[Kabar-Irian] News: June 10-12 2006

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June 10-12 2006
KABAR IRIAN NEWS

TOPICS

* ASK THE WEST PAPUANS WHAT THEY WANT
* Search continues for missing TV crew
* 4 of 8 TV crew found in Papua
* Envoy's return ends rift on Papua
* Four Russian helicopter pilots deported from Indonesia - agency
*  'The Naked Tourist'
* Indonesian ambassador returns to Australia after row
* Papua New Guinea commander downplays Indonesian troop activity
* Crisis in the Asia Pacific
* Indon border troop build-up ‘normal’
* Security treaty with Indonesia shouldn't be signed

- ---

http://www.pmw.c2o.org/2006/papua4960.html

Comment:
ASK THE WEST PAPUANS WHAT THEY WANT
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=00085D87-23CA-1485-92DF8
3027AF1010B

By Maire Leadbeater

AUCKLAND (New Zealand Herald/Pacific Media Watch): Two Herald contributors,
John Roughan and Michael Richardson, have gone into bat for the virtues of
a unified Indonesia. I totally agree that New Zealand should foster
positive links with Indonesia. If that means a boost in Government funds to
tertiary institutions so that they can get Indonesian language courses
going again, I am all for it.

However, I strongly dispute the suggestion that good relations depend on
uncritical acceptance of Indonesia's rule in West Papua, or that the crisis
in Timor Leste shows that the country would have been better off if it had
stayed under Indonesian occupation.

Let's take things back a step. Through the long bloody years of Indonesia's
occupation of East Timor, our Government had scant concern for East
Timorese aspirations.

When I combed the declassified diplomatic records of those years it seemed
that some of the officials couldn't understand why the resistance
continued.

Tim Groser, formerly our ambassador to Jakarta and now a National MP,
visited East Timor in 1995 and noted the strong support for independence
but could not understand why people would not support "the obvious
compromise" of substantial autonomy.

Back then he seemed to share the concern Richardson has today about support
for West Papua - that international activists were keeping the issue alive.

He noted: "After all, the poor position of the East Timorese is hardly
worse than many other grossly unfortunate people in the world, but whose
plight does not have an international character."

Around that time desperate East Timorese activists began seeking asylum in
foreign embassies including ours, but New Zealand increased its defence
co-operation and sent our Skyhawks to practise ground attack tactics with
Indonesian planes.

Despite our Government's intransigence, East Timor's resistance gained even
stronger international support epitomised in a Nobel Peace Prize win for
two of its leaders.

More importantly it won over significant numbers of concerned Indonesians,
and ultimately important national political leaders.

Unlike Roughan, I never thought that an impoverished and traumatised
society would make an easy transition to independence.

The roots of this year's heart-wrenching internal conflict lie deep in the
dark years of Indonesian military repression. Back then with spies on all
sides, it was difficult to know friend from collaborator.

Timor Leste's remarkable Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
did the best it could to heal the wounds. Community hearings gave victims
the chance to tell their stories and for perpetrators to atone for more
minor crimes.

But there has been no positive response to the Commission's call for an
accounting and compensation from the "big fish", the Indonesian generals
and those nations who provided crucial support.

In the case of Australia, that country still benefits from the favourable
oil and gas deal it stitched up with Indonesia during the occupation.
Regrettably, impunity on this scale lays the ground for others to take the
law into their own hands.

At the time of the Indonesian invasion, Australia and New Zealand talked
about self-determination, one of the clearest tenets in the United Nations
Charter. But "pragmatism" and Indonesia's anti-communist credentials led
them to kowtow to their powerful regional neighbour.

In the same vein Roughan decries "two bit" states. He is not alone.
Australia is backing away as fast as it can from any perceived sympathy for
the plight of West Papuans after having accepted the asylum claims of 42
West Papuan seafarers.

Under international law Australia had little choice but to accept the group
because their claims of persecution were watertight. Now none is likely to
reach safe haven because Australia will work with Indonesia to mount a
border surveillance using submarines, warships, planes and even satellites.

If any do make it through they will confront the "Pacific solution" policy
under which asylum seekers will be sent offshore to have their claims
processed.

A key focus of West Papuan anger has been the Freeport McMoran mine whose
gold and copper reserves rank among the largest in the world. The US owners
derive fabulous wealth and the mine is Jakarta's largest taxpayer.

Meanwhile, the local people live in poverty and millions of tonnes of waste
are dumped each year into their once pristine rivers.

Would Roughan and Richardson take their arguments to the point of arguing
for a new age of Empires? If not, then we should give the seductive
arguments against "separatism" a more critical look, and more importantly
ask the West Papuans what they want.

Over the past four years there has been a strong call coming from the
churches and the traditional councils for West Papua to be declared a "Land
of Peace". This vision is about restoring human rights, dignity and basic
fairness and the pre-requisite is a broad-based dialogue with Jakarta and
substantial demilitarisation.

Aceh will soon have a new law setting the parameters for the province to
have internal self-government. If that process continues to go well it will
set a valuable precedent and there is bound to be considerable national and
international pressure for a similar plan for West Papua.

No doubt that will not suit the military, but there are indications that
some political figures, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, are
open to peace proposals.

