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Papua special autonomy evaluation meeting cut short, participants arrested
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A mural shows two Papuans with the words: “If we are monkeys, don’t force monkeys to raise the [Indonesian] flag. Stop racism.” The mural was displayed on a road connecting Depok and Bogor, West Java. It refers to an incident last year in Surabaya, East Java, in which a Papuan student was vilified and called a “monkey”. The incident led to a string of antiracism protests. (JP/P.J.Leo)
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Among the 54, arrested on Tuesday at 10 a.m. local time, were one expert staff member, six staffers and two members of the MRP.
One of the participants of the session, Catholic priest Pius Manu, told The Jakarta Post that some of the arrested participants were handcuffed when police picked them up from the session at Grand Merauke Hotel in Merauke regency, Papua. He did not know what charges the arrests were based on.
A source close to the case, who requested anonymity, claimed that the detained members of the MRP had been told by police to sign a statement that said, first, that the MRP had organized the session using special autonomy funds allocated for the MRP, second, they would not be involved in protests against the special autonomy status or ask for a referendum, and third, that they support the continuation of the Special Autonomy Law and the Republic of Indonesia.
The MRP is an institution mandated in Papua’s Special Autonomy Law, an institution that lies at the heart of the special status the province enjoys. It works to accommodate Papuan aspirations alongside local councilors. The evaluation meeting in Merauke was held amid increasing opposition to special autonomy by several civil groups in Papua and West Papua. The special autonomy funds, amounting to more than Rp 94 trillion since 2002, would end in 2021, and the House of Representatives is discussing whether the transfers should continue or not.
Pius said he himself had not been detained in the beginning; he only followed other participants from behind, because it was “part of his job as a member of the Peace and Justice Commission at the Merauke Archdiocese”. At noon, he entered the police station and no police officers intercepted him.
But later, at 8:30 p.m., when he visited again to give cigarettes to the detainees, police detained him for entering the police station “without reporting his presence to the police”.
