By Duncan Graham in Malang, East Java

There were ten stories in a Google Alert media feed last week for “Indonesia-Australia”.

One covered illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific claiming economic losses of more than US$6 billion a year — important indeed.

Another was an update on the plight of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens, held hostage since February 7 by the Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat (TPNPB-West Papua National Liberation Army).

This is the armed wing of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka, (OPM Free Papua Organisation) that has been pushing its cause since the 1970s.

A major story by any measure. The Indonesian military’s inability to find and safely secure the New Zealander has the potential to cause serious diplomatic rifts and great harm to all parties.

There have been unverified reports of bombs dropped from helicopters on jungle camps where the pilot may have been held with uninvolved civilians.

The other eight stories were about Queenslander Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones who had been arrested in April for allegedly going on a nude drunken rampage and bashing a local in Indonesian Aceh.

Stupidities commonplace
Had the 23-year-old surfer been a fool in his home country the yarn would have been a yawn. Such stupidities are commonplace.

But because he chose to be a slob in the strictly Muslim province of Aceh and facing  up to five years jail plus a public flogging, his plight opened the issue of cultural differences and tourist arrogance.  Small news, but legitimate.

He has now reportedly done a $25,000 deal to buy his way out of charges and pay restitution to his victim. This shows a flexible social and legal system displaying tolerance — which is how Christians are supposed to behave.

All noteworthy, easy to grasp. But more important than the threatened execution of an innocent victim of circumstances caught in a complex dispute that needs detailed explanations to understand?

Mehrtens landed a commercial company’s plane as part of his job for Susi Air flying people and goods into isolated airstrips when he was grabbed by armed men desperate to get Jakarta to pay attention to their grievances.

Ironically, Aceh where Risby-Jones got himself into strife, had also fought for independence and won. Like West Papua, it’s resource-rich so essential for the central government’s economy.

A vicious on-off war between the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, (GAM-Free Aceh Movement) and the Indonesian military started in 1976 and reportedly took up to 30,000 lives across the following three decades.

Tsunami revived peace talks
It only ended when the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami killed 160,000  people and  former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was elected president and  revived peace talks. Other countries became involved, including the European Union and Finland where the Helsinki Agreement was signed.

Both sides bowed to a compromise. GAM leaders abandoned their demands for independence, settling for “self-government” within the Indonesian state, while soldiers were withdrawn. The bombings have stopped but at the cost of personal freedoms and angering human rights advocates.

Freed from Jakarta’s control, the province passed strict Shariah laws. These include public floggings for homosexual acts, drinking booze and being close to an opposite sex person who is not a relative. Morality Police patrols prowl shady spots, alert to any signs of affection.

Australian academic and former journalist Dr Damien Kingsbury was also instrumental in getting GAM and Jakarta to talk. He was involved with the West Papua standoff earlier this year but New Zealand is now using its own to negotiate.

Dr Kingsbury told the ABC the situation in West Papua is at a stalemate with neither Wellington nor Jakarta willing to make concessions. The Indonesian electorate has no truck for “separatists” so wants a bang-bang fix. NZ urges a softly-slowly approach.

A TPNPB spokesperson told the BBC: “The Indonesian government has to be bold and sit with us at a negotiation table and not [deploy] military and police to search for the pilot.”

The 2005 Aceh resolution means the Papua fighters have a strong model of what is possible when other countries intervene. So far it seems none have dared, fearing the wrath of nationalists who believe Western states, and particularly Australia, are trying to “Balkanise”  the “unitary state” and plunder its riches.

Theory given energy
This theory was given energy when Australia supported the 1999 East Timor referendum which led to the province splitting from Indonesia and becoming a separate nation.

Should Australia try to act as a go-between in the Papua conflict, we would be dragged into the upcoming Presidential election campaign with outraged candidates thumping lecterns claiming outside interference. That is something no one wants but sitting on hands won’t help Mehrtens.

In the meantime, Risby-Jones, whose boorish behaviour has confirmed Indonesian prejudices about Australian oafs, is expected to be deported.

Mehrtens will only get to tell his tale if the Indonesian government shows the forbearance displayed by the family of Edi Ron.  The Aceh fisherman needed 50 stitches and copped broken bones and an infected foot from his Aussie encounter, but he still shook hands.

