TAPOL Press

Curbs on access to Papua must be lifted

13 February 2006

In a statement last week, Indonesia's Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono defended the current restrictions on access to West Papua for foreign journalists. The restrictions appear also to apply to foreign non-governmental organisations and churches whose presence, according to Minister Sudarsono, might create conflict 'by encouraging Papuans to campaign on issues of human rights'.

It defies belief that a senior member of the Indonesian government is worried about the Papuan people campaigning on human rights issues especially as Indonesia has now ratified the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It was hoped that this would lead to greater efforts to promote and protect human rights in areas such as West Papua as part of the transition from the military dictatorship under former President Suharto.

It is a matter of deep concern to TAPOL that it was the defence minister who spoke about the need to maintain these curbs, reinforcing the impression that, for the authorities in Jakarta, the territory of West Papua is effectively under the control of the Indonesian military.

The assertion that conflict in West Papua was being 'created' by the presence of foreign journalists or organisations ignores the fact that Papunas have been nursing a long-held grievance against Indonesia because of widespread human rights violations and because of the infamously fraudulent Act of Free Choice in late 1969, in which just over 1,000 Papuans were allowed to participate and forced to decide unanimously to be integrated into the Republic of Indonesia. Throughout the Suharto period and since his downfall in May 1998, nothing has been done to rectify this injustice or to engage in meaningful dialogue with representatives of the West Papuans on their many grievances.

According to our many years' experience of monitoring the situation in West Papua, the people of the territory also confront a host of social, economic and cultural problems in defending their very existence against the activities of multinational corporations who are plundering the territory’s immense natural resources. The right to freedom of expression has been violated on numerous occasions, most notably when two Papuans were convicted last year on charges of sedition and sentenced to ten and fifteen years imprisonment, for peacefully unfurling the Papuans' Kejora (Morning Star) flag. Last month, 43 West Papuan men, women and children, undertook a hazardous five-day journey to Australia to seek political asylum. They held high banners accusing the Indonesian military of 'conducting genocide in their homeland'.

The Jakarta Foreign Correspondents' club said last week that no foreign journalists have had access to Papua for the past eighteen months, and said it has been lobbying hard for an end to what it called 'a de facto ban' on travel there.

There can be no justification for any restrictions on access to West Papua, either for foreign journalists or for church representatives and NGOs. To maintain such a policy only reinforces the belief that the Indonesian government fears that visits to the territory will reveal the real situation there and bring to world attention the many problems now being confronted by the people of West Papua.

TAPOL calls on all organisations around the world concerned with the situation in West Papua to send protests to the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the curbs being imposed on access to West Papua and to call for them to be lifted unconditionally.

ENDS