WEST PAPUA: New link between Indonesian special forces and Papua killings
PINA Nius Online, Saturday: November 2, 2002
Sydney
American intelligence agencies have intercepted messages suggesting Indonesian special forces soldiers were behind an ambush at a mine in West Papua, the Sydney Morning Herald reported today.
Three schoolteachers – two of them Americans – were killed in the attack near the giant American-run Freeport-McMoRan gold and copper mine on 31 August.
The newspaper reported a source close to America’s Jakarta embassy said the ambush was to pressure the mining company. This was to continue paying a “protection” payment of more than $US10 million to military elements.
Papua, a big and rebellious Indonesian province, covers the western half of the island of New Guinea.
Evidence Indonesian soldiers ran the ambush is becoming a serious diplomatic embarrassment as the USA Administration looks for ways to help Indonesia fight terrorism, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
The source believes American officials are deeply worried such intelligence, plus investigations at the mine township at Timika by American FBI agents, could cut affect current USA policy. This is to reopen links with Indonesia’s military.
The source said: “They know the killing of the two Americans was initiated by Kopassus [the Indonesian army's special forces] but they sit on the information because it hurts their larger interests.”
Several reports citing senior military and intelligence sources say Indonesian police have already zeroed in on soldiers as the chief suspects, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
However, the head of police in Papua, Inspector-General Made Mangku Pastika – who has been switched to head the Bali bombing investigation – would only say it was “one of the possibilities”.
Indonesian defence headquarters sent its military police commander, Major-General Sulaiman, to Papua a week ago to confer with police about the case.
But on Thursday, the armed forces commander, General Endriartono Sutarto, denied hearing from any source that army personnel were involved, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
A separate case, the killing of the West Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay nearly a year ago, has led to murder charges against 10 Kopassus and other personnel.
The Timika incident arose from a breakdown in the regular flow of funds to the military from the mine, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The company, Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc of New Orleans, had been finding it more difficult to account for the “protection” pay-off, the newspaper said. This was because of the climate of tighter auditing scrutiny in the USA following several financial scandals.
As well as paying the costs of troops stationed around the mining township and the mine itself high above on Grasberg mountain, the source said Freeport had been making a large cash payment to the regional command.
The Sydney Morning Herald said: “On many years, around the time the payment was due, the military had staged riots and other incidents attributed to Papuan separatists to remind the company of security dangers that could arise.”
Two Western military experts in Jakarta told the Sydney Morning Herald they were not aware of any specific intelligence pointing to who was responsible for the attack.
But both experts believed the ambush was conducted by Indonesian soldiers, whether from Kopassus or an infantry battalion stationed in Papua, it said.
The Indonesian military had tried to blame fighters from the Free Papua Movement (OPM) for the attack.
But this was denied by the Free Papua Movement and quickly questioned by both Indonesian human rights groups and some police officers.
Resource-rich West Papua is a former Dutch colony controversially taken over by Indonesia in the 1960s after American pressure on the Dutch at the time of the Cold War.
Ambushed U.S. Teachers Say They Were Shot by Papuans
Nov. 3
By Paul Tait
Sydney (Reuters)
At least three Papuan men fired about 200 rounds from rifles and shotguns into a convoy of mainly U.S. teachers, killing three, near a huge gold mine in Indonesia’s Papua two months ago, ambush victims said on Sunday.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the August 31 ambush, the eight U.S. survivors of the attack described in an e-mail to Reuters they were trapped for about 30 minutes as the gunmen fired methodically into their vehicles.
“We waited in sorrow and pain, preparing to die,” the victims said of the ambush, in which 10 people were injured.
Their account is the first reliable description to emerge of the ambush, which is still under investigation. Speculation over who was responsible has swung wildly from Papuan separatists to the Indonesian army or Papuans working for Jakarta’s military.
U.S. teachers Saundra Hopkins and her husband Ken Balk said they had expected to die and said good-bye to each other and their six-year-old daughter Taia as they lay wounded.
“They cried and hugged and told each other how much they were loved,” the victims said.
Hopkins said the party was returning from a picnic to the high-altitude town of Tembagapura along a winding, narrow road near the world’s largest gold and copper mine, operated by U.S. miner Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc in the province formerly known as Irian Jaya.
She said she saw one of the gunmen clearly in profile.
“He was Papuan, with bushy hair held back by a head band,” Hopkins told Reuters.
“He was wearing a black T-shirt and dark brown camouflage pants. He was holding a rifle,” said Hopkins, who had been working with her husband at a Tembagapura school for Freeport employees for about a year.
She said she saw other men, one of whom was wearing a green army jacket, run down an embankment from the road.
