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All is forgiven - who cares about the past?  Jokowi reinstates Prabowo

There’s a seething and brutal guerrilla war underway in the Indonesian provinces closest to Australia. Thousands have been killed but little is known because foreign journalists and UN inspectors are banned.

At first it was arrows against AK-47s, but the independence-seeking rebels are now better armed and more lethal.

 A just-concluded security deal with Jakarta gives Canberra a chance to offer mediation,  let observers in  and help secure the human rights we uphold in other  conflicts.

Though not this one. Instead we get closer to an antagonist, ignore the abuses and agree to be gagged under the Agreement Between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia on the Framework for Security Cooperation.

 The deal was ticked while Indonesian Defence Minister and President-elect Prabowo Subianto was briefly Down Under.  Defence Minister Richard Marles is reportedly heading to Jakarta soon for the big final inking.

Australians keen to understand what international handshakes are happening  in their name might want to know who we’re dealing with and scrutinise the language.

An ‘agreement’ may be a synonym for a ‘pact’, ‘alliance’ or ‘arrangement’ in casual talk, but it’s not a formal ‘treaty’, whatever Anthony Albanese suggested in a joint media statement on Tuesday.  (20 Aug).

Treaties around the world are big time, the most notable being the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a military alliance of 32 states founded in 1949. Members agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. 

The ANZUS Treaty with the US has been our supposed defence bedrock since 1952.

Staged bonhomie is essential in diplomacy - and collaboration better than confrontation. Unfortunately in our dealings with Indonesia straight talk is the casualty.

The PM's office calling Prabowo 'HE General (rtd)' may be polite but untrue. The career soldier was cashiered in 1998 for disobeying orders, then fled into exile in Jordan for seven years.  

Men under his control were allegedly involved in the disappearance of activist students.  Their families have staged Aksi Kamisan (Thursday action) demonstrations outside the Presidential palace in Jakarta every week since 2007 wanting to know what happened to their sons.

Prabowo's record as a commander in East Timor last century is allegedly grim.

Australian researcher Pat Walsh, who was involved in the new nation's Reconciliation Commission (CAVR) has called Prabowo  ”a person with demonstrated disregard for the rule of law, of both the domestic and international kind, and regarded by many as a war criminal.”

Prabowo denies wrongdoing and has never been charged in court. He becomes president in October having decisively won (58 per cent) of the February election.

Understandably, Australian ministers dealing with the world's fourth-largest nation with a population eleven times bigger prefer to dodge historical facts and sell out upholders of human rights.

Before the Tuesday announcement Daniela Gavshon, the local director at Human Rights Watch wrote that Australian government leaders should “raise concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in the Indonesian provinces of West Papua”.  

She alleged “ongoing abuses against indigenous Papuans include killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and mass displacement of people.”

According to four Australian academics including a former AFP investigator, "hundreds of thousands" have died since 1965 when Indonesia took over the territory.

There's no indication HR issues have ever been discussed during the negotiations.  Though the final text hasn't been released The Australian gave the show a page one paean, imagined multiple benefits, hinted China was a  common threat and  praised all participants.  

Prabowo would be delighted getting homeland-style  treatment in  a nation with a media reputation for tough reporting.

It's understood one article in the agreement bans Australian support, participation or encouragement in activities "including separatism".

There's no mention of West Papua but this is what the words are about - effectively gagging any Australian government from voicing distress and lobbying for resolution.

Far from being outraged Minister Marles has embraced the ban.  In February in Jakarta, he said:

 “There’s no support for any independence movements … we support the territorial sovereignty of Indonesia and that includes those provinces being part of Indonesia, no ifs, no buts, and I want to be clear about that.”

This week’s announcement dubbed by the ABC as an  "upgraded defence agreement",  hardly seems worth bedecking the halls. Yet the PM called it  "the deepest, the most significant agreement that our two countries have ever made."

 Marles likes the adverb ‘profoundly’ using it twice to describe the dealings.

The Australians' glee was not reflected in Prabowo's comments or demeanour. The best he could manage  was to call the deal a “good neighbour relationship.”

