containers a day – making Singapore the world's maritime transshipment capital.

Immigration and customs authorities conduct rigorous checks for drugs, weapons and other contraband entering and leaving Singapore. But "transshipment goods do not enter the commerce of Singapore, as it does not cross the customs line," Trade Ministry officials noted. "Any timber, if it indeed passed through Singapore, merely switched ships here."

In the first 10 months of 2005, US ports received about 3,840 tons of Indonesian sawed timber that had been transshipped through Singapore, up from 2,600 tons the year before, according to US customs data analyzed by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit organization with offices in Washington and London. The agency obtained the data from a subscription database maintained by the commercial Port Import Export Reporting Service.

US officials said they felt the more pressing issue was helping Indonesia fight illegal logging. Last week in Washington, trade officials from both countries announced that they would work toward an agreement to combat illegal logging in Indonesian forests.

According to Singapore Trade Ministry data, in 2005, about 126,300 cubic meters of sawed timber, the equivalent of forest area the size of Arlington County, was imported into Singapore from Indonesia. Singapore officials said they could not be expected to enforce other countries' laws.

"If there is evidence of smuggling offenses into Singapore and that Singapore laws have been breached, our authorities will do what is within their legal powers," the Trade Ministry said in an e-mail reply to questions from The Washington Post.

"The most robust solution to smuggling is to deal with the problems at source," the ministry said. "Destination ports could perhaps play a part, as the shipments would have to pass through customs checks to reach their buyers. At transshipment ports, most shipments merely stay a few hours. It is not possible or even feasible to check each and every shipment."

In February 2005, the Environmental Investigation Agency issued a report exposing a massive smuggling trade in which up to 300,000 cubic meters of merbau logs a month – worth more than $600 million retail – were being illegally cut in Indonesia's Papua province and shipped to China and India. Often, Singaporean traders were involved in the deals, the environmental group alleged.

Some of those logs were shipped by Wajilam Exports Pte., according to the environmental group. Wajilam's director, Tarun Mehta, insisted in a telephone interview that the shipments were legal and came from Papua New Guinea.

In two transactions, Wajilam and another Singaporean firm shipped 21,626 cubic meters of logs to India via Davao, in the southern Philippines, the Environmental Investigation Agency reported.

The logs went by barge to Davao, where, according to documents and interviews with Philippine officials, they were hoisted onto ships bound for Hong Kong and India. The accompanying documents listed the logs' origin as Papua New Guinea.

But Waliya Abilo, Papua New Guinea customs' director of investigations, who examined the papers at the agency's request, concluded that the documents had been forged. He said the way the forms were filled out did not match those usually issued by his customs office.

Asked whether the logs were actually from Indonesia and the documents forged, Mehta replied: "I wouldn't know absolutely anything about that. I was just the exporter, [with the] beginning point from Davao, that's all."

Last year, the Indonesian government's Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, which tracks money laundering, filed a report with police about suspected timber smuggling involving more than 50 transactions from a Singapore bank account to two bank accounts in Indonesia. The transactions totaled $10 million over two years, investigators said.

Those accounts fed a series of other accounts in Indonesia belonging to local military, police and Forestry Ministry officials and timber company representatives in several Indonesian provinces with serious illegal logging problems, the investigators said. The money-laundering unit has not yet asked Singapore about the account, held in the name of a Malaysian timber company, because the case is still being investigated, said Yunus Husein, head of the Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center.

Singapore officials said Singapore was "fully committed" to the international effort against money laundering. "If there is evidence to show that proceeds of crime have been laundered in Singapore, we will not hesitate to investigate the matter and take appropriate enforcement action," said Stanley Norbert, a police spokesman, in an e-mail reply on behalf of the police and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the nation's financial regulator.

But based on inquiries in previous money-laundering cases, Husein said, he is not optimistic that Singapore would respond. "I think because Singapore wants to keep its status as the region's financial center," he said, "they keep secret information about bank accounts."

Norbert acknowledged that Singapore aims to preserve "the integrity" of its financial sector. But, he said in his e-mail, "banking confidentiality is never absolute." He said that in Singapore, bank account information may be provided as part of a police investigation.

In Singapore, officials said they conduct stringent checks for an endangered hardwood species called ramin, a blond wood noted for its fine grain that grows primarily in Indonesia. Singapore reported imports of sawed ramin from Malaysia, but not Indonesia, in 2004 and 2005. But a wood-products manufacturer in the booming Guangzhou area of southern China told an Environmental Investigation Agency investigator in November that Indonesian ramin, most of it smuggled, often finds its way into the market through Singapore.

