John Rumbiak Human Rights Defender Award

Last month, ETAN and our national coordinator received the John Rumbiak Human Rights Defender Award for 2009 from the West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT).

Above is a photo of the plaque, which just arrived.

The award is given annually by the West Papua Advocacy Team to organizations and individuals who have "contributed most substantially to protection of human rights in West Papua."

SBY Implicated in Cover Up of Ambush Murder of U.S. Citizens

On July 1st, 2009, ETAN released recently declassified U.S. government documents about the 2003 killing of three including two U.S. teachers at the Freeport mine in West Papua.

On July 8, John M. Miller, ETAN National Coordinator appeared on Democracy Now!, (with Eben Kirksey and Paula Makabory to discuss the case and the Indonesian elections.





Also the West Papua Advocacy Team released a statement on the recent killings in Timika, West Papua. It observes that:

A race to find scapegoats appears underway.

Sign the Petition - Don't Train Indonesia's Deadly Kopassus

Sign the Petition - http://www.gopetition.com/online/29600.html

(Spread the word!)

Indonesia's Special Forces (Kopassus), more than any other in the Indonesian military, stands accused by the Indonesian people of some of the most egregious human rights violations.

The history of Kopassus human rights violations, its criminality and its unaccountability before Indonesian courts extends back decades and includes human rights and other crimes in East Timor, Aceh, West Papua and elsewhere. The crimes of Kopassus are not only in the past. A recently published Human Rights Watch report details ongoing Kopassus human right violations in West Papua.

In 2008, the Bush administration proposed to restart U.S. training of Kopassus. the State Department legal counsel reportedly ruled that the ban on training of military units with a history of involvement in human rights violations, known as the Leahy law, applies to Kopassus as a whole.

Read the letter signed by more than 50 U.S. organizations opposing training for Kopassus. For additional background about the crime of Kopassus click here.

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