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Govt told to deal with past abuses to end violence in Papua
=The prevailing violence being committed by police and military personnel to quell separatist sentiment in resource-rich Papua would cease if the central government was committed to prosecuting those responsible for past human rights abuses, an NGO says
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=The prevailing violence being committed by police and military personnel to quell separatist sentiment in resource-rich Papua would cease if the central government was committed to prosecuting those responsible for past human rights abuses, an NGO says.
The statement came on the heels of another show of violence in the restive province.
An anonymously posted video circulating on the Internet shows graphic footage of a Papuan political activist dying in his garden with a gaping wound in his stomach, inflicted by men believed to be personnel of the Papuan Mobile Brigade.
The activist has been identified as Yawan Wayeni, who died in August last year.
The police ambushed him at his farm on Serua Island. A report by the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) says his wife saw the police tie his hands and feet to a log and told him to say “Papuan Freedom” before stabbing him in the stomach.
Kontras coordinator Usman Hamid said on Monday that security forces in the area never used dialogue to deal with unrest.
“Violence has taken root… in [the practices of] the police and military forces in Papua. Impunity is prevalent and law enforcement is dysfunctional,” he added.
The central government, he said, needed to look at the issue in its entirety.
“Past injustices are the root cause of current injustices. The failure to deliver justice in the past continues [and] results in repetitions because there is no deterrent. It’s like sending out the message: ‘You can do it again’,” he told The Jakarta Post.
Human rights groups have repeatedly reported human rights violations committed by security forces in the province but have been given little attention from law enforcement institutions, including the National Police and the Attorney General’s Office.
Human rights group Imparsial said in a report that only one of hundreds of torture cases it had come across from 1998 to 2007 in Papua had been brought to court or investigated by the police.
The one case, a series of police attacks against locals in Abepura in December 2000, ended with the acquittal of two police officers who were implicated.
Imparsial said that in almost all of the cases, “the stigma placed upon the Papuan people of being part of a separatist group is mostly used to justify torture”.
No legal process has been undertaken regarding Yawan’s case, Usman said.
“We have tried talking to the National Police, the local police and lawmakers at the House of Representatives. The police have promised they will investigate but I don’t think they will,” he added.
He said he was saddened by the central government’s lack of attention to the country’s easternmost province.
“The regional autonomy law mandates the central government to establish three crucial institutions in Papua — a human rights court, a human rights commission and a truth commission. But nine years after the law was passed, we’ve seen none of them established,” he said.
“If the three institutions were in place, there would be historical clarification on past human rights abuses, and there would also be investigations and prosecutions of those responsible,” he added.
