On Behalf of the Federal State Republic of West Papua
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I. INTRODUCTION 1. This communication is hereby submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council (the ‘Council’ or the ‘HRC’) pursuant to HRC Resolution 5/1 by Professor Göran Sluiter2 and Andrew Ianuzzi3 on behalf of the Federal State Republic of West Papua (Negara Republik Federal Papua Barat) (the ‘NRFPB’) and its president Forkorus Yaboisembut, as well as on behalf of nineteen unnamed citizens of West Papua4 (collectively, the ‘Complainants’). 2. Situated at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, West Papua occupies the western half of the island of New Guinea.5 The land of West Papua is currently comprised of two provinces, Papua and West Papua. Tanah Papua, as it is known in Indonesian, has been forcibly occupied by the Indonesian government since 1963. While the territory ‘may only be a swim and walk away from Australia, […] it may as well be the dark side of the moon. [It] is [largely] a secret story, hidden from the world by the vagaries of geopolitics and a policy that keeps foreign journalists, human rights workers, and even diplomats out’.6 Papua’s diverse population, ‘with more than 200 distinct indigenous ethnic groups and a large population of migrants from elsewhere in Indonesia, struggles with some of the lowest development indicators in the country’.7 And the ongoing dispute over who should rightly control the land and resources of West Papua is ‘the Pacific’s longest-running political conflict’.8 2 Professor Sluiter holds a chair in international criminal law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Amsterdam and is a partner at the Amsterdam law firm of Prakken d’Oliveira Human Rights Lawyers. 3 Mr Ianuzzi is an independent legal consultant and human-rights investigator. 4 The victims’ accounts are set out in detail below. See para 322 infra. N.b. In order to ensure their safety and protect their privacy, the identities of the unnamed victims—who have each specifically expressed security concerns—will not be disclosed at this stage. Thier identities could be made available to the Council subject to satisfactory conditions of confidentiality and approval of the victims. 5 The eastern half is the independent state of Papua New Guinea (hereinafter, ‘PNG’). 6 Jason MacLeod, MERDEKA AND THE MORNING STAR: CIVIL RESISTANCE IN WEST PAPUA (University of Queensland Press 2015), pp 17–18. N.b. West Papua ‘is […] much closer to Australia than you’d think. From Boigu Island in the Torres Strait, Australia’s northernmost islands, you can wade across to Papua New Guinea. From there you can trek to the West Papuan border.’ Ibid, p 17. 7 Cillian Nolan & Sidney Jones, ‘Jokowi’s Turn to Solve the Papua Question’, East Asia Forum, 19 May 2015. 8 MacLeod, MERDEKA AND THE MORNING STAR, p 27. Communication to the HRC Regarding Violations in West Papua 2 of 215 3. West Papua—a former Dutch colony and ‘a Melanesian nation-in-waiting’9—has long suffered from two major and interlinked injustices. The first, the denial of Papuans right to self-determination in 1969, was unjustly orchestrated by the Republic of Indonesia with the complicity of Western powers and the United Nations. The transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to Indonesia ‘occurred under highly contested circumstances that included widespread allegations of manipulation, intimidation, and human rights violations’.10 And—the second—since that time, Papuans have been brutally dispossessed of their land, natural resources, and cultural heritage while simultaneously enduring a systematic government-sanctioned campaign of unspeakable depravity and brutality. ‘Conflict and violence continues to the present day in varying degrees of intensity. […] It is a conflict that many Papuans argue is threatening their very survival as a people.’11 4. In spite of this, Papuans have continued to demand political independence and recognition of their basic rights. While their struggle has faced both external and internal difficulties, Papuans are well aware that they face a fierce and determined common enemy: The good is that there is a great deal of clarity and agreement among Papuans about the root causes of conflict in West Papua: historical grievances and lack of political recognition, state violence and impunity, discrimination and racism, and economic marginalization and neglect […]. The Indonesian government has compounded irresolution of the conflict through blocking open access to West Papua from media, international agencies and diplomats, although there are signs that the Indonesian government is succumbing to pressure to open up West Papua to foreign press. But limited media access is not the only obstruction to a just peace. The Indonesian government continues to pursue a policy of large-scale industrialized development that disadvantages traditional landowners. It encourages unfettered migration of non-Papuans and refuses to recognize customary land rights. Then when there is resistance, or to pre-empt insurgency, the police and military are used as tools to repress and divide Papuan dissent. Papuans understand these strategies of rule. […] Papuans want political self-determination and respect for their basic rights as indigenous peoples. They want to be masters of their own destiny, to live freely in the land of their ancestors.12 Sadly, over fifty years of occupation and marginalization demonstrate that the land and resources of West Papua are far more important to the Indonesian government that the Papuan people themselves, who—in the words of Filip Karma—are treated as if they 9 Ibid, p 107. 