[Kabar-Irian] News: August 24-26 2007
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KABAR IRIAN NEWS
Aug 24-26
TOPICS
* Australian pilot detained in Jayapura
* Australian pilot detained in Indonesia's Papua
* Aussie pilot deported
* Rough drink kills 13 Papuan in one week
* Mysterious Papuan deaths worry NGO
* Mysterious killings seek to silence Papuan voices
* re. Unconfirmed news
---
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailgeneral.asp?fileid=20070824181156&irec=11
Australian pilot detained in Jayapura
JAYAPURA (Antara): An Australian pilot was detained Thursday for allegedly
violating Indonesian
immigration law.
The pilot, identified as Sthepen Richard, 44, was arrested late Thursday
at around 11:00 p.m. when he
was about to return to his country.
Head of the Jayapura immigration office, Giri Haryanto, said Friday
Richard had landed his plane at
Sentani airport on Aug. 23. Neither he nor his company, plantation firm SM
Group, reported his arrival to
the authority.
“There was no Indonesian immigration stamp on his passport. So, he was
brought to the Papua police
office and later to the immigration office,” Giri added.
According to Giri, Richard would be deported to Australia soon through
Denpasar, Bali.
"We are waiting for information from the sponsor about his ticket. When it
is ready, an immigration
officer will take him to the airport," Giri said. (**)
---
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/6247518.html
Australian pilot detained in Indonesia's Papua
20:00, August 24, 2007
An Australian pilot has been held in detention in the Indonesian
easternmost province of Papua for
alleged immigration offense, an official said Friday.
The pilot, identified as Stephen Richard, 44, was arrested late Thursday
at around 11:00 p.m. local time
when he was about to return to his country.
Richard had landed his plane at Sentani airport in the provincial capital
of Jayapura on Aug. 23 without
reporting his arrival to local authorities, said Jayapura immigration
office head Giri Haryanto.
"There was no Indonesian immigration stamp on his passport. So, he was
brought to the Papua police
office and later to the immigration office," Giri was quoted by the
national Antara news agency as saying.
Richard would be deported to Australia soon through Denpasar, Bali, he said.
Source: Xinhua
---
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20070825.G05
Aussie pilot deported
- August 25, 2007
JAYAPURA, Papua: Jayapura immigration office deported an Australian pilot
Friday for illegally entering
the country after delivering a plane bought by a local company to Papua,
an immigration official said.
Death Stephen Richard was detained around 11 p.m. Thursday and deported
Friday from Papua to
Ngurah Rai airport in Denpasar, Bali, where left for Australia.
The 44-year-old pilot entered Papua on Thursday to bring in a Fletceer FU
24-950 PK-PNB aircraft
purchased by PT Sinar Mas Group from a company in New Zealand. The plane
would be used in the
company's oil palm plantation in Jayapura.
Head of Jayapura Immigration Office, Giri Haryanto, said the pilot was
scheduled to return to Australia
soon after arriving in Jayapura, but his passport showed no entry stamp,
forcing immigration to detain
and then deport him. -- JP
---
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20070825.@03
Rough drink kills 13 Papuan in one week
National News - August 25, 2007
Angela Maria Flassy, The Jakarta Post, Jayapura
The high price of alcoholic drinks and restrictions on the sale of alcohol
have failed to dampen the spirits
of Papua's more committed drinkers, with deadly results.
Many are playing the role of amateur chemists, concocting their own ersatz
drink of 70 percent alcohol
bought from pharmacies, combined with two bottles of energy drink and a
drop or two of condensed milk.
But the new brew has proved to be lethal. In only a week, 13 people have
died in Jayapura city and
surrounds alone.
The toll of dead drinkers, which includes two women and two university
students, does not include those
killed in traffic accidents while driving under the influence.
All died after drinking the concoction, which is made in lieu of
prohibitively expensive legal alcoholic
drinks.
In Java, a small bottle of vodka, known in Indonesia as voucher (short of
vodka ceper), costs between Rp
8,000 (about 88 US cent) and Rp 11,000. In Papua, the same bottle can cost
as much as Rp 55,000.
Similarly, a small bottle of beer sold in a licensed store costs up Rp
17,000 in most of the country, but in
Papua the price jumps to around Rp 30,000.
The price of alcohol in Papua is simply too high for everyday drinkers
such as construction workers, low
-level civil servants and students, making the prospect of an easy and
cheap purchase of 70 percent
alcohol from pharmacies an attractive option.
