Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 27/08/2012
Reporter: Hayden Cooper
Get a rare look inside West Papua, meet its resistance leaders and hear accusations of killings and beatings by Indonesian government security forces.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3577104.htm
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: To Australia's north, a human rights
tragedy is unfolding and many activists believe it's as grave as what
once happened in East Timor.
In the Indonesian province of West
Papua, separatist groups have been waging a struggle for independence
for the past four decades. For all that time, Indonesian security forces
have ruthlessly tried to crush them, claiming the freedom fighters are
terrorists.
Foreign journalists are routinely refused access to
West Papua, so tonight we go inside, undercover, to meet the resistance
leaders and investigate a string of killings, torture and other abuses.
Reporter
Hayden Cooper and producer Lisa Main travelled to the Papuan capital to
file this report, and a warning: this story contains some shocking
images.
HAYDEN COOPER, REPORTER: It's little wonder that this
place is fought over. Nestled between Asia and the Pacific, West Papua
is a region of rugged beauty, a treasure trove of mineral wealth and a
place where two vibrant cultures meet and struggle for the right to
rule.
ANDREAS HARSONO, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: The Papuan live in
fear, in a constant fear, because of so many human rights abuses that
they suffer over the last five decades.
VIKTOR YEIMO, CHAIRMAN,
KNPB: Every day I'm thinking about how I can bring my people to freedom.
We know that Indonesia want us to be lost from this land, we know it.
HAYDEN
COOPER: We travelled to West Papua undercover, flying from Jakarta,
posing as tourists. The Indonesian authorities have a track record of
arresting and deporting foreign journalists.
We arrive in the
remote capital of Jayapura. And set out to discover what it's really
like in these two troubled provinces, known collectively to their people
as West Papua.
The sheer scale of the military and police presence here is obvious from the moment you arrive.
Now,
this is the main road into town, into Jayapura. And it seems that every
kilometre or so, there's another military or police outpost, and
they're just the authorities that we can see. Then there's the unmarked
plain-clothed brigade of motorbike riders. We're told that many of them
are actually police.
The next layer is a complicated but
co-ordinated web of police informants. Now these are mostly ordinary
Indonesians. They might be taxi drivers, shop owners or hotel workers.
They
watch the Papuan population and if they see anything they that think is
suspicious, they pass the information back up the chain to police for
money.
The heavy security presence is keeping the closest eye on the independence leaders.
At a safe house in the suburbs, we meet the new face of the Papuan resistance struggle; his name, Victor Yamo.
VIKTOR
YEIMO: They want to kill us in West Papua. You can go around here and
you can see, every day you can see military in everywhere.
HAYDEN
COOPER: Yeimo is the chairman of KNPB, or West Papua National
Committee. It's pushing for a referendum on Papuan sovereignty.
VIKTOR
YEIMO: I don't feel how Indonesian, they will attack or target me. I
don't feel about it. I don't think about it. What I'm thinking is how I
can bring my people to freedom.
HAYDEN COOPER: The death toll
from the past three months alone speaks for itself. Five KNPB activists
have been targeted and killed, all at the hands of police or military
forces. Three died after they were beaten by police at an independence
rally in June.
Is KNPB an organisation that uses violence?
VIKTOR
YEIMO: No, we don't use violence. As I said, we believe that in the
open era, we believe that one - the best method that we have to use is
civil power now.
HAYDEN COOPER: West Papua's history is a story
of violence and repression stretching back to the 1960s. The colonial
rulers, the Dutch, had pulled out.
The Papuans faced a choice: independence or Indonesia. A thousand elders specially selected by Jakarta voted for the latter.
Amid widespread reports of beatings and intimidation, it was called, ironically, the Act of Free Choice.
JOURNALIST
(archive footage): To the Indonesians, the result is already a foregone
conclusion. West Irian will remain with Indonesia.
HAYDEN COOPER: To this day, Papuans consider it a travesty and they fight to overturn it.
Amnesty International estimates that at least 100,000 Papuans have been killed by Indonesian forces since the '60s.
Extra
judicial killings in Papua still happen frequently. In 2010 alone, the
Asian Human Rights Commission reported a dozen cases. Video of torture
and abuse at the hands of the Indonesian forces is common.
In
this footage a Papuan man has been disembowelled and left for dead.
Human Rights Watch is investigating dozens of current examples of
torture, abuse and deaths.
ANDREAS HARSONO: Over the last three
years, I keep on receiving this kind of incident almost every week -
beating, arrest, shooting, stabbing.
