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"Andreas Harsono is not well known to the public but he is very well known among a small network of human rights activists, dissident scholars, Indonesian journalists, and foreign correspondents. He is often the fixer behind their stories – unacknowledged, unassuming, unselfish. Now he has shown just what a superb chronicler he is in his own right."

Clinton Fernandes of University of New South Wales University

on Andreas Harsono's book Race, Islam and Power

Andreas Harsono meliput dampak dari tsunami 2014 di Aceh. Ombak raksasa tersebut membunuh lebih 100,000 orang dan mengakhiri perang selama tiga dekade antara Gerakan Acheh Merdeka dan Indonesia lewat perjanjian damai Helsinki pada Agustus 2015. ©Hotli Simanjuntak

Media dan Jurnalisme

Saya pernah bekerja sebagai wartawan The Jakarta Post, The Nation (Bangkok), The Star (Kuala Lumpur) dan majalah Pantau (Jakarta). Saya suka menulis soal jurnalisme. Bill Kovach, guru jurnalisme, mendidik saya buat menjadi wartawan ketika belajar di Universitas Harvard.

Buku dan Laporan

Saya menerbitkan dua antologi –Jurnalisme Sastrawi (2005) bersama Budi Setiyono dan “Agama” Saya Adalah Jurnalisme (2011)—serta beberapa laporan termasuk Prosecuting Political Aspiration: Indonesia’s Political Prisoners (2010), In Religion’s Name: Abuses Against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (2013) serta "I Wanted to Run Away": Abusive Dress Codes for Women and Girls in Indonesia (2021). Pada 2019, buku Race, Islam and Power terbit.

Hak Asasi Manusia

Sejak 2008, saya bekerja sebagai peneliti buat Human Rights Watch. Ia membuat saya banyak menulis soal diskriminasi terhadap minoritas agama di Indonesia: minoritas dalam Islam termasuk Ahmadiyah dan Syiah; minoritas non-Islam termasuk Protestan, Katholik, Buddha, Hindu dan Khong Hu Chu; minoritas agama kecil maupun agama baru macam Millah Abraham. 

Minoritas gender --termasuk perempuan serta LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer)-- juga sering saya bahas. Saya juga banyak menulis minoritas etnik macam Aceh, Kalimantan, Jawa, Maluku, Timor serta Papua.

Perjalanan

Saya pernah jalan dari Sabang sampai Merauke, dari Miangas sampai Rote, lebih dari 80 lokasi, selama tiga tahun. Saya menulis tempat menarik. Saya juga sering menulis perjalanan di negeri jauh, dari Eropa sampai Amerika, praktis berbagai kota besar di Asia Tenggara. 

Cerita

Pengalaman hidup, dari kegembiraan sampai kesedihan, dari kawan sampai adik. Saya selalu tinggal di Pulau Jawa --Jember, Lawang, Malang, Salatiga, dan Jakarta-- namun pernah bermukim di Phnom Penh dan Cambridge, dekat Boston. Kedua anak saya lahir di Jakarta. Isteri saya, Sapariah Saturi, kelahiran Pontianak, pindah ke Jakarta buat bekerja. Mungkin kawan saya di luar Indonesia, paling banyak di New York sehingga saya sering berkunjung ke New York maupun kota-kota sekitarnya.

Racism and repression in West Papua

Mekong Review

Five books, reviewed by Andreas Harsono, describe West Papua's tormented history

An Act of Free Choice: Decolonisation and the Right to Self-Determination in West Papua

Oneworld Academic: 2009

Updating Papua Road Map

Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia: 2017

Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua

Deiyai, Jayapura: 2014

Morning Star Rising: The Politics of Decolonization in West Papua

University of Hawaii Press: 2021

In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua

Duke University Press: 2022

If you visit Indonesia’s National Library—home to 7.7 million physical books—and do a search with the keywords “West Papua”, “Irian Jaya” or even simply “Papua”, you’ll find a rather modest number of results in Dutch, English and Indonesian: just 1,192 titles. The thin collection reflects not only how complicated it is to unpack and analyse the West Papua conundrum but also how successful the Indonesian government has been at restricting independent research on environmental degradation, human rights abuses and the suffering of Indigenous Papuans.

Since the late 1960s, the Indonesian government has severely restricted foreign journalists and international rights monitors from visiting the highly militarised area, as Pieter Drooglever chronicles in his book, An Act of Free Choice: Decolonisation and the Right to Self-Determination in West Papua, available in the National Library. In 1999, the Dutch parliament requested that the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague produce a comprehensive review of the decolonisation of West Papua, hoping that the fall of Suharto, who’d been president for three decades, would open up dialogue between Indonesia and West Papua.

Drooglever, a historian, was appointed to lead the study. He examined archives in the Netherlands, the United States, the United Nations and Australia, but wasn’t given access to Indonesia’s National Archives in Jakarta. He also interviewed Papuans and Indonesians who’d been involved in the transitional period in the 1960s. He published his 807-page book in Dutch twenty-seven years later, in 2005. An English translation was published in 2009 and the Indonesian translation appeared in 2010. Drooglever hoped his book would help Indonesians seek a peaceful solution in West Papua, as had happened in Timor-Leste in 1999 with a United Nations–organised referendum, and in Aceh in 2004, with an agreement signed in Helsinki granting the territory special autonomy. His wish has not yet come to pass.

In An Act of Free Choice, Drooglever writes that the Dutch Kingdom had, in the 1950s, tried to establish a functional administration in “Dutch New Guinea” with schools, hospitals, security, roads and other facilities. They were learning from their failures in the Netherlands Indies, which declared independence in 1945, fought against returning Dutch forces and became the sovereign Republic of Indonesia in 1949. The Dutch Kingdom set up an administration in New Guinea with two highly educated Dutch scholars holding top executive posts. Although some of the Papuan elite initially welcomed the idea of integration with Indonesia, they changed their minds between the 1950s and 1960s as they watched the neighbouring country transform from a progressive new republic to an aggressive military-dominated state. Preparations began, with support from the Dutch, for West Papua to eventually become a self-governing administration.

Indonesia invaded West Papua in 1962; the Dutch were pressured by the United States into negotiating and signing the New York Agreement a year later. This agreement provided for a plebiscite, supervised by the United Nations, that would let Papuans decide if they wanted to join Indonesia. But, as Drooglever describes in a chapter entitled ‘Under Jakarta’s Thumb’, the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority was continually manipulated, pressured and fooled. Lambertus Nicodemus Palar, then the Indonesian representative to the United Nations, openly admitted that Subandrio, the Indonesian foreign minister, didn’t want a plebiscite. Instead, the Indonesian authorities organised a referendum known as the Act of Free Choice, in which about 1,000 government-selected delegates voted for a merger with Indonesia. Most Papuans say they were denied their right to choose and continue to demand a separate nation. Although the independence movement is largely peaceful, there are some long-standing armed groups. Today, West Papua remains Indonesia’s most underdeveloped and poverty-stricken province and human rights abuses are rife.

Another book available in the National Library is the 2019 Updating Papua Road Map, a follow-up to a 2009 book published by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia, or LIPI). The volume’s authors criticise the Indonesian government’s security approach in West Papua, urging them to hold a dialogue with West Papuan groups instead. Muridan Widjojo, the lead researcher, notes: “These dialogues do not kill anyone, and if failed, we could always try again.”

Contributors to Updating Papua Road Map describe four main problems in West Papua, starting with the marginalisation of Indigenous Papuans. Settlers from Indonesia—particularly from the densely populated Java—have made indigenous people a minority in their own lands. Development programmes have not only failed to meet Papuans’ basic needs in terms of education, health and economic welfare, but have also caused environmental destruction. Furthermore, the Indonesian authorities have turned a blind eye to state violence against Papuans, failing to punish perpetrators or restore the rights of victims. There’s now a deep mistrust, among Papuans, of the Indonesian authorities.

The authors of Updating Papua Road Map managed to persuade the Indonesian government to agree to a non-governmental Papua Peace Dialogue involving LIPI researchers and some Papuan civil society leaders. The process started in 2010 and was led by Widjojo and Neles Tebay, a Papuan intellectual and Catholic priest; they travelled from one regency to another throughout West Papua. This effort culminated in a public conference in July 2011, where a senior Indonesian security minister delivered a keynote speech welcoming the idea of dialogue. Hundreds of Papuan leaders from different tribes—men and women, young and old—participated in the week-long event. The conference ended with the election of five Papuan leaders, all living in exile, to lead the dialogue with Indonesia. The five openly advocated independence from Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, this upset Indonesian officials, especially after the prominence that these five individuals gained from the conference contributed to the setting up of the Vanuatu-based United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua in 2014.

You won’t find the late Filep Karma’s book, Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua (As If We’re Half Animal: Indonesian Racism in the Land of Papua) in the National Library. Karma was perhaps West Papua’s most well-known political prisoner. He was first arrested in July 1998 and jailed for nearly two years for leading a protest on Biak Island at which Indonesian security forces gunned down more than 150 Papuans. He was later released after receiving presidential amnesty. In 2004, he led another peaceful protest in Jayapura and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for treason. He was released in November 2015 and drowned while on a diving trip in November 2022.

In his book, Karma recalls how Papuan businesses thrived in Jayapura prior to integration with Indonesia. Jayapura—then already the largest city in West Papua—had more than twenty movie theatres. “Jayapura was like Hong Kong,” Siegfried Zöllner, a German missionary, wrote in his memoir about his first impression of the city in 1961.

Jayapura was looted by invading Indonesian soldiers upon their arrival in 1962; Karma describes finding steel cupboards, still bearing Jayapura hospital stamps, in a Surabaya hospital in East Java years later. And hardware wasn’t the only thing West Papua lost. Karma points out that, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Indonesian military and police imprisoned members of the Papuan elite, accusing them of committing treason by being “separatists” and taking over their businesses and lands. He argues that entrenched racism is the underlying problem: Papuans, with their darker skin and curly hair, look different. Indonesians often mock Papuans, calling them “monkeys” to imply that they’re lagging behind in evolution or describing Papuans as lazy, primitive or foul-smelling.

Even West Papua’s flora and fauna have been marginalised and displaced. Sophie Chao’s book, In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, focuses primarily on oil palms, only recently introduced into West Papua. Many ethnic Marind, the indigenous tribe in Merauke in West Papua’s south, consider the crop “alien and invasive”. Apart from land grabs and human rights abuses around oil palm plantations, Chao finds that the “foreign plant” is destroying native animals and their local habitats.

In Merauke, where Chao did her anthropological research, Papuans make up less than 40 per cent of the population. She writes that “mortality rates are high, life expectancies are 35 years for men and 38 for women, and HIV infection rates are the second highest in Indonesia”. She also argues that the introduction of oil palms has significantly increased armed conflict in West Papua. Apart from importing this non-native plant, the Indonesian government has also encouraged large-scale transmigration since the 1970s, subsidising settlers and triggering conflict between communities. Many Papuans have armed themselves with bows and arrows to defend their land. Militant groups have also acquired firearms, mostly from the black market, with supplies coming from Indonesian security officers. While some might be profiting handsomely from oil palm plantations, the introduction of this industry has perpetuated West Papua’s long-standing problems.

