TORTURE: ASIAN AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | JUNE-AUG 2013
VOLUME 02 NUMBER 02 & 03
An article published in 1979 in Morning Star describing the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Indonesian government against the Papuans. The national media was silent on the matter.
witnessed military officers forcibly inserting batteries into a woman’s vagina while her husband was severely beaten. He also saw with his own eyes how the elderly Papuans were forced to eat the faeces and drink the urine of the military officers. Papuan women interviewed by the AHRC narrated their grief in losing their children, who were shot to death by the military. In some other cases, the children died due to starvation, malnutrition and diseases, as the military had deprived them from access to basic necessities. Missionaries who wanted to help the suffering Papuans were prevented from doing so and were labeled enemies of the state.
The interviews with victims and the literature available is enough to convince me that the series of atrocities in the Central Highlands during the late 1970s amount to genocide. I am aware that this is considered a bold or reckless conclusion. A friend assisting me with the editing of the report even asked the question ‘why [are you] taking the difficult route of proving genocide’. The answer I could provide was simply that I could not pretend to be blind to the Indonesian government’s genocidal intent in the case and how there have been issues of racism involved. It was indeed subtle and implicit, as there is no government’s document which directly orders the killings of Papuans (or at least there is no such document available
137