International tribunal demands end to Indonesia’s 'cold genocide' in West Papua

The “Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” took place last month at Queen Mary University of London.

A panel of tribunal experts heard evidence from numerous international NGOs and local civil society organisations as well as testimonies from individuals who have witnessed human rights violations and environmental destruction.

The Tribunal stated that the Indonesian state has forcibly taken Indigenous Papuan lands through racial discrimination, leading to cultural loss and violent repression, including unlawful detention, extrajudicial killings, displacement, and environmental degradation. It urged the international community, particularly the UN, to respond urgently to the situation in Papua.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) is a public opinion tribunal based on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (Algiers, 1976) and on all the instruments of  international law; the various chapters of the PPT have sought to struggle against impunity and to promote respect for human rights, access to justice and the re-appropriation of the human rights instruments; the PPT is able to adjudicate flagrant, systemic and systematic violations of the rights  of peoples;

It combined legal scholars, right-defending NGOs, and West Papuans in exile, with eye-witnesses from West Papua connecting via online calls. These tribunals examine international law, but cannot enforce their judgement. The Indonesian state is accused of the following, 

The Indonesian state is accused of taking the ancestral land of the Indigenous Papuan people against their will, employing racial discrimination which leads to the loss of culture, traditions and Indigenous knowledge, erases their history and subsumes them into the Indonesian national narrative. 

The Indonesian state is accused of violent repression, including unlawful detention, extra-judicial killing, and population displacement in West Papua as a means of furthering industrial development.

The Indonesian state is accused of organised environmental degradation, including the destruction of eco-systems, contamination of land, the poisoning of rivers and their tributaries and of providing the permits, concessions and legal structure of non-compliance for national and foreign companies to invest in West Papua in a way that encourages environmental degradation.

The Indonesian state is accused of colluding with national and foreign companies to cause environmental degradation, population displacement and sustain violent repression in West Papua.

The panel of experts comprised of Teresa Almeida Cravo (Portugal), Donna Andrews (South Africa), Daniel Feierstein (Argentina), Marina Forti (Italy), Larry Lohmann (UK), Nello Rossi (Italy), and Solomon Yeo (Solomon Islands), according to the website of Queen Mary University of London

The territory of West Papua refers to the Western half of the island of New Guinea, partitioned as a result of European colonial settlement. West Papuans, an Indigenous Melanesian people, have been engaged in a struggle for their right to self-determination since colonisation by the Netherlands in 1898.

Responding to the final statement of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Papua in London, Amnesty International Indonesia’s executive director Usman Hamid said:

“The final statement truly mirrors the deteriorating developments in Papua. Their historic findings signal the depth of human rights violations and environmental destruction in the region.

“The tribunal is a great start to paving the way to justice in Papua and we hope that it serves as an opportunity for the international community to stand in solidarity with the people of Papua, to acknowledge their suffering and to support their fight for human rights.

“The Indonesian authorities have continuously failed to end the conflict that keeps claiming more civilian lives in the region. It is therefore essential for authorities to evaluate its military operations and business activities by corporate actors to ensure the recovery and the protection of human rights in Papua.

“This arduous path of justice for Papuans must end. It is high time for the international community to call on the Indonesian authorities to end the long-established violence.”

Read more here and here

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button