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On 5 October 2020, the Indonesian Parliament passed an ‘Omnibus’ law. At the time of writing, the legislation has not yet been signed into law by President Widodo and reportedly has gone through further revisions since being passed by Parliament. The draft law remains the subject of extensive street protests across Indonesia.
We write to you on the fifty-fifth anniversary of the so-called September 30th movement (G30S) in Indonesia. The movement, which led to the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of people accused of being communists by the military and its proxies, marked the beginning of the New Order military dictatorship in Indonesia. The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom both played crucial roles in these events.
In your capacity as representatives of permanent members of the Security Council, we call on you and your governments to investigate and raise with the Indonesian government these problems. The United States and the United Kingdom have a duty to address the impunity and influence that the military continues to enjoy.
London, 30 September 2020
TAPOL, in collaboration with human rights lawyer Veronica Koman, has today published an extensive report on the 2019 West Papua Uprising ('the Uprising') on the anniversary of its last day in 2019. The written report is supplemented with a short video.
TAPOL condemns the killing of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani, a church leader from Hitadipa District, Intan Jaya Regency, Papua Province. It has been reported that Pastor Zanambani was killed by members of the Indonesian military (TNI). Pastor Zanambani was found dead near his pig pen, 300 meters from his home, with bullet and stab wounds.
Today marks the first anniversary of the West Papua Uprising. The Uprising swept across 22 towns in West Papua, 17 cities in Indonesia, and 3 cities overseas during the period of 19 August to 30 September 2019.
At least an extra 6,500 police and military personnel were deployed to crush the Uprising. The civilian death toll during its duration period reached 61 people, of whom 35 were indigenous West Papuans. Of those 35 people who died, 30 had sustained bullet wounds, suggesting that they were killed by the Indonesian security forces. Five other deaths were from stab wounds inflicted by civil militias.
Surveillance, intimidation and harassment, protest dispersals, torture, arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial killings continued in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, and in Indonesia more broadly, as the state tried to crack down on the contentious issue of West Papua’s self-determination in 2019. Alarmingly, the Indonesian Government also used new tactics such as internet shutdown and cyber-attacks during the anti-racism protests and riots which culminated in the ‘West Papuan Uprising’ in August and September 2019.