The West Papua conundrum is not just a local question; it’s also one of international law. In Morning Star Rising: The Politics of Decolonization in West Papua, Camellia Webb-Gannon forcefully questions the international rationale to integrate West Papua with Indonesia in 1969. Uti possidetis juris  is a principle in international law which says that newly formed sovereign states should retain the internal borders they had as a colony prior to independence. In this case, the principle was taken to mean that the Netherlands Indies, including West Papua, would become Indonesia. Yet this question is nowhere near settled.

Webb-Gannon cites the arguments of Akihisa Matsuno, an international relations scholar who challenged the legitimacy of uti possidetis juris by pointing to the January 2011 referendum that foregrounded South Sudan becoming an independent state. There were significant ethnic, linguistic, religious and social differences between North and South Sudan, and the British ruled them as separate colonial entities. Therefore, Sudan’s history suggests that a lack of integration, whether natural or historical, between areas ruled by the same colonial power can be used to justify the establishment of separate states. Colonial boundaries, like all other man-made constructs, aren’t as absolute as they are sometimes made out to be.

The Sudan experience could be particularly instructive in the case of West Papua. As Drooglever underlines in his writing, West Papua had a different history of occupation from the rest of Indonesia. The Dutch occupation of West Papua was shorter and the entire island was liberated by the US military in 1944. There are religious differences too: unlike much of the rest of Indonesia, where Islam is the dominant religion, Christianity has more influence in West Papua.

Most of the Papuans in Webb-Gannon’s book are part of the diaspora. Andy Ajamiseba, based in Vanuatu and a member of the Black Brothers, a Papuan rock band, talks about how Papuans see themselves: “The issue here is that identification of ourselves, our identity is—we are not Indonesian. Maybe when we become independent, the situation may be [that] our economy is not as good as [it was] under Indonesia, we have to crawl out, but we want to be ourselves. I am a Papuan. In all due respect to the Indonesians… we are two different people: we are not Indonesians; they are not Papuans.”

Benny Wenda, a leader of the United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua who is currently living in Oxford, England, denies that the freedom Papuans seek is primarily metaphysical or spiritual. Referring to the Indonesian struggle for merdeka (independence) against Dutch colonisers, he says: “If [Indonesians just] wanted freedom spiritually, why did they fight against the Dutch?”

Morning Star Rising doesn’t pretend that all Papuans are united in goals and tactics. A major split is frequently traced to a 1976 feud within the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, or OPM) in the jungles of Keerom, near the border with Papua New Guinea. Conflict—involving a misunderstanding about foreign relations and also ethnicity—erupted between Jacob Prai, the scholar of the group and a native Keerom, and Seth Rumkorem, the movement’s military man and an ethnic Biak. Both men later sought refuge in Europe. The movement suffered a mild setback with Rumkorem living in the Netherlands and Prai in Sweden.

Webb-Gannon also describes the practice of pemekaran, the rapid creation of new administrative and budgetary units in West Papua by the Indonesian government, which has caused disunity in the Papuan community. In June 2022, for instance, the Indonesian parliament divided West Papua, previously governed as two provinces, into six administrative areas. These moves are widely viewed by many Papuans as a ‘divide and rule’ tactic in which a small minority of Papuans are given limited control over divided regions.

Despite this, West Papuan politics revolves around, and can achieve, periodic strategic consensus, including with the United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua, an umbrella organisation for some of the pro-independence factions. Webb-Gannon writes: “Working toward consensus through debate and disagreement as West Papuans do is democratic; it is also a key characteristic of Melanesian political style, which reflects Melanesia’s traditionally acephalous [leaderless] social structures.”

In his book’s final paragraph, Drooglever writes: “The possibilities for a better future for the inhabitants of western New Guinea can also be found in Indonesia’s interest in the area, for Indonesia not only has a tradition of military and authoritarian rule, but also of cultured interaction and efforts to provide good government. We can only hope that the latter two aspects gain the upper hand.”

The National Library may not contain a lot on West Papua, but books like the five reviewed here describe its tormented history. They reveal the trickery and obfuscation by Indonesian leaders to stave off international criticism for its abuses while capturing this naturally rich territory. Papuans have also learned from the failures of the older generations; they continue to defend their rights and resist oppressive Indonesian rule.

Andreas Harsono works for Human Rights Watch. He has covered West Papua since the 1996 kidnapping of international biologists in the Central Highlands.

Indonesia: Freedom of Religion or Belief

A Gafatar religious group farm house was burned down in Kalimantan, 2016.

JAKARTA -- In January 1965, President Sukarno wrote the blasphemy law, declaring “six protected religions” –Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism— in Indonesia and to punish anyone who is defame one of those religions with a jail term, maximum five years. His administration never used that toxic law. President Suharto administration, which ruled between 1965 and 1998, used that law only 10 times. 

In 2004, when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono came to power, his administration was to use the law frequently, jailing 125 individuals during his decade in power. In 2006, Yudhoyono also introduced the “religious harmony regulation," starting another set of discrimination against religious minorities in Indonesia in building or renovating their houses of worship. 

In 2008, I joined Human Rights Watch, putting attention on these rising discrimination against religious minorities. I learned a lot from these field trips and research. I especially learned about the discriminatory regulations including the 1965 blasphemy law and the 2006 "religious harmony" regulation. I also put attention on some state institutions which facilitate religious discriminations in Indonesia: Ministry of Religious Affairs (1946), the blasphemy law office (1952), the Indonesian Ulama Council (1982) and the Religious Harmony Forum (2006). 

Here're several of my writing and interviews. 

Interviewing an Ahmadiyah Muslim on Lombok Island in 2009.

Court Ruling a Setback for Religious Freedom

Blasphemy law puts religious minorities at risk.

Human Rights Watch, April 19, 2010

No Model for Muslim Democracy

The New York Times, May 21, 2012 

In Religion’s Name

Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia

Human Rights Watch, February 28, 2013 

Sufi Muslims Feel the Heat of Indonesia’s Rising Intolerance

The Jakarta Globe, August 15, 2013

Interview: Indonesia Divided

Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono sits down with Steve Paikin to discuss the spiritual makeup of Indonesia, its government, the violence committed against groups, and how the outside world can lend a helping hand.

The Agenda with Steve Paikin, TVO April 15, 2014

Undoing Yudhoyono’s Sectarian Legacy

New Mandala, May 13, 2014 

Interview "Religious Harmony Versus Religious Freedom in Indonesia"

New York University, February 23, 2016

Persecution of Gafatar Religious Group

Thousands were forcibly evicted from their farms in Kalimantan, relocated, detained.

Human Rights Watch, March 29, 2016

Interview "Religious Harmony" Regulations Creating Dissonance in Indonesia

Carnegie Council, May 11, 2016

Indonesia Religious Discrimination Harms Education Rights

Jakarta Globe, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki T. Purnama.

Indonesia's courts have opened the door to fear and religious extremism

By jailing the Jakarta governor Ahok for blasphemy, judges have sent a chilling message to moderates and non-Muslims 

The Guardian, May 10, 2017

Interview: Indonesia Convicts Jakarta's Christian Governor of Blasphemy

NPR: All Things Considered, May 9, 2017

The human cost of Indonesia’s Blasphemy Law

Indonesia at Melbourne, October 25, 2018 

Review: ‘Race, Islam and Power’ A troubling tour through a pained land

The Jakarta Post, May 6, 2019

Indonesia’s Journalists Grapple with Islamism

Reporters in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country are navigating — and too often abetting — a rising trend of reactionary Islamism.

Foreign Policy in Focus, August 21, 2019

Catholics celebrated their Sunday mass in a temporary church in 2016.

Indonesia: Draft Criminal Code Disastrous for Rights

Remove provisions harmful to women, minorities, free speech

Human Rights Watch, September 18, 2019

Indonesian Woman Tried for Blasphemy Over Mosque Incident

Suzethe Margaret brings dog and faces 5 years in prison

Human Rights Watch, October 11, 2019

Indonesia to Expand Abusive Blasphemy Law

Human Rights Watch, October 31, 2019

Indonesia’s ‘Religious Harmony’ Regulation Brings Anything But

The Jakarta Post, April 11, 2020 

Indonesia’s harmful restrictions on foreign journalists, academics

Andreas Harsono

The Jakarta Post

Kate Walton wanted to cook klepon and she tweeted it – showing a bag of flour, pandan, coconut etc. – and Indonesians on social media were buzzing!

A white Australian woman in Canberra could make klepon, the pandan-flavored rice balls filled with palm sugar and coated in grated coconut.

She tweeted a photo of her father: “Dad was very impatient for the klepon to cook.”

Walton, 32, speaks fluent Indonesian, writes about Indonesia, has many Indonesian friends, and loves Indonesian food and culture.

She was banned from entering the country she had lived in since 2011 when immigration officials deported her in June 2019 after she was seen taking photos of a street protest in Jakarta.

She left behind her partner and their cats in Jakarta. Walton is not the only one. Several Australian journalists and academics are on the Indonesian government’s visa blacklist, meaning that their decades of research and linguistic skills go to waste.

Immigration officials stopped two others last year. One is Ross Tapsell, an expert on Indonesian media at the Australian National University. And the other is Dave McRae from Melbourne University, a writer on sectarian violence around Lake Poso, Sulawesi.

Social-cultural visas

American environmental editor Philip Jacobson in the Palangka Raya prison in January 2020.

They traveled to Indonesia on social-cultural visas, rather than on the specific visas required for academic research.

Immigration officials deported a US environmentalist, Phil Jacobson, from Indonesia earlier this year over a visa violation. The authorities detained him for three nights in January 2020, seized his passport, and accused him of using a business visa to work as a journalist in Palangka Raya.

Following the involvement of the US embassy, Jacobson was deported back to the US.

In 2014, the Indonesian authorities convicted Valentine Bourrat and Thomas Dandois, two French journalists from Arte TV, of journalism activities without the appropriate visa and jailed them for 2.5 months in Jayapura, Papua.

In 2015, Rebecca Prosser and Neil Bonner, two British journalists from National Geographic, were jailed for three months on Batam Island, near Singapore, on similar charges.

Every country is entitled to protect its borders, enact immigration laws and regulate visas. But Indonesia’s 2011 Immigration Law is especially harsh.

Any foreigner “who deliberately misuses or engages in activities inconsistent with the intent and purpose of the residence provided to him” can be punished with up to five years in prison and fined up to Rp 500 million (US$35,000).

The law also criminalises “every person who orders or provides an opportunity for foreigners to abuse or engage in activities inconsistent with the intent or purpose of the residence provided to him”.

Meanwhile, getting a journalist visa or a research visa for Indonesia is very complicated.

18 units in ‘clearing house’

Journalists’ applications go to the Foreign Ministry, which will take it to a “clearing house” involving 18 working units from 12 government bodies.

The bodies include the Religious Affairs Ministry, the State Secretariat (the Bureau for International Technical Cooperation), the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry, the National Police, the Communication and Information Ministry, the Home Ministry, the Law and Human Rights Ministry with two participating units (Immigration and Trafficking of Migrants), the State Intelligence Agency, the Strategic Intelligence Agency and the Coordinating Political Legal and Security Affairs Ministry.

The clearing house serves as a strict gatekeeper, often denying applications outright or simply failing to approve them, placing journalists in a bureaucratic limbo.

At times the process has operated as a de facto ban on foreign journalists. Sensitive subjects that delay or deny applications include Papua, religious freedom, environmental sustainability and LGBT rights.

The clearing house system means any one ministry or bureau has veto power, which generally means that the most media-adverse department carries the day. Foreign researchers also have to go through a rigorous vetting process to get a research permit and then a visa.