After weeks in a cell the surfer has shown contrition and apologised. Australian ‘”proceedings of crime” laws should prevent him earning from his ordeal.

If the Kiwi pilot does get out alive, he deserves the media attention lavished on the Australian. This might shift international interest from a zonked twit to the issue of West Papua’s independence and remind diplomats that if Jakarta could bend in the far west of the archipelago,  why not in the far east?

Lest Indonesians forget:  Around 100,000 revolutionaries died during the four-year war against the returning colonial Dutch after Soekarno proclaimed independence in 1975. The Dutch only retreated after external pressure from the US and Australia.

Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press) and winner of the Walkley Award and Human Rights awards. He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia. This article was first published in Pearls & Irritations on 30 May 2023 and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An Indonesian human rights researcher has cricitised his government’s failure to negotiate with West Papuan rebels, saying security officials should learn from the 2005 Aceh peace pact.

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) research and mobilisation division head, Rozy Brilian, said the Indonesian government had always refused to hold a dialogue with Papuan pro-independence fighters.

He gave this message during a virtual public discussion titled “Failing to Address the Roots of the Conflict and the Window Dressing of a Development Illusion” last Friday — just two days before several Indonesian soldiers were believed to have been killed in a clash with West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) rebels in the Papuan highlands.

The Indonesia soldiers were searching for New Zealand hostage pilot Philip Mehrtens who has been held captive since early February.

“The government always refuses to hold a dialogue with armed groups that the government refers to as KKB [armed criminal groups] even though the push for dialogue has often been encouraged by different parties,” said Brilian.

Yet, according to Brilian, the model of dialogue with an armed group has successfully been pursued by the Indonesian government in the past.

Aceh peace talks
Brilian gave the example of the Aceh peace talks conducted during the era of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY).

“This dialogue then concluded in negotiations that produced a Memorandum of Understanding (Mou), or agreement, between the Indonesian government and GAM [Free Aceh Movement] in Helsinki,” said Brilian.

That pact brought peace after three decades of warfare.

According to Brilian, the current government should learn from earlier experiences of holding dialogue with armed groups.

In addition to this, said Brilian, Indonesia could also learn from the Philippines which succeeded in “taming” armed independence groups through dialogue.

“Learn from other experiences in the Southeast Asia region, dialogue between the government and pro-independence armed groups were once held by the Philippines government with the pro-independence Moro Islamic Liberation Front group,” he said.

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Pemerintah Dinilai Selalu Menolak Usul Dialog Damai dengan KKB Papua”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An Indonesian human rights researcher has cricitised his government’s failure to negotiate with West Papuan rebels, saying security officials should learn from the 2005 Aceh peace pact.

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) research and mobilisation division head, Rozy Brilian, said the Indonesian government had always refused to hold a dialogue with Papuan pro-independence fighters.

He gave this message during a virtual public discussion titled “Failing to Address the Roots of the Conflict and the Window Dressing of a Development Illusion” last Friday — just two days before several Indonesian soldiers were believed to have been killed in a clash with West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) rebels in the Papuan highlands.

The Indonesia soldiers were searching for New Zealand hostage pilot Philip Mehrtens who has been held captive since early February.

“The government always refuses to hold a dialogue with armed groups that the government refers to as KKB [armed criminal groups] even though the push for dialogue has often been encouraged by different parties,” said Brilian.

Yet, according to Brilian, the model of dialogue with an armed group has successfully been pursued by the Indonesian government in the past.

Aceh peace talks
Brilian gave the example of the Aceh peace talks conducted during the era of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY).

“This dialogue then concluded in negotiations that produced a Memorandum of Understanding (Mou), or agreement, between the Indonesian government and GAM [Free Aceh Movement] in Helsinki,” said Brilian.

That pact brought peace after three decades of warfare.

According to Brilian, the current government should learn from earlier experiences of holding dialogue with armed groups.

In addition to this, said Brilian, Indonesia could also learn from the Philippines which succeeded in “taming” armed independence groups through dialogue.

“Learn from other experiences in the Southeast Asia region, dialogue between the government and pro-independence armed groups were once held by the Philippines government with the pro-independence Moro Islamic Liberation Front group,” he said.

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Pemerintah Dinilai Selalu Menolak Usul Dialog Damai dengan KKB Papua”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Just the other day a robot guard came along a corridor in a special digital prison, consulted his flatscreen embedded on its wrist and then pressed his thumb on a door, which sprang open.

