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'I have chosen not to respond': Human rights lawyer breaks silence after being charged by police
Human rights lawyer Veronica Koman finally spoke up against the accusations made against her via a written statement uploaded to her social media on Saturday.
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A protester holds a poster that reads "Open access to Papua for foreign and domestic journalists" in front of the State Palace in Jakarta recently. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
H
uman rights lawyer Veronica Koman has finally broken her silence on accusations surrounding her alleged involvement in a series of protests in Papua staged in response to alleged racial abuse against Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java.
In a written statement uploaded to the lawyer's social media, Veronica, who currently lives overseas, stated that she had chosen not to respond to the allegations against her so as not to distract from the main problems facing Papuans.
PERS RILIShttps://t.co/5DoSL9uT85 pic.twitter.com/3NXJbBfkGu
— Veronica Koman (@VeronicaKoman) September 14, 2019
"I, Veronica Koman, with full awareness, have always chosen not to respond to what the police have alleged through the mass media. I did not mean this because everything I was accused of was true, but because I did not want to participate in efforts to divert the issue from the main problems that were actually happening in Papua," Veronica said in a Facebook post.
She also said the criminalization against her was just one of many examples of the large-scale intimidation Papuans currently faced.
"I reject all attempts at character assassination that are being directed at me, the official lawyer for the Papuan Student Alliance [AMP]. The police have abused their authority and have overestimated their efforts to criminalize me, both in their methods and in exaggerating the facts," she added.
The East Java Police have named Veronica among the suspects of causing unrest in Papua for allegedly provoking people to riot via her social media updates. She was charged under several articles of the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law, Law No. 1/1946 on misinformation, Article 160 of the Criminal Code, as well as Law 40/2008 on the eradication of racial and ethnic discrimination.
