Torture and Peacebuilding in Indonesia

The Case of Papua

Budi Hernawan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317290162
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Pace e sviluppo globale

State-sponsored torture and peacebuilding encapsulate the essence of many of the current conflicts in Indonesia. Papua in particular provides a thought-provoking example of the intricacy and complexity of building peace amidst enduring conflict and violence.

This book examines the complex power relations that have constructed the gruesome picture of the fifty-year practice of torture in Papua, as well as the ongoing Papuan peacebuilding movements that resist the domineering power of the Indonesian state over Papuans. Conceptualising 'theatres of torture and peace', the book argues that torture in Papua is performed in public by the Indonesian state in order to communicate its policy of terror towards Papuans - it is not meant for extracting information, gaining confessions or exacting punishment. A Torture Dataset is provided, codifying evidence from a broad range of cases, collected through sensitive interviews. In examining the data, the author crafts a new, more holistic framework for analyzing cases of torture and employs an interdisciplinary approach integrating three different theories: Foucault's theory of governmentality and sovereignty, Kristeva's theory of abjection and Metz's theory of memoria passionis (the memory of suffering).

The book successfully establishes a new understanding of torture as 'public theatre' and offers a new perspective of strengthening the existing Papuan peacebuilding framework of Papua Land of Peace. It will be of interest to academics working on Southeast Asian Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding, Human Rights and Anthropology of Violence.

1Locating torture in Papua

Confronting disturbing phenomena

In early 1998 during the first six months of my residence as a member of the Pastoral Team of St Joseph’s Parish in Enarotali in the highlands of Paniai, Papua,¹ I confronted marks of torture presented to me by the locals. During private conversations with torture survivors, who were mostly our parishioners, I witnessed marks of torture left by the Indonesian military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia/TNI) on the bodies of Papuans in the highlands of Paniai. The survivors narrated their stories in whispering voices while showing swollen legs and hands, bruised eyes, or red scars all over their bodies. Although none of them were bleeding, it was obvious that they could not hide their pain, with terrified faces and tears in their eyes. In confidence, one by one they voluntarily told their experiences of being almost drowned in freezing water in a ditch, beaten up with a piece of wood or a rifle butt, humiliated in front of their family, or being forced to give some cash to the Indonesian soldiers in exchange for promises of protection from further harassment. All of this mistreatment happened because the TNI accused them of supporting a Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka/OPM) based in Paniai led by the late TPN-OPM leader Tadeus Yogi by providing supplies and logistics.

I had carefully documented some ninety victims’ stories before I found similar incidents in the neighbouring villages, especially around the Waghete area. When I put all the jigsaw pieces together, I found that patterns of mistreatment of the TNI against the Papuans were no coincidence. They indicated a high degree of intentionality and regularity. All incidences were reported by the three main Church leaders of Papua (Catholic, GKI and KINGMI) to the Commander of the Army in Jayapura in July 1998 under the title ‘Hak-Hak Azasi Manusia di Wilayah Paniai dan Tigi, Irian Jaya’ (The Human Rights Situation in Paniai and Tigi, Irian Jaya). The Churches’ report had an impact on the ground as the TNI groups were replaced by new ones which were reportedly more restrained. However, we never heard of any criminal investigation over the incidents and thus we cannot assume that the soldiers were ever held accountable, although by then Indonesia’s reformasi was on the move.

My confrontation with torture incidents in Papua did not stop there. In 2010, torture footage from Papua was leaked on YouTube and grabbed international attention (Hernawan 2016). The footage contains graphic images of two Papuan highlanders being tormented by a group of TNI in front of their community. As I will fully discuss this particular incident in Chapter 3, it will suffice to say at this stage that the event was not uncommon but the distribution of the footage through the internet was entirely novel. The setting of the incident was very much similar to that in Paniai. It targeted villagers/highlanders who were located in the remote area of Papua with limited access to public scrutiny. The way of responding to the incident and exposing the crime was entirely different from what the Papuan Church leaders did in 1998. The human rights activists called on the international public to act, which eventually led to prosecution of the perpetrators.

