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.
Ordered to return scholarship funds, Veronica Koman pleads for justice
Change Size
W
ith accusations mounting against her, Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman has said she is being forced to return hundreds of millions of rupiah in government-sponsored scholarships in what she claims is a move to financially punish her as she pleads for Finance Minister Sri Mulyani's impartiality in handling her case.
Veronica, who is currently residing in Australia, said she was forced to return scholarship money totaling Rp 773.8 million (US$52,760) from the Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) that she received in September 2016.
“The Indonesian government has imposed a financial punishment as its latest effort to pressure me to stop advocating human rights issues in Papua,” Veronica said in a statement obtained by The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
The public lawyer was a recipient of a scholarship program run under the Finance Ministry that supported her pursuit of a master's of law at the Australian National University.
She said the request was made by the LPDP because of her failure to return home to Indonesia after her studies, a claim she said was baseless as she returned in September 2018 after completing her master’s degree.
She explained that in October 2018, she joined the Jayapura-based Human Rights Lawyers Association for Papua (PAHAM Papua), for which she advocated human rights issues in the country’s easternmost province. Veronica also said she went to Switzerland in March to attend an event with the United Nations in and returned to Indonesia right after.
Furthermore, the former public attorney for the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) said she gave pro-bono legal services to Papuan activists in three separate trials in Timika, Papua, from April to May 2019.
She then traveled back to Australia on a three-month visa to attend her graduation ceremony in July 2019. A month later, she was alerted that she had been summoned by the National Police and put on their wanted list.
“The ministry has ignored the fact that I had returned to Indonesia and dismissed my willingness to return home if I had never received any threats that could endanger my safety,” Veronica said.
She called for Finance Minister Sri Mulyani to be impartial in dealing with the issue, “so that [the ministry] does not become a state institution that wants to punish me for my capacity as a public lawyer that defends human rights in Papua”.
LPDP executive director Rionald Silaban, however, defended the program’s decision, claiming that Veronika had refused to go back to Indonesia after finishing her studies even after the committee had asked her to do so.
“It’s true we demanded that Veronica Koman Liau return all the scholarship money we gave her because it is written in the contract that scholarship recipients studying abroad must immediately return to Indonesia after they finish studying,” he told the Post.
Veronica, who is a lawyer for the National Committee for West Papua (KNPB), was named a suspect by the East Java Police in September for allegedly violating four different laws, including the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law, by reportedly encouraging Papuans and West Papuans to riot.
She was part of a group of activists who was vocal in expressing their disagreement of the government’s decision to temporarily shut down internet services in the restive region amid a string of protests and riots triggered by a racially charged incident in Surabaya.
Her tweets were the only source of information regarding the protests that broke out in Papua and West Papua during the internet blackout.
During that time, she said that not only did she receive death and rape threats, but she also became a target for online disinformation.
