Rave hospitality, but Indonesia fails West Papua with media freedom hypocrisy

Al Jazeera's coverage by Step Vaessen of the Papuan protest at WPFD2017 in Jakarta.

By David Robie in Jakarta 

INDONESIAN hospitality was given a rave notice this week for hosting World Press Freedom Day 2017, but it was also given a huge black mark for its “gagging” of free discussion over West Papua violations. 

Four days before the WPFD event got under way, prominent Papuan journalist Victor Mambor had warned in the New Internationalist that Indonesian double standards had imposed a silence over West Papua.

Even a Papuan protest outside the Jakarta Conference Centre venue was kept at the margins, ensuring most of the 1300 journalists, media academics and communication policy makers from 90 countries were unaware of the shocking press and human rights violations that continue almost daily in the Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua (collectively known as West Papua).

Al Jazeera broadcast the most comprehensive television report from its Jakarta bureau on media freedom and West Papua with both Titro.id website and The Jakarta Post also carrying reports.

But for the rest, mostly silence.

West Papuan students stage anti-Freeport protests in Indonesia

KBR audio report on the Jakarta protest in Bahasa. Audio: KBR/Asia Pacific Report

From the Pacific Media Centre's Asia Pacific Report.
West Papua is the ongoing Pacific human rights story that the mainstream New Zealand media ignores. Freeport in West Papua is the copper and gold mine - the world's second largest -- that the $20 billion NZ Superannuation Fund was forced to pull out of in 2012 after sustained protest about its "unethical" investment in the company.

PROTESTERS from the Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) and religious pupils from an Islamic boarding school (pesantren) have faced off against each other at the Malan city hall in East Java.

Both groups held the protests on Friday under tight police security, as West Papuan protests over Freeport took place at several other places across Indonesia.

Scores of demonstrators from the AMP and the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-West Papua) unfurled banners and conveyed a number of demands, including the closure of the PT Freeport gold and copper mine in Papua.

They also brought banners with demands such as, “A joint action to support the Papua problem at the United Nations Human Rights Council” and “Close and Expel Freeport”. Protesters took turns in giving speeches.

The spokesperson for the AMP and FRI-West Papua, Wilson, said that the action represented Papuan society’s anxiety saying there are so many violations at PT Freeport that it was creating ever more misery in the land of Papua.

Febriana Firdaus, following in the courageous footsteps of Suara Papua editor Pogau

The last video posted by Oktovanius Pogau on his YouTube channel before he died early last year
- a KNPB rally in Jayapura posted on 31 May 2015.

WEST PAPUAN editor Oktovianus Pogau, who died last year aged just 23, would have been proud. An inaugural award for journalism courage named in honour of him has been presented to a brave young woman, freelance journalist and blogger Febriana Firdaus, who has been covering human rights abuses in Indonesia.

This published on Asia Pacific Report from the Pantau Foundation that has made the award and which has made a point of shunning cash prizes and extras to concentrate on the recognition:

Febriana Firdaus ... winner of the inaugural Pogau Award
for journalism courage. Image: Pantau Foundation

“We want to honour our colleague, Oktovianus Pogau, a smart and courageous journalist, who edited Suara Papua newspaper and highlighted human rights reporting. He passed away at a very young age – just 23 years old. We want to honour his legacy by establishing this Oktovianus Pogau award,” said Imam Shofwan, chairman of the Pantau Foundation in a speech to a small gathering at his office.

The Pantau Foundation selected Febriana Firdaus, a Jakarta journalist, to receive the inaugural award.

Firdaus covered Indonesia’s efforts to deal with the 1965-1966 massacres, disappearances and arbitrary detentions. She also covered discrimination, intimidation, and violence against the LGBT community in Indonesia.

West Papua: The crackdown aftermath - finding a dignified solution

The arrests of more than 1600 protesters in West Papua earlier this week are part of a broader systematic oppression of Papuans by the Indonesian government. Pictured are many detained protesters in the Mobile Brigade compound at Kotaraja, Jayapura.  Photo: Tabloid Jubi

OPINION: By Rev Benny Giay
 
LAST MONDAY, Indonesian police arrested more than 1600 people in Jayapura, Papua. They were rallying in support of a coalition of groups representing West Papuans’ aspirations for independence.

The police stopped the protesters, who were heading to the local parliament, forced them to board military trucks, and took them to the Mobile Brigade compound.

The protesters were demonstrating their support for the United Liberation Movement of West Papua's (ULMWP) bid to gain full membership in the grouping of Melanesian countries, the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG).

The ULMWP holds observer status in the group, which consists of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. Last year, Indonesia was granted associate membership.

To prevent further violent mistreatment of protesters, together with several Papuan councillors and church leaders, that day I [May 2] went to the Mobile Brigade’s compound to negotiate with the security forces to release the detainees peacefully.

'TPPA - walk away' rally welcomes West Papuan leader Octo Mote

Visiting West Papuan leader Octo Mote at the Auckland rally against the controversial
Trans-Pacific Partnership “trade” negotiations. Photo: Del Abcede/PMC

WHILE New Zealand protesters were giving an emphatic thumbs down to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership corporate slap in the face of democracy at the weekend, a quietly spoken West Papuan in a yellow raincoat was offering solidarity at the Auckland march.

Octo Mote, a former journalist and now secretary-general of the United Liberation Front of West Papua, was in town to spread the good news of West Papuan strategic self-determination developments to activists and supporters.

He spoke at a packed public meeting in the Peace Place on Friday night less than 24 hours after talking to students at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji before taking part in the anti-TPP/TPPA rally.

Rally organiser Barry Coates introduced Mote to the crowd outside the US Consulate-General.

Apart from welcoming Vanuatu’s initiative to press for a United Nations special envoy on West Papua, and the Solomon Islands decision to appoint a special envoy, Mote was positively upbeat about the upsurge in Pacific regional support for the West Papuan human rights cause.

Real media freedom or MSG ‘brownie points’ over West Papua?

Freed West Papuan political prisoner Numbungga Telenggen (left) is hugged by a supporter
in Jayapura at the weekend. Image: HRW/AFP

MEDIA freedom in West Papua? The end of the international media blackout in the most repressed corner of the Melanesian Pacific, far from the gaze of neighbouring nations with the exception of Vanuatu?

This is what Indonesian President Joko Widodo effectively declared in Jayapura last Saturday just days before a critical meeting between the Indonesian observers and a Melanesian Spearhead Group while the West Papuans are lobbying to join the club.

But hold on … Promising sign though this is, Café Pacific says we ought to be viewing this pledge more critically and to take a longer term view to see if there are any real changes on the ground.

Some media groups, such as the Pacific Freedom Forum and Pacific Islands Media Association, have responded with premature enthusiasm.    

“Freeing political prisoners and foreign press access to West Papua will be the biggest regional story this year - and the next,” declared the PFF.

Indonesian ‘open door’ policy on West Papua ‘a lie’ as French journos still detained

Two arrested French journalists, Thomas Dandois (centre) and Valentine Bourrat (left), from Franco-German
television channel Arte, are photographed with an unidentified Indonesian immigration official in
Jayapura in Papua province last week. Image: AsiaOne

RECENT claims by Indonesian authorities that there was a fresh “open door” policy over inquisitive journalists wanting to enter West Papua and report “on the level” have turned out to be false.

Hopeful signs through insightful reports (long with intelligence minders) by SBS Dateline’s Mark Davis, Michael Bachelard of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Jakarta bureau and AAP’s Karlis Salna that the Indonesian government had indeed seen the light – or at least was having a serious rethink – have turned out to be nothing but a mirage.

In the latest July/August edition of The Walkley Magazine, a Bachelard article featured “Opening the doors to West Papua” about his experience in January 2013 as “the first foreign reporter (excluding travel writers) to be given entry for about 12 months, and the first Australian for significantly longer”. He wrote rather prematurely:

“I hope the Indonesian government sees that these stories have not caused the sky to fall in, because only then will they open up West Papua. Then perhaps, reporting there can become just like any other part of my job.”

However, the detention of two French journalists – who are facing charges of “treason” and “immigration crime” – and a West Papuan tribal leader early last month has made a mockery of the new Indonesian policy.

