A graphic YouTube video emerged last week via Al Jazeera of two West Papuan farmers being tortured by Indonesian soldiers in the province of West Papua. The Indonesian government admitted the video, believed to have been taken in May of this year, was genuine, after initially stating it was fake.
After the footage surfaced the Indonesian government said it would investigate but members voiced suspicions that the video might be part of a separatist campaign to put pressure on them. But Friday Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto confirmed its authenticity and said the soldiers involved had been “unprofessional”.
There has been conflict since the Indonesian military moved into the area in 1963. Two years earlier people in the province, a former Dutch colony, had believed it would gain independence and created its own identity as West Papua, though these efforts were thwarted and the Indonesians have continued to lay claim to the area. Survival International said military operations in the area were routine where villages were burned and people forced to flee into the forest. It said a conservative estimate would put the number of deaths caused as a result of the conflict at around 100,000.
Sophie Grig, a campaigner for Survival, said there had been common accounts of soldiers taking footage of atrocities. “It’s not a surprise to us. I met one priest who said soldiers had come to their village and committed rape and had taken a video which had been shown around,” she said. “This kind of trophy taking, usually with photographs, is commonplace. It’s just a relief that it has got out because this has been going on a long time.”
Grig followed that although the separatists from the Free Papua Movement (OPM) had shown “low-level” resistance in the highland area, the response by the Indonesian military had been “completely disproportional” and was linked to valuable resources.
The Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro stated that soldiers who use excessive force during prisoner interrogations would be likely to face a court martial. “There was indeed a firefight at the time and those questioned were detainees. But it is not impossible that our soldiers behaved excessively. That will be dealt with. The president used the words ‘court-martial.”