The Australian Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, raised sensitive issues relating to alleged human rights abuses and violence in Indonesia’s poorest province, Papua, during a meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Marty Natalegawa, on Monday.
Marty said that Carr
told him that Australia wanted the Indonesian government to promote
transparency in matters concerning Papua.
“But he also reiterated
the principal position of Australia: that it recognizes Indonesia’s
integrity and sovereignty which includes Papua,” Marty said at his
office after the meeting with Carr.
The Australian media had
reported that Carr was aware of the human rights issues in Papua, and
would bring the issue up in his Indonesian visit.
Carr arrived in
Indonesia on Friday, and has since visited several projects funded by
the Australian government in Yogyakarta, including a village hit hard by
Mount Merapi’s eruption in 2010.
“We’ve quietly worked with the
Indonesians to see that there, as elsewhere, reasonable standards of
human rights protection are maintained,” Carr said in Yogyakarta.
The
Papua issue has remained a sensitive issue for most Indonesian
politicians, particularly when it comes to the role of Australia.
Many
have regularly blamed Australia and the Western countries for meddling
in the province’s affairs, alleging that they have engineered the
worsening security through their sponsored NGOs.
Indonesia’s
obvious concern is that Papua may end up breaking away from Indonesia as
in the case of Timor Leste, which benefited from intense advocacy and
support from Australia and the West world before its independence from
Indonesia in 2002.
The government has also remained the subject
of criticism for failing to resolve the prolonged violence in Papua,
including a series of deadly shootings.
Dozens of civilians, police and military personnel have been killed in various locations in Papua over the past few months.
The latest bloody incident was the killing of a soldier and two civilians last week.
With
the killing remaining mostly unresolved, the Indonesian Military (TNI),
the police and the intelligence services have also been blamed by human
rights activists for having a role in allegedly creating the security
instability in the province for their own ends.
Papua is home to
the operations of US-based Freeport McMoran, one of the world’s biggest
gold miners, and London-based energy company BP.
With the protracted violence, Papua has probably the world’s highest ratio of police and soldiers to civilians.
With
around 2.85 million people, Papua has more than 20,000 TNI personnel
and 25,000 police officers, according to a source at the Defense
Ministry. These numbers exclude intelligence officers from various
agencies.
The TNI is building up its forces in Papua by sending
more troops to help secure the border with neighboring Papua New Guinea
(PNG), which has been used as a refuge by members of the Free Papua
Movement (OPM).
The Wirabuana Military Command in Makassar,
South Sulawesi, shipped 620 personnel on Monday to Merauke, Papua, to
help secure the borders and infuse a “nationalist spirit” in the remote
communities there.
“Their task is to ensure order, guard the
border, and develop a nationalist spirit there. The troops will be there
for a one-year tour of duty,” said Wirabuana commander Maj. Gen.
Muhammad Nizam.