Instead, he spoke about the Olympics and illegal drugs,  notably  hosing down his host's ardour and extinguishing any hints of policy change:

"As you know we are, by tradition, non-aligned. By tradition, our people do not want us to be involved in any geopolitical or military alliances or groupings. I myself am determined to continue this policy."

While Albanese and Marles used ‘security’ to spruik the agreement as a defence deal, Prabowo only spoke of  ‘food security’.  No ’treaty’ on his lips, only Albanese’s:

“This historic treaty will bolster our strong defence cooperation by deepening dialogue, strengthening interoperability and enhancing practical arrangements.”

Using the term suggests that the local deal comes  within Coo-ee of NATO or ANZUS.  That’s ridiculous.  There's no suggestion we'll dash into the archipelago to help should anyone invade, or the other way around.

So what’s going to happen?   The PM again: “It will be a vital plank for our two countries to support each other's security, which is vital to both countries, but also to the stability of the region that we share.”

The best interpretation is that the Australian military will continue joint exercises with its Indonesian counterpart (the TNI) currently busy in West Papua.

 Indonesian HRW researcher Andreas Harsono told Michael West Media that any bilateral agreement  should include  defending the rights of all people:

 “I guess Indonesian officers will not be happy if Australian soldiers, involved in atrocities in Afghanistan are to take part in a military training program in Jakarta.

“Vice versa. Australian officers might not feel comfortable to train with abusive Indonesian soldiers who tortured indigenous Papuans.”

It hasn’t all been one-sided: This month guerrillas allegedly killed Kiwi chopper pilot Glen Conning; he was flying for an Indonesian company ferrying local health workers into a remote region.  The six passengers were reportedly unharmed.

Another NZ pilot Phillip Mehrtens was seized early last year by the  West Papua National Liberation Army.  He's reportedly alive and being held hostage.  The rebel group denies murdering Conning and has hinted at military involvement.

The PM said the agreement will “see us working together in the global commons to support the rules-based order and, importantly, it will allow us to operate from each other's countries."

Though not West Papua.

First published in Michael West Media, 22 August 2024: https://michaelwest.com.au/when-is-a-treaty-not-a-treaty-the-marles-and-prabowo-canberra-love-in/

 

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 TYRANNY OF PROXIMITY Duncan Graham

The pundits are already in a tizz: What’ll happen to defence, AUKUS, trade and other relationships should Trump win in November? More pressing and certain is how we’ll cope when Indonesia’s  President-elect Prabowo Subianto takes office in October.

Next door there’ll be a leader “with demonstrated disregard for the rule of law …seen by many as a war criminal” and not the person most  voters wanted in the February poll.  

Proof is that two earlier stabs at the Presidency and one at the VP job by the disgraced and aging former general had all been dumped by the electorate.

Prabowo only won this year when coupled with Gibran Rakabuming son of the current and popular President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo with voters hoping the lad will be Dad Version Two.

It’s widely accepted that the youngster’s  presence on the ticket has put right-wing Prabowo in power.

But for how long? The life expectancy for Indonesian men is 68. Prabowo will be 73 when inaugurated.  About half the population of the world’s fourth largest nation is under 30.

Should  plump, hot-tempered Prabowo become too unwell to govern, Vice President-elect, Gibran, 36, will be the youngest leader in Indonesian history - and probably the world.

He’s a Singapore-educated businessman from the regional city of Solo where he’s been mayor.  His wife accountant Selvi Ananda was a Catholic but had to convert to Islam to marry. He has no military background.

Prabowo is the Republic’s version of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.  There's little Indonesian material online to back that slander of fascism;  most comes from Australian researchers.

Instead, locals get details of Prabowo's massive electoral victory - 55.5 per cent in a three-man contest - won through playing the role of an avuncular and caring statesman.  Cartoon images contrived through his PR team have whitewashed his alleged villainy.

Missing are at-length interviews with independent Western journalists for Prabowo is afraid.  Not from misunderstanding questions in English, a language in which he’s fluent from schooling in London,  but because he’s a - let’s be careful here - stranger to frank talk with a free press.

He knows he’ll be asked about his past; however much he spins his sins of yesteryear and tries to push them away as unproved and unimportant, all the while claiming the future is the only thing that matters.  A pub-test fail.