* Maire Leadbeater is spokesperson for the Indonesia Human Rights
Committee.
		+++niuswire

PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH is an independent, non-profit, non-government
organisation comprising journalists, lawyers, editors and other media
workers, dedicated to examining issues of ethics, accountability,
censorship, media freedom and media ownership in the Pacific region.
Launched in October 1996, it has links with the Journalism Program at the
University of the South Pacific, Journalism Studies at the University of
PNG (UPNG), the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ),
Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and Community
Communications Online (c2o).

© 1996-2006 Copyright - All rights reserved. Items are provided solely for
review purposes as a non-profit educational service. Copyright remains the
property of the original producers as indicated. Recipients should seek
permission from the copyright owner for any publishing. Copyright owners
not wishing their materials to be posted by PMW please contact us. The
views expressed in material listed by PMW are not necessarily the views of
PMW or its members. Recipients should rely on their own inquiries before
making decisions based on material listed in PMW. Please copy appeals to
PMW and acknowledge source.
Sunday, 11 June 2006

- ---

Search continues for missing TV crew

Nethy Dharma Somba, The Jakarta Post, Jayapura

A rescue team continued searching Sunday for four of eight people who went
missing while filming a segment in Papua for television travel show Jejak
Petualangan (Steps to Adventure).

The team worked to find the four all day Sunday, but had no success in
locating cameraman Budi Dwi or the three locals hired to assist the team
from the TV7 television station.

"No one has been found," Mimika regency search and rescue team chief Yanto
Sugiman told The Jakarta Post.

The four others -- producer Dody Johanjaya, assistant producer Wendy M.
Firman, cameraman Budhi Kurniawan and presenter Medina Kamil -- were found
by the search and rescue team on Tiga Island, some 50 kilometers from
Poumako port in Timika, Mimika regency.

The search and rescue team is comprised of Mimika local administration
officials, police officers, military personnel and PT Freeport workers.

The TV crew went missing while traveling on a wooden boat to Timika from
the Asmat capital town Agats on Tuesday.

Yanto said three airplanes had been deployed to monitor the air, while a
speedboat was being used to inspect the shoreline around Tiga Island.

"First we flew a helicopter belonging to PT Airfast, followed by a Nomad
small aircraft owned by the Indonesian Navy and the last was a Trigana
plane," he said.

The team from Jejak Petualangan, which features interesting corners from
across the country and airs Monday to Thursday and Saturday, was one of
three groups sent by TV7 to the province to shoot three programs. They were
expected back in Jakarta on June 20.

- ---

4 of 8 TV crew found in Papua

National News - June 11, 2006

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Jayapura

Four of eight production and camera crew members on assignment in Papua to
film a television travel show were found alive on Saturday, after
experiencing their own survival adventure against the elements.

The eight were in Papua to shoot part of the TV travel show Jejak
Petualangan (Steps to adventure).

Producer Dody Johanjaya, assistant producer Wendy M. Firman, cameraman
Budhi Kurniawan and presenter Medina Kamil were found by a joint
search-and-rescue team four days after the crew was reported missing.

Cameraman Budi Dwi and three locals hired to assist the team from TV7 are
still missing.

The station's news and current affairs director, Bambang S.K., told The
Jakarta Post by phone that the four were found in stable condition.

"They were found at around 3:30 p.m. on Tiga Island," Bambang said
Saturday.

Tiga Island is located some 50 kilometers offshore from Poumako port in
Timika, the capital of Mimika regency.

He said the team, which went missing on Tuesday while traveling by boat to
Timika from the Asmat capital town of Agats, was found by a
search-and-rescue team comprising Mimika officials, police officers,
military personnel and PT Freeport workers.

In a phone interview with TV7 on Saturday shortly after being evacuated and
arriving at a health post in Timika, Dody said their boats had been
capsized by big waves, spilling the passengers into rough waters.

He said he and the three others managed to stay in one group, holding on to
anything they could, while the missing cameraman was rescued by a local
crew.

"We floated on the sea for 20 hours. In the morning, we decided to get to a
nearby island. We swam for three hours before reaching Tiga Island," he
said.

They found the island deserted, he said, and walked every day around the
island in the hopes of getting help from passing fishermen or ships.

Some locals apparently saw them, but did not stop.

"We survived by drinking rainwater that we collected when it rained, and
there wasn't much food, so we ate anything we came across. Crab, seafood,"
Dody said.

Jejak Petualangan features interesting corners of the country and airs
Monday to Thursday and on Saturday.

The show's team was one of three TV7 teams sent to the province to film
three separate programs. The other teams are expected to return to Jakarta
on June 20.

- ---

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19441562-2702,00.html

Envoy's return ends rift on Papua
Joseph Kerr
June 12, 2006
INDONESIA'S ambassador has returned to Australia for the first time since
being recalled in protest over the Howard Government's decision to grant
refugee visas to 42 Papuans.

The return of Hamzah Thayeb comes before a visit by a delegation from the
Indonesian parliament, which will seek to discuss the two countries'
strained relationship, as well as the individuals at the heart of the
Papuan row.

Led by Muhammad AS Hikam, the delegation is expected to seek meetings with
Prime Minister John Howard, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

It is understood the delegation will also seek to meet representatives of
the 42 refugees.

Mr Thayeb was recalled in March in protest at the decision to grant
sanctuary to the Papuans, a move widely seen in Jakarta as proof of
Australia's support for the West Papuan separatist movement.

In the wake of the recall, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned
Indonesia might rethink its involvement in Australia's fight against
people-smuggling. Jakarta also cancelled a high-level ministerial visit to
Australia despite the Government's moves to push asylum-seekers offshore
for processing.

Mr Thayeb's return comes after moves to forge a new security treaty between
the two nations.

Officials are still finalising arrangements for a meeting between Mr Howard
and Dr Yudhoyono, expected to take place on the Indonesia island of Batam
late this month before Mr Howard travels to China.

The talks are expected to centre on the strained bilateral relationship,
particularly the Papuan crisis, but will also include the planned security
agreement.

A trilateral meeting to include Singapore is also under negotiation for
around the same time.

- ---

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060610/49323226.html

Four Russian helicopter pilots deported from Indonesia - agency

13:44 	| 	10/ 06/ 2006



JAKARTA, June 10 (RIA Novosti, Mikhail Tsyganov) - Four Russian helicopter
pilots have been deported from the Indonesian province of Papua over
alleged visa violations, the Antara national news agency said Saturday.

According to a spokesman for the local immigration service, Russian
nationals Alexander Sukonin, Vitaly Dudnik, Yury Ashikhmin and Oleg
Tretyakov entered Indonesia April 28 on tourist visas valid until June 1.

"They had a contract with PT Trigana Air Service, a private Indonesian
airline, to work as cockpit and technical personnel," the spokesman said.
He added that the pilots were now on their way to Jakarta accompanied by
guards, and would be later sent to Russia.

The consular department of the Russian Embassy in Indonesia is
investigating the incident.

- ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/10/books/10grim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Books of The Times | 'The Naked Tourist'


By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: June 10, 2006

Tourism is the world's biggest business. Lawrence Osborne, a dyspeptic
professional traveler, finds this perverse. The word travel itself, he
points out, derives from the French for labor, and ultimately from a Latin
word for a three-pronged stake used as an instrument of torture.
Skip to next paragraph
Denise Malone

Lawrence Osborne
THE NAKED TOURIST
In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall

By Lawrence Osborne

278 pages. North Point Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24.
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Nonfiction

Travel is painful. Also boring and pointless, since the efficient machinery
of mass tourism has produced an all-purpose, one-size-fits-all, synthetic
destination he calls "wherever."

It does not matter where you go, Mr. Osborne argues in "The Naked Tourist,"
a biting, highly amusing and occasionally profound inquiry into travel and
its discontents. All places these days are the same place, yet the traveler
presses on, driven by an ill-defined hunger. Sometimes the point of a
journey is self-discovery. At other times the traveler wants to leave the
world, to reach "a mythic place beyond known time and history." And
sometimes travel simply satisfies a primitive need to roam, perhaps a
legacy of our hunter-gatherer origins.

Mr. Osborne experiences all this and more as he makes his way to what could
be the remotest destination on the planet, the sago swamps and rain forests
of southern Papua. Not for him the prepackaged "wonderland Stone Age
sensations" promised by an Indonesian travel company. Research leads him to
a Grizzly Adams from Missouri who promises to take him deep into the heart
of a land beyond wherever, a place where maps based on global positioning
systems simply read "no data."

Fortunately, it takes him a long time to get there. There's a lot of
wherever to be dealt with first, in Dubai, Calcutta, Bangkok and Bali, all
of them teeming with the petty annoyances and bad taste that set Mr.
Osborne's teeth on edge and get his vitriol flowing. The jungle can wait.

Like many English travel writers, Mr. Osborne has a kind of death wish. By
upbringing, he is acutely sensitive to embarrassment, yet he seeks it out
wherever he goes. Browsing the cheap-treatment medical clinics in Bangkok,
he undergoes a disastrous high-colonic irrigation that recalls the most
harrowing moments of "The Poseidon Adventure." He checks into a luxury spa
in Hua Hin, on the Gulf of Thailand, where, after sneaking out and bingeing
on Thai street food and alcohol, he must look the doctors in the eye and
try to explain how he managed to gain weight after a week of strenuous
slimming.

Travel depresses Mr. Osborne. And misfortune stalks him everywhere he goes.
Touring the Andaman Islands, he listens as his guide rhapsodizes over their
vast tourist potential. "All this talk of the Andamans being the next
Maldives or Seychelles had only reminded me how much I loathe the Maldives
and Seychelles," he writes. An ant crawls out of a biscuit he is eating and
bites him on the eye, leaving an infected lump that grows to the size of a
golf ball.

Misery and boredom inspire some of Mr. Osborne's finer insights. Stumbling
on a copy of "Robinson Crusoe," he finds his own double, with "all the
traits I see in myself: the longing to get naked, the fastidious disdain
bordering on arrogance, the need to 'get organized,' the utopian desire to
transcend the real world."

The freshly minted transsexuals at the Bangkok hospital he visits get him
to thinking. They are tourists, in a way. "They could even be called the
quintessential tourists of our age," he writes. "They set off looking for a
transformation — and boy did they find it."

Mr. Osborne's transforming moments come in Papua, where he feels himself
"an unreal man in an unreal place." At an abandoned missionary house in
Wanggemalo, members of the local tribe, the Kombai, gather to stare. A
young boy is led in by a village policeman. The boy is suspected of being a
sorcerer. The Kombai deal with witches by cutting them into four parts,
then cooking their brains and viscera on hot stones and eating them.