Investigations Continue
Indonesian police say they are investigating several possibilities, including whether the Indonesian military were involved in the ambush.
An Australian newspaper reported on Saturday that U.S. intelligence services had intercepted messages between Indonesian army commanders that implicated them.
The Sydney Morning Herald said a source close to the U.S. embassy in Jakarta suggested the ambush was linked to a protection racket targeting the mine.
Australian academic Dr Harold Crouch said identification of the gunmen as Papuan did not rule out military involvement.
He pointed to the military’s use of militias that killed hundreds in East Timor after it voted for independence.
“It doesn’t even have to be militia, it can be Papuans in the army for that matter,” said Crouch, senior fellow in Indonesian politics at the Australian National University in Canberra.
The Free Papua Movement, which has fought a low-level guerrilla war against Indonesian rule for decades, has denied responsibility for the ambush. It blamed the Indonesian military.
U.S. teachers Ted Burgon and Rick Spier, sitting in the front seat of the first of two four-wheel drive vehicles, were hit by shots fired through the windshield and died almost immediately. Indonesian Bambang Riwanto also died in the first vehicle.
Hopkins said she stood during the attack and screamed “Gurus, gurus, escola Amerika” — Bahasa Indonesia for “Teachers, teachers, American school” — to try to deter the gunmen.
Killings in Indonesian Province Investigated by FBI
Voice of America, Patricia Nunan
Jakarta
05 Nov 2002, 09:52 UTC
Indonesian officials say four members of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation have visited the separatist province of Papua, to learn more about the deaths of two Americans and an Indonesian killed in an ambush in late August. The victims worked for the U.S.-owned mining giant Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold, whose presence in the province has been controversial. It was supposed to have been a pleasant Saturday afternoon outing. A group of eleven teachers and some family from an international school linked to the Freeport mine went on a picnic. But as their convoy climbed the steep, mountainous road leading home to the town of Tembagapura, it was ambushed. When the gunfire stopped, two Americans and one Indonesian were dead, and 10 others were wounded. The murders sent shockwaves throughout the international business community and the Indonesian government in Jakarta, in part because international staff had rarely been targeted in Papua’s long-running conflict with the central government.
John Rumbiak is with the Papuan Institute for the Study and Advocacy of Human Rights, or Elsham – which launched an investigation into the murders immediately after they occurred. He alleges Indonesia’s special forces, known as Kopassus, are involved. “We found that by interviewing witnesses, Freeport employees, as well as the information that we obtained through the survivors
indicates strongly that this incident on the 31st of August implicates the Kopassus,” he says. Thousands of Indonesian soldiers and police are based in Papua Province – the western half of the island of Papua New Guinea. They have been fighting a low-intensity conflict against separatist rebels since the 1960’s. Papua was integrated with Indonesia in 1969, after a special ballot. But independence supporters say the vote was rigged in Indonesia’s favor and they want the United Nations to review the approval it gave to it.
To many, Papua is worth fighting over. Located some 2,300 kilometers east of the Indonesian capital, the province has vast mineral deposits, including the gold and copper mined by PT Freeport Indonesia, the local subsidiary of the U.S.-based Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold. Freeport’s position as the only major foreign investor in a largely underdeveloped province puts it in a unique position. Founded in 1969, Freeport’s Grasberg open pit mine is the second largest copper mine in the world and it boasts the world’s largest gold deposits. It reportedly earns $1 million a day, and it is Indonesia’s largest taxpayer. Freeport say its gross revenues have fluctuated between $1.75 billion and $2 billion a year between 1995 and 1999. During the same period, it has channeled between $600 million and one $1.2 billion a year back to Indonesia – in taxes, wages and reinvestment – and development work. Those projects include education, health and agricultural projects aimed at improving the local community.
The Indonesian government considers Freeport and other mining and oil projects to be “vital state assets” – which are protected by the Armed Forces. And that has generated some controversy. Human rights groups have charged that in the past, Freeport has provided the Indonesian military with logistical support
that was used in operations against the separatists. Indonesia’s national human rights group also says that in 1996 the military provoked violent incidents near the Freeport mine in order to justify a crackdown against the separatists and earn protection money. After that incident, rights groups say Freeport paid the Indonesian Armed Forces a lump sum $35 million dollars for security – followed by $11 million a year to follow. Freeport has consistently denied those allegations. Elsham says the military is up to its old tricks, and it was involved in the killing of the Freeport staffers, to prove to Freeport that it cannot operate without protection from the Armed Forces. An Indonesian Foreign Minister spokesman Marty Natalegawa dismisses the allegation the military was involved in the killings. “To suggest that we are, somehow the Indonesian
government is behind it, is really too much.”
