Groups Condemn Sale of Deadly Attack Helicopters to Indonesia

Contact: Contact: John M. Miller, +1-917-690-4391, etan@etan.org Ed McWilliams, +1-575-648-2078 August 26, 2013 - The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) and the West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT) today condemned the U.S. government's decision to approve the sale of deadly Apache attack helicopters to Indonesia. The sale demonstrates that U.S. concern for greater respect for human rights and justice in Indonesia are nothing more than hollow rhetoric.   The new Apache attack helicopters will greatly augment the capacity of the TNI to pursue "sweeping" operations, extending TNI capacity to stage operations after dark and in ever more remote areas. The sale, announced during the visit of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to Jakarta, ignores the appalling record of human rights violations by the Indonesian military (TNI), which will operate this deadly weapons system. The helicopters are offensive weapons often used in counter-insurgency campaigns. The TNI continues to conduct military campaigns in West Papua. The military's "sweeps" and other military operations purportedly target the few remaining, lightly-armed pro-independence guerrillas. In reality, the operations are aimed at repressing and intimidating Papuans. The sweep operations, involve assaults on remote villages in West Papua, destroying civilian homes, churches and public buildings and forcing civilians from their homes. These attacks drive civilians into surrounding mountains and jungles where many have died due to a lack of food, shelter or medical assistance. The new Apache attack helicopters will greatly augment the capacity of the TNI to pursue "sweeping" operations, extending TNI capacity to stage operations after dark and in ever more remote areas. The statement by Indonesia's Minister of Defense that the sale does not include any conditions on the use of these weapons is especially concerning. The TNI use of these weapons platforms will be largely unconstrained. TNI personnel are not accountable to the civilian judicial system nor is the TNI as an institution subordinated to civilian government policy or operational control. For decades, the TNI has drawn funding from a vast network of legal and illegal businesses enabling it to evade even civilian government budgetary controls. Legislation to restrain the TNI has been weak or only partially implemented.   U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, second from left, meets with Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in Jakarta, Aug. 26, 2013. DOD photo by U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Aaron Hostutler   Background On Monday August 26, Secretary of Defense Hagel announced that the U.S. had closed a deal for Indonesia to buy eight AH-64E Apache attack helicopters for a half a billion dollars. The U.S. did not attach conditions restricting their use. The sale represents the latest step in the Pentagon's increased engagement with the TNI. In 1999, restrictions on U.S. engagement with the Indonesia military were tightened as the TNI and its militia allies were destroying East Timor (now Timor-Leste) following the UN-conducted referendum on independence. Through the 2000s, restrictions on engagement with the Indonesian military were gradually lifted, even though it remained unaccountable for its past crimes in Timor-Leste and throughout the archipelago  and rights violations continue in West Papua and elsewhere. Last year, ETAN and WPAT coordinated a letter signed by more than 90 organizations urging the U.S. not to sell the deadly attack helicopters to Indonesia. The groups warned that the helicopters will escalate conflicts in Indonesia, especially in the rebellious region of West Papua: "Providing these helicopters would pose a direct threat to Papuan civilians." ETAN, formed in 1991 and advocates for democracy, justice and human rights for Timor-Leste and Indonesia. Since its founding, ETAN has worked to condition U.S. military assistance to Indonesia on respect for human rights and genuine reform. See ETAN's web site:http://www.etan.org WPAT publishes the monthly West Papua Report.

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Pedalling for Papua in NYC August 22, 2013

Pedalling for Papua
Thursday, August 22, 2013, 7:00pm
Maryhouse, 55 E Third St, New York City (Lower East Side)

for more information contact: etan@etan.org or call 917-690-4391

RSVP on Facebook

Pedalling for Papua is coming to New York City! A 12,000 kilometer international bicycling and performance tour, Pedalling for Papua aims to raise awareness of the 50 year old human rights and environmental abuse in the underreported region of West Papua.

As home to the bird of paradise, the second largest jungle remaining in the world, and our planet’s most bio-diverse marine zone, this beautiful region has been subject to what many observers have dubbed a slow-motion genocide. Tens of thousands of indigenous West Papuans have died as a result of the military presence and lack of development in their homeland.