"Singapore is the place to be if you want to look for ramin," the manufacturer said. Singaporean officials asked for proof. "Singapore authorities stand ready to take action," trade officials said in their e-mail, "should reliable and detailed information that illegal trade in ramin is taking place through Singapore be made available to us."

Smokers take the fall as real culprits get away

Jakarta Post - April 8, 2006

Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – While smokers are being held accountable for air pollution, it is not clear what the consequences are for car owners who fail to get an exhaust emissions test done.

"We are still drafting it (local decree) on emissions tests," Yusiono Anwar Supalal, head of air control at the Jakarta Environmental Management Agency, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The 2005 bylaw on air pollution makes regular emissions tests mandatory for all private vehicles and bans smoking in a range of public places. It also promotes the use of compressed natural gas for public transportation vehicles.

The administration, however, needs to issue regulations and technical guidelines to support the implementation of the bylaw.

The smoking ban, which took effect Feb. 4, was not properly enforced from the start because of the absence of technical guidelines. Yusiono did not say when the supporting regulations would be ready.

"We have to discuss the details of both the regulations and the technical guidelines with the related agencies, "In the meantime we may apply the decree on emissions tests issued by the governor in 2000 to support the bylaw," he said.

The decree stipulates that private car owners are required to get an emissions test done once a year. The 2005 bylaw increases the frequency to at least two times a year.

The 2000 decree recommends the program be overseen by a commission established by Jakarta Governor and made up of city officials, environmentalists and representatives of non- governmental organizations.

The decree, however, focuses more on the appointment of auto workshops to perform the tests. Currently, there are 80 auto authorized workshops and 239 technicians certified to conduct the tests.

The air pollution bylaw stipulates the free "clean emissions" certificate would be the main requirement for renewing vehicle registrations. Vehicle owners will also be given a sticker to be placed on the inner top left side of the windshield, under the plastic film.

Police said the bylaw contradicted a 1980 law issued by the Transportation Ministry, which only requires public transportation and commercial vehicles to be tested. But the administration assured last week police would start ticketing car owners without certificates.

Meanwhile, NGO Clean Emissions Partner (MEB) expressed concern over the city's poor preparations for enforcing the bylaw. "The delay of the program shows the administration is not serious about reducing air pollution in Jakarta," Firdaus Cahyadi, MEB program manager, said in a statement.

He said any further delays would worsen air pollution in the city because research showed 70 percent of the pollution was caused by car exhaust emissions.

Health & education

Malnutrition grips Tangerang children

Jakarta Post - April 8, 2006

Multa Fidrus, Tangerang – Eighteen-month-old Citra stares vacantly up at the ceiling of her parents' small house in Dadap village in Serpong, Tangerang. The malnourished child was sickly at birth.

"I don't have the money to take her to hospital for treatment," said her father Nurhasan, who is a farmer.

In February, Citra was admitted to Tangerang General Hospital, where she stayed for a week before being transferred to Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital in Jakarta for specialist treatment.

Most children of her age weigh about 15 kilograms, while Citra weighs just over five.

The head of Serpong Community Health Center, Khow Loanita, said the center was supplying the family with enriched food for Citra. "That's all we can do," she said Friday.

Three siblings of another Tangerang family are also malnourished. The father, Wasito, who is a dockhand at Tanjung Priok Port, North Jakarta, cannot afford to take his children to hospital.

Four-year-old Salsabila, two-year-old Vita and 11-month-old Rifki are being treated at home. "This is the first case in Serpong of a family with three malnourished children," Loanita said.

She said that despite malnutrition cases in the district dropping from 37 in February to 22 in March, the health center was struggling to treat some of the children because they also had tuberculosis. "They have been taking food supplements for six months, but we see no progress," she said.

Each child receives two liters of milk and four packets of enriched biscuits a month.

Data from the regency's health agency shows that 1,871 children under the age of five – mostly from areas along the north coast, such as Teluk Naga and Rajeg districts – are malnourished.

Eleven-month-old Suharto and 17-month-old Andriyansah from Legok and Balaraja districts respectively died last week from malnutrition-related illnesses.

The head of Tangerang Health Agency, Heni Harianto, said their condition was mainly triggered by poverty caused by unemployment or harvest failure.

Dozens of factories in the regency laid off thousands of workers after last year's fuel price increases. Farmers in the regency's north have been struggling since pests attacked thousands of hectares of rice fields last year.

Village nurses under-skilled, overworked, study says

Jakarta Post - April 8, 2006

Hera Diani, Jakarta – In a village in West Kalimantan, a patient's relative threatened a nurse with a traditional sword because she was reluctant to treat him, a discussion heard on Friday.