Wanggemalo is the sophisticated urban center on Mr. Osborne's ambitious
itinerary. He pushes deep into the jungle, where he eats fat grubs wrapped
in floury balls made from the pulp of the sago tree. As a treat, he is
offered piles of roasted mouse legs. The jungle Kombai do not know whether
Mr. Osborne and his fellow whites are human or not. They have never heard
of Papua or Indonesia. When Mr. Osborne explains that he comes from a
country beyond the forest, he is met with blank stares. How can there be
anything beyond the forest, since that is the entire world?

White skin inspires fear. It looks cold. A Kombai explains, after some
discussion, that he and his fellow tribesmen were shocked at the sight.
White? Who would have guessed? "They groaned softly for a while, as if this
was truly an appalling idea, as no doubt it is," Mr. Osborne writes.
Finally, he gets his wish. He is outside time, off the map: "We were
nowhere, anywhere — wherever we happened to be."

Back home, Mr. Osborne descends from his transcendent heights, and in New
York ("a moralistic and corporate city") finds himself on the same boring
plain: "Throughout this journey I had had the same feeling that I had not
been 'abroad' anywhere, that I had simply moved through different
dimensions of a single human contemporaneity."

That's the thing about travel. It never takes you anywhere, no matter how
far you go. But Mr. Osborne has his bag packed. Next year: wherever.

- ---

http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds/afx/2006/06/11/afx2807527.html

AFX News Limited
Indonesian ambassador returns to Australia after row
06.11.2006, 08:47 AM


SYDNEY (XFN-ASIA) - Indonesia's ambassador to Australia has returned to
Canberra, almost three months after he was recalled to Jakarta during a
diplomatic row over Australia's acceptance of asylum-seekers from Papua.

Ambassador Hamzah Thayeb returned to Canberra earlier today, an embassy
official said.

Thayeb was recalled in March after Australia granted temporary visas to 42
boat people from Indonesia's Papua, a move seen in Indonesia as tacit
support for the province's independence.

The ambassador returned ahead of a visit this week by five Indonesian
parliamentarians to discuss relations between the two countries.

In a move seen as appeasing Jakarta, Howard made changes to Australian
immigration laws after the 42 Papuans arrived so that any future arrivals
will be processed offshore.

Howard and Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are due to meet
in Indonesia later this month.

Papuan separatists have campaigned for more than 30 years to split from
Indonesia, accusing Jakarta of widespread human rights abuses in the
resource-rich province.

mfc/sm/swp

- ---

http://abcasiapacific.com/news/stories/asiapacific_stories_1660821.htm

An Indonesian parliamentary delegation has arrived in the Australian
capital, Canberra, to discuss relations between the two countries.

The five MPS will hold talks with Prime Minister John Howard later this
week.

Their visit comes after weeks of tension between the two nations over
Australia's decision to grant temporary visas to 42 asylum seekers from the
Indonesian province of Papua.

The Indonesian delegation will also meet Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander
Downer and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone in coming days.

Indonesia's ambassador to Australia, Hamzah Thayeb, who was recalled in
March over the visa issue, returned to Canberra over the weekend.

ABC Asia Pacific TV / Radio Australia

- ---

BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific
June 9, 2006
Source: Papua New Guinea Post-Courier website,
Port Moresby, in English 9 Jun 06

Papua New Guinea commander downplays Indonesian troop activity

The heavy presence of Indonesian soldiers on the border
is no course for concern, Papua New Guinea Defence
Force commander Commodore Peter Ilau said yesterday.
Commodore Ilau said Indonesia was able to afford the
numbers of soldiers to patrol its side of the border. He
was responding to queries by this paper if he was aware
of a  build-up of soldiers on the border and if the Indonesian
soldiers have violated border laws to enter PNG.

Mr Ilau said there was no official report or complaint of border
crossings and if there were any, the Indonesian soldiers may
have been pursuing their own citizens and or may have entered
PNG side by error.

- ---

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/671/671p4e.htm

Crisis in the Asia Pacific

BRISBANE — The neo-colonial policies of the Australian government,
particularly the theft of East Timor's oil, were the primary cause of the
current crisis in East Timor, Green Left Weekly journalist Jon Lamb told a
forum here on June 5.

Lamb explained that the East Timorese political elite compounded these
problems through an over-reliance on international institutions, rather
than mobilising "East Timor's greatest asset — its people". He warned
that, through its current military intervention, the Australian government
would put further pressure on the Timorese to comply with Australian
business interests and consolidate its role as "sheriff" of the Asia
Pacific.

Callum Hyslop of the Australia West Papua Association spoke about the long
struggle for a free West Papua, which has been thwarted by the
pro-Indonesian-regime policies of Australian governments. Queensland
University of Technology lecturer John Tomlinson told the forum that
Australia's policies are "driven by economic fundamentalism, and overlaid
by colonialism, racism and nationalism".

Paul Benedek

- From Green Left Weekly, June 14, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

- ---

http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20060609/frhome.htm

Indon border troop build-up ‘normal’

THE heavy presence of Indonesian soldiers on the border is no course for
concern, Papua New Guinea Defence Force commander Commodore Peter Ilau said
yesterday. Commodore Ilau said Indonesia was able to afford the numbers of
soldiers to patrol its side of the border. He was responding to queries by
this paper if he was aware of a buildup of soldiers on the border and if
the Indonesian soldiers have violated the border laws to enter PNG. Mr Ilau
said there was no official report or complaint of border crossing and if
there were any, the Indonesian soldiers may have been pursuing their own
citizens and or may have entered PNG side by error. He said the large
number of Indonesian soldiers was nothing new as they have always done as
they did not have the financial and mobility capability and the manpower.

- ---

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0606/S00269.htm

Security treaty with Indonesia shouldn't be signed
Sunday, 11 June 2006, 5:40 pm
Press Release: Australian Green Party
Security treaty with Indonesia should not be signed

Senator Nettle, today, called on the Federal Government to suspend plans
for a new security treaty with Indonesia in light of continuing revelations
of abuses in West Papua.

She also called for the two month military exchange 'Kartika Exchange 06'
between the ADF and Indonesian army beginning this month to be halted.

"Every day there is more reports of military abuses coming out of West
Papua. Last night SBS Dateline reported on increased Indonesian military
operations on the border with Papua New Guinea and in some cases incursions
into PNG."

"I am concerned at reports that the treaty will include military
cooperation, intelligence sharing, joint naval and surveillance patrols,
and expanded exchanges and joint training exercises at a time when the
Indonesian military are increasing repression in West Papua."

"At the same time as the government's new migration laws are shutting the
door on West Papuan refugees they are seeking to finalise a treaty that
will assist their abusers."

"The reports we receive about military activities in West Papua follow a
similar pattern to what happened in East Timor prior to Independence.

"Australia should not be cooperating with the Indonesian military until
personnel who have been implicated in human rights abuses elsewhere in
Indonesia and East Timor have been tried and punished for these horrendous
crimes.

The Greens will move a motion in the Senate next week calling on the
government to suspend treaty negotiations until allegations of human rights
abuses have been investigated and finalised.

- ---

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mine is Jakarta's largest taxpayer.

Meanwhile, the local people live in poverty and millions of tonnes of
waste are dumped each

year into their once pristine rivers.

Would Roughan and Richardson take their arguments to the point of arguing
for a new age of

Empires? If not, then we should give the seductive arguments against
"separatism" a more

critical look, and more importantly ask the West Papuans what they want.

Over the past four years there has been a strong call coming from the
churches and the

traditional councils for West Papua to be declared a "Land of Peace". This
vision is about

restoring human rights, dignity and basic fairness and the pre-requisite
is a broad-based

dialogue with Jakarta and substantial demilitarisation.

Aceh will soon have a new law setting the parameters for the province to
have internal

self-government. If that process continues to go well it will set a
valuable precedent and

there is bound to be considerable national and international pressure for
a similar plan for

West Papua.

No doubt that will not suit the military, but there are indications that
some political

figures, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, are open to peace
proposals.

* Maire Leadbeater is spokesperson for the Indonesia Human Rights Committee.
		+++niuswire

PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH is an independent, non-profit, non-government
organisation comprising

journalists, lawyers, editors and other media workers, dedicated to
examining issues of

ethics, accountability, censorship, media freedom and media ownership in
the Pacific region.

Launched in October 1996, it has links with the Journalism Program at the
University of the

South Pacific, Journalism Studies at the University of PNG (UPNG), the
Australian Centre for

Independent Journalism (ACIJ), Auckland University of Technology in New
Zealand, and

Community Communications Online (c2o).

© 1996-2006 Copyright - All rights reserved. Items are provided solely for
review purposes

as a non-profit educational service. Copyright remains the property of the
original

producers as indicated. Recipients should seek permission from the
copyright owner for any

publishing. Copyright owners not wishing their materials to be posted by
PMW please contact

us. The views expressed in material listed by PMW are not necessarily the
views of PMW or

its members. Recipients should rely on their own inquiries before making
decisions based on

material listed in PMW. Please copy appeals to PMW and acknowledge source.
Sunday, 11 June 2006

---

Search continues for missing TV crew

Nethy Dharma Somba, The Jakarta Post, Jayapura

A rescue team continued searching Sunday for four of eight people who went
missing while

filming a segment in Papua for television travel show Jejak Petualangan
(Steps to

Adventure).

The team worked to find the four all day Sunday, but had no success in
locating cameraman

Budi Dwi or the three locals hired to assist the team from the TV7
television station.

"No one has been found," Mimika regency search and rescue team chief Yanto
Sugiman told The

Jakarta Post.

The four others -- producer Dody Johanjaya, assistant producer Wendy M.
Firman, cameraman

Budhi Kurniawan and presenter Medina Kamil -- were found by the search and
rescue team on

Tiga Island, some 50 kilometers from Poumako port in Timika, Mimika regency.

The search and rescue team is comprised of Mimika local administration
officials, police

officers, military personnel and PT Freeport workers.

The TV crew went missing while traveling on a wooden boat to Timika from
the Asmat capital

town Agats on Tuesday.

Yanto said three airplanes had been deployed to monitor the air, while a
speedboat was being

used to inspect the shoreline around Tiga Island.

"First we flew a helicopter belonging to PT Airfast, followed by a Nomad
small aircraft

owned by the Indonesian Navy and the last was a Trigana plane," he said.