For the fourth time, I was being released from Facebook prison having served a term of imprisonment imposed upon me by Great Algorithm Machine which we lags shorten to GAM.

Self-sustaining and completely devoid of any human intervention, GAM has deemed me to be a serial hate speech offender. I am absolutely not, but my protests were not only pointless, there was no one listening or reading them.

Again, with no human hand involved at any point, I was hauled off to solitary inside the Mark Zuckerberg Institution for Global Speech Control.

Now, living in Aotearoa and having our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern create the Paris Call, a powerful new weapon to end online hate speech, it is my patriotic duty to support it.

But lately I have become collateral damage to her Paris Call, and a nagging thought is growing that there may be many other casualties too. Stopping the nutters, the terrorists, the bad guys might additionally include GAM wiping out any one expressing any kind of opinion.

Especially opinions that a human reader — rather than a machine — would immediately recognise as arguments opposed to opinions advanced by bad guys.

Silence save the banal
Algorithms will silence all, except the banal, the bland, the boring and the pointless.

As GAM will run all my words through its system, I am going to avoid using the commonly accepted abbreviation for the National Socialist German Workers Party. Nor will I mention its leader; that’s a fast ticket back to a Menlo Park prison.

After some trepidation, I present a summary of my rap sheet:

October 11, 2021: I made a small posting based on a clipping from New Zealand Paper’s Past, a significant historical online collection of the nation’s newspapers. I posted a little story from the Bay of Plenty Times in 1941 which reported that people in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa were raising money to buy Spitfires in order to defeat the previously mentioned German Workers Party and its leader. I was prevented from any posting or commenting for three weeks.

February 18, 2022: As an anti-covid “freedom convoy” rattled around the country, I posted a meme showing the Workers Party leader in front of the Eiffel Tower, saying he was on a freedom convoy. Locked up again.

May 26, 2022: I posted a link to US CBS News on some new arms non-control measure and commented: “The continued stupidity of (Redacted, insert nationality of a people between Canada and Mexico) bewilders the world.” This got me a big “Hate Speech” stamp, a ban and a declaration that my future posts would be lower in people’s news feeds.

September 13, 2022: I asked why accused woman beater Meli Banimarama and convicted killer Francis Kean were using the “ratu” title. Banned again.

No human review
It was immediately apparent from the formatted notice issue to me, that while GAM had processed the thing, no human in Facebook had. Generously they tell the victim that there is a review system and to fill out a submission.

Dutifully, this gullible fellow did, pressed send and got an instant message back from GAM which said, in effect, that due to covid there were no available humans to read my submission. So, the sentence, imposed entirely by machine, stands every time.

It doesn’t matter what you say; no one is listening.

Facebook’s GAM is lying at this point: Covid has nothing to do with the removal of their humans. They are deliberately sacking them, due to Wall Street demands for more profit.

At one stage I discovered email addresses for assorted Facebook functionaries in Australia and New Zealand. That did no good. They ignored me, if they even existed.

Despite all this, I have been something of a Facebook fan. With Sue Ahearn, I co-manage The Pacific Newsroom with its 60,000 plus followers. The fact that I was in the digital slammer meant that group did not get serviced in the way they normally would.

Facebook plainly does not care.

My worry now is what is all this doing to free speech. At first blush, yes it’s a good idea that something like Mein Kampf cannot be trotted out on Facebook. But wouldn’t it be a good idea for some one or ten to read it and warn us all of what is in it?

Digital trip wires
Currently GAM is looking you up, digitally speaking if certain trip wires are touched in the algorithm.

Paris Call’s GAM model has no space, or ability, to deal with satire, cynicism or sarcasm. Many would say that is, of course, a good thing. Ban them. But they have long been part of human discourse, indeed vital.

And it will silence Paper’s Past! A national treasure now defined by GAM as a gathering of hate speech.

What else do we have to give up to keep evil from exploiting public conversation?

How will we learn the new rules, other than with a spell in the digital penitentiary? Perhaps there will soon be an app, in which The Machine checks each sentence, prior to use, for social acceptability.

Is social media creating a world in which speech can only be made, after The Machine has deemed it acceptable?

Michael Field is an independent journalist and author, and co-manager of The Pacific Newsroom. This article is republished with his permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pressure is mounting on Indonesia to back off its brutal and unsuccessful military strategy in trying to crush West Papuan resistance to its flawed rule in “the land of Papua”.

