Open Letter to President Obama from West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT) and
East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN)
For Immediate Release
Contact: John M. Miller,
+1-718-596-7668; mobile: +1-917-690-4391, john@etan.org
Ed McWilliams, +1-575-648-2078, edmcw@msn.com
President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
November 15, 2011
Dear President Obama,
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President
Obama meets with
President
Yudhoyono at the
Istana Merdeka
State Palace
Complex in
Jakarta, Nov. 9,
2010. (Official
White House Photo
by Pete Souza) |
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We urge you to seize the opportunity of your imminent return to
Indonesia to consider the challenges and opportunities posed by the
U.S.-Indonesia relationship more realistically than you have up to now.
Your Administration urgently needs a policy that addresses the problems
created by the Indonesian security forces' escalating violations of
human rights and criminality and its failure to submit to civilian
control. The recent 20th anniversary of the
1991 Santa Cruz massacre in Dili. East Timor (Timor-Leste), when
hundreds of peaceful protesters were massacred by Indonesian troops
wielding U.S. supplied weapons, reminds us that a lack of accountability
for past crimes -- in Timor-Leste and throughout the archipelago --
keeps those affected from moving on with their lives, while contributing
to impunity in the present.
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Indonesian military and police
forces continue to operate without any accountability before the law. Only in
rare instances are individual personnel brought before military tribunals for
crimes against civilians, often because of international pressure. Prosecution
is woefully inadequate and sentencing, in the rare instance of conviction, is
not commensurate with the crime.
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Indonesia's security forces, including the
Kopassus special forces and U.S.-funded and
-trained Detachment (Densus) 88, continue to
employ against civilians weaponry supplied by the U.S. and to use tactics
developed as result of U.S. training. In West Papua, these security forces have
repeatedly attacked civilians, most recently participants in the
October 16-19 Congress and striking workers at the
Freeport McMoRan mine. Those assaulted were
peacefully asserting their right to assemble and freedom of speech. At the
Congress, combined forces, including regular military units, Kopassus, the
militarized police (Brimob) and Detachment 88, killed at least five civilians,
beat scores more, and were responsible for the disappearance of others.
Moreover, in the central highlands of West Papua, these same forces regularly
conduct so called "sweeping operations," purportedly in search of the very small
armed Papuan resistance. These operations have led to the deaths of many
innocent civilians and driven thousands from their village into forests where
they face life threatening conditions due to inadequate access to shelter, food
and medical care.
Indonesian military and police forces continue to operate without any
accountability before the law. Only in rare instances are individual personnel
brought before military tribunals for crimes against civilians, often because of
international pressure. Prosecution is woefully inadequate and sentencing, in
the rare instance of conviction, is not commensurate with the crime. Several
videoed incidents of military torture of civilians
-- widely discussed during your November 2010 visit to Indonesia -- concluded in
just such failures of justice. The concept of command responsibility is rarely
considered in the military tribunals.
International monitoring of these developments in West Papua is severely
hampered by Indonesian government restrictions on access to and travel within
West Papua by foreign journalists, diplomats, researchers, and human rights and
humanitarian officials. The International Committee of the Red Cross remains
barred from operating an office in West Papua. Indonesian journalists and human
rights officials face threats and worse when they try to monitor developments
there.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, too many times security forces have stood by or actively
assisted in attacks on minority religions, including deadly attacks on Ahmadiyah
followers.
The Indonesian security forces -- especially the military -- are largely
unreformed: it has failed to fully divest itself of its business empire, its
remains unaccountable before the law, and continues to violate human rights.
These forces constitute a grave threat to the continued development of
Indonesian democracy. The upcoming national elections in Indonesia present a
particularly urgent challenge. The Indonesian military is in position to pervert
the democratic process as it has in the past. The military has frequently
provoked violence at politically sensitive times, such as in 1998 when it
kidnapped tortured and murdered democratic activists. For many years it has
relied on its unit commanders, active at the District, sub-District and even
village level to influence the selection of party candidates and the elections
themselves. The territorial command system is still in place.
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In the past, U.S. restrictions and
conditions on security assistance have resulted in real rights improvements in
Indonesia. Your Administration should learn from this history. |
Given this threat to democracy and to individuals posed by
Indonesian forces, it is essential that the U.S. employ the significant leverage
that comes from Indonesia's desire for U.S. security assistance and training to
insist on real reforms of Indonesian security forces. Rhetorical calls for
reforms are clearly insufficient. These exhortations have manifestly not worked
and readily brushed aside. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's recent
expression of "concerns about the violence and the abuse of human rights" in
Papua were
dismissed by a spokesperson for Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono , who called the escalating rights violations "only isolated
incidents."
In the past, U.S. restrictions and conditions on security assistance have
resulted in real rights improvements in Indonesia. Your Administration should
learn from this history and quickly suspend training for those units whose human
rights records and impunity are especially egregious, as required by the Leahy
law. We specifically urge you to end plans to re-engage with Kopassus and to end
assistance to Detachment 88. These actions would demonstrate U.S. Government
seriousness in pursuit of real reforms of the security forces in Indonesia.
Sincerely,
Ed McWilliams for WPAT
John M. Miller for ETAN
see also