10 Ibid. 11 MacLeod, MERDEKA AND THE MORNING STAR, pp 107–108. 12 Ibid, pp 54–55. Communication to the HRC Regarding Violations in West Papua 3 of 215 are ‘half animals’.13 ‘In many ways, West Papua is a worst-case scenario: internationally isolated and internally divided indigenous peoples facing a genocidal occupying army.’14 5. West Papua’s curse, as it were, is its riches. Ongoing military operations and state violence are at the service of economic exploitation on a vast scale and characterized primarily by massive resource-extraction projects. Not only does such institutional theft deprive Papuans of their natural wealth, unchecked extraction has ‘also resulted in ecological destruction, expropriation of land, and socio-cultural dislocation; displacement and marginalization created by Jakarta’s promotion of migration to West Papua; and institutional racism contributing to what Papuans call a “crisis of identity”’.15 6. West Papua is a land where foreign companies make nearly $20 million per day, while the indigenous population suffers from chronic hunger and a lack of education, medical care, and basic services. Caring little to nothing about Papuan wellbeing, the Indonesian government treats the territory as a resource to be exploited to the fullest extent possible. And in order to achieve this goal, Papuans are subjected to the abuses typical of occupation: lack of political recognition and participation, state violence, discrimination, racism, economic marginalization, large-scale industrial development at the expense of traditional landowners, denial of access to health, welfare, education and other human rights, unfettered migration of Indonesians to displace/dilute the indigenous population, as well as police, paramilitary and military violence, including torture, to repress Papuan dissent.16 The Papuan resistance movement has never stood a chance in the face of Jakarta’s approach ‘to crush it, repress it, persuade it, co-opt it, divide it, dilute it, or smother it in a process called development’.17 Successive Indonesian governments have combined a ‘security approach’ and a ‘prosperity approach’ in different proportions. But all of them 13 Ibid, p 60. 14 Ibid, p 61. 15 MacLeod, MERDEKA AND THE MORNING STAR, p 118. 16 Robert J Burrowes, ‘The Struggle for Merdeka in West Papua’, Pacific Scoop, 13 January 2016. 17 ‘The Current Status of the Papuan Pro-Independence Movement’, Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Report No 21, 24 August 2015, p 1. Communication to the HRC Regarding Violations in West Papua 4 of 215 have confronted the movement ‘with force and cracked down on non-violent pro- independence groups’.18 7. While willing at times to provide lip service regarding the concept of ‘special autonomy’, the Indonesian government refuses to negotiate with anything even resembling a separate party. This is especially the case after the country’s ‘experience with two other separatist areas: East Timor, which voted to break away in 1999, and Aceh, where a negotiated peace in 2005 led to the former guerrillas dominating local politics’.19 8. After more than fifty years of death and destruction in West Papua, the Complainants now submit that it is time for international legal action. There is every reason to believe that the Indonesian government has brutally denied the people of West Papua their right to self-determination, while at the same time—and in the specific service of such denial—has violated every Papuan human right and fundamental freedom acknowledged by international law. In support of this communication, which is admissible to the Council, the Complainants have relied upon a selected number of publicly available reports from various media, human-rights, academic, and government sources. 9. As the term West Papua is generally used to describe all of the territory comprising the two Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, the issue of nomenclature can be a confusing one. For purposes of this filing, the following disambiguation will be useful: West Papua is the name used by most Papuans (Papua Barat in Bahasa Indonesia, the lingua franca in West Papua) and by those in the international community who support self- determination. West New Guinea and Netherlands New Guinea refer to the Dutch names for West Papua during the period of Dutch colonialism. At the time of the dispute between Indonesia and the Netherlands the territory was also known as West Irian (Irian Barat).