"It was not even a nurse's job, it was a doctor's," Achir Yani S. Hamid, the president of the Indonesian Nurses Association, told a forum on Indonesian public health.

After the threat, the nurse improvised a treatment she had once seen doctors' perform, Yani said. She worked in the Kapuas Hulu regency, which had only four doctors serving 24 community health centers.

The situation in Kapuas Hulu was little different to those in other regions of the country, which were also short of trained health workers, Yani said.

With a ratio of one nurse for every 900 people, Indonesia was far below the international recommendation of one nurse for every 250 patients, she said.

Research by the Health Ministry and the University of Indonesia School of Nursing in 2005 surveyed community health centers in 60 rural areas throughout the country.

In almost all of the centers, nurses were being asked to do the jobs of doctors or midwives, procedures they were not qualified for, Yani said.

More than 90 percent of nurses were prescribing drugs, while 97 percent were making diagnoses and house calls. Nurses also regularly checked on the progress of pregnancies (70 percent) and delivered babies (57 percent). Most were also in charge of clinic cleaning and hygiene (78 percent) and administrative work (63 percent).

The majority of nurses had few qualifications, and many had little more than elementary school educations, further limiting their service to the public. It didn't help that they were often tired, uncommunicative or rude to patients, Yani said.

"Their skill level is not entirely their fault because 70 percent of nurses in this country have never been properly trained, let alone trained to do doctor's work. The error rate in their work is understandably also high." Another survey by the association showed most district health nurses were stressed and unhappy in their jobs, Yani said.

The skill shortage meant Indonesia had some of the worst health statistics in the region, she said.

The country's infant and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in South Asia, with 48 deaths per 1,000 live births and 470 deaths per 100,000 births respectively. Indonesia also has the world's third-highest number of tuberculosis cases, endemic malaria and dengue and problems with water-borne infections, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS.

Indonesian Public Health Experts Association head Kemal N. Siregar said improving the situation boiled down to the government getting serious about funding public health.

This year's national health budget amounts to 2.4 percent of the country's gross domestic product, while the World Health Organization recommends a minimum 5 percent allocation.

"The budget has to be increased, but it has to be allocated well. Most of the funding goes into buildings and medicines. The priority, however, should be on public service; primarily developing and empowering the health workforce," Kemal said.

Aid & development

Bridges a hive of activity for the poor

Jakarta Post - April 15, 2006

Jakarta – Her chores are done and Tina is waiting for her husband to come home to their makeshift shack under Matraman overpass in Central Jakarta. She is not alone.

Under the overpass, which traverses Ciliwung River, hundreds of the city's poorest people live in damp and squalid conditions. Many do not have ID cards, meaning they are considered illegal residents, and make barely enough to eat.

Thirty-two-year-old Tina and her husband started off in the city as scavengers. But the husband recently got a permanent job separating organic waste from nonorganic waste to be sold to a garbage collective in Manggarai, South Jakarta.

"I know it's illegal to live under bridges, but there is no other place for us to stay," said the mother of two, who came here from Indramayu, West Java, 10 years ago.

To survive in the capital, many people from poor regions end up living in semi-permanent structures or cardboard boxes under bridges or overpasses. Some of them even run businesses from home.

One of Tina's neighbors, Rumsi, makes furniture from sheets of plywood, which he salvages from buildings that have been torn down, and sells it at the market. "I can only make two chairs or tables a month but it helps us survive," he said.

Under the overpass in Teluk Gong, North Jakarta, motorists get a good view of the living conditions of some of the city's worst off. They live in the rows of shacks alongside the dump. Garbage trucks come and go constantly.

Eko, one of the slum dwellers, said his family moved there because the city administration evicted everyone in his neighborhood in 2003.

"We used to live near the street... The Public Order Agency burned down our houses. Governor Sutiyoso has not said anything about us living here. Hopefully they'll allow us to stay."

To earn a living, the community assembles power plugs for a nearby electronics goods factory. "They pay us Rp 2,500 a sack," Eko said.

Perceived as "illegal" in the eyes of the law because he does not have an ID card, Eko, who came here from Central Java, is ineligible for one of the low-cost apartments the city makes available for the poor.

The head of the planning unit at the Jakarta Housing Agency, Suratman, said the low-cost apartments were only for Jakarta residents.

"In North Jakarta slum areas, from Tanjung Priok to Penjaringan districts, only 994 of 2,557 households are eligible for the apartments because they have Jakarta ID cards," he told The Jakarta Post recently.

The city administration is planning to build some 3,000 units of low-cost apartments. It has allocated some Rp 251 billion to acquire the land for the construction in its 2006 budget.

The city administration had ordered 301 developers to build the low-cost apartments as part of their obligation to provide public facilities for obtaining the permits to construct housing estates.

The housing agency estimates there are some 40,000 people living in slums or on the banks of polluted rivers.

However, an activist who has taken up the cause of evicted residents in North Jakarta, Firdaus Piping, said that the city administration should give people without Jakarta ID cards equal rights to housing. "They should not stay illegal residents for the rest of their lives," he told the Post.

Poverty programs have 'little impact'

Jakarta Post - April 8, 2006

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – The many poverty reduction programs the government implemented in 2005 took only a million people out of absolute poverty, a survey reveals.

Data collected by the Office of the Coordinating Minister for Social Welfare made available to The Jakarta Post on Friday, said 19 ministries and government agencies implemented 55 poverty reduction programs worth a total of Rp 23.1 trillion (US$2.34 billion). The programs succeeded reducing the number of people classed as extremely poor in the country from 36.1 million in 2004 to 35.1 million in 2005, the data says.

Despite the minor reduction in the overall number of people in poverty, the number of people in urban centers classed as poor increased by 14 million in 2005, the data says.

An official from the Office of the Coordinating Minister for Social Welfare said many of the programs were unable to reach their targets.

"We are now reviewing which programs failed and which succeeded. We will announce the results in June," welfare ministry deputy Sujana Royat, said.

Sujana said 10 programs would be dropped and another 10 would win more support after the review, to be overseen by chief welfare minister Aburizal Bakrie. "This is to show that we are serious in reducing poverty." Infrastructure projects targeting the poor had the least effect, Sujana said.

Of all government agencies tasked with implementing poverty reduction programs in 2005, the education, health and public works ministries and the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) received the most funding – a total of Rp 18 trillion.

After his election in 2004, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the government planned to halve poverty in the nation by 2009.

State Minister of National Development Planning head Paskah Suzzetta recently told Antara in Makassar that Indonesia aimed at achieving "zero poverty" by 2015 as part of its United Nation's Millennium Development Goals.

The government's critics say the targets are highly unrealistic, and point to increasing unemployment and a rising cost of living as likely reasons the poor will stay poor here.

Neither would the projected economic growth rate, a modest 6 percent per annum, be enough to create sufficient jobs for the two to three million people entering the workforce every year, they said.

Welfare ministry statistics show there are still 28,000 "disadvantaged villages" in over 199 regencies throughout the country.

The lingering economic crisis, underfunding, official mismanagement and corruption and a lack of coordination among state welfare agencies are frequently blamed for a succession of governments' failures to reduce the nation's poverty rate.

Opinion & analysis

The hawk in wolf's clothing

Paras Indonesia - April 14, 2006

Roy Tupai – World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, who served as US ambassador to Indonesia from 1986-89 and more recently as hawkish deputy defense secretary, has been back in town this month, extolling the need for good governance, supremacy of the law and anti-corruption strategies.

Critics say his message is a bit late in coming – 20 years to be precise. The general consensus is that while Wolfowitz was a congenial and competent diplomat during his posting in Jakarta, he almost never tried to encourage the Suharto regime to adopt democratization, respect for human rights or clean governance.

It was only in his final days as ambassador that he made some politely worded parting remarks about Indonesia's corruption and political repression. In his May 1989 farewell speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia, he said that "if greater openness is a key to economic success, I believe there is increasingly a need for openness in the political sphere as well".

Apparently unwilling to risk causing offense by using taboo words such as corruption and nepotism, he said "the cost of the high- cost economy remains too high, for the private sector to flourish, special privilege must give way to equal opportunity and equal risk for all".

Wolfowitz claimed he also paid a farewell visit on Suharto at this time and raised three sensitive issues: "the problem of succession; the problem of corruption as a drag on economic growth; and the need for greater political openness in a country whose economy was becoming increasingly open and whose growing middle class was demanding a greater voice in government".

Jeffrey Winters, an American expert on Indonesia disagreed, saying "it is really too much to claim that he played any kind of role in leading Indonesia to democracy".

Wolfowitz on Tuesday announced the World Bank and multilateral development banks were working on a common strategy to blacklist firms that engage in corruption. "I believe it would be good if all development institutions would publicly blacklist firms and individuals that engage in bribery in projects, as the World Bank already does," he said.

Countries that upset Wolfowitz are also being penalized. In January, he suspended $124 million in World Bank loans to the impoverished sub-Saharan African nation of Chad because its government had sought access to a poverty alleviation fund generated from the country's oil revenues. Critics complain that Wolfowitz is using World Bank money to help develop a Third World country's oil fields to benefit the US and ExxonMobil.