Critics have intensified their condemnation of the intransigent “no negotiations” stance of authorities as West Papuans mark their national day today on 1 December 1961 when the banned Morning Star flag of independence was raised for the first time.

The TNI (Indonesian military), the Polri (Indonesian police) and the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) have been locked in a conflict since Jakarta ordered a crackdown in May following a declaration of resistance groups as “terrorists”.

Many groups have raised their criticism of Jakarta’s flawed handling of its two colonised Melanesian provinces, Papua and West Papua. Recent developments include:

‘Path of violence’
Pastor Benny Giay, a member of the Papua Council of Churches, says the Indonesian government is still choosing the path of violence in dealing with the armed conflict.

The council has come to this conclusion based on its experience of how conflicts in Papua have been handled in the past and the recent situation, involving six regencies in Papua — Intan Jaya, the Bintang Mountains, Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat and Puncak Papua.

“Based on past experience and the most recent facts, we concluded that the Indonesian government is still choosing the path of violence in dealing with the Papua conflict,” said Pastor Giay, according to CNN Indonesia.

Giay said that as a consequence of many years of armed conflict, at least 60,000 Papuans had fled into the forests or neighbouring regencies.

He and three other pastors view this as part of what could not be separated from the politics of “systematic racism”.

They suspect that “buzzers” — fake internet account operators — are being used by Indonesian intelligence and pro-government groups.

These buzzers, said Pastor Giay, continued to spread hoaxes and news containing anti-Papuan views based on racism against the Papuan people.

‘Prolonged suffering’
The Papua Council of Churches is calling for the United Nations Human Rights Council (Dewan HAM PBB) to visit Papua to see the humanitarian crisis directly – “the prolonged suffering of Papuans for the last 58 years.”

The council also wants the Indonesian government to put an end to its racist policies.

Pastor Giay and his fellow pastors have demanded that President Widodo be consistent about a statement he made on September 30, 2019, agreeing to dialogue with the ULMWP.

“Mediated by a third party [in a similar way] as took place between the Indonesian government and the GAM (Free Aceh Movement) on August 15, 2005,” said Pastor Giay.

Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Jaleswari Pramodhawardani has reportedly said that the government was managing the security situation in Papua and West Papua provinces in “accordance with the law”.

This was conveyed in response to a UN report in intimidation and violence against human rights activists in Papua, says CNN Indonesia.

Open letter of protest
On November 15, ELSHAM Papua sent an open letter to President Widodo protesting about the presence of non-organic troops in Papua and West Papua provinces. It says this has resulted in the deaths of many civilian victims as well as members of the TNI, Polri and the TPNPB, according to Suara Papua.

Each time an armed conflict happened, the first casualties were mothers and children — along with the elderly — who were forced to seek shelter and were suffering, ELSHAM said.

“What is happening at the moment, once again shows that the state has been negligent in protecting its citizens,” it said.

“It should be the responsibility of the state to protect its citizens as mandated by the preamble to the 1945 Constitution — that the state is obliged to protect everyone regardless of their birthplace in Indonesia.”

The open letter asked the government to withdraw all non-organic troops from Papua, for the TNI, Polri and TPNPB troops to restrain themselves, and for both warring parties to prioritise respect for human rights.

The letter also declared that security forces should not become the “accomplices of business interests and companies” in Indonesia — and instead be the protectors of ordinary people and “good” law enforcement officials.

The open letter was supported by 24 civil society organisations which work in human rights, justice and the environment.

Catholic leaders protest
On November 11, some 194 Catholic leaders in Papua called for an end to Indonesian military operations.

Speaking on behalf of the priests, Father Alberto John Bunai said the government had been ecstatic over the success of the recent 20th National Games in Papua, but the people were “deeply saddened by the suffering of God’s communities” in Nduga, Intan Jaya, Puncak, Kiwirok and Maybrat.

“To solve the root of the problem, what is needed is dialogue and reconciliation in a dignified manner,” Father Bunai said at a “moral call” media conference in Waena, Jayapura.

It was the church’s duty to articulate the “cries of God’s communities” who had no voice, Father Bunai said.

“The government must halt the ongoing military operations which have resulted in the killing of civilians, violence and people being displaced in several parts of Papua.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz