Your Say

I have read Jill Elliot's article, ‘Fishing in Australian waters’, in Inside Indonesia (No. 46), and find it very disturbing, though the article itself is thorough and informative. My question is this: Does this still happen? Are these relatively innocent fishermen still prosecuted?

I have read a press release for Troubled Waters, a documentary by Ruth Balint, and find it quite horrifying. If Indonesian people are still being incarcerated without understanding our language, or our legal system, as well as not being provided with a translator or any legal defence, then I would want to help raise awareness of that.

Papuan human rights

Ed Aspinall says those ‘advocates of the [West] Papua cause need to examine their motives to ensure they are not also partly acting on the basis of unexamined fears and prejudices’ because, he effectively says, they don't appear to be interested in human rights issues elsewhere in Indonesia (Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 2006, of which an abbreviated version was printed in Inside Indonesia No. 87 – Editor). He asks why those activists didn't show interest in five protesting farmers being killed in Flores and the tens of thousands of Indonesian workers protesting for their industrial rights in April.

Many human rights advocates are also focusing on Papua now because a controversial diplomatic dispute between Australia and Indonesia erupted when Australia granted asylum to 42 Papuan asylum seekers. The 42 Papuans were found by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to have a well-founded fear of persecution in their homeland.

Unlike all other so-called ‘provinces’ of Indonesia, Papua was not mandated by the UN to be part of Indonesia when the Dutch recognised Indonesia as a republic under Sukarno in 1949, but it was forced to come under Indonesian rule in 1963, following Indonesia's brutal invasions of the Dutch colony in 1961 and 1962. Unlike people in other places now under Indonesian rule, Papuans have suffered human rights abuses on a huge scale for more than 40 years. More than 100,000 Papuans have been killed and a great many have been tortured and raped by Indonesian military forces in the decades following the Javanese invasion and colonisation. Thus Papua's case for being granted a genuine act of self-determination regarding independence from, or union with, Indonesia is arguably much stronger than any other existing ‘province’ of that nation.

The claims of many hundreds of thousands of Papuans might easily take priority for Australian human rights advocates over other worthy human rights causes in Indonesia.

Facing the past

The full report of the East Timor truth commission CAVR, entitled Chega! (Enough), mentioned in Inside Indonesia No. 87, is still available on the website of the International Center for Transitional Justice, but now in a less prominent place (www.ictj.org/en/news/features/846.html) in English and in Indonesian. Promise yourself to read at least one chapter.