Freeport McMoran has condemned the killings, but has said little else. Freeport staff who witnessed the attack have declined to speak to the media and officials from Freeport Indonesia declined to be interviewed for this report.
That silence only contributes to the controversy, says Sidney Jones, an analyst with the Jakarta office of the think-tank the International Crisis Group. “There are a lot of rumors floating around that funds for security are diminishing and the military isn’t getting as much as it has, and that might be a factor for why the military might be involved in these shootings and so on,” says Ms. Jones. “But it would help matters if there was more information coming from the company itself about exactly what its security operations are, exactly
how much its paying the security personnel including military personnel, but what we have is this stone wall of silence.” In the meantime, the investigation into the killings has made little progress. Members of the rebel, Free Papua Movement, have denied Jakarta’s assertion that they were responsible.
U.S. consular officials went to Papua to work with Indonesian authorities. Amidst the finger-pointing between Elsham, the Indonesian government and the rebels, the U.S. Ambassador in Jakarta, Ralph Boyce, says he considers the investigation still open. “We are very pleased with the access and the cooperation that we have received from the police,” he says. “And we will continue to work with them on this case, which I consider very much an open matter on who murdered the unfortunate victims in Papua.” Indonesia’s chief
investigator Police General Made Pastika confirmed that members of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation have visited Papua to discuss the case with authorities. The Indonesian government has taken steps to improve rights and appease demands for separatism in Papua. The National Assembly passed special
autonomy legislation, which would allow Papuans more say over the revenue derived from their natural resources. But with many Papuans seeing little in the way of accountability for killings there, it is doubtful new legislation will be seen as enough.
Opposition criticises Australia’s intelligence exchange
ABC Radio Australia News
05/11/2002 20:08:57
The Australian opposition claims Australian intelligence agencies have not maintained information exchanges with Indonesia.
The claim comes after a United States investigation into an attack near the Freeport gold and copper mine in West Papua, in which two American teachers were killed.
Our Indonesia correspondent Graeme Dobell says US officials recently cited Australian signals intelligence as evidence the Indonesian army was involved.
The Washington Post newspaper reports US government officials have said top Indonesian military officers discussed an attack on the mine to discredit the Free Papua Movement, and have it declared a terrorist organisation.
The report says the claim has been supported by signals intelligence gathered by Australia and passed to the US.
The opposition Labor Party spokesman on foreign affairs, Kevin Rudd, who is visiting Jakarta, says Australian intelligence exchanges with Indonesia have fallen away significantly.
“Four or five years ago, what former intelligence officers have told me is that there was a large flow of information and [it] has now dried up to a trickle,” Mr Rudd says.
Indonesia’s military rejects Freeport ambush claim
ABC Radio Australia News
05/11/2002 12:03:52
The Indonesian military has dismissed a US media report that senior officers may have planned an ambush in Papua province that killed two American teachers and an Indonesian colleague.
The three were killed in late August when gunmen opened fire on buses carrying them near the giant US-owned Freeport gold and copper mine in Timika district.
An Armed Forces spokesman says the Washington Post’s report alleging officers discussed an unspecified operation near the mine WILL be investigated.
But he says any suggestion the military planned the August attack was “irrational.”
Indon. military linked to ambush
Australian News Network
November 05, 2002
AUSTRALIA’S most secretive spy agency has reportedly passed intelligence to the US implicating Indonesia’s military in an ambush at a West Papua mine which killed two Americans.
The ambush at the Freeport gold and copper mine in August left three people dead, including two American teachers and an Indonesian.
The Indonesian army has denied newspaper claims it was involved in the deadly attack in a bid to implicate the Free Papua Movement and have it outlawed as a terrorist organisation.
But The Washington Post newspaper said the US had obtained reliable human intelligence about Indonesian military plans, including discussions involving Indonesia’s commander-in-chief, Endriartono Sutarto.
The paper said intelligence had now been backed by signals intelligence likely to have been gathered by Australia’s super-secret Defence Signals Directorate (DSD).
DSD monitors communications traffic, including mobile phone, radio and internet messages, from its Canberra headquarters.
The August 31 attack took place near a mine operated by New Orleans-based Freeport and the three victims were all contract employees.
US officials said their intelligence did not detail a specific attack, nor did Indonesian military officers call explicitly for the killing of Americans or other foreigners.
But it did clearly target Freeport, they said.
Subordinates could have understood the discussions as a direction to take some kind of violent action against Freeport, a government official told the newspaper.
A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Robert Hill refused to confirm whether DSD had passed information on the attack to Washington.
“We don’t comment on security matters,” she said.
But news of Australian involvement could further sour already tense relations between Canberra and Jakarta in the wake of East Timor, the Bali bombings and high-profile ASIO raids on suspected Islamic extremists.