The team from Jejak Petualangan, which features interesting corners from
across the country

and airs Monday to Thursday and Saturday, was one of three groups sent by
TV7 to the

province to shoot three programs. They were expected back in Jakarta on
June 20.

---

4 of 8 TV crew found in Papua

National News - June 11, 2006

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Jayapura

Four of eight production and camera crew members on assignment in Papua to
film a television

travel show were found alive on Saturday, after experiencing their own
survival adventure

against the elements.

The eight were in Papua to shoot part of the TV travel show Jejak
Petualangan (Steps to

adventure).

Producer Dody Johanjaya, assistant producer Wendy M. Firman, cameraman
Budhi Kurniawan and

presenter Medina Kamil were found by a joint search-and-rescue team four
days after the crew

was reported missing.

Cameraman Budi Dwi and three locals hired to assist the team from TV7 are
still missing.

The station's news and current affairs director, Bambang S.K., told The
Jakarta Post by

phone that the four were found in stable condition.

"They were found at around 3:30 p.m. on Tiga Island," Bambang said Saturday.

Tiga Island is located some 50 kilometers offshore from Poumako port in
Timika, the capital

of Mimika regency.

He said the team, which went missing on Tuesday while traveling by boat to
Timika from the

Asmat capital town of Agats, was found by a search-and-rescue team
comprising Mimika

officials, police officers, military personnel and PT Freeport workers.

In a phone interview with TV7 on Saturday shortly after being evacuated
and arriving at a

health post in Timika, Dody said their boats had been capsized by big
waves, spilling the

passengers into rough waters.

He said he and the three others managed to stay in one group, holding on
to anything they

could, while the missing cameraman was rescued by a local crew.

"We floated on the sea for 20 hours. In the morning, we decided to get to
a nearby island.

We swam for three hours before reaching Tiga Island," he said.

They found the island deserted, he said, and walked every day around the
island in the hopes

of getting help from passing fishermen or ships.

Some locals apparently saw them, but did not stop.

"We survived by drinking rainwater that we collected when it rained, and
there wasn't much

food, so we ate anything we came across. Crab, seafood," Dody said.

Jejak Petualangan features interesting corners of the country and airs
Monday to Thursday

and on Saturday.

The show's team was one of three TV7 teams sent to the province to film
three separate

programs. The other teams are expected to return to Jakarta on June 20.

---

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19441562-2702,00.html

Envoy's return ends rift on Papua
Joseph Kerr
June 12, 2006
INDONESIA'S ambassador has returned to Australia for the first time since
being recalled in

protest over the Howard Government's decision to grant refugee visas to 42
Papuans.

The return of Hamzah Thayeb comes before a visit by a delegation from the
Indonesian

parliament, which will seek to discuss the two countries' strained
relationship, as well as

the individuals at the heart of the Papuan row.

Led by Muhammad AS Hikam, the delegation is expected to seek meetings with
Prime Minister

John Howard, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer.

It is understood the delegation will also seek to meet representatives of
the 42 refugees.

Mr Thayeb was recalled in March in protest at the decision to grant
sanctuary to the

Papuans, a move widely seen in Jakarta as proof of Australia's support for
the West Papuan

separatist movement.

In the wake of the recall, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned
Indonesia might rethink

its involvement in Australia's fight against people-smuggling. Jakarta
also cancelled a

high-level ministerial visit to Australia despite the Government's moves
to push

asylum-seekers offshore for processing.

Mr Thayeb's return comes after moves to forge a new security treaty
between the two nations.

Officials are still finalising arrangements for a meeting between Mr
Howard and Dr

Yudhoyono, expected to take place on the Indonesia island of Batam late
this month before Mr

Howard travels to China.

The talks are expected to centre on the strained bilateral relationship,
particularly the

Papuan crisis, but will also include the planned security agreement.

A trilateral meeting to include Singapore is also under negotiation for
around the same

time.

---

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060610/49323226.html

Four Russian helicopter pilots deported from Indonesia - agency

13:44 	| 	10/ 06/ 2006



JAKARTA, June 10 (RIA Novosti, Mikhail Tsyganov) - Four Russian helicopter
pilots have been

deported from the Indonesian province of Papua over alleged visa
violations, the Antara

national news agency said Saturday.

According to a spokesman for the local immigration service, Russian
nationals Alexander

Sukonin, Vitaly Dudnik, Yury Ashikhmin and Oleg Tretyakov entered
Indonesia April 28 on

tourist visas valid until June 1.

"They had a contract with PT Trigana Air Service, a private Indonesian
airline, to work as

cockpit and technical personnel," the spokesman said. He added that the
pilots were now on

their way to Jakarta accompanied by guards, and would be later sent to
Russia.

The consular department of the Russian Embassy in Indonesia is
investigating the incident.

---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/10/books/10grim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Books of The Times | 'The Naked Tourist'


By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: June 10, 2006

Tourism is the world's biggest business. Lawrence Osborne, a dyspeptic
professional

traveler, finds this perverse. The word travel itself, he points out,
derives from the

French for labor, and ultimately from a Latin word for a three-pronged
stake used as an

instrument of torture.
Skip to next paragraph
Denise Malone

Lawrence Osborne
THE NAKED TOURIST
In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall

By Lawrence Osborne

278 pages. North Point Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24.
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Nonfiction

Travel is painful. Also boring and pointless, since the efficient
machinery of mass tourism

has produced an all-purpose, one-size-fits-all, synthetic destination he
calls "wherever."