As one of the world's poorest countries, landlocked Chad cannot afford to pay its civil servants and also has to deal with thousands of refugees from neighboring Sudan and the Central African Republic. Kenya, Bangladesh and Congo-Brazzaville have also been refused loans by Wolfowitz for failing to abide by the terms of agreements with the World Bank.

It was a rather different story in January 1998, when Wolfowitz urged a US Congressional committee to release International Monetary Fund assistance to Indonesia before examining whether the program was suitable or open to embezzlement. "To withhold funding from the IMF because of concerns that some IMF programs may hurt the poor or help the wealthy or even rescue individuals or institutions from the consequences of their own irresponsibility would be like using an axe to do the work of a scalpel," he said.

Although Wolfowitz was known for ignoring human rights violations, many Indonesians were still shocked when he became US deputy defense secretary in 2001 and began promoting his policy of American global leadership through military force.

Indonesians who were vehemently opposed to the Iraq war seem to have short memories, as little fuss has been made over Wolfowitz's current visit, which commenced in Aceh on April 5. A recent column in The Jakarta Post heaps praise on Wolfowitz as the most prominent FOI (Friend of Indonesia) in Washington, notes his "love and affection" for the country and declares he is "perhaps Indonesia's most effective advocate overseas".

A barrage of critical articles appeared one year ago when US President George W. Bush announced his intention of putting Wolfowitz at the helm of the World Bank. Following is one of the articles, written by Jeffrey Winters. It was originally published on March 29, 2005, by the Joyo Indonesia News Service.

Wolfowitz's record on economic policy and human rights poor

Joyo Exclusive - March 29, 2005

Jeffrey A. Winters – In an effort to downplay his more recent hawkish profile as the No 2 man at the Defense Department, Paul Wolfowitz, nominated by George Bush to be president of the World Bank, has pointed to his tenure as ambassador to Indonesia as evidence that he is well suited to lead the worlds largest institution focused on development.

In fact, Wolfowitzs record as ambassador in Jakarta provides some of the most damning evidence against him.

In 1997 the Indonesian banking and financial sector imploded under the weight of gross mismanagement, non-performing loans, and debilitating corruption. As ambassador to Indonesia, Wolfowitz helped set the stage for this collapse of the Indonesian economy, a tragedy that plunged tens of millions into abject poverty.

Specifically, in 1988 Indonesia implemented one of the most reckless deregulations of a banking sector ever undertaken. Pushed by the World Bank, the IMF, and Wolfowitzs Economic Policy Support Office (EPSO) at the US embassy, Indonesia's technocrats opened the floodgate for local crony conglomerates to set up private banks across the country and take in deposits from a trusting public.

Wolfowitz and his EPSO staff talked up the wonders of liberalization. The deregulated banking system would mobilize capital more efficiently, jobs would be created, and the economy would soar.

Left out of the formula was any Indonesian government mechanism or capacity for supervision and safeguards for the banking and financial sector. Ideologues like Wolfowitz could only see a need for the state to get out of the way. But what Indonesia's depositors really needed was a stronger state role to set rules and boundaries for bankers behavior.

The foxes were running wild in the financial chicken coop, and no one, including Ambassador Wolfowitz, pressured the Indonesians to design safeguards to protect the publics deposits. These policies were a time bomb set in 1988 and finally triggered in 1997 when the Thai baht collapsed.

Indonesia's banking system had to be bailed out, the public took on crushing levels of new debt, and the Indonesian population suffered miserably. Eight years later, Indonesia is just barely back to where it stood before the crisis hit.

Wolfowitz is certainly not solely responsible for the devastating effects of the 1988 deregulation. But he was one of a handful of key actors pressing the Indonesians forward on a reckless and risky path, driven by simplistic free market ideologies summed up in the now discredited "Washington Consensus."

Turning to the question of human rights and democracy, ambassador Wolfowitzs record from his Indonesia days is even worse.

Prominent Indonesian activists and leaders of NGOs are already on record stating that when he was ambassador, Wolfowitz never met with them or visited their offices to lend moral support as they struggled for freedom from the repressive Suharto regime.

But the single most important political moment of Ambassador Wolfowitz's years in Jakarta – the visit of President Reagan in 1986 – shows that he played a crucial role in shielding the Suharto regime from any close scrutiny of its human rights record. He also helped keep democratization in Indonesia off the front-burner of US-Indonesia relations.

Reagan's handlers dubbed his swing through Asia the "winds of freedom" tour. As the Reagan entourage was on final approach to Bali, Indonesia, Ambassador Wolfowitz was scrambling to get the Indonesian government to grant visas to two Washington-based reporters from Australia who were flying with Reagan. The New York Times reporter, Barbara Crossette, had already been deported the day before for writing an article critical of the regime.

