Mysterious killings seek to silence Papuan voices

[struggle4progress]

August 26, 2007

~snip~ No one saw who killed them, and the church report obtained by The Sunday Age described their deaths as "mysterious killings" — a term with a particular meaning in Indonesia. It suggests there's no mystery at all.

The term emerged in the mid-1980s, when Indonesian soldiers and police killed about 5000 criminal suspects, mostly in Java. The killings remained unexplained until 1989, when then president Soeharto admitted ordering them in a campaign of "shock therapy".

Church workers who investigated the Nabire killings believe they, too, were carried out by Indonesian security forces — part of a largely hidden but steady trickle of murders, designed to intimidate Papuans seeking independence.

With churches stepping into the void left by a crackdown that has effectively silenced Papuan nationalists, clergy and church workers are increasingly targeted for harassment, intimidation and worse. The targets include the Reverend Socratez Yoman, head of the Baptist churches in Papua and an outspoken critic of human rights abuses. He alleges Indonesian police and army intelligence officers last month threatened him with a pistol outside his church in Jayapura, the Papuan provincial capital. ~snip~


http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/mysterious-killings-seek-to-silence-papuan-voices/2007/08/25/1187462582842.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
warning: graphic photos at link

[greenman3610]

1. "the targets include"

The targets include the Reverend Socratez Yoman, head of the Baptist churches in Papua and an outspoken critic of human rights abuses.

So we can expect the Southern Baptist convention to speak out
against this, right?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks for this post. Had not heard about it. So ugly to learn this has happened.

Lives snuffed out just because they can.

What a damned shame.

Yeah, I'll be looking for those public statements of support for these people from the American Baptists, too!

[dipsydoodle]

3. Indonesia has a lot to answer for

and so has the USA.

The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975 set the stage for the long, bloody, and disastrous occupation of the territory that ended only after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999. President Bill Clinton cut off military aid to Indonesia in September 1999—reversing a longstanding policy of military cooperation—but questions persist about U.S. responsibility for the 1975 invasion; in particular, the degree to which Washington actually condoned or supported the bloody military offensive. Most recently, journalist Christopher Hitchens raised questions about the role of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in giving a green light to the invasion that has left perhaps 200,000 dead in the years since. Two newly declassified documents from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, released to the National Security Archive, shed light on the Ford administration’s relationship with President Suharto of Indonesia during 1975. Of special importance is the record of Ford’s and Kissinger’s meeting with Suharto in early December 1975. The document shows that Suharto began the invasion knowing that he had the full approval of the White House. Both of these documents had been released in heavily excised form some years ago, but with Suharto now out of power, and following the collapse of Indonesian control over East Timor, the situation has changed enough that both documents have been released in their entirety

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/