It involves a clearing house at the Research and Technology and Higher Education Ministry with representatives from intelligence and security agencies.

The permit process seems to be even stricter now with the 2019 Science and Technology Law, which contains draconian criminal sanctions. The effect of the new law will be to discourage foreign researchers from coming to Indonesia, which would be detrimental to scientific advancement and international collaboration.

Extra sensitive in Papua

In places such as Kalimantan or Papua, officials are extra sensitive when seeing foreigners in their cities. In 2016, when Kate Walton was running a training programme in Timika, Papua, for an international development agency, she was detained and questioned for about five hours, despite having a visa that specified she could work in Papua.

She told me that the immigration officials thought she was “doing research illegally”.

In 2018, immigration and military officials detained and questioned a BBC correspondent, Rebecca Henschke, for 17 hours in Timika even though she had a journalist visa and a travel permit to be in Papua. Exhausted, she and her BBC crew abandoned their reporting plan.

I know Kate Walton, Phil Jacobson and other scholars and journalists well. They may have revealed uncomfortable truths about Indonesia but they also love this country very much.

We need people who will speak the truth. The health of a democracy depends on the quality of its journalism – local, national and international media – and its openness to academic research.

The Indonesian government should reform its laws to simplify the process for journalists and researchers to enter the country.

And in the interim, President Joko Widodo should encourage government officials to allow entry to journalists and academics, even those who have something critical to say about the country.

Andreas Harsono works for Human Rights Watch. He is a founding member of the Alliance of Independent Journalists, also sits on the board of the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation, the binational Fulbright Commission for Indonesia. 

Indonesia Is No Model for Muslim Democracy

By ANDREAS HARSONO
New York Times

IT is fashionable these days for Western leaders to praise Indonesia as a model Muslim democracy. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has declared, “If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia.” And last month Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, lauded Indonesia for showing that “religion and democracy need not be in conflict.”

Tell that to Asia Lumbantoruan, a Christian elder whose congregation outside Jakarta has recently had two of its partially built churches burned down by Islamist militants. He was stabbed by these extremists while defending a third site from attack in September 2010.

This week in Geneva, the United Nations is reviewing Indonesia’s human rights record. It should call on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to crack down on extremists and protect minorities. While Indonesia has made great strides in consolidating a stable, democratic government after five decades of authoritarian rule, the country is by no means a bastion of tolerance. The rights of religious and ethnic minorities are routinely trampled. While Indonesia’s Constitution protects freedom of religion, regulations against blasphemy and proselytizing are routinely used to prosecute atheists, Bahais, Christians, Shiites, Sufis and members of the Ahmadiyya faith — a Muslim sect declared to be deviant in many Islamic countries. By 2010, Indonesia had over 150 religiously motivated regulations restricting minorities’ rights.

In 2006, Mr. Yudhoyono, in a new decree on “religious harmony,” tightened criteria for building a house of worship. The decree is enforced only on religious minorities — often when Islamists pressure local officials not to authorize the construction of Christian churches or to harass and intimidate those worshiping in “illegal” churches, which lack official registration. More than 400 such churches have been closed since Mr. Yudhoyono took office in 2004.

Although the government has cracked down on Jemaah Islamiyah, an Al Qaeda affiliate that has bombed hotels, bars and embassies, it has not intervened to stop other Islamist militants who regularly commit less publicized crimes against religious minorities. Mr. Yudhoyono’s government is reluctant to take them on because it rules Indonesia in a coalition with intolerant Islamist political parties.

Mr. Yudhoyono is not simply turning a blind eye; he has actively courted conservative Islamist elements and relies on them to maintain his majority in Parliament, even granting them key cabinet positions. These appointments send a message to Indonesia’s population and embolden Islamist extremists to use violence against minorities.

In August 2011, for example, Muslim militants burned down three Christian churches on Sumatra. No one was charged and officials have prevented the congregations from rebuilding their churches. And on the outskirts of Jakarta, two municipalities have refused to obey Supreme Court orders to reopen two sealed churches; Mr. Yudhoyono claimed he had no authority to intervene.

Christians are not the only targets. In June 2008, the Yudhoyono administration issued a decree requiring the Ahmadiyya sect to “stop spreading interpretations and activities that deviate from the principal teachings of Islam,” including its fundamental belief that there was a prophet after Muhammad. The government said the decree was necessary to prevent violence against the sect. But provincial and local governments used the decree to write even stricter regulations. Muslim militants, who consider the Ahmadiyya heretics, then forcibly shut down more than 30 Ahmadiyya mosques.

In the deadliest attack, in western Java in February 2011, three Ahmadiyya men were killed. A cameraman recorded the violence, and versions of it were posted on YouTube. An Indonesian court eventually prosecuted 12 militants for the crime, but handed down paltry sentences of only four to six months. Mr. Yudhoyono has also failed to protect ethnic minorities who have peacefully called for independence in the country’s eastern regions of Papua and the Molucca Islands. During demonstrations in Papua on May 1, one protester was killed and 13 were arrested. And last October, the government brutally suppressed the Papuan People’s Congress, beating dozens and killing three people. While protesters were jailed and charged with treason, the police chief in charge of security that day was promoted.

Almost 100 people remain in prison for peacefully protesting. Dozens are ill, but the government has denied them proper treatment, claiming it lacks the money. Even the Suharto dictatorship allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit political prisoners, yet the Yudhoyono government has banned the I.C.R.C. from working in Papua.

Instead of praising Indonesia, nations that support tolerance and free speech should publicly demand that Indonesia respect religious freedom, release political prisoners and lift restrictions on media and human rights groups in Papua.

Mr. Yudhoyono needs to take charge of this situation by revoking discriminatory regulations, demanding that his coalition partners respect the religious freedom of all minorities in word and in deed, and enforcing the constitutional protection of freedom of worship. He must also make it crystal clear that Islamist hard-liners who commit or incite violence and the police who fail to protect the victims will be punished. Only then will Indonesia be deserving of Mr. Cameron and Mrs. Clinton’s praise.

Andreas Harsono is a researcher for the Asia division at Human Rights Watch.

Prejudice, Ignorance, Inequality

A scene at the animated television series Justice League Unlimited shows a Greek god telling Wonder Woman that people will always have massacres, bloodlust or slaughters as long as there are "prejudice, ignorance and inequality."

Ares, the ancient Greek god, just lost a war he helped instigate when telling the winning Wonder Woman, "But I'll be back and sooner than you think. Wherever there's prejudice, ignorance, inequality, I'll be there."

Standing right in front of Ares, Wonder Woman coldly replied, "And I'll be waiting."

I like to learn from that scene. When crisscrossing Indonesia and Timor Lorosae over the last four years, from Aceh in northern Sumatra to Papua near Australia, I visited many mass graves and researched many slaughters under both the Dutch and Indonesian rules over the last four centuries. Ares' statement is relevant to this archipelago.

Unfortunately, Wonder Woman's presence is only fictional. Wonder Woman, whose real name is Diana Prince, is a founding member of the Justice League Unlimited. Other DC Comic characters in this series include Batman (Bruce Wayne), Flash (Wally West), Green Lantern (John Stewart), Hawkgirl (Shayera Hol), Martian Manhunter (J'onn J'onzz) and Superman (Clark Kent).

In Greek mythology, Ares or Ἄρης or Άρης is the son of Zeus and Hera. Though often incorrectly referred to as the Olympian god of war, he is more accurately the god of savage war, or bloodlust, or slaughter personified.

Let me give you one simple example. In October 1999, a contentious letter began circulating around Ternate and Tidore that shifted attention from a land dispute in the Malifut area in Halmahera to the religious aspects of the conflict. The letter was addressed to the “Head of the Halmahera Synod in Tobelo” from the Synod of Maluku.

This letter contained plans for the removal of Muslim Makian settlers from Halmahera and the establishment of Christian control over the island and its wealth. Muslim readers saw the letter as evidence of the church’s role in the violence in Malifut. It also drew a link between the events in Kao-Makian village war and the sectarian violence in Ambon. Kao is predominantly Christian although Kao Muslims also took part in battling the Makian settlers.

The letter was signed by “Semi Titaley.” There were many signs that the letter was a questionable one. It has no official church letterhead. Sammy P. Titaley also usually used “S.P. Titaley” plus his academic title “S.Th.” when signing a church document. The Protestants churches implicated in the letter, GPM and GMIH, denied its authenticity and quickly released statements that decried it as a blatant attempt at provocation.

The Evangelical Church of Halmahera (GMIH), the immediate successor of the Dutch mission church, has long held a near monopoly over Protestant Christianity in North Maluku. It remains the dominant church in most of North Maluku with the exception of Tidore, Obi and Bacan, which are under the Protestant Church of Maluku (GPM).

Muhammad Amin Faaroek, an elder in Tidore, told me that when he received the letter he saw the signature to be a fake. “It doesn’t look like Sammy Titaley’s signature,” Faaroek said. That fake letter, however, succeded in triggering a sectarian conflict between the Muslims and the Christians in Tidore, Ternate, Halmahera etc, killing more than 6,000 people and dividing the society along religious lines. Sometimes I suspected Ares was walking somewhere in Tidore or Ternate when that letter circulating.

The scene took place in Justice League Unlimited Season 1 Episode 4 entitled "Hawk and Dove." In the series, Ares was told to create a bloodlust between two peoples. He pretended to be an arms dealer, selling arms to both sides and hoping the war will increase his benefit. Wonder Woman and her colleagues got involved in the battles, telling the warring sides that they were being used by Ares. Finally, Wonder Woman could stop the war and confront Ares. She told Ares not to do the arms dealing again.

Justice League will never be present to stop violence in Aceh or Papua or the Malukus. But Ares' statement about prejudice, ignorance and inequality always remind me about the wars in the Malukus, Acheh, Minangkabao, Java, Borneo, Minahasa, Poso, East Timor, Papua et cetera. In the summer of 1965, a so-called Gilchrist document also circulated in Jakarta about a Council of General prepared to conduct a coup against President Sukarno. It prompted the September 30 Movement to kidnap and later to kill several Army generals in Jakarta, triggering a massive manslaughter in Java and Bali. The document, an alleged letter from the British Ambassador to Jakarta, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, revealed the British were working with the CIA to help the Council of Generals to supervise Sukarno's policies. Many wars began with rumors, fake letters or anonymous messages.

Perhaps, we could not help to fight prejudice, ignorance and inequality in this part of the world. But we could always remind ourselves to be careful when finding anonymous messages. Ares is a real presence in many parts of Indonesia while the Justice League is only on our television screens.

A Lobbying Bonanza

Indonesia hired well-connected firms to restore U.S. funding cut off after 1991 massacre

By Andreas Harsono
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

A long string of human rights abuses had put Indonesia in a deep hole with the United States, but then the September 11 terrorists struck. Suddenly the hole got shallower.

No country has more Muslims than Indonesia, and it is the world’s fourth most populous country after China, India and the United States, with almost twice as many people as Japan. So in the emerging post-9/11 world of Islamist terrorism, Indonesia’s importance to the U.S. suddenly increased.

The island nation had inaugurated a new president just months before the 9/11 attacks and, by chance, the White House had issued an invitation for her to visit on September 19. As it turned out, the new president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, was one of the first state visitors to the White House after the terrorists struck — and the timing couldn’t have been more propitious.

For President Bush, it was an occasion to make friendly overtures to a huge nation that could be a crucial ally in dealing with terrorists.

