A human rights activist said on Tuesday that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should immediately return to Indonesia to solve the escalating conflicts in Papua.
The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) coordinator Haris Azhar said that Yudhoyono, who is currently attending the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, should “unravel the Papuan conflicts with his own hands.”
“The President should come back to Indonesia in the next few days to organize a conflict resolution team for Papua as soon as possible,” Haris said as quoted by tempo.co. “He [Yudhoyono] should also start dialogues with related parties.”
Haris said he was pessimistic about the dialogue between the government and Papuan community members, saying that Coordinating Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto had a tendency to defend the security officers, particularly in the killing of Papua independence activist, Mako Tabuni.
“He [Djoko] should have listened to the opinion from eyewitnesses in the community first, but he went on to defend the law enforcers instead,” said Haris.
Commenting on this, Haris said that it was about time Yudhoyono took on Papuan matters by trying to hold dialogues with the Papuans.
Tabuni died an hour after he was shot by law enforcers last Thursday.
The police claimed that they had to shoot Tabuni because he was violently resisting the officers who were trying to arrest him. Tabuni was reported to have been involved in a number of provocative and violent incidents.