This story needs to be told, and it will be. Over six months, Jeremy Bally will tour a multimedia performance on his bicycle through seven countries.

The show takes recorded conversations with West Papuan exiles, refugees and activists live on stage through an original animation. 

This is projected beside Jeremy as he narrates with original spoken word poetry and ukulele based hip-hop music.

Entry is by donation. See you there!

About the Performance
In January and February 2013, Jeremy Bally conducted a series of interviews with members of the West Papuan diaspora. Among those he spoke with were musicians, students, activists, and former political prisoners. All of them identified as either refugees or exiles themselves, or having been born to refugees.

Those interviews were recorded with permission, and have been transformed into a story of West Papua by West Papuans. Now set to original animation, their story is narrated on stage through ukulele based hip hop and spoken word.

We believe that stories, when told well, have the power to change the world. Our vision for this performance is that audiences are at once engaged, educated and inspired to participate in building a peaceful future for West Papua.

Pedalling for Papua on Facebook, Twitter

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Free Papua Political Prisoners
Support the Appeal of Filep Karma's Daughter Sign the petition today!

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see also

• Read the monthly West Papua Report
• Indonesia and West Papua Struggles

Guatemalan path for Indonesian justice

Guatemalan path for Indonesian justice
By Andrew de Sousa*
Over two months ago, a packed courtroom in Guatemala City appeared to be in chaos. Many were in tears as the room filled with cries of "justicia!". The former military dictator General Efrain Rios Montt, meanwhile, was surrounded to ensure he would not escape.

What many assumed to be impossible had happened: someone was being held responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses of the past century, the genocide of the indigenous Maya of Guatemala. Despite its notoriously corrupt judicial system, Guatemala had become the first country in the world to convict a former president for genocide in its own territory. It was a legal victory for human rights everywhere and ideally will serve as precedent for holding other leaders accountable, including in Indonesia.

While separated by some 16,000 kilometers of Pacific Ocean, Guatemala and Indonesia have similar modern histories. At the beginning of the Cold War, the United States government felt threatened by progressive, leftist movements in both countries. A decade before the Central Intelligence Agency supported General Suharto's rise to power, the democratically-elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz was ousted in a CIA-backed coup d'etat, just two years after legalizing the communist party and 18 months into a modest land reform program perceived as a threat to US business interests.

Throughout the Cold War, the US provided support to both the Indonesian and Guatemalan militaries under the pretext of stopping the spread of Communism. Just as perceived links to the Communist Party of Indonesia, or Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), or Chinese ethnicity were used to justify the massacre of as many as one million Indonesians, the Guatemalan military killed an estimated 200,000 mostly unarmed indigenous Mayans who were assumed to be guerrilla sympathizers based solely on their ethnicity. Before the purge, the PKI was the world's largest non-ruling communist party.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, while the Indonesian military's atrocities extended to the annexed island of East Timor, now known as Timor-Leste, across the Pacific a succession of military regimes increased their repression of the Guatemalan people. While thousands of activists were disappeared in the cities, the military conducted a scorched earth campaign against the entire Maya population.

While then US president Ronald Reagan applauded the "wise and steadfast leadership" of General Suharto, his praise for Guatemalan General Rios Montt was even more effusive. According to Reagan, the military dictator who oversaw the 16 bloodiest months of the 36-year conflict in Guatemala was "a man of great personal integrity and commitment".

The conflict in Guatemala officially ended with the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords. The government agreed to uphold international human rights standards, end extra-judicial or clandestine security forces, stop extra-judicial executions and enforced disappearances, and create a United Nations-supported Historical Clarification Commission. The commission found that acts of genocide had occurred, with successive military governments responsible for 626 separate massacres and 93% of the deaths during the conflict, with 83% of the victims being indigenous Maya.

Still, for almost 15 years after the Peace Accords, Guatemalan courts refused to hold high-ranking officials responsible for the atrocities of the 1980s. A group of brave Maya survivors, organized as the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), helped to change that.