For President Megawati, it was an opportunity to advance a public relations campaign so relentless that private sources politically connected to the Indonesian government spent more than $1 million to hire a team of Washington lobbyists led by Bob Dole, the former Senate Republican leader and 1996 presidential nominee. Indonesia’s lobbying goals included the resumption of controversial military aid that had been cut off after its troops massacred more than 100 demonstrators in East Timor in 1991.

The relentlessness paid off:

• In the three years after the 9/11 attacks, Indonesian forces benefited from training in counterterrorism techniques and skills worth more than $5 million under the Pentagon’s new post-9/11 Regional Defense Counterterrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP) — even though for much of that time other similar U.S. military assistance was embargoed because of Indonesia’s human rights record. An analysis of foreign military training and assistance conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) found that Indonesia received more CTFP training than any other country — twice as much as the second-place nation, the Philippines.

• In February 2005 U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared the Indonesian military sufficiently reformed to warrant resumption of aid under the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, despite skepticism from Congress and human rights organizations about the extent of reform.

• In November 2005, just over four years after Megawati visited the White House, the last restriction on U.S. military aid was lifted. The State Department announced that aid would resume under the Foreign Military Financing program (FMF) with the goals of modernizing Indonesia’s military and supporting U.S.-Indonesia counterterrorism cooperation. The program provides funds for foreign militaries’ purchases of U.S. military goods, services and training.

• In March 2006 Rice visited Jakarta and announced that the U.S. would increase military cooperation and boost the training budget. “A reformed and effective Indonesian military is in the interest of everyone in this region, because threats to our common security have not disappeared,” she said. “We look for continued progress toward greater accountability and complete reform.”

Indonesia was out of its hole, and U.S. military aid was flowing again. Around the time of the FMF announcement, according to lobbying records, the country ended its relationship with Richard L. Collins & Co., which had succeeded Dole’s team as one of Indonesia’s primary lobbyists in Washington. But questions remain over who exactly paid for the lobbying.

President’s supporters steered contract to Dole

Indonesia spreads over five major islands and more than 17,000 smaller ones in archipelagoes between Malaysia and Singapore. It stretches almost to Australia and across such exotic locations as Bali, Borneo, Java, New Guinea and Sumatra as well as the ancient Spice Islands (now called the Moluccas), where nutmeg originated. Its government is struggling to establish itself as a democracy after the brutal and corrupt 32-year dictatorship of Suharto, who, like many Javanese, uses only one name. During Suharto’s reign, the military was reported to have killed as many as 3 million Communists and other dissidents on the outer islands; estimates of Suharto’s reportedly embezzled fortune start at $15 billion.

The nation’s politics in the decade since Suharto stepped down in 1998 have been tangled and shadowy, with almost continuous insurgencies on the country’s different islands and the military still playing a powerful role in politics. So perhaps it is little wonder that Indonesia’s three Washington lobbying contracts were signed, successively and respectively, by a politically connected Indonesian businessman, a man claiming to be authorized to sign on behalf of a foundation started by a former president who is a moderate Muslim cleric, and the government’s intelligence agency.

Indonesia held its first direct presidential election in 2004, and international monitors declared it well run. In it, Megawati — the daughter of Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president after independence following World War II — was defeated by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a retired three-star general who had been her chief security minister and ran as a reformer. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records on file with the Department of Justice in Washington show that the lobbying contract with Dole’s firm, Alston & Bird, was terminated immediately after Yudhoyono was inaugurated.

The Alston & Bird contract had been negotiated by a powerful group of Megawati supporters after she became president, and it was signed by one of them, Yohannes Hardian Widjonarko, then the treasurer of the Kawula Alit Nusantara Foundation, an organization led by Megawati’s husband Taufik Kiemas. Taufik is also a leader of Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. Its executive director is Tjahjo Kumolo, who heads the party’s faction in the Parliament.

The one-year contract was signed on December 1, 2003, by Frank (Rusty) Conner III, the partner in charge at Alston & Bird LLP, and Widjonarko. The contract was also signed by Dole and specifically indicated that he would coordinate Alston & Bird’s lobbying efforts for Widjonarko and his “designated representatives.” The contract called for payment of $200,000 per month and laid out 12 lobbying objectives including increasing trade between America and Indonesia; seeking a resumption of the military assistance; and providing counsel to the Indonesian government regarding business, legal and financial issues. In addition to the retainer, the contract allowed the firm to charge up to $2,500 per month for travel, meals and administrative costs such as photocopying and computerized research.

The engagement specified that Dole was to “actively participate in and supervise our day-to-day work under this agreement. All work will be coordinated from his office.” And there was much to supervise: the work of nine other Alston & Bird lobbyists assigned to work on Indonesia’s behalf, including two other partners, Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, and Thomas Boyd, who headed the Office of Policy Development in the Department of Justice under President George H.W. Bush. Others working on the account (some of whom have since left the firm) included Michael Marshall, a former spokesman for Dole; John Schall, a former policy adviser to the senior Bush; Cameron Lynch, a former aide to Sen. John Ashcroft; plus Atiqua Hashem, a lawyer then working out of Alston & Bird’s Atlanta office .

The agreement had a follow-up detail three weeks later that brought Indonesia’s government directly into the arrangement, through a December 18, 2003, letter from Laksamana Sukardi, Indonesia’s minister for state enterprises. Records show that Sukardi, whose office controlled more than 150 companies ranging from oil exploration to shipping to telecommunications , asked Dole to advocate personally for the state-owned oil company Pertamina in a multimillion-dollar legal case.

FARA records show that the Dole team called and met with then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge as well as Karen Brooks, then the Asian affairs director for the National Security Council. They also met with U.S. Agency for International Development officials, including its Jakarta director, William Frej, and lobbied officials of the United States-Indonesia Society.

Those records further show that they made contact with the offices of then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice; Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state; and Cofer Black, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator and former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center. The records show that the lobbyists called or met with State Department officials 12 times, including Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.

According to listings of the firm’s expense accounts filed with its Department of Justice FARA papers, Dole and Atiqua Hashem traveled to Jakarta in December 2003 and again in March 2004 (a trip on which Winer joined them). The same records show Hashem traveled extensively between Atlanta and Washington to work with Dole.

On Capitol Hill, Dole’s team made contact with the offices of Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Kerry, D-Mass., and with many other members of Congress and their staffs, promoting not only the resumption of military aid but also Indonesia’s status as the biggest Muslim democracy and an ally in the Bush administration’s war on terror.

The total cost for all this, according to FARA records, was $1,044,147. From November 1, 2003, to April 30, 2004, Alston & Bird reported $846,163 in income from Widjonarko. From May 1, 2004, until October 20, 2004, the reported income was $197,984.

Where did all the money come from? It depends on whom you ask.

Alston & Bird’s Jonathan Winer wrote in a FARA document that Widjonarko “is responsible for financing and controlling this engagement. … Although this engagement may from time to time also be directed by individuals in the government of Indonesia, to my best knowledge, Mr. Widjonarko is not supervised, owned, controlled, financed, or subsidized by a foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal.”

In an interview with ICIJ, Muhamad S. Zulkarnaen, another member of the group of Megawati supporters who coalesced around her husband, declined to comment about who contributed to the Alston & Bird payments. He denied that Sukardi’s ministry of state enterprises funded the lobbying campaign, directly or indirectly, instead characterizing the funding as “political donations.” When asked by ICIJ who contributed those “political donations,” he responded that, “Well, you don’t keep that kind of list.”

The FARA documents, however, mentioned the name of “P. Sondakh,” an apparent reference to Peter Sondakh, a powerful businessman who controls the Rajawali Group, whose interests range from cigarette to cement productions. Winer sent Sondakh a package in June 2004, according to the firm’s FARA filings that year and two other sources, a Rajawali Group executive and an Indonesian diplomat in Washington, D.C., speaking with ICIJ on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Taufik, Megawati’s husband, had asked the Rajawali Group for financial contributions.

So what did all of this lobbying accomplish? When the contract was terminated after Yudhoyono became president in October 2004, the U.S. embargo on IMET and FMF funds was still in place and the Pertamina case had not been resolved. In a phone call with ICIJ, Winer said that the firm has a policy of not commenting on its work for clients unless authorized by the client; Widjonarko did not respond to repeated requests for an interview by an ICIJ reporter in Indonesia. Zulkarnaen told ICIJ that the lobbying accomplished almost nothing.

After the Dole team had left the field, in February 2005, Condoleezza Rice, who had become secretary of state a month earlier, announced that reform of Indonesia’s military was sufficient to justify resumption of IMET funding.

Military, intelligence agency linked to abuses

Military reform in Indonesia is a major challenge. Suharto’s military conducted massacres on an all but unimaginable scale. Today many of the officers of that era are still serving in the military or are retired but engaged in politics.

Indonesia’s military has long operated with unusual independence; the International Relations Center quotes experts who estimate that only 25 to 30 percent of the military’s funding comes from the government’s budget, “with the rest coming from ‘taxes’ on natural resource extraction, bribes, and other forms of ‘informal’ financing.”

Further, Indonesia’s military is deeply engaged in the country’s various conflicts. Suharto had used the military to force outlying parts of the islands to become part of Indonesia against their will and, as a result, troops were routinely engaged with separatist insurgencies, notably in East Timor, Papua and Aceh provinces.

East Timor, which is predominantly Catholic and Portuguese-speaking, became an autonomous nation after a United Nations-supervised referendum in 1999, but even after the referendum Indonesian troops and militia groups launched attacks there. At other far reaches of the archipelago, the special region of Aceh and province of Papua have achieved ceasefires and negotiated greater autonomy. Charges of repression and gross human rights violations, once common, continue at lesser volume in both Aceh and the predominantly Christian Papua.

In November 2001, Papua leader Theys Eluai was assassinated. An investigative commission concluded that a unit of Koppasus, the army’s special forces, was involved in planning and executing the murder.

In August 2002, gunmen attacked cars passing on a mountainous road to a copper mine in Papua that’s operated by Freeport-McMoRan, now the world’s largest publicly traded copper company. Two American teachers and one Indonesian teacher at Freeport’s school were killed in the ambush. The attack alarmed Washington.

John Otto Ondawame, spokesman for the Free Papua Movement, which is known by the initials OPM, issued a statement alleging that the attack may have been “orchestrated by the Indonesian military.” The Papua police and Elsham Papua, a human rights group, also said they suspected the military. Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa countered that “there are indications the act was committed by elements of OPM.” In November 2006, a Papuan guerilla fighter, Antonius Wamang, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and six other defendants received lesser sentences. But human rights advocates insist that Kopassus officers played a part and that a police officer supplied the bullets Wamang used.

Indonesia’s intelligence agency, Badan Intelijen Negara (BIN), has also long been linked to human rights violations, including the 2004 assassination of human rights campaigner Munir Thalib.

According to Central Jakarta district court documents, Munir was poisoned with arsenic sprayed on his fried noodles during a Garuda Indonesia flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam on September 7, 2004. In December 2005, the court sentenced a Garuda pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, to 14 years in prison for poisoning Munir and for carrying forged travel documents. His conviction was overturned by Indonesia’s Supreme Court, and in April 2007 two new suspects were named by Indonesia authorities.

The court documents note that Pollycarpus had no personal motive to kill Munir; the proceedings also brought to light 41 telephone conversations between Pollycarpus and a mobile phone number, 0811-900978, before and after Munir’s assassination. The mobile phone was registered to Maj. Gen. Muchdi Purwopranjono, a deputy director at BIN and a friend of Widjonarko, the businessman who signed the Alston & Bird lobbying contract.

In his court testimony, Purwopranjono confirmed that 0811-900978 was his mobile phone number but he said it was frequently used by his driver and aides. He denied ordering Munir’s assassination or having ever met Pollycarpus. Purwopranjono, who was the commander of the notorious Koppasus special forces in the Suharto era and retired from the military in 1999, confirmed that Widjonarko is his friend. BIN didn’t respond when contacted several times for comment.

Second lobbying effort pays off

Indonesia’s lobbying campaign in Washington resumed in May 2005 with the hiring of Richard L. Collins & Co., a smaller boutique firm. This time, BIN, the Indonesian intelligence agency implicated in the Munir assassination, was paying the bills.

Its selection of the firm was no coincidence: Collins & Co. didn’t have a Bob Dole on its roster, but its vice president for international business at the time, Eric Newsom, was a former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs in charge of running the IMET and FMF military aid programs — the very programs Indonesia wanted restored. He was also a former top aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a key figure in the Senate on human rights issues and U.S.-Indonesia policy.

BIN initially lobbied from the shadows, hiding behind a former Indonesian president’s charitable foundation. But the connection between BIN and the charitable foundation, the Gus Dur Foundation, is documented in papers Collins & Co. filed in compliance with FARA. The foundation was established by former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, who goes by the nickname Gus Dur and is known for his moderate politics and support for human rights.

Gus Dur retained Collins & Co. for $30,000 a month to lobby to “remove legislative and policy restrictions on security cooperation with Indonesia,” according to a copy of a signed initial contract. But in FARA forms that accompany the contract the firm noted, “For the purposes of this contract, the Gus Dur Foundation’s activities are directed and funded by the [BIN]. The nature of the activities carried out under this contract were defined in consultation with representatives from the [BIN] and the [BIN] provides the funding. . . .”

The FARA documents show that on July 31, 2005, the contract between Collins & Co. and the Gus Dur Foundation was terminated and, effective September 1, a new contract for the same monthly amount was executed directly between Collins & Co. and BIN. Collins & Co. lobbyists did not return repeated calls requesting comment.

The initial contract defines Collins & Co.’s mission in the context of Indonesia’s “obstacles to a more cooperative relationship with the United States, particularly in the area of military cooperation . . . the image of Indonesia, especially in the United States Congress, remains highly negative and colored by events in East Timor and other disturbed areas like Papua and Aceh.”

The FARA filings also reflect the fact that part of Collins & Co.’s charge was to assuage congressional concerns over the in-flight assassination of Munir, the Indonesian human rights campaigner. In the U.S. Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2000, Congress made the resumption of military aid contingent on reform of the Indonesian military and prosecution of major human rights offenders.

The FARA records show that between June and October of 2005, Collins & Co. lobbyists, sometimes accompanied by BIN officials, met with several key members of Congress and their staffs. Among them were Sen. Leahy, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, as well Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. and an aide to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill..

Newsom accompanied BIN officials As’ad Said Ali and Burhan Mohammed to a meeting with Sen. Leahy and a key aide just off the Senate floor on July 21, 2005.

According to Tim Reiser, Sen. Leahy’s top aide on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee for State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (whose annual funding bill finances the IMET and FMF programs), Sen. Leahy agreed to the 15-minute meeting so he could express his opposition to the resumption of full military assistance to Indonesia. Sen. Leahy told As’ad that he didn’t think sufficient reform had taken place.

The lobbyists from Collins & Co. also met with American Samoa’s representative, Eni Faleomavaega, to discuss West Papua. Faleomavaega, a Democrat, is the most important, if not the only, champion of the Papuan cause on Capitol Hill. He has spoken about Indonesia “slaughtering” 100,000 people since its takeover of West Papua in 1969.

The lobbying campaign was certainly not the only reason military assistance was eventually resumed; in fact, the push for reinstating IMET and FMF for Indonesia began shortly after the Bush administration took office in 2001. The administration and Republican allies in Congress say the previous policy of punishing Indonesia for human rights violations had not paid dividends; the much-hoped-for reform of the Indonesian military and security apparatus had not occurred.

In November 2005, the FMF restriction was lifted — and, the FARA records show, Indonesia’s contract with Collins & Co. came to an end.

In an interview with the Inter Press Service news agency, Sen. Leahy called the decision “premature and unfortunate,” saying resumption of a military training program for Jakarta “will be seen by the Indonesian military authorities who have tried to obstruct justice as a friendly pat on the back.”

Sen. Leahy inserted a provision in the Senate version of the fiscal 2007 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill (not yet passed by Congress ) that would require the Secretary of State to submit a report to the Senate and House Appropriations committees detailing “the status of the investigation of the murder of Munir Said Thalib, including efforts by the Government of Indonesia to arrest any individuals who ordered or carried out that crime and any other actions taken by the Government of Indonesia (including the Indonesian judiciary, police and the State Intelligence Agency [BIN]), to bring the individuals responsible to justice.”

How did Gus Dur find his name attached to lobbying paid for by BIN? Muhyiddin Aruhusman, a close associate of Gus Dur’s, signed the original Collins & Co. contract on behalf of the Gus Dur Foundation. Ikhsan Abdullah, the foundation’s secretary, told ICIJ that Aruhusman, a member of Parliament, had no official position at the foundation. Asked whether he was authorized to sign on behalf of the foundation or whether Gus Dur himself knew about the contract, Aruhusman said, “I can’t discuss more. I have to bear in mind Gus Dur’s good name. He didn’t know.”

In a September 2006 news conference, following inquiries by ICIJ on the matter, Gus Dur acknowledged letting BIN use his foundation, saying that it was done “for the sake of the nation.”

“Neither the Gus Dur Foundation nor I have ever made any deal with BIN nor hired a U.S. company to seek resumption of the military training program,” Gus Dur told the media. He told reporters in Jakarta that BIN deputy chief As’ad Said Ali and several other intelligence agents had met with him one day in 2004, asking him if it was okay to make use of his name for the national interest. “Upon hearing the words ‘for the sake of the nation,’ I replied: ‘Please do.’ And I had no idea this conditional permission would be misused to lobby for the lifting of the military embargo,” he said.

Counterterrorism efforts offset by tensions

What did the United States get in return for opening the military aid spigot to Indonesia?

The island nation became an early, if somewhat reluctant, partner in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. After 9/11, President Megawati was careful about cracking down on suspected militants for fear of inflaming the country’s vast Muslim majority. The U.S., well aware of this dynamic, also took an early kid-glove approach, declining initially to include Indonesian extremist groups such as Laskar Jihad and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) on its list of terrorist organizations, despite the fact that JI’s founder, Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian national better known as Hambali, was a known associate of Al Qaeda.

But over the years, the Indonesian government quietly stepped up its pressure on homegrown militants, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of terrorist suspects, many of them in connection with the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings , which killed 202 people and injured 209, largely Australian tourists. A steady drumbeat of attacks has continued since: a 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing that killed 12; a 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, which killed 10; and 2005 suicide bombings in Bali that killed 19.

In late 2006, in a visit with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, President Yudhoyono pledged to increase anti-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan, signaling the convergence of two of America’s key counterterrorism allies. Indonesia is also now part of the State Department’s Regional Strategic Initiative, an effort to link key governments in a particular area — in this case, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines — to combat terrorism. All three countries are combating local insurgencies that at times have been linked to Islamist extremists.

But tension continues over whether BIN, which hired the lobbyists who helped push a resumption of military aid, was responsible for the assassination of a human rights advocate. Tension also exists over whether the Indonesian military, which benefits from the military aid, was behind the Freeport mine ambush that killed two Americans.

Yohanes Hardian Widjonarko

Yohanes Hardian Widjonarko is an Indonesian businessman born in Semarang. He built his career with one of Indonesia’s largest timber company, PT Barito Pacific Timber Tbk, involved in massive deforestation of Borneo’s rainforest since the 1980s. In 1998, it was caught in financial difficulties at the height of the Asian economic crisis. Widjonarko resigned as its president director in June 2002 but still retained the status of a commissionaire for two years.

During my reporting, I talked to many businessmen, politicians and journalists. I learned that Widjonarko, to quote one business executive, has “a lot of friends among politicians and has a good networking among businessmen.” Most of these business leaders know that Widjonarko works with Taufik Kiemas. Widjonarko regularly plays billiard with some Jakarta television executives and newspaper editors at Hotel Le Meredian in downtown Jakarta.

Kawula Alit Nusantara Foundation rented an office space on the 23rd floor of Menara Mulia, one of Jakarta’s towers. “We used that office just to get together. What would people think if we sing at the State Palace?” said Muhamad S. Zulkarnaen, smiling.

Zulkarnaen told me that Widjonarko is the main operator of this Washington lobby. He is also its treasurer. The foundation registered an internet domain www.kawula.or.id under Widjonarko’s name. The foundation gradually became "non active" after President Megawati Sukarnoputri lost the election in 2004.

The internet domain is currently used by PT Winaros Kawula Bahari, a frozen seafood exporter, located in Beji near Pasuruan in eastern Java. The head office of this company is located in Bellagio tower in Jakarta, where Yohanes also opens a pub called Flo Lounge. Widjonarko and his wife, Lianawati Hardjoanwar (nicknamed Li Lan), also live in an apartment in Bellagio. They manage the pub themselves.

Florian Arieschka, the pub's marketing manager, told me, “Ibu Megawati often came here four or five times, organizing her own private parties. Pak Taufik’s colleagues also regularly come here as well as the buddies of my owner.”

Marissa Haque, a movie star who joined Megawati's party, once came to Kawula Alit office and had lunch with Taufik Kiemas and his associates. “TK’s (Taufik Kiemas) office is below the Kawula Alit headquarters. The offices are luxurious, a lot of paintings,” Haque said.

Helmy Fauzi, a former op-ed page editor of the Sinar Harapan daily and now an assistant to Kiemas, also used that office to hold a meeting once with other activists. “We invited many activists to discuss some political issues,” said Fauzi. “The office is very spacious and comfortable.”

I tried to interview Widjonarko many times. He didn't answer my text messages. Once he answered my call, saying he was in Geneva on his way to Amsterdam. I finally met him at Flo Lounge. He agreed to have a short interview. He said he is "a friend" to Major General Muchdi Purwopranjono, a deputy director at the State Intelligence Agency, allegedlly involved in the assasination of human rights campaigner Munir. Widjonarko admitted that he bought the mobile number "0811-900978" used by Muchdi. This number frequently appeared in the trial of the Munir assasination.

When asked how he was involved in the Washington lobby, he responded that the Kawula Alit Nusantara Foundation’s mission was simply “for orphans.” He declined to comment on his relation with Megawati dan Taufik Kiemas. "We're just friends," he said.

Terminology 'Indonesia'

The terminology of Indonesia is not necessarily a native idea. The term "Indonesia" is compounded by Indo (Latin word for India or Indus) and Nesos (Greek word for island).

James Richardson Logan, a jurist born in Scotland, worked in Singapore and buried in Penang, is known as the inventor of the terminology Indonesia when writing The Ethnology of the Indian Archipelago in 1850, which expressed, “The name Indian Archipelago is too long to admit of being used in an adjective or in an ethnographical form. Mr (George Samuel Windsor) Earl suggests the ethnographical term Indunesians but rejects it in favour of Melayunesians. I prefer the purely geographical term Indonesia, which is merely a shorter synonym of Indian Islands or the Indian Archipelago. We thus get Indonesian for Indian Archipelagian or Archipelagic, and Indonesians for Indian Archipelagians or Indian Islanders.”

