Video offers window on rights abuses in Indonesia province

Reporting from Jakarta, Indonesia — 

The video, shot in the jungle of Indonesia’s restive Papua province, shows a wounded political activist lying face-up on the ground, surrounded by an armed national police tactical squad.

The captive, Yawan Wayeni, winces in agony, his head propped up on a log. A bloody sarong covers a gaping wound inflicted by the assailants with a bayonet, his intestines bulging from his stomach.

The seven-minute clip, the focal point of a new human rights campaign here, shows the men mocking Wayeni as he lies dying. At one point, Wayeni raises his fist in defiance.

“Papua freedom,” he says weakly, his head lolling.

“How are you going to get freedom when you’re like this?” one captor taunts Wayeni before he dies.

Since the video was recently posted on the Internet, activists have used it to pressure Indonesia to allow foreign access to the resource-rich province that critics say has long been closed to outsiders.

For nearly half a century, Papuans have waged a little-publicized struggle for independence from Indonesia. Human rights groups estimate that police and military forces have killed tens of thousands of native Papuans since the former Dutch colony, on the west side of the island of New Guinea, was absorbed into Indonesia in 1963.

Activists say elite strike teams, operating with little supervision 3,000 miles from Jakarta, the capital, have for decades run legal and illegal operations such as logging, prostitution and trade in endangered species to turn a profit.

“This video is a window into a very dark place in the world, and should influence the government to lift its ban on outsiders,” said Brigham Golden, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations task force focusing on Papua. “Without access, it’s brutally difficult to get information out of there; we just don’t know.”

Security forces operating in the province include special Indonesian police squads and a covert counter-terrorism and intelligence unit called the Indonesian Komando Pasukan Khusus, known as Kopassus.

Despite human rights abuse allegations concerning both units, the Obama administration has decided to resume training with Kopassus troops, whom it considers a key ally in fighting Islamic extremist groups in Indonesia.

The officers who interrogated Wayeni were part of an Indonesian National Police unit called Korps Brigade Mobil, or Brimob, said activists who have viewed the video. Kopassus has also frequently run exercises in Papua, analysts say.

Edward Aritonang, a spokesman for the Indonesian National Police, said officials were aware of the video. “Yes, we know about it,” he said, but would not comment further.

The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs disputed that Papua was closed to outsiders.

“People go there, but we have tried to be careful,” spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said. “Certain elements in Papua have tried to make use of these visits for their own purposes.”

Activists say the only way to enter the province is to pose as a tourist. Journalists and nongovernmental workers caught investigating human rights cases, filming demonstrations or discussing politics in Papua are most often deported, the activists say.

Activists also describe Papua as having an uncontrolled, Wild West air, in which the military freely takes advantage of native Papuans.

“Nobody is going to say no to them,” Golden said. “They’re free to do what they want.”

National police and military forces use torture and illegal detention to instill fear and discourage political agitators, the human rights activists say.

“They consider these people separatist rebels and believe any violence is legitimate,” said Usman Hamid, chairman of the nonprofit Commission for Disappearances and Victims of Violence, which investigates military human rights abuses.

“Watch the video of Wayeni’s torture. They had no remorse. They not only watched a man slowly die, they taunted him,” Hamid said.

Wayeni, a former tribal leader turned farmer, was jailed years ago for an alleged role in an attack on a police station. He escaped in 2007 and was placed on a wanted list.

On Aug. 3, 2009, police moved in on the fugitive at his farm on Serua island. Police say Wayeni drew a homemade firearm. Activists contend that he was unarmed.

The video, filmed by an officer with a cellphone camera, shows Wayeni dying in his own garden, challenging his captors after being bayoneted in the stomach.

“This land was promised by God to us, the Papuan people,” he says weakly.

“Wayeni doesn’t get it, does he?” one officer says.

“Yes, I know I am a simple man,” he responds. “I only have to tend my garden. I don’t know anything.”

Wayeni cries out: “God, the suffering of the simple people, there are so many! They are crying, oh God!”

A gunman rebuffs him: “God isn’t going to answer your prayers. People like you are savages.”

Wayeni was eventually taken for medical care, but soon died, police said.

Graphic Internet photographs of an injured Wayeni quickly surfaced, but activists could not corroborate them or pinpoint their circumstances.

In March, when the video was anonymously posted and Papuan investigators confirmed the details of Wayeni’s death, activists began circulating the video to Indonesian government officials.

“The response is always positive, but the Indonesian government is still weak; officials don’t have the control over military and police,” said Calum Hyslop, spokesman for Papua Watch Australia. “The international community needs to support civil control over Papua.”

He called the video a warning to the United States about dealing with Kopassus and other elite units.

“The military isn’t ready to be treated in a mature way. They haven’t reformed when it comes to human rights,” he said. “Those losing are indigenous Papuans, some of the most impoverished people in the world.”

Others say that Indonesians must also press for change in Papua.

“If the strong voices come only from outside, it reinforces the view that these cries of outrage are merely a hidden agenda to take resource-rich Papua away from Indonesia,” said Sidney Jones, senior advisor to the Asia program of the nonprofit International Crisis Group. “There has to be outrage from the Indonesian public to make a real impact.”

As Papuans lobby for a national dialogue about the province’s self-determination and military human rights abuses there, Hamid says the death of Yawan Wayeni must be part of the discussion.

Hamid wrote letters to government officials and tried to buttonhole politicians, to little avail.

“One member of parliament said he is trying to arrange a public hearing on the matter,” he said. “It’s a promise; it’s good. But so far it hasn’t happened.”

john.glionna@latimes.com