Finally, another confronting phenomenon occurred on 2 May 2016. At least 2,190 Papuans, men and women, members of Komite Nasional Papua Barat (KNPB/West Papua National Committee) were arrested by the Indonesian police in seven Indonesian cities, including Jayapura, Sorong, Merauke, Wamena, Semarang, Makassar and Manokwari.² They took to the street to protest what they called the beginning of Indonesian’s occupation over then West New Guinea back in 1 May 1963. This was the day when the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority transferred the administration of West New Guinea to Indonesia’s hands. The protesters believed that 1 May 1963 was when the Indonesian oppression against indigenous Papuans began by violating Papuan rights to self-determination. Therefore, they demanded a new referendum for Papuans to be held again today.

The incident constituted the largest police arrests in a single day throughout the history of Papua. The Indonesian police forced people to strip their clothes, including women, to half-naked. Most of them were beaten and left bare under the scorching sunlight in the front yard of the Mobile Police (BRIMOB) headquarters in Kotaraja. In the downtown Provincial Capital of Jayapura, the police harassed a journalist from a local online publication, Suara Papua, and denied access to other journalists to cover the event. Nevertheless, the police publicly demonstrated that they had no hesitation in deploying large state resources to suppress the demonstration, even if the public closely watched their action across eight locations in Indonesia. The police actions were captured by amateurs who instantly distributed images and videos through both the mainstream³ and social media.

The KNPB demand was also a signpost for another related event held in London on the following day (3 May 2016). A group of concerned lawyers and parliamentarians under the name of International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) expressed their calls for reviewing the so-called Act of Free Choice, which had been held nearly fifty years ago in 1969 under the UN auspices (see Chapter 3), as it was considered legally flawed. Although the event received little attention from the British public, it drew various reactions from the Indonesian audience and Indonesian authorities, including a visit from the Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Security, Legal and Political Affairs, Luhut Panjaitan.

If we juxtapose the three cases, we will find that the victims experience the impact of torture in different ways. In the first two instances, although they were exposed by national and international media, torture broke the spirit of the victim villagers as they became traumatised, paralysed and silenced. On the contrary, the young Papuans became more resilient in pursuing their campaign for their agenda for a referendum. They continue expressing their political aspirations in public both inside and outside Papua. In the three settings, apart from victims and perpetrators, we should not forget the role of caregivers who work closely with victims, such as the Papuan churches, human rights organisations and the media. Caregivers play a central role in exposing the disturbing phenomenon of torture.

The dynamics of the three torture incidents encapsulate the essence of this book. That is, torture in Papua is a theatre. The acts of torture are not hidden in a secret chamber. Rather, they have been displayed in public by the Indonesian security apparatus to infuse terror into the Papuan society. In the last fifty years, the practice of public torture in Papua has become an integral part of how the Indonesian state governs Papua with complete impunity, and hence it constitutes what Foucault (1991) calls a symbolic torture. These stories, however, are only the tip of the iceberg of state-sponsored torture in Papua, as recorded in the Torture Dataset which I generated from the available archives in Papua.

But we might ask: why have the Papuans experienced the long-term practice of state-sponsored torture, so that this book only deals with Papua? I found at least three answers for this. First is the question of sovereignty. Papua is the only region in Indonesia that was incorporated into the Indonesian state through a lengthy post-colonial dispute over sovereignty. This historical background has consolidated a legacy of political resistance in Papua which began when President Sukarno launched Trikora (the Three Peoples’ Commands) to date (see Chapter 3).

Second, Papua is the only region in Indonesia that confronts the issue of separatism. Following Indonesia’s reformasi in 1998, Papua was one of the three areas, including Aceh and East Timor, to be granted greater autonomy to govern their own regional governments. These three regions experienced high levels of state violence, which have followed different paths towards resolution. East Timor was granted an opportunity by President B.J. Habibie to exercise the right to self-determination, in which the people of Timor-Leste eventually opted for independence in 1999. Aceh, in contrast, embarked upon peace negotiations that resulted in a peace accord, internationally known as MOU Helsinki, in 2005. Apart from the question of justice and accountability, which remains unresolved, the two regions have experienced considerable peace and reconciliation at the interpersonal and communal levels. Such a situation does not apply in Papua. It continues to confront the issue of separatism, which has met with an oppressive response from the Indonesian state.