In 2000 and 2001, AJR filed legal charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against two former presidents, Romeo Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt, and their top military commands. The move appeared quixotic: Rios Montt enjoyed immunity as a sitting member of parliament, and his political ally, Alfonso Portillo, was president. With a lack of political will among judges and public prosecutors, the case stalled under the regularly filed appeals of defense lawyers.

In 2006, however, the system began to change. The UN created an International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, placing an international prosecutor in Guatemala to target organized crime. Then, in 2011, four low-level former soldiers were convicted and sentenced to 6,060 years in prison each for their role in the 1982 Dos Erres Massacre, the first time members of the military were found guilty for atrocities committed during the 1980s. A year later a fifth soldier was convicted and sentenced. When Rios Montt left parliament in 2012, he was placed under house arrest pending trial.

Within a year, Rios Montt was before a three-judge panel. Over six weeks, the court heard evidence of the military's systematic rape, torture and murder of rural subsistence farmers targeted merely for being from the Ixil Maya communities. Experts provided evidence that Rios Montt was fully aware and in command of these scorched earth operations, making him culpable of genocide. Rios Montt was sentenced to 80 years and immediately taken to prison.

On May 20, in an unprecedented ruling 10 days after the conviction, the Constitutional Court annulled the second half of the trial. Rios Montt was back under house arrest and many lamented a major defeat for the pursuit of justice. While the reversal was unwanted, for those most involved it was far from unexpected. From the beginning, the trial was not only about Rios Montt but also about to create a process of justice for Guatemala as a whole - and the elite in particular - to acknowledge that what had happened to the poor and indigenous Ixil Maya population was illegal and wrong.

The trial gave the people of Ixil a national stage to tell their story. Their testimony was broadcast and the public heard how children were forced to watch their parents being killed and fetuses ripped from their mothers' wombs. A former solider testified how the current president, Otto Perez Molina, ordered his troops at the time to burn villages and kill anyone who tried to escape. The most powerful message of all was "si hubo genocido!", or that genocide did occur. This motto was a rallying cry for an emboldened fight for justice - what was once only said in private or abroad was now in the open.

While impunity still reigns in Guatemala, it is only a momentary victory. The testimony of dozens of survivors, built upon decades of struggle and resistance, engendered hope more powerful than any court ruling. By refusing to let those in power silence them, some of the poorest and most oppressed people in the Western Hemisphere were able to accomplish the impossible. By holding Rios Montt accountable, if only temporarily, they have shown that it is possible for justice to prevail in even the most unlikely of circumstances.

Who is to say that the same cannot happen in the courts of Jakarta or the fledgling legal system in recently independent Timor-Leste? Certain prominent Indonesian politicians, including former military generals and at least one presidential hopeful, could easily be found culpable for human rights abuses if justice was legitimately pursued. While Guatemala's fight for justice has only now gained traction, 15 years after the initial calls ofreformasi and Indonesia still has not come to terms with its genocidal past.

In the words of Guatemalan genocide survivor Edwin Canil, "This has got a long way to go yet. It's just a question of who gets tired first: them or us. But we're still here and staying firm."

* Andrew de Sousa is with the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and a member of the board of the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN),

also published in Speaking Freely at Asia Times Online 

(Copyright 2013 Andrew de Sousa) 

Making a difference

Rev. Elice Higginbotham

East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN)

August  2013

Protester with signs outside ETAN's protest of the Appeal to Conscience award's ceremony in New York City. Photo by John M. Miller/ETAN.

Dear friend:

Do you ever wonder if signing a petition makes a difference?

Last spring, some shocked Indonesians informed ETAN that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was to be honored by the New York-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation, an organization dedicated (it said) to religious tolerance and human rights. Our immediate response was to organize protests against giving the "World Statesman Award" to SBY. Among other actions, we organized online petition that many of you signed.

I am writing to urge you to support ETAN by making a contribution today. Please go to www.etan.org/etan/donate1.htm to donate.

