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Papuan political prisoners: Broken promises, broken lives
Antara/Novrian ArbiDo you remember when you were a child and your dad made a promise he didn’t keep? You felt pretty crushed right? Well, you don’t have to be a child to feel let down by a broken promise
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Antara/Novrian Arbi
Do you remember when you were a child and your dad made a promise he didn’t keep? You felt pretty crushed right?
Well, you don’t have to be a child to feel let down by a broken promise.
A promise is a commitment to do or not do something. Different kinds of promises include: personal and professional ones, solemn promises like marriage vows, the Hippocratic Oath for doctors, the military oath, allegiance to the nation, etc., and election promises.
Then there is the promise that states make when they sign international agreements. Thirteen years ago, on Feb. 23, 2006, Indonesia ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR).
“Indonesia is a nation based on law and since its founding in 1945, strongly upholds the principle of human rights,” is the first sentence explaining why it ratified the CCPR. So clearly, the state made a promise to uphold the civil and political rights of all its citizens.
So why doesn’t it?
The detention of six activists of the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP) — Surya Anta Ginting, Charles Kossay, Dano Tabuni, Isay Wenda, Ambrose Mulait and Arina Elopere — is a case in point.
They have been held at the National Police’s Mobile Brigade (Mako Brimob) detention center in Depok, West Java since August. Their crime? They were accused of treason for raising the Papuan Morning Star separatist flag in front of the State Palace.
Treason for raising a flag at a peaceful demonstration? Wow. And all this time I thought treason involved an extreme act such as attempting to overthrow the government, killing the head of state of one’s country or spying for an enemy country.
Well, it’s true that they were demanding a referendum on self-determination for Papua. Why was that? When Papua was handed over from the Dutch to Indonesia in 1969 through the farcical “Act of Free Choice”, or, as some call it, “Act of No Choice”, it was like being handed over from one colonizer to another.
As Richard Chauvel wrote in his 2006 policy paper “Constructing Papuan Nationalism: History, Ethnicity, And Adaptation”, “Rather than feeling liberated from [Dutch] colonial rule, Papuans have felt subjugated, marginalized from the processes of economic development and threatened by the mass influx of Indonesian settlers”.
The latest demand for a referendum was just one of many. There have been numerous calls since 1998 in the post-Soeharto era alone and more than 70 violent related incidents documented, included torture, rape and killings.
Due to the ill treatment they received from the Jakarta Police, the above six activists filed a pretrial motion.
As plaintiffs, they are being represented by five public lawyers across organizations grouped in the Papua Advocacy Team. The defendants, the Jakarta Police, are also being represented by five lawyers.
The pretrial hearings were taking place at the South Jakarta District Court. The first hearing on Dec. 2 saw the reading of the reasons why the plaintiffs filed the motion. The following days, the defendants responded.
One of the members of the advocacy team, M. Fuad, stated that the Jakarta Police “[committed] acts of deprivation, fraud, discrimination and violence against the petitioners”.
When the police arrested the activists on Aug. 29, they had not shown their identification; they used force and did not have a search warrant. Tigor Hutapea, one of the advocacy team members, said this contradicted Article 33 of the Criminal Law Procedures Code.
Suarbudaya Rahadian, the spokesperson of the six activists, told me that on paper, the lawyers of the police did not have good grounds to rebut the plaintiffs’ claims.
“The police made an arbitrary arrest and a haphazard police investigation report. We should win in the pretrial hearing, have the main trial canceled and the accused activists freed unconditionally,” he said. But since this is a political case, Suar was unsure if the judge could be objective. Sounds familiar. Hah!
The pretrial hearings have been held daily and continued until the decision was read out on Tuesday. It is pretty ironic since the activists lost, as Dec. 10 happens to be Human Rights Day.
Recently, between Dec. 5 and 6, Indonesia hosted the 12th Bali Democracy Forum (BFD) attended by representatives from 81 countries. On its website, it claims that “the BDF has […] been active in advocating the principles of democracy [and] has succeeded in making democracy a strategic agenda in the Asia-Pacific”. This year, the focus is on “inclusivity”. Judging by the fate of our brethren in Papua, you could have fooled me!
Obviously, the Indonesian government loves to bask in international attention. Well, due to their treatment of its Papuan political prisoners — and not just the six at Mako Brimob — they sure are getting it! In London, Sydney, Amsterdam and other cities, every week the Indonesian embassies have had to face the protests of demonstrators demanding the release of Papuan political prisoners.
In relation to Papua, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo actually did something no other president has done before. In May 2015, he visited Abepura prison in Jayapura to personally hand over documents granting clemency for five Papuan political prisoners. On that occasion, he said it was just the beginning of the government’s efforts to empty the prisons in Papua of political prisoners. Well, seems that was yet another broken promise.
Jokowi was recently announced Asian of the Year by Singapore daily The Straits Times. One of the reasons for the choice, it said, was that Jokowi had not lost sight of the values of unity and harmony. Yeah right, unity and harmony for whom?
Papuans feel that despite the frequency of Jokowi’s visits to Papua — 13 times so far — it has not made any difference to the fate of Papuans. Otherwise, why would they keep on waving the Morning Star demanding a referendum?
The way the Papuan problem is dealt with is a serious test for the nation — and Jokowi’s second term in office. Indonesia’s democracy is said to be at its lowest in 20 years. It’s often the government apparatus that violates its own laws and tramples on the civil, political and human rights of its own people.
It’s high time Papuans be treated justly and with dignity, respecting their state-guaranteed rights, not just for the sake of Papuans, but for Indonesia’s integrity nationally and internationally.
“Broken vows are like broken mirrors. They leave those who held them bleeding and staring at fractured images of themselves,” writes the author Richard Paul Evans.