For an oversight of the man who’ll lead the world’s fourth most populous nation with more Muslims than any other country - and our neighbour - the best analysis is a 12-page background briefing here.

It comes from Australian writer and human rights activist Pat Walsh who was seconded by the UN to help establish and advise the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CAVR) after the 1999 East Timor referendum.

It's a damning document that should have provoked legal challenges, but wasn't on TikTok so passed with little notice.  It's also possible Prabowo wasn't keen to fuel international publicity.

A shortened version was published ahead of the February election in the prestigious magazine Inside Indonesia with the heading: Is Prabowo fit and proper to be Indonesia’s next president?

This is Walsh’s answer: 

"Until he is cleared of allegations of wrongdoing, Prabowo is not fit and proper to serve as the president of this great nation.

"If Prabowo is elected a dark cloud will settle over Indonesia. Indonesia will be perceived as regressive, prepared to forget rather than remember and learn, and to tolerate impunity when, in fact, it could be a beacon of democracy and champion of the rule of law in a much-troubled region and world."

Corrosive, but the reality is that this is the man Canberra will have to deal with for the next five years.

Some of Walsh’s analysis is based on evidence given to CAVR; this concluded that the commando Kopassus Special Forces “were responsible for committing crimes against humanity and war crimes during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, 1975-1999.

“As a member and then a commander of Kopassus, Prabowo undertook at least four tours of duty in East Timor…They show (he was) anything but an innocent or bit player.”

Walsh’s voice is not isolated. Tim Lindsey, professor of Asian Law at Melbourne Uni has written:

“There are claims of human rights abuses against him (including alleged kidnappings, forced disappearances and war crimes by troops under his command); and his campaign was marred by accusations of unethical conduct and collusion.

“Prabowo has been very clear in the past that he thinks the democratic reforms that followed the fall of Soeharto in 1998, should be wound back.

“...as he settles into office, a further gradual dismantling of democratic checks and balances, institutions and individual freedoms is very likely. Critics of Prabowo have good reason to be concerned.”

After he was cashiered for disobeying orders, and his marriage with President Soeharto’s daughter Siti hit the rocks, Prabowo fled to exile in Jordan.

He returned years later as a businessman backed by his billionaire younger brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo who helped bankroll his third campaign.

Since the poll, Jokowi has restored Prabowo's rank as a four-star general.  He'd earlier made him Minister for Defence.

So how does Walsh feel now?

“I am shocked by the ease with which Prabowo won,” he told your correspondent. “That he pulled it off in one round against credible alternative candidates and despite his obvious unsuitability is stunning.

“That his military failures and dismissals, violations of human rights and the rule of law, international pariah status (declared persona non grata by three US presidents and Australia), age, lack of legislative and government experience and previous electoral failures, were ignored, beggars belief.”

International diplomacy protocols ensure Prabowo will be treated with respect by PM Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong whatever they feel personally. Indonesia is too big, too close and too important to snub.

Should he come to Australia he’ll be shielded from physical harm; but don’t expect any open media conferences.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 14 June 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/tyranny-of-proximity-link-out-answer/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHEGA! GETTING THE FACTS OUT

Memory as the mother of wisdom                                        

In the 2012 British comedy film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the ultra-optimistic  manager Sonny explains away his dysfunctional business with the memorable line:  ‘Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end’.

Seasoned Australian human rights campaigner Pat Walsh, 74, has adopted this reasoning to explain his optimism as he struggles to help Indonesians know the facts of their country’s recent history – and take responsibility for the crimes “that have so deeply scarred Timor-Leste”.

His brief on behalf of a non-government organization [NGO] covers the 25-year occupation of East Timor, a Portuguese colony from the 16^th century till invaded by Indonesian troops in 1975.  It’s now the nation of Timor-Leste with a population of about 1.2 million. 

In the August 1999 referendum authorized by Indonesian President BJ Habibie, almost 80 per cent voted for independence.  The Indonesian army (TNI) was outraged. Aided by militants it embarked on what Walsh calls “flat earth retribution.”

He was among official observers of the vote but the team pulled out when it became clear the result would not be accepted peacefully by the TNI. 

Walsh returned three months later to a tragic scene. Up to 2,600 people had been killed or disappeared.  “From the number and destruction of so many Indonesian government buildings in town after town we concluded two things,” he said.