HAYDEN COOPER: Andreas
Harsono has been following the plight of the West Papuan people for
years. Based in Jakarta, his work is read around the world and his
latest research uncovers many new human rights violations.
ANDREAS HARSONO: He was stabbed on the back. The wound is about this long.
HAYDEN COOPER: Should the international community be paying more attention to what's going on in Papua?
ANDREAS
HARSONO: Absolutely. Because if nothing serious to be done in Papua,
these poor people have lost their dignity, their pride and they live in
fear for decades.
PENEAS LOKBERE, BUK, UNITED FOR TRUTH (voiceover translation): All these violations cannot be ignored and cannot be forgotten.
HAYDEN
COOPER: Peneas Lokbere is one man who's taken on a risky assignment,
speaking out on behalf of Papuans who've been tortured by the
authorities.
PENEAS LOKBERE (voiceover translation): There is an
increase in abuses, for example, in mysterious shooting by unknown
shooters, but also direct and open forms like summary execution and
arrest without legal procedure.
HAYDEN COOPER: In Papua's jails,
30 political prisoners remain behind bars, including this man, Phillip
Karma, who served almost 10 years for raising the Papuan Morning Star
flag.
These two men were locked up for treason just last month, simply for holding documents from independence groups OPM and KNPB.
And
just eight weeks ago, the Indonesian Army went on a violent rampage
attacking this town near Wamena in the country's highlands.
WITNESS
(voiceover translation): Five people were stabbed. Two were hit with
pieces of wood. Then they got some petrol and burnt it straightaway.
WITNESS
II (voiceover translation): That day, the Army soldiers came and
punished us. I got beaten and had to have six stitches in my hand and
also 20 stitches in my head. They beat me in the legs, and now it is
hard to walk. That's how they punished us.
HAYDEN COOPER:
These witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch say 300 soldiers
destroyed the village in retaliation for the death of one of their own.
WITNESS
III (voiceover translation): My house was burnt down by the battalion
and I still haven't been compensated. This house was built when I was a
child. Now we're living in huts, in tents.
ENOS LOKMBERE, LOCAL
POLITICIAN (voiceover translation): As soon as they have even a small
problem with the Papuan, they just cut him up and throw him away left
and right, the Indonesian Army does.
HAYDEN COOPER: More than a dozen were injured, one was killed, 87 houses burned.
Andreas Harsono sees it as an all-too-common example of the military acting without boundary.
ANDREAS
HARSONO: The Army says they are investigating the soldiers. But from
what I know, the witnesses, the survivors, people whose houses were
burnt, none of them, especially the prominent one, the most articulate
one, none of them has say that they are ever being questioned by
military police over the rampage. So, this is things we just happening
over and over again in Papua.
HAYDEN COOPER: In Jayapura there's a
sense of unease. Human rights groups report that the frequency and
ferocity of abuse is on the rise.
There's an uncomfortable truth
about life in West Papua and it's one that the Indonesian Government
doesn't want the world to see. This is a police state. Local journalists
here are watched, followed and some have been murdered. Foreign media
are just not welcome.
Even the Red Cross has been kicked out. For
the people who live here, the local Papuans, just flying the wrong type
of flag can land you in prison. So after almost 50 years of Indonesian
Government rule, it seems the reins of control in West Papua are being
pulled tighter than ever.
In such a climate of control, Papua's
resistance leaders know that they are losing the struggle. But Victor
Yeimo is determined to keep fighting, even if it means his name could
soon be added to the list of the dead.
VIKTOR YEIMO: It is a
consequence of the struggle. We know that we will be died, we will be
shoot by them and it's not a new thing. It's not new story. We have been
killed, many of our elder already killed by Indonesia. But, we will
struggle for freedom. Because, if it not me, who? There's no way. If we
don't struggle, if we don't fight, we will be lost from this country. We
know it.
HAYDEN COOPER: The Indonesian security forces are determined to crush that struggle.
This
scene more than any other sums up what the activists are facing. It's
the meeting of the Papuan National Congress last October when the forces
took the extraordinary step of opening fire on the gathering. Three
were killed, many more were beaten.
Human rights activists say
the security forces responsible for abuses like these include the elite
counter-terrorism unit, Detachment 88. The unit is trained and supplied
by Australia. It's now operating in West Papua, where it's accused of
targeting independence leaders, and in the case of this man, killing
them.
LEIGH SALES: And tomorrow night we'll bring you part two of
our investigation, as Hayden Cooper and Lisa Main examine the role of
the Australian-backed crack police squad known as Detachment 88 in the
atrocities and killings of separatist leaders.
Some images supplied by West Papua Media.