Papua's local administrations have so far failed to appreciate the extent
of the problem.
"Currently, local governments deal with the problem by raising taxes on
alcoholic drinks under the
assumption people will not buy alcohol if the prices are too high," said
activist Anita Sihombing Bonay
from the Papuan Women and Children Empowerment Research Center.
"But that's not the case, is it?" she added.
Anita's center provides support for women and children who are the victims
of violence, most of it
alcohol-fueled. Her group does not provide rehabilitation for alcoholics,
however.
Calls for stricter action on problem drinking have also come from the
Papua chapter of the Indonesian
Reverends Association, which has urged the local government to take a
strong stand against alcohol
sales in Papua.
"God gave us wealth in the form of gold, copper, forests and other things
for the sake of the Papuan
people's welfare. We must develop Papua in the right way. If we build it
with a tax on alcohol, we're
demolishing it," said the association's head, Rev. Kirenius Bole.
The association has called for an end to alcohol distribution and sales,
asked people not to vote for
leaders known to be drinkers and demanded the government provide
rehabilitation center for alcoholics.
Papua currently has no such centers.
Responding to the deaths, Jayapura Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Robert
Djoenso said he would try to
restrict sales of 70 percent alcohol.
"It's impossible to ban pharmacies from selling alcohol but we might be
able to restrict its sale, like by
selling it by prescription only (or) banning its sale in pharmacies."
Authorities have long anticipated problems with excessive drinking in Papua.
The Papua administration has limited the number of liquor distributors in
Papua to only two since 1995.
In reality, however, alcohol has flowed freely in the region, leading to
calls for clearer regulations from
the government on the issue.
---
http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=34626
Radio New Zealand International
The Voice of New Zealand, Broadcasting to the Pacific
Te Reo Irirangi O Aotearoa, O Te Moana-Nui-A-Kiwa
Mysterious Papuan deaths worry NGO
Posted at 01:49 on 23 August, 2007 UTC
The NGO, The Institute for Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights, has expressed
concern over what it
calls mysterious killings in the Indonesian province.
It says new information from Nabire suggests that the Indonesian security
forces have moved to increase
the intimidation of the Papuan community by engaging in a campaign of
extra-judicial killing and torture.
The group says statements from senior military commanders to repress
political descent coincides with a
deteriorating of the human rights environment in Papua.
It says this comes just days after the Indonesian President, Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono, said he would
not tolerate separatism or any interference that would slow down the
development of Papua province.
---
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/mysterious-killings-seek-to-silence-papuan-
voices/2007/08/25/1187462582842.html
Mysterious killings seek to silence Papuan voices
Baptist minister Socratez Yoman, left, and the bodies of Ones Keiya and
Matias Bunai.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
August 26, 2007
Indonesian security is suspected for a steady trickle of Papuan killings,
writes Tom Hyland.
MATIUS Bunai was last seen alive three weeks ago today when he left a
church service in the town of
Nabire in the Indonesian province of Papua. His body, beaten and
lacerated, was found dumped in the
street the following morning.
His neighbour, Ones Keiya, was still alive, just, when he was found with
similar wounds, in similar
circumstances, two weeks before. He died in hospital two hours later.
A report by a church worker in Nabire said both men had similar wounds:
smashed foreheads and deep
knife cuts.
Mr Bunai, 29, was a civil servant employed by the Indonesian police and a
youth worker with the Kingmi
Protestant church.
Mr Keiya, 31, a farmer, was in the same congregation. Like Mr Bunai, he
was single and a member of
the indigenous Mee tribal group.
No one saw who killed them, and the church report obtained by The Sunday
Age described their deaths
as "mysterious killings" — a term with a particular meaning in Indonesia.
It suggests there's no mystery
at all.
The term emerged in the mid-1980s, when Indonesian soldiers and police
killed about 5000 criminal
suspects, mostly in Java. The killings remained unexplained until 1989,
when then president Soeharto
admitted ordering them in a campaign of "shock therapy".
Church workers who investigated the Nabire killings believe they, too,
were carried out by Indonesian
security forces — part of a largely hidden but steady trickle of murders,
designed to intimidate Papuans
seeking independence.
With churches stepping into the void left by a crackdown that has
effectively silenced Papuan
nationalists, clergy and church workers are increasingly targeted for
harassment, intimidation and worse.