The raids have provoked heated complaints from Jakarta about the heavy-handed tactics used in the raids.
An Indonesian military spokesman, Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin, denied senior officers ever discussed an operation targeting Freeport and accused critics of mounting a smear campaign against the army.
“This is probably something made up to discredit the TNI,” he said.
Sutarto said last week no Indonesian military officers were involved in the attack, which took place in Indonesia’s restive eastern province.
But Papua police investigators have said they believed Indonesian soldiers were behind the attack. — AAP
Canberra spies’ tip-off to US may rile Jakarta
South China Morning Post (via Joyo Indonesia News)
November 6, 2002
Roger Maynard in Sydney
The claim that Australia’s spy agency passed on intelligence reports to the United States which implicate the Indonesian military in the West Papua mine ambush could add tension to the already uneasy relationship between Canberra and Jakarta.
Relations between the two countries have been under strain since masked security officers last week raided the homes of Indonesians living in Australia. Now, reports that Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate gathered intelligence about the possibility of an attack on the Freeport gold and copper mine and gave the information to its US counterpart, could further sour relations.
Two Americans were killed in the August 31 ambush at the mine, which the Indonesian military blamed on Papuan rebels. However, some security analysts expressed suspicion, saying the rebels did not have the kind of firepower used in the attack.
The Washington Post suggested that the US, with Australian input, obtained reliable intelligence about Indonesian military plans for an attack on the mine.
Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill yesterday refused to confirm whether the spy agency had passed on information to Washington about the attack.
“We don’t comment on security matters,” he said.
With Australia determined to get to the bottom of the Bali bombings and to identify those responsible for the attack, a lot is riding on maintaining a productive relationship with Jakarta.
But that seems increasingly unlikely as the mood in Indonesia becomes distinctly anti-Australian.
Shadow foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd, currently on a visit to Jakarta, said in an interview on Australian radio yesterday that “the tempo of the Indonesian media reporting on Australia is becoming more negative by the day”.
The manner in which newspapers had reported the raids on Indonesian homes in Australia had fuelled anti-Australian sentiment, he claimed.
Mr Rudd, who supported the raids, said Australian media coverage of the operation had offended some Indonesians.
Jakarta believes the action was heavy-handed.
South China Morning Post (via Joyo Indonesia News)
November 6, 2002
West Papua
Military chief ’spoke of Papua mine attack’
Marianne Kearney in Jakarta
The US has reportedly obtained intelligence showing that Indonesia’s armed forces chief, General Endriartono Sutarto, discussed attacking a mine in West Papua with local commanders.
Three people were killed in the attack on the Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold mine on Saturday, including US citizens Ted Burgon and Rickey Spear.
The incident has left Indonesian analysts bemused as there is no obvious motive for the attack, however various theories have been offered.
The intelligence was based on information supplied by a person who claimed to be knowledgeable about the high-level military conversations. The source was described in the intelligence report as highly reliable.
The information was supported by an intercept of a conversation involving that individual, said a US government official and an American source. The intercept was shared with the US by another country, identified by a Western source as Australia.
Although the discussions described in the intelligence report did not detail a specific attack or call explicitly for the killing of foreigners, they clearly targeted Freeport, the US official and American source said. Subordinates could have interpreted the discussions as a direction to take some kind of violent action against Freeport, the government official said. It was not clear precisely when the discussions took place.
The intelligence report was given to the State Department about two weeks after the ambush, the official said.
Since Saturday, the road linking Timika and Tembagapura has been largely sealed off, except to security forces. Unconfirmed reports say Kelly Kwalik, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) leader in the Timika area, issued an ultimatum last week for all Indonesian troops to leave the region within four months. Some analysts took this as a sign that he was planning an attack.
However, several Papuan sources, including Thom Beanal, a leader of the Amungme people in Timika, doubted the accuracy of the statement as they had not heard about it.
One Church source said a witness reported seeing modern torches scattered at the scene of the attack, which took place in broad daylight. The source pointed out that rebels generally did not have sophisticated equipment.
Analysts said yesterday that a military role in the ambush would not be surprising.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a political motive to discredit the OPM,” one Western military analyst said. He added that before the attacks, the OPM had agreed to cease attacks and back the pro-independence Papua Presidium’s bid to seek a political solution to its struggle for independence.
This would have been disastrous for the military because if the independence guerillas laid down their bows and spears, the military could not justify its heavy troop deployment to Papua.
One diplomat said that in the eyes of the military, an added benefit of the attack if blamed on the OPM would be that they would be seen as terrorists, giving the military justification for a harsh crackdown with little international criticism.
Papua’s police chief, General Made Mangku Pastika, says the military is still one of the suspects in the case.
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