Greens senator lambasts Australian foreign minister over 'offensive' denial of West Papuan human rights

Senator Richard Di Natale questions Foreign Minister Bob Carr about allegations
of ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua.

AUSTRALIAN Greens Senator Dr Richard Di Natale has condemned the Australian Foreign Minister’s comments in Senate Estimates where he blamed the escalating tensions in West Papua on the international human rights movement.

“Senator Carr’s comments are a clear acknowledgement that human rights abuses, killings and incarceration of political prisoners in the province of West Papua are escalating but rather than show leadership he has blamed people like me who are campaigning for an end to the
violence,” said Senator Di Natale

“To imply that I am in some way responsible for the atrocities inflicted on the West Papuan people and to label my advocacy for the West Papuan people as the ‘Greens latest cause de jour’ and ‘a cruel deceit byself-indulgent people’ is both offensive and patronising.

“It is patronising to the people of West Papua, who are not taking their cues from me but are actively engaged in a local movement for self-determination. It also makes me wonder what Minister Carr thinks about the many Australians who campaigned for an end to violence in East Timor or for Nelson Mandela to be freed from prison.

“Filep Karma is currently serving a 15 year prison sentence simply for flying the West Papuan Morning Star flag but according to Minister Carr, any foreigner who flies a flag as a way of highlighting this injustice is ‘planting in the minds of people who actually live in the place, the notion that this campaign has some sort of international resonance’.

Independent Papuan journalist attacked in Indonesian crackdown on protest

A 10-minute Metro TV news feed of Indonesian police shooting at protesters.

JAKARTA GLOBE stringer and SuaraPapua.com reporter Oktovianus Pogau was choked and beaten by Indonesian police as he attempted to report on a West Papuan protest.

Indonesian police opened fire on protesters in Manokwari, West Papua, shooting two and wounding three others — including a Jakarta Globe contributor — in the latest crackdown on pro-independence groups in the restive Melanesian province, reported Pacific Scoop.

The independent West Papua Media reported four people had been shot. Indonesian police denied the shootings, which were graphically videotaped by Metro TV.

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Seapa) has protested over the assaults against journalists in Indonesia.

Tuesday morning’s West Papua National Committee-sponsored (KNPB) rally began near the State University of Papua (Unipa) in Manokwari, said human rights activist Markus Haluk.

About 300 protesters attempted to march to nearby Borarsi field when police and the Indonesian Military (TNI) blocked their path.

Pogau was videotaping the scene when he was approached by a plainclothes officer and told to leave, according to the Jakarta Globe. When he refused a second officer attacked him from behind.

'Choked my neck'
“[A] policeman in a uniform came and choked my neck while he threatened me and told me to leave the location,” Pogau said.

“I tried to escape and told him that I’m a journalist… but [another] policeman punched me in the face.”

Pogau was pulled from the scene by fellow journalists. He showed the officers his press credentials before the second attack took place.

It was the second assault on journalists in Indonesia in the past week. On October 16, members of the TNI attacked five journalists reporting on a downed military aircraft in Penkanbaru, Riau.

Riau Pos photographer Didik Herwanto was beaten and choked by an officer with the Indonesian Air Force in a widely spread video.

The attack sparked widespread condemnation in Indonesia. Lt. Col. Robert Simanjuntak later apologised.

Pogau is the second Jakarta Globe contributor to be injured on the job while reporting in Papua. Last year, long-time writer Banjir Ambarita was stabbed in Jayapura after reporting on allegations of sexual abuse of female inmates by officers in a Jayapura police detention centre.

Ambarita survived the attack but said the stabbing left him “deeply traumatised” and wary of reporting on government abuse.

In 2011, two journalists working in Papua were killed, according to the Pacific Media Freedom 2011: A status report by the Pacific Media Centre. Eight were kidnapped and 18 others attacked during the course of their work.

Foreign media are banned from reporting in Papua without a special permit. In 2011, only three foreign media outlets were granted approval.