The targets include the Reverend Socratez Yoman, head of the Baptist
churches in Papua and an
outspoken critic of human rights abuses. He alleges Indonesian police and
army intelligence officers last
month threatened him with a pistol outside his church in Jayapura, the
Papuan provincial capital.
"Absolutely, I know about the pressure, the intimidation, the threats," he
told The Sunday Age. "They are
spying on us, following us, stopping us all the time."
The number of recent killings in the campaign to suppress independence
activism is disputed, but
evidence from human rights monitors suggest the figure, by past standards,
is relatively small.
A report last month by Human Rights Watch listed eight killings, mostly by
police, in the Central Highlands
over the past two years.
Human Rights Watch said the fall of Soeharto and the introduction of
"Special Autonomy" giving Papuans
greater self-government have helped ease tensions between Papuans and the
Jakarta government. There
had also been "some decrease" in military crackdowns and "sweeping"
operations, due mainly to
reduced resistance by pro-independence guerillas.
But at the same time, Human Rights Watch complained that "endemic" abuses
were "deepening mistrust
of the national government in Jakarta and potentially inflaming separatist
tensions".
Melbourne academic Richard Chauvel, an expert on Papua who has recently
visited the territory,
characterises the anti-Papuan violence as systemic and strategic.
"It is systemic in the sense that it is an integral part of how the
security forces interact with many
sections of Papuan society," he said. It is strategic in that it is
calculated "to create a certain atmosphere
… of varying degrees of intimidation".
The behaviour of the security forces reflected the military culture that
pervaded the Soeharto regime,
"where violence against unarmed Indonesian citizens was legitimate", said
Dr Chauvel, director of the
Australia Asia Pacific Institute at Victoria University.
The fall of Soeharto in 1998 heralded a brief spring for Papuan
nationalists, who could fly their flag and
openly advocate independence. But freedom faded with the detention of
leading nationalists in late 2000,
and the murder by Indonesian troops of Papuan leader Theys Eluay in 2001.
"The democratic space for political activity and the free expression of
political opinion in Papua itself,
that's been closed down," said Dr Chauvel.
"I'm not suggesting pro-independence sentiment has disappeared. What I'm
suggesting is that its public
expression and the public mobilisation for that objective has been closed
down."
In this environment, church leaders play a critical and risky role. With
their own communications
networks inside the territory, as well as international links, then can
gather and release information that
the military would prefer not to come out.
But they risk being accused of promoting independence by security officers
suspicious of churches,
paranoid about outside interference, and fearful that Papua could follow
East Timor and break away.
Pastor Yoman said the clergy had no choice but to speak out. "They will
never stop us, because we are
talking about our dignity, our life," he said. "We're talking about peace
and justice and equality. These
are universal values."
He has no doubt who killed Mr Bunai and Mr Keiya: "Our experience for 44
years is that the Indonesian
security attack and kill the Papuan people, everywhere."
In an attempt to ease tensions, the Jakarta Government has granted Papua a
degree of autonomy, with
control over funds and local administration. But implementing autonomy has
been half-hearted and
complicated by the division of the territory into two provinces, Papua and
West Papua, with plans for a
third.
Even with the carrot of autonomy, the stick of repression remains.
Regardless of what Jakarta politicians say, security agencies remain the
real power in Papua.
Last month, a senior army officer in Papua, Colonel Burhanuddin Siagian,
issued a blunt warning ahead
of a meeting of a traditional Papuan council.
"What is absolutely certain," he said, "is that anyone who tends towards
separatism will be crushed by
TNI (the Indonesian military).
"In the interests of the Republic of Indonesia, we are not afraid of human
rights."
Colonel Siagian knows how to carry out such threats. In 2003 he was
indicted by UN investigators for
murder and torture when he was based in East Timor in the run-up to the
1999 independence
referendum.
Jakarta refused to extradite him. Instead he was promoted and sent to Papua.
---
re. Unconfirmed news
Below is the original forwarded message:
(edited for privacy)
Hi Guys
I heard of something happening up on the mountain on Friday am and will
attempt to get more details. I did hear that
something had happened in the morning and that that had kept them busy
for the day but we did not discuss it further as it was not relevant to
our discussion.
I am aware that NAME was in the region and from his schedule
would appear to be overdue given he was going through the mine on 15
August, thereabouts and was expected back before now. I have sent him
an email also but expect he may be busy or not willing to talk
especially if the news is really bad.
As I hear more I will advise but do NOT use my name.
Kind Regards
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