Skip to main content

Jakarta criticised on Papua rights


At least 18 people in Indonesia's Papua province are serving jail sentences for peacefully expressing political views, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says. The rights group said several Papuans had been jailed in recent years for their peaceful support for self-determination for the province. Opposition to Indonesian rule in Papua has simmered since Jakarta took over from Dutch colonial control in 1963.

An official in Papua denied anyone had been jailed for peaceful protest. Jakarta has been fighting a low-level insurgency for decades, with small, armed groups carrying out sporadic attacks on economic and military targets in the province. But there has also been continued non-violent protest from a much wider section of society, the BBC's Lucy Williamson in Jakarta reports. 'Tool of repression' The Human Rights Watch report highlights the cases of 18 people the group describes as political prisoners. It includes the case of Filep Karma, a 45-year-old civil servant convicted of rebellion after organising peaceful demonstrations and raising the Papuan flag. He received a 15 year prison sentence. His case is not unique, HRW said. "All too often Papuans not involved in the armed insurgency are caught up in anti-separatist sweeps or arrested as troublemakers for peacefully expressing their political views," the organisation' s report said. The courts in Papua are "being used as a tool in political repression", often handing down sentences harsher than those sought by the prosecution, HRW noted.

The organisation calls on Jakarta to immediately release all political prisoners in Papua and to drop any outstanding charges against individuals awaiting trial The government is also urged to repeal "vague and broad laws", which HRW said enable prosecutions to violate international law. The head of Papua's Law and Human Rights Department denied that anyone had been jailed for peaceful protest, but said that some people had received sentences for belonging to separatist organisations.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/02/21 07:50:58 GMT© BBC MMVIII
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Greenpeace boycott Palm oil products Duta Palma

Environmental organization Greenpeace India has demanded that all Indian palm oil importers and corporate consumers immediately stop palm oil sourcing from Indonesian companies like Duta Palma who make palm oil by destroying forests and tiger habitat in Indonesia. An investigative report issued by Greenpeace Indonesia released on Thursday links India's growing palm oil imports and corporate apathy to Duta Palma's destruction of hundreds of acres of Indonesian rainforests and tiger habitat in complete disregard of Indonesian government&# 39;s moratorium on such activities in the rainforest. Big Indian corporates like Ruchi Soya, Adani -Wilmar, Godrej Industries, Parle, Britannia are among many who use Indonesian palm oil in their products on a large scale.  "Duta Palma's dirty oil could well be entering into their supply chains. Yet, so far, no Indian company has taken any visible steps to clean up their supply chain, to delink their brands from the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

If Soeharto became National Hero

Three short years after his death, Indonesia's dictator Suharto has been   nominated to a shortlist to be designated a "National Hero." The final decision   rests with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. and any honors will likely be   announced on November 10, Heroes’ Day. President Obama is scheduled to visit  Indonesia around that date.  After Suharto died in January 2008, Indonesia's former dictator General Suharto   has died in bed and not in jail, escaping justice for his numerous crimes in   East Timor and throughout the Indonesian archipelago. One of the worst mass   murderers of the 20th century, his death tolls still shock... We cannot forget that the United States government consistently supported   Suharto and his regime. As the corpses piled up after his coup and darkness   descended on Indonesia, his cheerleaders in the U.S. welcomed the "gleam of   light in Asia." In the pursuit of realpolitik, U.S. administration a...
2 comments
Read more

Debate Islam in Indonesia

http://www.thejakar taglobe.com/ opinion/interloc utors-of- indonesian- islam/560447 Interlocutors of Indonesian Islam Ahmad Najib Burhani | December 08, 2012 A few months ago, the Japanese anthropologist Mitsuo Nakamura told me that studying Nahdlatul Ulama as an organization was beyond the imagination of any American scholar from the 1950s to the ’70s. But he is not the only academic to have noticed this. George McT. Kahin of Cornell University stated the same thing. Even NU-expert Martin van Bruinessen was not expecting to study NU as his primary focus when he came to Indonesia for the first time in the 1980s.   During the early decades of Indonesian independence, NU was relatively unorganized and its management was largely based on the authority of religious teachers ( kyai ). Of course there were a number of scholars who studied NU-affiliated religious schools ( pesantren ) and its kyai, but not NU as an organization.   Even though NU was one of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more