Challenges in West Papua, New Roads, Military Impunity, Freeport, New Governor, MSG
CONTENTS: This edition of the West Papua Report offers the PERSPECTIVE of a longtime observer of West Papua who recently traveled to the Central Highlands, who reports the growing militarization of the region and the negative impact of that military build up on human rights and in stoking rising communal tensions. In UPDATE we note that the Indonesian military will shortly begin a massive road project which will likely service military rather than Papuan interests. New contract negotiations between the central government and the Freeport-McMoRan mining operation are proceeding absent West Papuan participation and without regard for their interests. The new Governor of Papua province appears not to understand problems of development and security facing the region. Papuans have again called for an end to the presence of the notorious "Special Forces" (Kopassus) in their homeland. Indonesian and international calls for an end to the impunity accorded Indonesian military leaders and personnel for human rights abuses are growing. That impunity gives license to continuing abuse and criminal activity by the military. WPNCL pressed it case to have West Papua join the Melanesia Support Group at a meeting with Fiji Prime Minister Banimarama. CHRONICLE highlights two first-hand accounts of the Wamena area and a review of Eben Kirksey's Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power.
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