Indonesian President's Visit to OZ

Sydney, 9th March 2010

Under domestic political pressure with the controversial Bank Century bailout, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is visiting Australia today, to discuss security, the environment, and economic development with the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, with Indonesia is also the largest recipient of Australian aid.

However, despite democratisation, there are continuing human rights abuses, and there is increasing poverty in West Papua; 37,53% of people are below the poverty line (figures for March 2009). Jakarta’s policy, familiar from the days of the Suharto dictatorship, is to deploy more troops in the territory to respond to social unrest. This condition has been undermining the democratic process of Special Autonomy for Papua, which the Labour government in Canberra has supported.

Mr Musa Sombuk, MA is a leading West Papuan academic from the Social Science Department of Papua State University: Mr Sombuk calls on the Prime Minister to discuss with Indonesian President that Jakarta needs to open political dialogue with Papuans to address the social injustice before there are more atrocities. Failure to ameliorate conditions in Papua raises the spectre of more refugees seeking asylum in Australia, a big irritant in the bilateral relationship.

Meanwhile Imparsial is a human rights monitoring group in Jakarta concerned among other things, with the death penalty. Their latest report states that 21 of the 119 people (include two Australians on death row) sentenced to death across the country were executed between 1998 and December 2009 and almost half of those were executed in 2008 alone, when 10 prisoners faced the firing squad.

Mr Darma Rusdi Marpaung is a prominent Indonesian human rights activist from Imparsial, Mr Marpaung asks that the Labor government should ask President Yudhoyono to ratify the second option protocol of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which aims at the abolition of the death penalty.

Indonesian Solidarity is an independent non-profit human rights NGO. To interview either of these activists please contact Eko Waluyo on 04160809107 or at indonesian_solidarity@yahoo.com.au