TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
TNI shrugs off ‘unified’ West Papua Army
The Indonesian Military (TNI) has shrugged off claims made by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) that three armed groups had united in a “historic declaration” to create the West Papua Army
Change Size
T
span>The Indonesian Military (TNI) has shrugged off claims made by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) that three armed groups had united in a “historic declaration” to create the West Papua Army.
Papua’s Cendrawasih Military Command spokesman Col. Muhammad Aidi said the issue was “old news” and the TNI was not afraid.
“They declare this again and again every year but always [fail to] face the military,” Aidi told The Jakarta Post via phone interview on Monday.
Aidi said the military would not tolerate any act of rebellion in Indonesia.
“Whether it’s one person or a group of people, especially by those illegally armed, we will fight them,” he said.
“Militants commit acts of violence and kill soldiers, too. But when the military defends itself, the militants stretch their political wings and tell national and international media that their human rights were violated, that the military committed crimes against humanity,” Aidi said. “So, I say they are cry-babies.”
The ULMWP announced on Monday that West Papua’s three largest separatist factions had united.
“For the first in West Papuan history, the major West Papuan armed groups will unite under one single command, forming the West Papua Army,” it said in a statement.
The three armed factions, according to the ULMWP, are the West Papua Revolutionary Army (TRWP), West Papuan National Army (TNPB) and the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).
The ULMWP claimed that all three acknowledged it as their “political leader”.
“The ULMWP is ready to form an independent West Papua. Politically and militarily we are united now,” ULMWP chairman Benny Wenda said in the statement.
This claim, however, has also been countered by the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), which is based in Indonesian West Papua.
KNPB chairman Agust Kossay said the committee did not recognize the unified West Papua Army.
“We don’t support the unification,” he said on Monday.
Kossay said the KNPB still referred to an agreement made in a summit in Biak in 2012, which was a mandate from 24 “regional commands” throughout West Papua.
The summit, he said, appointed Goliat Tabuni as the general and highest commander of TPNPB, headquartered in Tingginambut, Puncak Jaya, in Jayapura.
Kossay said the KNPB would only recognize the “real” works of the TPNPB.
“We don’t acknowledge those who don’t show any actions,” Kossay told the Post.
He said the KPNB had not been present during the unification.
“We didn’t know about it and we never attended the meetings in Papua New Guinea. We don’t know who was present there,” he went on.
The headquarters of the fight for self-determination and liberation should stay in West Papua, not outside, he said, adding that the ULMWP’s task was to handle foreign diplomacy.
The ULMWP was formed in December 2014 in Port Vila, Vanuatu, to bring “together the three major West Papuan independence groups for the first time since the Indonesian occupation began in 1963”.
The KNPB was established on Nov. 19, 2008, although it claims that the seeds of its fight had begun in 1961.