Multatuli used Insulinde in his book Max Havelaar, published in 1860, compounded by “inseln” means islands and “indie.” There were also Malay Archipelago or Le Grand Archipel Malais or Nusantara Malayu Raya (Nusantara Raya) that extended to use.

But it was Adolf Bastian of University of Berlin who popularized the name of Indonesia through his book Indonesien oder die Inseln des Malayichen Archipels 1884-1894. Bastian was then much more popular worldwide than Logan nor Multatuli.

Well, the term Indonesia is finally a Scottish creation, an Indian geography and a German socialization! There is nothing native here.

Murder at Mile 63

By S. Eben Kirksey and Andreas Harsono

U.S. intelligence reports linked the Indonesian military to the 2002 murder of American school teachers in Timika, a mining town in the remote Indonesian province of Papua. Despite these reports, and opposition from the U.S. Congress, the Bush Administration removed a decade-old ban on funding for military education programs in Indonesia. In May 2006, the Bush Administration announced a new Pentagon program that will provide up to $19 million in additional funds for building Indonesian military capacity. An Indonesian court charged that Antonius Wamang, an alleged Papuan guerrilla, was the ringleader of this attack and sentenced him to life in prison on Nov. 7 2006. Six other alleged coconspirators were given sentences ranging from 18 months to seven years in jail. The same day that the sentences were handed down, Pentagon officials announced a “new era of military co-operation” with Indonesia. Yet, rigorous standards of evidence didn’t prevail in this Indonesian court and questions remain about whether Wamang’s group acted alone. This report—prepared for the Joyo Indonesian News Service and the Pantau Foundation—is based on internal police documents, court records, and eyewitness accounts. Antonius Wamang, Decky Murib, Patsy Spier and more than 50 other sources were interviewed in Timika, Jayapura, Biak, Jakarta and Washington DC.


When Antonius Wamang boarded a Garuda jet in September 2001 at Timika’s Moses Kilangin airport in Papua, his heart was pounding—he was on a mission to get weapons and ammunition in Jakarta. Born in the remote highland village of Beoga in 1972, Wamang was a young boy when Indonesian Brigadier-General Imam Munandar launched Operation Eliminate (Operasi Kikis) in the highlands of Papua. Anti-personnel Daisy Cluster bombs, mortars and machine-guns were used against Papuan villagers who were armed with bows and arrows. Nearly 30 years later, Wamang found what he thought was an opportunity to buy arms in hopes of fighting back against the Indonesian military.

Wamang flew to Jakarta alone and was met at Cengkareng airport by Agus Anggaibak, a sandalwood (kayu gaharu) dealer with close ties to the Indonesian military. According to Janes Natkime, a Beoga native who has known Wamang since elementary school and currently heads the Warsi Foundation in Timika, “Agus Anggaibak set up everything, he lobbied the officers and arranged the money.” Anggaibak, Natkime and Wamang are members of the Amungme tribe, a relatively small ethnic group where almost everyone knows everyone else. Anggaibak had earlier visited Wamang’s group in their jungle hideout, encouraging them to raise money to buy guns. He brought a rifle with him. Anggaibak showed off this weapon in Wamang’s camp: “MODEL P88-9, Col 9 mmp AK, Made in Germany.”

Anggaibak promised to help Wamang obtain weapons like the one he was carrying, as well as other guns, from arms dealers in Jakarta. Like all groups in West Papua’s Tentara Pembebasan Nasional (National Liberation Army)—a group without a clear hierarchical command structure founded in 1971—Wamang’s group was poorly armed.

Antonius Wamang’s group, according to the prosecutor’s indictment and several witnesses, only had three aging weapons: an SS1, an M16, and a bolt-action Mauser. Following several weeks of intensive gold panning, and sandalwood collecting, Wamang’s group raised money to purchase more guns. Anggaibak departed for Jakarta, with an advance payment from Wamang, where he began working on securing a deal. Wamang later flew to meet Anggaibak. He brought sacks of sandalwood probably worth more than 500 million rupiah. On the international market sandalwood fetches even higher prices. This rare wood is used to make incense and perfume.

Initially Anggaibak and Wamang stayed in a police guest house in Jakarta. A sandalwood middleman from Makassar named Mochtar introduced Anggaibak and Wamang to some Indonesian army and police officers. Well aware of how to exploit internal conflicts within the Indonesian security forces, Wamang hoped to secure weapons from one faction in hopes of attacking another faction.

Sergeant Puji, a police officer, befriended Wamang while he was staying at the guest house. Sergeant Puji took Wamang and Anggaibak on trips around Jakarta. They toured around while Puji asked them about the activities of Papuan guerillas around Timika. Puji said that he wanted to help the movement: he presented Wamang with a gift of six magazines of bullets (total 180 bullets) that could be used in Wamang’s M16 or SS1 rifles. Sergeant Puji also gave Wamang bullets for his Mauser. One night in the guest house, Sergeant Puji showed Wamang fifteen M-16 rifles. Wamang said he paid 250 million rupiah for these guns and Sergeant Puji held on to them for safe keeping.

Later Wamang moved to Hotel Djody at Jalan Jaksa 35, a backpacker hostel in downtown Jakarta. He probably checked in using a false name. “Mochtar was a regular guest here,” said Herry Blaponte, the hotel’s front office staff. Blaponte said Mochtar had regularly made sandalwood business deals with his Papuan guests. Hotel staff remember Mochtar as having a stocky build and being a “dandy”—their memories of him are not fond, however, since he left without paying his bill. Blaponte and hotel security staff Mahmud Trikasno told Indonesian chief detective Dzainal Syarief that they did not remember Wamang’s stay at their hotel. “I don’t remember his face,” said Trikasno. Four cleaning service staff also did not recognize Wamang’s picture.

One afternoon at Hotel Djody, according to Wamang, a stranger approached him and Anggaibak. “I hear you are looking to buy guns”, Wamang quoted the stranger as saying. Eventually Anggaibak admitted that they were. The stranger—Captain Hardi Heidi—said that he was an Indonesia soldier from Surabaya. Eventually Wamang paid for four additional guns from Hardi Heidi: two AKs and two M-16s. As with Sergeant Puji, Wamang arranged for Hardi Heidi to keep the weapons for safe keeping until he was ready to depart for Timika.

Hardi Heidi introduced Anggaibak and Wamang to Sugiono, an active duty Kopassus officer who pledged to help transport the weapons to Timika. They all traveled to different cities in Java together—to Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya. Sugiono and Hardi Heidi had interests similar to Sergeant Puji’s—they wanted to hear about TPN activities around Timika.

On September 21, Wamang visited 40 Amungme and Kamoro tribal leaders, who had just returned from negotiations with Freeport McMoRan at its New Orleans head office. They were making a stop in Jakarta and stayed at Hotel Mega Matra. Excited to see many fellow Amungme leaders, Wamang visited the hotel a number of times. The leaders were negotiating a profit sharing deal with Freeport’s management.

Wamang asked many delegates for money. Omaleng said Wamang had bragged about how he had secured a shipload of weapons that were ready to be shipped to Papua. Wamang needed the extra money to transport the weapons. Janes Natkime gave Wamang 1.5 million rupiah, “Five days later he came back to the hotel, saying that the ship had been rerouted to Aceh.”

Wamang said that he had paid Sugiono nearly 50 million rupiah to ship the guns to Timika. After a chartered boat was loaded with the weapons, Wamang claims that Sugiono and Hardi Heidi gave him the slip. The ship motored away with Wamang standing alone on the dock. Just prior to the boat’s departure, Wamang said that he overheard a conversation between Hardi Heidi and his wife. Wamang quoted the wife as saying: “We should sell these in Aceh.”

After calling associates back in Timika for more money, Wamang traveled alone back to Timika on the Kelimutu passenger ship. Wamang arrived in Timika with only the bullets that Sergeant Puji had given him. His extensive contacts with Sergeant Puji, with Sugiono, with Hardi Heidi, and with Mochtar had given him moments of hope. But his mission to obtain guns had ultimately failed. Instead, Wamang revealed his plan to attack Freeport to these Indonesian officers and gave them intelligence about TPN activities.

THE AMBUSH

In early August 2002, Antonius Wamang started out on foot with at least six other men, including Johni Kacamol, Yulianus Deikme and Elias Kwalik, from a jungle camp near Kali Kopi . Their destination was the main road that connects Tembagapura, the mining town of Freeport McMoRan, to Timika, a sprawling urban center in the lowlands. This 79-mile road connects Grasberg, Freeport’s highest mining site, down to the Amamapare port site in Timika.

According to Wamang, the journey took nearly three weeks. Wamang, and his men, were preparing to launch an armed assault on Indonesian military troops traveling on this road. The group set up a temporary camp in a ravine below mile 63 of the road.

One of Wamang’s co-conspirators, Hardi Tsugumol, was also very busy getting ready for “an action” on the road, according to Deminikus Bebari of the Amungme Indigenous Council (Lemassa). In the weeks leading up to the ambush, Tsugumol “amassed food and other supplies,” wrote Bebari, in a 2002 report prepared for Indonesian police investigators.

When Hardi Tsugumol was a boy, growing up in an Amungme village, he wanted to be a soldier. As an adult, Tsugumol cultivated relationships with Indonesian soldiers stationed in Timika. He once worked in a lobster company in Biak and later moved to Java, marrying a Javanese woman. The couple separated and Tsugumol’s wife maintained custody of their only child. Tsugumol returned to Timika alone. In the lead up to the ambush Tsugumol “contacted his friends in the military to buy ammunition—300 bullets for 600,000 rupiah, via his friends who were in Kopassus and Brimob,” wrote Bebari.

On Saturday 31 August 20002, just before dawn, three men, including Tsugumol, were “picked up at the Kwamki Lama neighborhood by a white Toyota Land Cruiser from Freeport’s Emergency Planning Operation division,” wrote Bebari. The EPO is a Freeport division that provides logistical, transportation and communication supports for the more than 3,000 Indonesian security personnel stationed in the area. Tsugumol, declined to reveal the vehicle’s driver, saying that he has to protect his “friend.” He only admitted that they had traveled along the Timika-Tembagapura road, past five checkpoints, that morning. The 79-mile road has 14 military posts manned by various units such as Kopassus special forces, Kostrad army reserves, the Marines, the Air Force’s Paskhas elite unit, the Army Battalion 752, the Army’s Cavalry, as well as Brimob (Mobil Brigade) police troops.

Decky Murib, an Amungme informer, said that ten soldiers picked him up at Hotel Serayu in Timika at 8 am that same day. Murib often accompanied Indonesian officers in their operations. He said that he was surprised to see Kopassus Captain Margus Arifin leading this group. “He was supposed to be in Bandung,” said Murib. Formerly, Margus had been the Kopassus liaison officer at Freeport’s EPO office. Murib later told police investigators that Margus brought him in a car with license plate number 609 through the Freeport checkpoints and dropped him, with four solders at mile 62 of the Tembagapura road. Margus reportedly continued north along the road with the remaining soldiers. Margus Arifin denied Murib’s testimony, saying that he was in Bandung that day. Kopassus commander Major General Sriyanto Muntrasan told Tempo that Margus’s signatures showed that he was in the Bandung military course that day.