“Indonesia had planned to stay forever, and that having lost, had no intention of coming back.”

But Walsh did come back, and for the next ten years worked in Dili for international agencies, including the United Nations. His main job was with the independent Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation, known by its Portuguese acronym as CAVR.

The seven East Timorese commissioners were tasked with ‘truth seeking’ for the period 1974 to 1999. Their  report  Chega! [Portuguese for ‘enough’] was published in Indonesian and Portuguese. To Walsh’s dismay there have been no mainstream media reviews or doctoral theses on the document.

Now a new five volume English version has been edited by Walsh after six months’ work in Jakarta. The study found almost 103,800 civilians died during the quarter-century conflict. Around 18,600 of them were killed or disappeared and at least 84,200 people died from hunger and disease.

The report has evidence from almost 8,000 victims, and includes sickening first person testimonies of rape and torture. Reading these made Walsh “very emotional … distressed and angry.”

His current job is with Asia Justice and Rights [AJAR], a European-funded NGO based in Jakarta ‘to strengthen accountability and respect for human rights’.

Walsh is distributing 1,500 boxed sets of Chega! to university libraries, NGOs  and media organisations. He’s criss-crossing the archipelago, lobbying politicians, showing videos and addressing law students, activists and anyone who’ll cock an ear. Condensed versions of Chega!, including comics, will be released next year.

“Many Indonesians still don’t know the truth about East Timor,” he said. “They accepted  President Soeharto’s line that East Timor was to Indonesia what Cuba was to the US – an offshore Communist enclave which could not be tolerated.

“That wasn’t true.  Fretilin [the political party fighting for independence] was not a Marxist or Communist movement, and it never wanted all Timor. Nor did it want to see the Balkanisation [fragmentation] of Indonesia.”

Walsh was speaking in Batu, East Java at Omah Munir, the museum celebrating the life of human rights activist and lawyer Munir Said Thalib who was assassinated in 2004. Although some of those allegedly involved were jailed, the masterminds behind his poisoning on board a Garuda flight have never been convicted.

Walsh’s presentation was titled Rediscovering Indonesia. The subtitle came from the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus: ‘Memory is the mother of wisdom’.  To this was added: ‘But a lost memory is the mother of a mistake!’.

Walsh has a resume that punctures the image of reconcilers as unworldly theorists who can’t face the rawness of realpolitik outside their aid-funded offices. He has fronted the Vatican and the US Congress to plead for the victims of brutality in East Timor.

Walsh studied military strategy to understand how soldiers think.  He directed the human rights office of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, and in 1983 co-founded the highly-respected magazine Inside Indonesia, now an Internet journal. 

Two years ago he was awarded the prestigious Order of Australia medal for his contribution to international human rights and reconciliation. These stripes on his sleeve have helped dissuade nationalists getting stroppy because an Australian is telling their history.

“I’m a sitting duck,” Walsh said.  “Many still blame Australia for the referendum and Indonesia losing its most easterly province.  So far no problems. My concerns are with the actions of governments, not the Indonesian people.”

Walsh was raised on a dairy farm in rural Victoria and educated in a seminary. For seven years he was a Catholic priest with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. He taught Latin, then Indonesian.

Walsh eventually left the priesthood, married, fathered three daughters and turned to the quest for a just world.

His studies aroused a strong concern for human rights and abuse of power. In 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor, and Melbourne became activism central.  Scores of political refugees gathered in the Victorian capital and worked to tell the world what was happening.

When Walsh wasn’t there he was in Indonesia until blacklisted in 1993. Walsh told Immigration they’d got the wrong person because Pat is also a woman’s name; no deal.

The recommendations in Chega! include reparation – from Indonesia and Australia which allegedly supplied arms to the TNI that were used against the Timorese.  So far - nothing.

“I’d like an independent Indonesian commission to examine how history is taught,” Walsh said. “Reparation isn’t money, but social services and support for victims.

“I feel a strong responsibility to ensure their voice gets out. I believe Indonesians will respond to this challenge.”

[Chega! Is on line at www.chegareport.net]

(First published in The Jakarta Post 29 December 2014)