Impunity at the Freeport Gold & Copper Mine:
Will Indonesian Security Forces Get Away with It
Again?
West Papua Advocacy Team Statement
Contact: Edmund McWilliams, West
Papua Advocacy Team (New Mexico); +1.575.648.2078
(English)
Eben Kirksey, Ph.D., University of California (Santa Cruz);
+1.831.600.5937 (English or Bahasa Indonesia)
July 23, 2009 - Amidst an ongoing shooting spree at the Freeport McMoRan
mining concession in Timika, West Papua, four people have died,
including an Australian Freeport employee. Six separate ambushes
have taken place since shootings began on July 11.
A race to find scapegoats appears underway. Indonesian authorities
have arrested as many as 20 individuals. Trusted sources informed
the West Papua Advocacy Team that these detainees have been
interrogated without the presence of their lawyers and at least one,
an elderly man, was beaten by security personnel. Even after these
recent detentions, a convoy of 12 Freeport busses again came under
attack by gunmen on Wednesday, 22 July.
This is just the latest chapter in the Freeport story in West Papua
- a saga of violence, human rights violations and internationally
condemned environmental destruction. For decades, in numerous
well-documented cases, the Indonesian security forces and Freeport's
own security personnel, have intimidated and repressed local Papuans
through extrajudicial killings, torture, rape and other forms of
violence and terror.
Indonesian security forces have long exploited the weakness of the
Indonesian judicial system to avoid prosecution for criminal
activity, including violations of human rights. Nowhere is this more
true than in West Papua where the culture of repression lives on
beyond former Army General and dictator Suharto's
32-year rule, which ended formally in 1998. The principal victims
have been ordinary Papuans, notably those living in the area of the
giant Freeport McMoRan mining concession. Indonesian officials and
the international community must act to ensure that the people of
West Papua are not victimized yet again.
Initial Indonesian police reports suggest that those responsible for
the recent attacks were "expert" shooters using weapons commonly
found in military and police arsenals. Similar statements were made
in 2002, when one Indonesian and two U.S. schoolteachers were killed
on the same road. Ballistic evidence and eye-witness testimony
pointed to an Indonesian military role in that ambush, but the Bush
Administration and Indonesian officials, including recently
re-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
orchestrated a cover-up. An
FBI investigation into the 2002 attack is still technically open.
Recent history raises grave concerns about finding the truth about
this latest incident. The military has joined the investigation
into the latest attacks, making it likely the investigation will
again fail to explore evidentiary lines leading to the Indonesian
military.
Indonesia and those who lobby for its interests boast of that
nation's democratic progress. This latest incident offers a test of
that progress:
-
the investigation of this
incident must be transparent;
-
the media and independent
human rights investigators should be given access to West Papua
and specifically the Freeport Concession;
-
security forces which have
long operated with impunity must be held accountable if evidence
emerges implicating them.
-
in the wake of this tragedy,
the Papuan people must not again be subjected to retaliatory
military/police action in the form of "sweeps" targeting
innocent villagers in the area;
-
the U.S. government and the
international community must reject a military takeover of the
investigation as well as efforts to stonewall independent
investigators as happened in 2002;
-
the U.S. should monitor
developments closely to ensure that Indonesian forces do not use
U.S. equipment in retaliatory "sweep" operations targeting
innocent Papuan civilians as in the past (such sweeps, unrelated
to the Freeport incidents, reportedly are already underway);
-
and the Obama administration
should focus renewed attention on an open FBI investigation into
the killing of the two U.S. schoolteachers in 2002, following up
on published accounts of military involvement in those murders.
see also