More than 2,000 of you spoke out against the award to SBY by signing ETAN’s petition. The petition motivated a spin-off in Indonesia, which gathered an additional 6,000 signatures, mostly from amazed, amused or outraged Indonesians. I was in Jakarta during this time and many Indonesians expressed their appreciation for ETAN's actions.

We weren’t surprised when SBY did, indeed come to New York to accept the “World Statesman Award.” Our old antagonist, Henry Kissinger, was on hand to present it at a big-ticket fundraising dinner. But so was ETAN’s “welcoming committee” of Indonesian, U.S. and other human rights advocates, who protested the award and spoke out about SBY’s real record on human rights, religious tolerance, and the rule of law in Indonesia.

Our actions helped to draw attention to Indonesia’s continued persecution of religious minorities and other human rights violations. For the first time the semi-weekly public protests by religious minorities in front of the National Palace in Jakarta drew regular media attention. Letters and other denunciations of the award from academics, rights activists, religious figures, and others generated news in Indonesia for weeks prior to the awards ceremony. Calls for SBY to make good on the promises he made in his acceptance speech continue to this day.

We were interested to learn just how “threatening” Indonesia’s diplomats find ETAN. We were told of a meeting among U.S.-based diplomats who blamed ETAN, among others, for the uproar about the award. We heard from Indonesians living in the New York area who had received offers of dollars and dinner to fill seats at the award presentation. Those bused in were forced to participate in a “counter-demonstration” aimed at covering up the truths that ETAN was exposing. We do not have access to the discretionary funds of the Indonesian Embassy; our protest was smaller, but all the more genuine.

Your signature made a difference. And so can your donation.

The “No Award for SBY” petition represents just one of ETAN’s deceptively modest efforts to keep Indonesia - and its continued military and economic support from the U.S. - in the public eye and before policymakers. These efforts have been making a difference for more than two decades and, with your support, will continue to do so.

Please contribute what you can. We depend on support from people like you. People who are dedicated to human and civil rights for the peoples of Indonesia.

Your financial contribution to ETAN will make a difference. With your help, ETAN can continue to:

• Keep you and others informed about violations of human rights, the role of corporate interests and other developments in West Papua through our monthly report,
  
• Respond to calls for action in response to reports of human rights violations,
  
• Provide firsthand reports on elections, legislation, economic development in Indonesia, West Papua, and Timor-Leste,
  
• Keep you aware of the influence of U.S. policy on events in Timor-Leste, Indonesia and West Papua – and keep U.S. and Indonesian policymakers aware that we are watching them.

Please see our website for information about our current campaigns.

Please give generously, so that together we can continue to make a difference. 
In solidarity,

Elice HigginbothamMember, Board of Directors, ETAN

P.S. Please consider becoming an ETAN sustainer by making a monthly donation by credit card. Help put ETAN on a firmer financial footing: information here.  

Watch The Act of Killing, Say Sorry for 65

In 1965-1966, up to a million Indonesians were massacred. Hundreds of thousands more were injured, disappeared, raped and imprisoned without trial. The United States and the United Kingdom secretly welcomed and supported the killings. Many of the mass murderers are still alive today and have never been brought to justice – on the contrary, the killers are celebrated as heroes. For fifty years the victims have been asking for justice and for the government to Say Sorry for ‘65, but Indonesia denies these crimes even happened. The new film THE ACT OF KILLING has finally exposed the staggering reality of Indonesia’s holocaust, and given the victims the chance they dream of – take action now to support their call for President SBY to Say Sorry for '65. Say Sorry for ’65 is campaign initiated by Tapol and supported by the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN). Take action! 1.Join the call for Indonesia President SBY to Say Sorry for 65 Sign Our Petition 2.Support the campaign for justice Donate 3.Find a screening near you Watch  Going to a showing of The Act of Killing? Print this and give out to the audience 4.Spread the word Watch the trailer Share the Video  The Act of Killing   5.Learn more about our campaign Read More  Download and print Factsheet: Minta Maaf! Say Sorry for 65 (PDF)   Background and links on 1965 killings, the film, and human rights and justice Subscribe ETAN's Key Contact List: ETAN action alerts, media releases, news and other resources