It does not matter where you go, Mr. Osborne argues in "The Naked
Tourist," a biting, highly

amusing and occasionally profound inquiry into travel and its discontents.
All places these

days are the same place, yet the traveler presses on, driven by an
ill-defined hunger.

Sometimes the point of a journey is self-discovery. At other times the
traveler wants to

leave the world, to reach "a mythic place beyond known time and history."
And sometimes

travel simply satisfies a primitive need to roam, perhaps a legacy of our
hunter-gatherer

origins.

Mr. Osborne experiences all this and more as he makes his way to what
could be the remotest

destination on the planet, the sago swamps and rain forests of southern
Papua. Not for him

the prepackaged "wonderland Stone Age sensations" promised by an
Indonesian travel company.

Research leads him to a Grizzly Adams from Missouri who promises to take
him deep into the

heart of a land beyond wherever, a place where maps based on global
positioning systems

simply read "no data."

Fortunately, it takes him a long time to get there. There's a lot of
wherever to be dealt

with first, in Dubai, Calcutta, Bangkok and Bali, all of them teeming with
the petty

annoyances and bad taste that set Mr. Osborne's teeth on edge and get his
vitriol flowing.

The jungle can wait.

Like many English travel writers, Mr. Osborne has a kind of death wish. By
upbringing, he is

acutely sensitive to embarrassment, yet he seeks it out wherever he goes.
Browsing the

cheap-treatment medical clinics in Bangkok, he undergoes a disastrous
high-colonic

irrigation that recalls the most harrowing moments of "The Poseidon
Adventure." He checks

into a luxury spa in Hua Hin, on the Gulf of Thailand, where, after
sneaking out and

bingeing on Thai street food and alcohol, he must look the doctors in the
eye and try to

explain how he managed to gain weight after a week of strenuous slimming.

Travel depresses Mr. Osborne. And misfortune stalks him everywhere he
goes. Touring the

Andaman Islands, he listens as his guide rhapsodizes over their vast
tourist potential. "All

this talk of the Andamans being the next Maldives or Seychelles had only
reminded me how

much I loathe the Maldives and Seychelles," he writes. An ant crawls out
of a biscuit he is

eating and bites him on the eye, leaving an infected lump that grows to
the size of a golf

ball.

Misery and boredom inspire some of Mr. Osborne's finer insights. Stumbling
on a copy of

"Robinson Crusoe," he finds his own double, with "all the traits I see in
myself: the

longing to get naked, the fastidious disdain bordering on arrogance, the
need to 'get

organized,' the utopian desire to transcend the real world."

The freshly minted transsexuals at the Bangkok hospital he visits get him
to thinking. They

are tourists, in a way. "They could even be called the quintessential
tourists of our age,"

he writes. "They set off looking for a transformation — and boy did they
find it."

Mr. Osborne's transforming moments come in Papua, where he feels himself
"an unreal man in

an unreal place." At an abandoned missionary house in Wanggemalo, members
of the local

tribe, the Kombai, gather to stare. A young boy is led in by a village
policeman. The boy is

suspected of being a sorcerer. The Kombai deal with witches by cutting
them into four parts,

then cooking their brains and viscera on hot stones and eating them.

Wanggemalo is the sophisticated urban center on Mr. Osborne's ambitious
itinerary. He pushes

deep into the jungle, where he eats fat grubs wrapped in floury balls made
from the pulp of

the sago tree. As a treat, he is offered piles of roasted mouse legs. The
jungle Kombai do

not know whether Mr. Osborne and his fellow whites are human or not. They
have never heard

of Papua or Indonesia. When Mr. Osborne explains that he comes from a
country beyond the

forest, he is met with blank stares. How can there be anything beyond the
forest, since that

is the entire world?

White skin inspires fear. It looks cold. A Kombai explains, after some
discussion, that he

and his fellow tribesmen were shocked at the sight. White? Who would have
guessed? "They

groaned softly for a while, as if this was truly an appalling idea, as no
doubt it is," Mr.

Osborne writes. Finally, he gets his wish. He is outside time, off the
map: "We were

nowhere, anywhere — wherever we happened to be."

Back home, Mr. Osborne descends from his transcendent heights, and in New
York ("a

moralistic and corporate city") finds himself on the same boring plain:
"Throughout this

journey I had had the same feeling that I had not been 'abroad' anywhere,
that I had simply

moved through different dimensions of a single human contemporaneity."

That's the thing about travel. It never takes you anywhere, no matter how
far you go. But

Mr. Osborne has his bag packed. Next year: wherever.

---

http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds/afx/2006/06/11/afx2807527.html

AFX News Limited
Indonesian ambassador returns to Australia after row
06.11.2006, 08:47 AM


SYDNEY (XFN-ASIA) - Indonesia's ambassador to Australia has returned to
Canberra, almost

three months after he was recalled to Jakarta during a diplomatic row over
Australia's

acceptance of asylum-seekers from Papua.

Ambassador Hamzah Thayeb returned to Canberra earlier today, an embassy
official said.