Wolfowitz's role was particularly telling in this mess. According to Los Angeles Times reporters Jack Nelson and Eleanor Clift, "Paul D. Wolfowitz, the US ambassador to Indonesia, had urged the Indonesians to withdraw the ban on the journalists for fear that it would draw attention to the human rights issue. Administration officials had emphasized that Reagan had no plan to raise human rights with Suharto and would prefer that the issue not be raised publicly."

Wolfowitz's efforts to get visas for the journalists were not to defend press freedom, but rather to make sure that Suharto and Reagan would not be embarrassed by talk about human rights violations, and by having the world see the Indonesian dictator behaving as dictators often do.

"In a press briefing book compiled for the Presidents trip," the Times article noted, "the Administration said that although problems remain, there were improvements in the human rights situation in Indonesia in 1985. In fact, Reagan's visit comes in the aftermath of a crackdown on dissidents."(1)

Reagan's trip cast more world attention on Indonesia than the country had seen in a decade – in fact, since President Ford's 1975 stop in Jakarta on the eve of Indonesia's bloody invasion of East Timor. It was the single most important opportunity ambassador Wolfowitz would have to raise the issue of dictatorship and human rights abuses in Indonesia.

Instead, he toed the hawkish line of the Reagan administration and kept the focus exclusively on economic and regional security issues.

The Indonesia Times quoted Wolfowitz as saying that "economic issues would be on the forefront on the agenda of the talks between the two presidents."(2) The Australian journalists, immediately taken into custody in Bali and deported, were being blocked because of a recent article another journalist had written back in Australia. The article accurately described the Suharto dictatorships abuses of human rights and focused on the Suharto family and cronies as being corrupt.

The Telegraph reported that, "Mr. Wolfowitz had described the [Australian] newspaper article as bad and told a press conference on his arrival in Jakarta that the US would handle the sort of situation it created with the Indonesian Government by playing down the article and trying to ignore it."(3)

Wolfowitzs cowardly behavior prompted a rare rebuke from the head of the Australian government. The Advertiser in Australia reported that Wolfowitz was specifically singled out for criticism by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke for his comments. Hawke "did not hesitate to attack" the new US Ambassador to Jakarta, Mr. Paul Wolfowitz."(4)

Wolfowitz not only undercut the Australian journalists who focused attention on a murderous and torturing American ally in Southeast Asia, but he lectured the Australians on how to handle an embarrassing flap like this – play it down, ignore it.

In a Lexis-Nexis search of every mention of Wolfowitz in the press during his years as ambassador, there is not one instance where he is quoted as speaking up on human rights or democracy in Indonesia. Instead, he is consistently apologetic for the Suharto regime, always turning the focus toward matters of business, investment, and the local and regional stability the iron-fisted Suharto helped promote.

Notes

1. Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1986, "Indonesia Bars 2 on Reagan Press Plane."

2. Quoted in Xinhua General Overseas News Service, April 29, 1986.

3. The Telegraph, April 24, 1986, "Hawke Blasts Bali Visa Action."

4. The Advertiser, April 25, 1986, "Hawke Drops Kid Gloves and Slams Indonesia," by Peter Costigan.

[Jeffrey A. Winters is an Associate Professer of Political Economy at the Northwestern University.]

The trouble with territory's future

The Australian - April 15, 2006

Damien Kingsbury – The diplomatic row between Australia and Indonesia has highlighted the increasingly critical situation in the already troubled territory of Papua. As events develop, the future of Papua looks less clear than at any time since Indonesia moved into the former Dutch territory in 1963.

The options range from worsening discord and conflict to the prospect of independence. But for those Papuans who favour independence, Indonesia's nationalists, spearheaded by the Indonesian military, the TNI, are profoundly opposed to Papua's separation from Indonesia and will destroy the place rather than let it go.

Should this situation arise, the Indonesian Government would have almost no capacity, and probably little desire, to limit the TNI's actions.

Beyond Papua in Indonesia, there is only opposition to its independence.

The problem with the independence proposition is that even though there is little likelihood it can be achieved, it suits the TNI to raise this prospect to entrench its own position in Papua and, as guarantor of state cohesion, in Indonesian politics.

No matter which way events turn, the situation in Papua is not sustainable. Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono recognises this and wants a negotiated resolution. However, he has so far said this should occur within the context of existing legislation for Papua. According to most Papuan groups, this is too limited to produce an adequate outcome.

Similarly, there is growing international interest in and increasing pressure for a resolution in Papua, not least from the US Congress and some parts of the US administration. Australia also wants to see a resolution in Papua, in large part to limit it as the focus of continuing bilateral discord.

The US Congress has applied some pressure over Papua's status and could push for a negotiated settlement. But the US administration is generally keen to retain and indeed boost Indonesia as a regional ally.

Short of overwhelming public pressure, as with East Timor, Australia is reduced to the diplomatic equivalent of hand- wringing, and this is more over its relationship with Jakarta than reflecting any great concern for the people of Papua.

The question, then, is whether a negotiated settlement can be charted between the competing claims of Papuan calls for independence, the backlash this would entail and the deteriorating status quo. A negotiated settlement, if it moved beyond rhetoric, would require three criteria. These can be summarised as intention, capacity and opportunity.

Both the Indonesian Government and a representative Papuan organisation must first want a negotiated solution. Yudhoyono does, if within an impossibly limited framework. Key Papuan leaders have also said they seek what they call a just peace through dialogue. The primary intention, therefore, appears to be there.

In terms of capacity, there has been a coalescing of Papua's political organisations around a common vision for the future, as well as a desire for a negotiated settlement to that end. In support of his legislative program, Yudhoyono, meanwhile, has so far been able to muster a small but definite majority in Indonesia's legislature, the People's Representative Council or DPR.

However, in Indonesia's sometimes factious political environment, Yudhoyono must also be able to command substantial institutional support to ensure that any agreement reached is respected. It would be easy for the Indonesian army or its proxy militias in Papua – Laskar Jihad and Laskar Tabligh - to wreck any such agreement. The militias have opposed Papuan activists in the past and there have been recent reports of militia involvement in drive-by shootings.

Among Papuans, too, there has been a capacity to divide, although many Papuans note that their lack of a united leadership is primarily a consequence of their leaders being murdered or forced into exile. Divisions in Papuan society, however, have been overstated in Jakarta and there is now a commitment to the idea of a representative team rather than the idea of a single leader.

A negotiated settlement also requires opportunity. The Aceh peace agreement was initiated before the 2004 tsunami, but there is no doubt that event helped push negotiations to a successful conclusion. The other main factor was international support, and pressure on both parties.

Papua does not have the tsunami incentive, but there is an increasing sense of urgency about its status. And, as with Aceh, any settlement in Papua will also require support, not least on the part of a willing mediator and the backing of a key international power such as the US or European Union to act as a guarantor for any agreement.

Indonesia would prefer to negotiate an outcome internally, but any possible internal agreement would probably be subverted, as it was with Papua's original special autonomy package. There is virtually no one in Papua who wants a negotiated settlement who would trust the Indonesian Government without international mediation and related guarantees.

There are, however, two impediments to the possibility of a negotiated settlement. The first and main impediment is that Indonesia's DPR has not yet passed the enabling legislation from the Aceh peace agreement. Further, and despite international guarantees, the legislation that is being considered falls short of that which was agreed to.

Despite differences between Aceh and Papua, the Aceh peace agreement will act as a precedent to any possible negotiated settlement for Papua. If it fails, then the chances of a negotiated settlement in Papua would appear slim. If the Aceh legislation is passed, but in diluted form, or subverted in practice, this too will undermine a possible Papua settlement.

At this stage, however, it appears that the Aceh peace agreement will hold. A recent meeting of senior Free Aceh Movement (GAM) leaders and other Acehnese politicians in Stockholm reaffirmed them as committed to a path of peace through democracy.

To that end, the Aceh peace legislation will probably be passed in the next few weeks, and its expected shortcomings will be referred to its international guarantors, the Crisis Management Initiative and the EU, for mediation. At that point, prospects for a follow-up settlement for Papua may start to look more reasonable, if not promising.

A lesser, although still critical, problem also lies with the international community. The EU backed the Aceh peace agreement because it came hot on the heels of its commitment with others to rebuilding Aceh after the tsunami.

Support for the Aceh agreement was also the first outing for the EU as a global player in conflict resolution. The relative success of the EU's Aceh monitoring mission has given it confidence. However, a further effort may stretch Indonesia's willingness to provide the necessary endorsement that such missions require.

And it may stretch the limited enthusiasm of the EU's member- states, which have provided less, rather than more, to Aceh than was originally asked of them. There are many in the US Congress who would also like to assist in resolving the Papua problem, but they are unlikely to receive great support from the administration, perhaps beyond Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Apart from the US's significant and sensitive investments in Papua, such as the contentious Freeport copper and gold mine, the US administration sees its renewed ties to the TNI as part of its principal focus of the war on terror.

Not only will the US administration be reluctant to jeopardise this warming security relationship, any military-based monitoring capacity is also limited by the US being stretched to its financial and logistic limits in Iraq. There is, then, little will, much less capacity, for even a moderate military-based guarantee in Papua.