Freeport operates its check points to register every car and person traveling along the road. Workers have to show their employee ID cards at the checkpoints. Locals have to show special permits issued by Freeport’s Community Liaison Office. There are also special Freeport-issued visitor cards. “Only the soldiers usually refuse to report at the checkpoints,” said Lexy Lintuuran, Freeport’s corporate security chief. According to Linturan, a car with the license plate 609, the car Decky Murib claimed he was in, passed through the checkpoints in the morning of the attack.

That morning a group of school teachers from the Tembagapura International School, went on a picnic around mile 62 of the road. The rugged terrain around this high-elevation section of the road is covered by old-growth cloud forest. Patsy Spier, who was part of this picnic with 10 others, said that it was rainy and foggy. “We ended up leaving the picnic early,” said Spier.

The teachers traveled in two white Toyota Land Cruisers. Rick Spier, her husband, drove the first SUV with four colleagues riding as passengers. Ted Burgon, the school’s principal, sat next to Rick Spier. Patsy Spier traveled in the second car driven by Ken Balk. She sat next to Bambang Riwanto, her Javanese colleague.

When Antonius Wamang, and his men, approached the ambush site, the group was carrying three weapons. “We had one M16, one SS1, and one Mauser,” Wamang said. One white Freeport SUV went by, and then another filled with men in camouflage. They did not shoot. When a third car passed, they opened fire.

Suddenly, in the fog, Patsy Spier saw her husband’s car stopped by the side of the road. Another car was speeding towards her on the opposite side of the road. “They ran Rick’s car off of the road,” Spier thought. Turning around in her seat to get a good look at its license plate, Spier felt a sharp stab in her side. She had been shot. The windshield shattered. Blood splattered all over the SUV interior.

The first shots, fired by a sniper at a moving car, were deadly. They came from straight in front of the first car. The windshield of Rick Spier and Ted Burgon’s car exploded. Within moments they both sustained fatal wounds. Wamang’s group—a rag-tag band of teenagers and men with limited weapons training—shot at the cars from the side. They wore black shorts, black t-shirts, and black plastic headbands. They were all barefoot.

“I did not see the shooters,” said Patsy Spier. Ken Balk, in the same car as Spier, saw a pair of black army boots underneath a truck, some 20 yards away from where their vehicle had come to a stop. Three other vehicles, a yellow Mac truck and two Canadian Pacific dump trucks, were also riddled with bullets.

“All of us were shot, wounded. Bambang was laying on top of me, bleeding. I was worried about my husband but the shooting just continued,” said Spier. Bambang died in the attack. Among the 11 people who were wounded in the attack, there were three Indonesian drivers. The two drivers who were seriously injured, Loudwyk Worotikan and Johannes Bawan, were employees of a Freeport contract company. Mastur, the third driver, sustained light injuries.

Another pick up truck was also shot but its driver, Daud Tandirerung, managed to speed away from the crime scene. Two colleagues, Yohan Jikwa and Kamame Moom, were riding with Tandirerung. They told investigators that they saw “two men in ski masks.” According to witnesses, and a reconstruction by police investigators, the shooting lasted between 30 to 45 minutes.

Wamang does not know who fired the first shot. In the initial burst of gunfire it was hard to tell who was shooting. “With everyone shooting, you can’t hear well .... If I had shot first, then I would have been able to tell,” recalled Wamang.

Wamang’s men were edgy. They did not approach the stopped cars. “We weren’t there very long. We immediately retreated,” Wamang told us.

We asked him, “Were you there thirty minutes?” “No,” he said, “30 minutes is way too long.” Of the six magazines given to Wamang by Sergeant Puji, only 1½ magazines (about 45 bullets of 5.56 caliber) were used by his men that day. As Wamang’s group retreated, the other unknown gunmen continued shooting. No one followed as they beat a hasty retreat on foot.

Andrew Neale, a Freeport expatriate, came upon the scene from the north. Neale jammed his vehicle and drove back to the Kostrad military post about 500 meters away at mile 64. According to Lexy Lintuuran, Freeport’s security chief, the Kostrad company stationed there “has more than 100 soldiers.” Why didn’t the Kostrad soldiers come sooner? Did they hear the 30-45 minutes of gunfire?

When the soldiers finally arrived at the scene, the attackers melted away. The soldiers briefly fired their guns. Then the shooting abruptly stopped. “I assumed that the shooters left after the TNI came,” said Spier, using the acronym of the Indonesian military. She remembered a soldier, dressed in full camouflage and black boots, who stood over her, glaring down. Victims were immediately transported to a nearby hospital and soon evacuated to bigger hospitals in Australia and Indonesia.

Decky Murib, the military informer, said that he had heard some shots while he was waiting, and drinking. Captain Margus Arifin later picked him up again and told him, “Your people (TPN) are responsible for those shots.”

A total of thirteen guns were used in this assault on the five cars, according to a ballistics report issued by the Police Central Forensic Laboratory (Pusat Laboratorium Forensik Polri) on 19 December 2002: six SS1s, five M16s, and two Mausers.

Ch. Syafriani, one of the Lab’s ballistics experts, reiterated the data contained in this report on 29 September 2006 in the Central Jakarta district court —the lab analyzed 30 bullets of 5.56 caliber, 77 bullet fragments, 94 bullet casings of 5.56 caliber, 7 bullet casings of 7.62 caliber. A total of 208 bullets, shells, or fragments were recovered from the crime scene.

Wamang’s account of his weaponry is consistent with the evidence presented by chief prosecutor Anita Asterida: his group carried a total of three guns. The prosecution did not account for the ten other guns.

Wamang told us that other gunmen were present. He saw other men shooting into the cars, but he could not clearly identify them. “The testimony of Anton Wamang and others at the crime scene is clear and consistent: there was a second group of shooters,” said Paula Makabory, a human rights worker in Timika who repeatedly interviewed Wamang over the course of three years.

Evidence of a second group of shooters was not considered by the Indonesian courtroom that recently found Wamang guilty. An Indonesian police investigation questioned 30 soldiers, 44 civilians, and conducted extensive forensic research. These police investigators found “a strong possibility” that there were Indonesian military shooters.

Why would the Indonesian military stage an attack at the Freeport mine? One theory is that Freeport paid a total of US$5.6 million in 2002 for “support costs for government-provided security.” The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 imposed new reporting requirements on U.S. companies in the wake of the Enron corporate accounting scandal. After this measure was passed into law, Freeport was forced to disclose their payments to the Indonesian military. Under public scrutiny, Freeport began reducing official and unofficial payments to Indonesian security forces. The August 2002 attack may have been orchestrated by the Indonesian military in a bid to convince Freeport of their continued need for security.

On 1 September, one day after the attack, the body of “Mr. X” appeared near the crime scene. Senior Indonesian military officers claimed that their troops had shot one of the Papuan guerrilla attackers. Second Class Corporal Wayan, an Indonesian soldier with Satgas Pam 515 Kostrad, claimed to have shot Mr. X while patrolling a mountain near the crime scene at 11:40 am.

At 1:30 pm senior military and police officials—including Papua police chief Major General I Made Mangku Pastika—arrived at the side of the road where Corporal Wayan was standing with the body. There were no blood stains on the ground near the body. The body was sent to the Tembagapura hospital at 3:30. Dr. Kunto Rahardjo conducted an autopsy. He concluded that Mr. X had been killed more than six hours before he was examined at the hospital. Mr. X had not eaten for more than 12 hours before his death. He had suffered from a severe intestinal worm infection and had a condition called hydrocele which caused his testicles to swell to 17 cm in diameter.

Corporal Wayan claims that Mr. X was standing on a small ledge approximately ½ meter in width on the side of a steep cliff when he shot and killed him. A police reconstruction conducted on 10 September 2002 found no blood stains on the ledge, at the base of the cliff, nor along the route where Corporal Wayan and his patrol members reportedly dragged the body. The Timika-Tembagapura road is 78 meters from the base of the cliff. This rugged terrain is covered with dense roots and loose rocks. The police reconstruction deemed Wayan’s story implausible. The body reportedly fell 8 meters off the cliff, yet did not have any broken bones. A report by Indonesian forensics experts found that the blood type of Mr. X was “O” and that dirt and leaves from the site where Wayan claimed to have shot the man did not contain any blood of this type.

THE COVER UP

Elsham human rights group, which was involved in the Timika investigation, issued a preliminary report on 26 September. It presented evidence “suggesting the shooting was carried out by Indonesian military personnel or groups facilitated by the TNI.” The BBC, Radio Australia, and many Papuan newspapers covered the report. Two days later, the Indonesian military announced that it was to sue Elsham. A court summons arrived in November, announcing that John Rumbiak and Yohanis Bonai, respectively the supervisor and director of Elsham, were being sued for libelous statements.

Thugs raided Elsham Papua’s Jakarta office on 10 October 2002. “During the raid, the men seized documents and computer diskettes containing Elsham reports on the August ambush,” wrote the Jakarta Post.

Yohanis Bonai’s wife, Elsje, and other members of their extended family, were attacked by unknown gunmen while travelling by car near the border between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea on 28 December 2002. Elsje Bonay was shot in both legs. She survived the attack, but after repeated surgeries she still has difficulty walking. Tempo magazine ran a story with the headline: “Shooting of Papuan Human Rights Activist’s Family May Be Related to Timika Incident.”

Brigadier General Raziman Tarigan, the second in command of the Papua police, headed an Indonesian police investigation. Tarigan worked closely with Elsham investigators. Tarigan told reporters that the 13 guns used in the attack were the types of weapons issued to soldiers stationed in the area. “Only the military and Freeport workers pass through the area,” Tarigan was quoted as saying by Koran Tempo.

Separately, I Made Mangku Pastika, Tarigan’s immediate superior, told three aides to Coordinating Minister on Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a meeting in the Timika police station: “Gentlemen, this country belongs to all of us. If you do something for the sake of the country and the nation, well, please tell us first. So we’re not all in trouble.” Saul Tahapary, a Freeport security consultant, was party to this conversation, recalling that Pastika was upset with attempts by the military to cover up their own actions.

Soon Tarigan and Pastika were transferred off of the investigation to new assignments elsewhere in Indonesia. Pastika was assigned to investigate the Bali bombing that killed more than 200 people.

Following the reports by Tarigan and Pastika, Indonesia’s Central Military Police (Puspom TNI) sent a team to conduct a “reconstruction.” According to Richard Saferstien’s authoritative text on criminology, a murder reconstruction involves answering a series of questions: (1) was there more than one person involved? (2) how was the victim killed? (3) were there actions taken to cover up what actually took place? The Indonesian military reconstruction did not rigorously attempt to answer any of these three questions. In fact, this “reconstruction” itself is further evidence of a cover up.

Decky Murib told us that he was threatened and intimidated by Indonesian soldiers on 28 December 2002, the day of the reconstruction. In the months prior to this day, Murib had worked with police investigators to identify Kopassus soldiers whom he alleged were at the crime scene: Captain Margus Arifin, First Lieutenant Wawan Suwandi, Second Class Sergeant I Wayan Suradnya, and First Class Private Jufri Uswanas. Murib told us that he had changed his story as a result of threats by Captain Margus on the day of the reconstruction. Captain Margus told Murib to not participate in the reconstruction. Murib decided to go into hiding.