• Indonesian police attack journalist, shut down West Papua protest with shootings
• Seapa protest over Indonesian 'excessive force'
• Pacific Media Centre / Pacific Media Watch media freedom report 
• Police fire on West Papuan students

Correcting the West Papuan media blackout

CURIOUS how much of our media privileges the elite sources, yet attempts to marginalise independent media groups that are providing critical news and analysis on the stories left out of the mainstream news agenda. Take West Papua, for example. While the world’s media grasped the “people’s freedom" digital media with enthusiasm during the Arab Spring in the Middle East, other groups comprising journalists providing far more thorough media coverage and resources in our own Pacific backyard are treated as “activists”. This open letter from the Australian-based West Papua Media editor Nick Chesterfield, written after coverage of the allegations of 17 Papuans being killed by Indonesian security forces in the Paniai area, is a good insight into the media struggle to get West Papua above the radar.

For the record - open letter from West Papua Media

Description of both West Papua Media, and that of independent human rights monitors Elsham as "pro-independence groups" , is both inaccurate, misleading, discrediting, and is highly dangerous to the safety for both our journalists and also for Elsham's human rights investigators.

I cannot speak for Elsham, but like us, they are not pro-independence. They are mandated exclusively to conduct scientific research and analysis of human rights violations in West Papua according to internationally recognised methodologies, and have received significant scientific training internationally to carry out this. They are not part of the pro-independence movement.
West Papua Media is an independent media outlet, focused on bypassing the media blackout of West Papua by reporting factual, verifiable, and real time content and providing it to the world's media. We are all journalists, both professional and traditionally trained, and also from a new generation of citizen journalists.

We provide a clear training programme for our journalists on reporting under repressive contexts, and have long and established relationships with many news organisations globally - including Fairfax. We are both a media agency in the traditional sense, and an outlet in our own right. West Papua Media is overseen by a team of six editors internationally - three of whom are journalists, several sub-editors who also work for major newswires and two human rights workers - and we have an extensive network averaging 10 stringers in sixteen locations in Papua.

Each location is overseen by at least one qualified journalist, all members of the Indonesian Alliance for Independent Journalists, and all of our stringers have been providing consistent, credible and verifiable coverage after training in our Safe Witness Journalism units. Our journalists outside the country are all members of our national journalists' union (AJA/MEAA for myself) and everyone of us holds IFJ membership.

What West Papua Media is not, is "pro-independence". We are journalists, whose sole mandate is to report the news from West Papua, including items that are critical of pro-independence forces, tactics, and policies: a principled position that has occasionally cost us access and relationships to certain sectors of Papuan resistance. Telling the truth of what is happening, by adhering to tried and trusted journalistic methodology , and exposing the truth, is not being "pro-independence". It is doing what journalism used to be about - Giving voice to the voiceless.

While we attempt to seek comment from the killers and plunderers in Papua, they generally do not wish to comment to us. That is their silence, that does not lessen our work as journalists.

By labeling us as pro-independence, which we are not, you are putting our people on the ground at great risk of arrest, torture and murder, and charges of subversion, something which should concern you given the amount of journalists, including our stringers, who were murdered or threatened in West Papua over recent years.

Nick Chesterfield
Editor West
Papua Media

• About West Papua Media
• Pacific Journalism Review Media Freedom Report 2011
  (West Papua sections contributed by West Papua Media)
• 17 killed in West Papua
  

Merry Christmas and all the best for 2012 to all.

Brutal crackdown against pro-independence West Papua congress

Indonesian military preparing for the crackdown against participants at the Third Papuan People’s Congress. Photo: West Papua Media

FOUR KILLINGS at the Freeport McMoRan copper mine strike last week, protests by journalists after one was beaten up and this week’s opening fire by Indonesian forces at the Third Papuan People's Congress have put the spotlight on media freedom and freedom of expression in West Papua. A new report published yesterday by Pacific Journalism Review examines media freedom across the South Pacific and it is grim reading. Amid the confusion and chaos in Jayapura this week, reports are emerging in West Papua Media, Pacific Scoop and other news sources of a growing toll from this repressive crackdown. Here is a dispatch from Jayapura by Jakarta Globe reporters Banjir Ambarita, Markus Junianto Sihaloho and Ezra Sihite in Jajapura:

Six people have been found dead a day after Indonesian security forces fired shots while breaking up a pro-independence rally in Papua, a human rights advocate reported.