Where there may be some scope, however, is for a US or joint US- EU civilian-based monitoring exercise through their respective official aid agencies. A military response to violations appears highly unlikely, but clear economic sanctions could work.

Indonesia remains highly vulnerable to pressure on foreign investment and continuing multilateral aid through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It was, after all, this latter type of pressure that persuaded the Indonesian government to allow an Australian-led UN sanctioned force into East Timor in 1999.

It appears, then, that a negotiated resolution to the Papua problem is available, if still having to overcome serious hurdles. Like any such resolution, it will not be easy and will be prone to competing pressures.

The intention to work towards a resolution exists on the Papuan side and probably exists on the part of Yudhoyono. It also appears that each have the capacity to negotiate, if still dealing with some fractious elements.

The question is, will the international community help provide Papua, and Indonesia, with the opportunity?

[Damien Kingsbury is director of international and community development at Victoria's Deakin University and was adviser to the Free Aceh Movement in the 2005 Helsinki peace talks.]

As long as Papua simmers, relations will be strained

Melbourne Age Editorial - April 8, 2006

The Australian Government's latest responses to the problems of West Papua and asylum seekers contain an ugly echo of previous times when the underlying causes of human suffering were ignored for reasons of brutal political expediency.

A diplomatic row with Indonesia over the granting of protection visas to 42 West Papuans has led the Government to harden its line on anyone else who might be about to make the passage south across the straits.

When a missing West Papuan family on a boat bound for Australia was reported to have turned up in Papua New Guinea, Prime Minister John Howard made clear his relief – not at the fact that they were safe, but that they were PNG's problem. "That's a good thing in the context of the relationship between Australian and Indonesia," he said.

Mr Howard yesterday confirmed that a review had begun of the processes for assessing claims by Papuans. Australia may give Indonesia the chance to reply to claims of persecution by asylum seekers.

Also, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has called for joint naval patrols with Indonesia to stop the flow of asylum seekers. Bear in mind that the Immigration Department has determined that the West Papuans who did reach Australia had well-founded fears of persecution by the Indonesian military. Australia was legally obliged to grant them asylum under the Convention for the Protection of Refugees.

Now the Government is signalling that it intends to shut the door on others fleeing persecution, a legally and morally dubious position. It will use the Australian Navy to help the Indonesian Navy round up and return any West Papuans, regardless of the risks of persecution. As with the shameful treatment of refugees aboard the Tampa, the navy risks being compromised again.

At worst, a joint naval blockade invites a repeat of the SIEV-X sinking, a tragedy involving the loss of 353 lives for which Australia's responsibility has never been fully addressed.

It would be a mistake to imagine that turning away the West Papuans to appease Indonesia will solve the problem by pretending there isn't a problem. Of course, Australian involvement in East Timor's battle for independence has made Indonesia acutely sensitive to any suggestion that West Papua might follow a similar course.

Mr Howard stressed that West Papua was part of Indonesia, its history was "quite different" from that of East Timor and Australia "will not support any kind of independence movement". He has gone out of his way to reassure Indonesia on issues of sovereignty.

Indonesia cannot expect more of Australia. It has no right to seek to interfere, as it has, in determinations on applications for asylum in Australia.

Nor is Indonesia entitled to hold the Government to account for support within Australia for West Papuan separatists – particularly when the leading supporters named are members of the Labor Party, Democrats and Greens.

Indonesia is, as Mr Howard observed yesterday, still making the transition to democracy. It shows. Many of its politicians fail to understand the proper role of government in political debate and administrative process. Mr Howard is probably right in assessing much of what is being said in Indonesia as intended for "domestic political consumption".

A corollary of that is that Australia should not be talked into abandoning its obligations to asylum seekers, nor should it look the other way when human rights are abused or blame the victims of abuse.

Mr Howard warned West Papuans that if they pursued independence, "you are going to end up with a lot more human rights abuses and deprivation of liberty than would otherwise be the case". What of Indonesia's responsibilities? Its laudable democratic transition will not be complete without a just political settlement in West Papua.

Australia must encourage Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to take up the offer of West Papua's first directly elected Governor, Barnabas Suebu, to discuss an autonomy arrangement similar to one achieved after decades of conflict in Aceh province.

Australians, for their part, should not underestimate the difficulties confronting Dr Yudhoyono. These include the assertion of civil authority over a military that is reluctant to accept its loss of political power. None of this excuses military repression of West Papuans or the Howard Government's willingness to blame them for seeking asylum rather than tackle the causes of this all-too-awkward refugee problem.