The level of oppression becomes the final reason to select this location. As a consequence of ongoing resistance, Papua has become the most violent area of Indonesia that has experienced a high level of militarisation since it was administered by Indonesia in 1962. While militarisation was a common phenomenon across Indonesia during Sukarno and Suharto’s regimes, Papua’s experiences with the intensity and duration of Indonesian militarisation seem incomparable with any other regions in Indonesia. The impact of long-term oppression with almost complete isolation from any attention from the outside world can be observed from the spread of many Papuan refugees not only in the Pacific, such as in PNG, Australia and Vanuatu, but even across continents such as in the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden, although their numbers are actually not very high in international comparative terms.

Therefore, I ask four questions to examine this disturbing phenomenon:

aWhat are the raison d’être and structure of the politics of torture in Papua?

This question is examined through the Torture Dataset to identify key patterns of torture and their dynamics that have constructed the politics of torture in Papua.

bWhat is the underlying logic that underpins this politics?

This question will lead the investigation into the discussion of webs of powers to explicate the mechanisms and governing principles that construct, maintain and reproduce torture in the Papua setting.

cWhat are the differences between the ways in which the politics of torture is understood by perpetrators, torture survivors and spectators?

This question aims at understanding internal and interpersonal dynamics of actors involved in torture. This investigation will analyse similar, different and contradicting arguments among different actors to explicate their motivations, justifications, postures and mindsets in relation to torture conceptualised as a ‘theatre of torture’.

dWhat kind of peacebuilding will adequately come to grips with these logics and practices?

Having identified the nature and underlying principles of torture in Papua, this investigation will analyse existing peacebuilding frameworks to integrate new elements identified from the Torture Dataset. This integration may help strengthen the existing frameworks, particularly the Papua Land of Peace framework, as a ‘theatre of peacebuilding’.

Inspired by the hope of generating a new theory from a case study as advocated by some scholars (Flyvbjerg 2004; George and Bennett 2004), this book reflects upon a detailed examination of a complex case study of torture in a specific context to generate a ‘paradigmatic case’. This term refers to ‘cases that highlight more general characteristics of the societies in question’ such as the Panopticon and European prisons for Foucault, the ‘deep play’ and the Balinese cockfight for Geertz as identified by Flyvbjerg (2004: 427).

Risks and challenges

I found that researching a politically sensitive topic, like torture, in a vulnerable society, like Papua, is a risky and challenging business. I confronted a number of challenges in collecting data. First, keeping records in Papua and across Indonesia remains a big issue. Very few government offices, NGO archives or university libraries in Papua keep records in an organised manner. I managed to access sixteen sources of data, twelve of which are public archives, whereas only four sources are personal archives. Moreover, only 17 per cent of the total cases come from the private archives. This means 83 per cent of the Torture Dataset does not come from secret reports, but has become public knowledge in Papua, Indonesia and even the international community, because it has been presented to relevant authorities and placed in the public domain.

Second, as written public documents, the torture files are not raw materials but they have been subjected to three different levels of scrutiny: first, by the reporting organisations and individual researchers that wrote those reports; second, by the Indonesian authorities that received the reports; and finally, by the public.

The challenge, however, is that the ‘torture files’ do not record all stories of Papuan oral traditions. For example, many recorded events post-1990 and very limited records on the events of 1960–1980 are publicly available, whereas other historical materials, including Indonesian military history (Cholil 1971; Osborne 1985; Pusat Sejarah dan Tradisi TNI 2000; TAPOL 1983), explain that Papua witnessed various intensive mil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Seriestitle
• Contributors
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Locating torture in Papua
• 2 Reconstructing torture: sovereign power, abjection and memoria passionis
• 3 A genealogy of torture
• 4 The anatomy of torture
• 5 Theatre of torture
• 6 Theatre of peace: reimagining ‘Papua Land of Peace’
• 7 Lenses on torture and peacebuilding
• Index