Thayeb was recalled in March after Australia granted temporary visas to 42
boat people from

Indonesia's Papua, a move seen in Indonesia as tacit support for the
province's

independence.

The ambassador returned ahead of a visit this week by five Indonesian
parliamentarians to

discuss relations between the two countries.

In a move seen as appeasing Jakarta, Howard made changes to Australian
immigration laws

after the 42 Papuans arrived so that any future arrivals will be processed
offshore.

Howard and Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are due to meet
in Indonesia later

this month.

Papuan separatists have campaigned for more than 30 years to split from
Indonesia, accusing

Jakarta of widespread human rights abuses in the resource-rich province.

mfc/sm/swp

---

http://abcasiapacific.com/news/stories/asiapacific_stories_1660821.htm

An Indonesian parliamentary delegation has arrived in the Australian
capital, Canberra, to

discuss relations between the two countries.

The five MPS will hold talks with Prime Minister John Howard later this week.

Their visit comes after weeks of tension between the two nations over
Australia's decision

to grant temporary visas to 42 asylum seekers from the Indonesian province
of Papua.

The Indonesian delegation will also meet Foreign Affairs Minister
Alexander Downer and

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone in coming days.

Indonesia's ambassador to Australia, Hamzah Thayeb, who was recalled in
March over the visa

issue, returned to Canberra over the weekend.

ABC Asia Pacific TV / Radio Australia

---

BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific
June 9, 2006
Source: Papua New Guinea Post-Courier website,
Port Moresby, in English 9 Jun 06

Papua New Guinea commander downplays Indonesian troop activity

The heavy presence of Indonesian soldiers on the border
is no course for concern, Papua New Guinea Defence
Force commander Commodore Peter Ilau said yesterday.
Commodore Ilau said Indonesia was able to afford the
numbers of soldiers to patrol its side of the border. He
was responding to queries by this paper if he was aware
of a  build-up of soldiers on the border and if the Indonesian
soldiers have violated border laws to enter PNG.

Mr Ilau said there was no official report or complaint of border
crossings and if there were any, the Indonesian soldiers may
have been pursuing their own citizens and or may have entered
PNG side by error.

---

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/671/671p4e.htm

Crisis in the Asia Pacific

BRISBANE — The neo-colonial policies of the Australian government,
particularly the theft of East Timor's oil, were the primary cause of the
current crisis in East Timor, Green Left Weekly journalist Jon Lamb told a
forum here on June 5.

Lamb explained that the East Timorese political elite compounded these
problems through an over-reliance on international institutions, rather
than mobilising "East Timor's greatest asset — its people". He warned
that, through its current military intervention, the Australian government
would put further pressure on the Timorese to comply with Australian
business interests and consolidate its role as "sheriff" of the Asia
Pacific.

Callum Hyslop of the Australia West Papua Association spoke about the long
struggle for a free West Papua, which has been thwarted by the
pro-Indonesian-regime policies of Australian governments. Queensland
University of Technology lecturer John Tomlinson told the forum that
Australia's policies are "driven by economic fundamentalism, and overlaid
by colonialism, racism and nationalism".

Paul Benedek

>From Green Left Weekly, June 14, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

---

http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20060609/frhome.htm

Indon border troop build-up ‘normal’

THE heavy presence of Indonesian soldiers on the border is no course for
concern, Papua New Guinea Defence Force commander Commodore Peter Ilau
said yesterday. Commodore Ilau said Indonesia was able to afford the
numbers of soldiers to patrol its side of the border. He was responding to
queries by this paper if he was aware of a buildup of soldiers on the
border and if the Indonesian soldiers have violated the border laws to
enter PNG. Mr Ilau said there was no official report or complaint of
border crossing and if there were any, the Indonesian soldiers may have
been pursuing their own citizens and or may have entered PNG side by
error. He said the large number of Indonesian soldiers was nothing new as
they have always done as they did not have the financial and mobility
capability and the manpower.

---

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0606/S00269.htm

Security treaty with Indonesia shouldn't be signed
Sunday, 11 June 2006, 5:40 pm
Press Release: Australian Green Party
Security treaty with Indonesia should not be signed

Senator Nettle, today, called on the Federal Government to suspend plans
for a new security treaty with Indonesia in light of continuing
revelations of abuses in West Papua.

She also called for the two month military exchange 'Kartika Exchange 06'
between the ADF and Indonesian army beginning this month to be halted.

"Every day there is more reports of military abuses coming out of West
Papua. Last night SBS Dateline reported on increased Indonesian military
operations on the border with Papua New Guinea and in some cases
incursions into PNG."

"I am concerned at reports that the treaty will include military
cooperation, intelligence sharing, joint naval and surveillance patrols,
and expanded exchanges and joint training exercises at a time when the
Indonesian military are increasing repression in West Papua."

"At the same time as the government's new migration laws are shutting the
door on West Papuan refugees they are seeking to finalise a treaty that
will assist their abusers."

"The reports we receive about military activities in West Papua follow a
similar pattern to what happened in East Timor prior to Independence.

"Australia should not be cooperating with the Indonesian military until
personnel who have been implicated in human rights abuses elsewhere in
Indonesia and East Timor have been tried and punished for these horrendous
crimes.

The Greens will move a motion in the Senate next week calling on the
government to suspend treaty negotiations until allegations of human
rights abuses have been investigated and finalised.

---