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No ties with the Indonesian military

Australia West Papua Association (Sydney) Press Release - June 26, 2009

In light of the latest Human Rights Watch report with accusations that members of elite special forces, Kopassus, had acted with impunity in Papua to detain, torture and beat up ordinary citizens, the Australia West Papua Association (Sydney) calls on the new Defence Minister, John Faulkner, to halt all ties and training with the Indonesian military,

Joe Collins from the Australia West Papua Association said " the Lombok treaty commits us to ties with the Indonesian military and this was also was a concern in a large number of the submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) concerning the Lombok Treaty. We are making the same mistake we did in the past over East Timor".

As former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said about the Indonesian military after East Timor "I am one of those who has to acknowledge, as Australia's foreign minister at the time, that many of our earlier training efforts helped only to produce more professional human rights abusers."

There should be no ties with the Indonesian military until it can be proven that the TNI has been reformed.

'What Did I Do Wrong?': Papuans in Merauke Face Abuses by Indonesian Special Forces - Human Rights Watch. June 24, 2009 (PDF format)

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