T

his is a comment on “Australia hopes cooperation can end human trafficking,” (The Jakarta Post), April 2, p. 12).

It is hoped that during their visit to Indonesia this week, both our Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Defense Minister Stephen Smith would raise the human rights situation in West Papua with their counterparts in Jakarta.

In the past month, there were a number of urgent recommendations made by the Asian Human Rights Commission concerning incidents of arrests and torture of Papuans, including of a pregnant woman and an 18-month-old baby.

Although asylum seeker arrivals in Australia will obviously be high on the agenda during the ministerial talks, we hope the
human rights situation in West Papua will not be ignored.

Hopefully, Smith will raise concerns about the actions of the security forces in West Papua and in particular about any members of Densus 88 counterterrorism unit who have been trained by Australia and may have been involved in security operations in West Papua, which is outside their brief.

West Papua is a very sensitive issue with Jakarta but ideally it would be great if the Indonesian government invited a cross-party parliamentary fact-finding mission from Australia to West Papua to not only investigate the human rights situation in the territory but to see how Australia can help the West Papuan people in
capacity building in the fields of health and education.

Joe Collins
Australia