The bodies of two of the dead, identified as university student Matias Maidepa and Papua Land Defenders member Yacop Sabonsaba, were found on Wednesday behind the military headquarters in Padang Bulan, Abepura.

“On October 20, 2011, four civilians were also found dead around the venue of the Papua Congress, but their identities remain unknown,” said Matias Murib, deputy chairman of the Papua office of the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM).

Some 300 people were detained by the Papua police, though many of them had nothing to do with the demonstration held in a field in Padang Bulan, Matias said.

“Many among the hundreds of people detained were not involved in the congress, and only happened to by passing by the area when they were arrested,” he said.

He added that he had received reports that hundreds of armed soldiers and police were out in force on the streets of Manokwari, some 740 km west of Jayapura, the Papua capital.

He cited an unconfirmed report that a man identified as Martinus Yeimo had been killed by a member of the police’s Mobile Brigade (Brimob) in Enarotali, a town in Paniai district….

[Police chief] Wachyono said Selfius Bobby, a social media activist and organiser of the Papua Congress, had been arrested, bringing the number of accused over the rally to six.

Police have said all six accused would face charges of violating articles 110, 106 and 160 of the Criminal Code.

Besides Selfius, the other accused are Forkorus Yoboisembut, chairman of the Papuan Customary Council and declared president of the Democratic Republic of Papua at the congress, Edison Gladius Waromi, his prime minister, August Makbrawen Sananay Kraar, Dominikus Sorabut and Gat Wenda.

• SBS audio report
• West Papua Media Alerts
• Pacific media freedom report update
• Global Voices on the media freedom report
• Earlier Cafe Pacific item
  
  

Indonesians shoot Papuan strikers – new Pacific media freedom report targets oppressors

© 2011 Malcolm Evans PJR
THIS Malcolm Evans cartoon in the latest Pacific Journalism Review spotlights the blood on Indonesia’s hands in four decades of occupation in West Papua. Tension has been building up since early August as thousands of Papuans prepare for their Third Papuan People's Congress in Jayapura. The strife has escalated and erupted into shooting on Monday by Indonesian security forces at the Freeport-McMoran gold and copper mine at Timika, Papuan Province, as they tried to suppress striking miners. At least one man was shot dead and about a dozen others wounded.

Kontras, the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence has condemned the shooting of the Freeport workers who were seeking negotiations with the management of the company. Since the strike began on September 15 there has been no sign that the management is seeking to provide any space for peaceful dialogue which could address the issues for both sides.

At the time of the shooting on October 10, about 8000 workers were involved in the protest against the company for recruiting new workers to replace those now on strike. The strikers marched from their SBSI trade union headquarters to the mine drains, a distance of about 500 metres along a road that was six metres wide. A short distance away, hundreds of policemen were standing on guard and they opened fire. Petrus Ayamiseba a catering worker at the company was shot in the waist and died.

As human rights protests gathered momentum this week, Pacific Journalism Review was being published with a comprehensive 39-page report on Pacific media freedom. The PJR report quite rightly focused on West Papua as the worst territory for human rights abuses against journalists. In fact, West Papua is now considerably worse than Fiji in terms of brutal assaults on media freedom. The research journal, published by the Pacific Media Centre, said in an editorial:

By far the most serious case of media freedom violations in the Pacific is in Indonesian-ruled West Papua — far from international scrutiny … In August, in particular, “sustained repression has also hit the news media and journalists”. At least two journalists have been killed in West Papua, five others abducted and 18 assaulted in the past year.

Ten West Papuan activists were arrested by Indonesian authorities in Jayapura last week for being in possession of material that featured the banned West Papuan Morning Star flag of independence.

Poengky Indarti, executive director of the Indonesian human rights monitor Imparsial, said recently: “Freedoms of expression, association and assembly are routinely violated in Papua, which seriously fuels tensions. Besides, gross human rights abuses, such as acts of torture, remain unaccounted for.”

This free media report, compiled by Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Alex Perrottet and Pacific Media Centre director Dr David Robie with a team of contributors, including West Papua Media editor Nick Chesterfield, is the most comprehensive and robust media freedom dossier published in recent years in the region.

• Pacific media freedom report 2011 [Pacific Journalism Review / Pacific Media Watch]