On 28 December 2002 at 11:30 am, the Indonesian military reconstruction team traveled by bus to mile 58. Deminikus Bebari of Lemassa and Albert Bolang of the Legal Aid Institute were accompanying the team as outside observers. Bebari protested, saying that mile 58 was not the place where Murib claimed to have heard the shots. Murib initially told police investigators that he had heard gun shots from his position in between mile 61 and 62 of the Timika-Tembagapura road. At this spot there was a large pole, shipping containers, and a place to sit. The team then traveled approximately 500 meters up the road and positioned themselves under some umbrellas by the roadside. The pole and shipping containers, from Murib’s testimony, were nowhere in sight. Over four miles of road and the Hanekam tunnel separated Bebari from the site where Murib said he heard the shots. But the military reconstruction team refused to travel further up the road.

Albert Bolang traveled with a separate team, a Brimob mobile police unit, to the site of the shooting at mile 63. Once both teams were in place, 20 bullets were shot in an automatic burst. Radio contact was made between the two groups. The reconstruction team and Bebari did not hear the gunshots. Brigadier General Hendarji, who headed the military reconstruction team, confronted Bebari as they stood on the road immediately after the shooting experiment. Hendarji said, Bebari recounted, “Since you did not hear any gunshots then all of Murib’s testimony about the Timika shooting were lies.”

That evening Bolang and Bebari were asked to sign two reports: Bolang signed a document that described the shooting experiment at mile 63 while Bebari signed a document stating that he did not hear gun shots at mile 58. In addition, Bebari was asked to sign an additional statement: “The testimony of Mr. Decky Murib is false and will not be used in the investigation of this case.” Deminikus Bebari refused to sign this document. “Decky might be a drunkard and an opportunist but he was at mile 62. How could we test whether he had heard the shots or not when I was placed four miles away from his position? They simply wanted me to state that he lied,” said Bebari.

In January 2003, Decky Murib was flown to Jakarta by Indonesian military officials. Major General Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, the Indonesian military spokesman announced on 14 January 2003, “Decky Murib lied.”

The reconstruction took place at the height of President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s effort to restore military ties with the United States. Her chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told reporters, “There are some things that do not match between the investigation results of the police and the results of the TNI internal investigation into the case.” Yudhoyono called for a “synchronization” of the two investigations at “the political level.”

Recovering from her gunshot wounds, and mourning her lost husband, Patsy Spier closely followed the news as police investigators implicated Indonesian military troops in the attack. When the Indonesian military took over the investigation, and promptly exonerated themselves, Spier began her campaign for justice. After making a few tear-choked phone calls to the offices of Washington policy makers, she learned that the US government was poised to fund the controversial International Military Education and Training (IMET) program for Indonesian soldiers. “I just, I just couldn’t believe it,” Spier told ABC reporters, “If the Indonesian police had implicated the Indonesian military, why would my government want to give money to that military?”

The Bush administration made military aid to Indonesia a high priority in the post-September 11th era. Following the Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor, the U.S. Congress had blocked military aid to Indonesia in 1992. All military assistance to Indonesia had been cut by the Clinton administration in response to the bloodbath during the 1999 independence referendum in East Timor. When Spier first came to Capitol Hill in early 2003, human rights groups—Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the East Timor Action Network—were losing a battle to keep restrictions on Indonesian military financing.

Spier’s presentations to lawmakers were well received. She secured meetings with some of the top U.S. government officials: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, FBI director Robert Mueller, key Senators, and Congressmen. Spier also met FBI agents Paul Myers, Brad Dierdorf, and Ron Eowan, men who she came to see as her personal “guardian angels.”

Initially FBI agents were only permitted short visits to Timika. All their interviews of witnesses were, at first, conducted in the presence of Indonesian minders. “We were objective,” said Dierdorf during the interrogation of a witness on 24 February 2005. “Our gut feeling initially leaned away from Papuans,” Dierdorf said. The Australian published a sensational headline on 28 October 2002, “FBI: Army Lied about Papua Ambush.” This story discussed the planting of false evidence and removal of other evidence from the scene of the killing. Despite repeated high-level requests from the U.S. government, including a personal appeal by President Bush, the FBI had continual difficulties in gaining access to witnesses and material evidence.

Spier saw that restricting funds for the Indonesian military would provide a financial incentive for cooperation. Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) later sponsored an amendment to prohibit “normalization” of the U.S.-Indonesia military relationship. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) sponsored a parallel amendment that prohibited the release of $600,000 in IMET military training funds. Both amendments passed in October 2003. Only “full cooperation” with the FBI in its investigation into the Timika ambush would prompt Washington to release these funds to the Indonesian military.

These congressional measures stymied Bush administration efforts to restore full military ties with Indonesia. Edmund McWilliams, formerly a U.S. Embassy political counselor in Jakarta, told us, “The FBI investigation, once it was finally launched, proceeded in the constraining political context of an administration policy which was pressing for rapid expansion of U.S.-Indonesian military ties. I personally observed FBI reluctance to accept or pursue information offered to it that pointed to Indonesian military involvement in the killings.”

Over a two-year period, Elsham’s John Rumbiak presented the FBI with specific details about Wamang’s ties to the Indonesian military. Senator Joseph R. Biden submitted written questions about this case to Dr. Condoleezza Rice during her January 19, 2005, confirmation hearing for the position of U.S. Secretary of State. Dr. Rice responded, “Although the investigation is not complete, the FBI has uncovered no evidence indicating TNI involvement in the Timika murders.” Did FBI investigators brief administration officials about Wamang’s trip to Jakarta and his extensive contacts with military agents? Were U.S. leaders informed about eyewitness reports of a second group of shooters?

Decky Murib was brought as a prosecution witness in the defamation suit against Elsham on 31 March 2004 in Jayapura, the capital of Papua. During the course of the trial, Murib stayed in the personal guest quarters of the Indonesian military commander for Papua. On 14 April 2004, the Elsham legal defense team staged a walk-out because the judges would not give them the opportunity to cross-examine Murib. The Elsham defense team was finally given the opportunity to question Murib on 5 May 2004, but Murib refused to answer any questions. On three separate occasions, Murib made death threats to Bebari, the human rights worker, in front of the court. The Elsham defense team asked that the judges take note of the threats. If bodily harm should come to their witness, the Elsham defense team observed, Murib would be suspected as the perpetrator.

Approximately one month later Bebari’s house was ransacked by an angry mob. A group of men wielding axes entered the house and grabbed Bebari’s wife, Nirmala Ohee, and their three children. The men destroyed books, clothes, and other personal property. They threatened to kill Nirmala Ohee and the children.

On 24 June 2004, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that Antonius Wamang had been indicted for the murders at mile 63. The indictment alleged that Wamang was a guerilla fighter seeking independence from Indonesia. He attacked the teachers to attract the international media attention. Ashcroft omitted any reference to the Indonesian military. The U.S. Department of Justice has not exonerated the TNI, but the TNI subsequently claimed exoneration. Following Wamang’s indictment, the Bush administration moved to eliminate the IMET training ban for Indonesian soldiers.

Less than one week after Wamang’s indictment, the Jayapura district court found Elsham guilty of libel. The rights group was fined 50 million rupiah (US$5,263) on 30 June and ordered to publicly apologize through national print and television media.

Following the indictment, the U.S. Congress dropped provisions that tied military education programs in Indonesia to cooperation in the Timika investigation. Yet, Indonesian authorities failed to capture Wamang. Willy Mandowen, a Papuan politician, began talking with the FBI and U.S. government officials about negotiating Wamang’s surrender. He sent an e-mail to a public discussion forum for Papuan activists on 7 December 2005: “Tomorrow at Capitol Hill, Washington D.C., we are meeting with important representatives of the U.S. Congress who are giving full support to help us resolve our problems in West Papua.” Congressional staffers talked with Mandowen about the possibility that FBI agents might bring Wamang to stand trial in America.

With Willy Mandowen’s help, Paul Myers and Ron Eowan of the FBI coordinated an 11 January 2006 “meeting” at a small hotel in Timika called Amole Dua. Invitations to this meeting were sent to suspects via Reverend Isak Onawame, a local church leader, who communicated extensively with Wamang’s group. The Washington Post reported that the FBI pledged to transport the suspects to the U.S. for trial. At the hotel, the two FBI agents told the 12 men attending the meeting, including Antonius Wamang, Reverend Onawame and two other church workers, to get into the back of a medium-sized truck. The agents reportedly said they would be driven to the Timika airport and flown out of Indonesia. Instead of driving to the airport, Myers and Eowan dropped the men at a local police station where Indonesian troops with the elite Brimob unit were waiting.

First the Indonesian police officers strip searched the 12 men. One detainee, Jairus Kibak, claimed he was hit by an Indonesian interrogator on his forehead. Four of them, who were never charged with any crime, were released on 12 January.

Reverend Onawame and his two church workers, Kibak and Esau Onawame, were not released. Denny Yomaki of Elsham Papua, who met with Reverend Onawame in the prison, said, “Interrogators extracted a false confession from Reverend Onawame. He told the police that he gave Wamang food.” Antonius Wamang has repeatedly said that Reverend Isak Onawame, and the two workers, were not involved in the crime. “It’s fine if I am held responsible,” Wamang said, “but, the Reverend didn’t even help us with logistics. He just wanted to visit the U.S. for free.”

The prisoners were soon transferred to the Indonesian Police Headquarters’ detention center in Jakarta. They were not given their own cells to sleep in. Instead they all shared the prison "TV room." Hardi Tsugumol, who was charged with providing Wamang with logistical support, developed serious heart problems in June 2006. His medical treatment was delayed until late August, when he underwent heart surgery. Tsugumol also suffered from hepatitis and HIV/AIDS. One of the prisoners’ lawyers, Riando Tambunan, repeatedly asked the court to attend to Tsugumol’s health problems. But, visits from doctors were infrequent.

Antonius Wamang was sentenced to life in prison by a Jakarta court on 7 November 2006. Two other defendants, teenagers Johni Kacamol and Yulianus Deikme, were sentenced to seven years in jail, while the other four, including Reverend Onawame, Hardi Tsugumol and the two church workers, were sentenced to 18 months. Tsugumol died on December 1st.

No charges have been brought against Sergeant Puji, the police officer who Wamang has fingered as supplier of the bullets used in the attack. Evidence of the reported involvement of Kopassus military agents—Captain Margus Arifin, First Lieutenant Wawan Suwandi, Second Class Sergeant I Wayan Suradnya, and First Class Private Jufri Uswanas—has not been heard by a court of law. Agus Anggaibak, who reportedly inspired Wamang’s attack and helped him get bullets, is now a member of Timika’s regional assembly.

The FBI does not yet consider this murder case closed. Despite the inconclusive outcome of this investigation, the Bush administration has launched aggressive new military aid programs for Indonesia. Earlier last year a new Pentagon program was announced that will provide up to $19 million in additional funds for building Indonesian military capacity. The same day that Wamang was sentenced to life, Washington signaled a “new era of military co-operation” with Indonesia.


This report is based on interviews with Wamang, Murib, Patsy Spier and more than 50 other sources in Timika, Jayapura, Jakarta, Washington DC. It is sponsored by the Joyo Indonesia News in New York and Pantau media group in Jakarta. S. Eben Kirksey conducted 17 months of anthropological research in Papua during six separate trips (1998-2005). He is now completing his Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz. Andreas Harsono is a Pantau journalist, currently writing his book From Sabang to Merauke: Debunking the Myth of Indonesian Nationalism.