Jayapura, Jubi – The Papua Legislative Council’s Special Committee on Human Rights for Paniai and Yahukimo concluded that human right violations occurred during the forced disbanding of West Papua National Committee (KNPB) activists by police.
Committee chairman Laurenzus Kadepa said on Tuesday (28/4/2015) the committee has conducted an investigation in Yahukimo and collected some data from related parties including the police and KNPB officials, residents, victims and witnesses as well.
“We have seven recommendations on this case. First, we concluded there’s human right violations in the incident occurred in Yahukimo. It is based on our investigation on the ground and information from the victims and witnesses as well as the way the police officers conducted the sweep and came into people’s houses,” said Kadepa.
He said the parliament wants no longer bloodshed in Yahukimo and police.should be held responsible for the shooting of civilians.
The local government and KNPB should compensate for the material losses suffered by the local community; sixth, the government, the police and local leaders must retrieve their letter of statement about prohibition of peace demonstration, and the seventh, the local government to immediately facilitate the reconciliation of all related parties.
“We would recommend this result to the Indonesian National Human Right Committee. About the material losses, we would submit it to the local government. We have listed all, including the victims, witnesses and the incident chronology. And we will explain it later to the competent,” he said.
According to him, the Police report is different from the report they received from KNPB. The Police reported the victims are non-Papuans while KNPB said all victims are Papuans. “We found both reports are contradictive, so we prefer to consider the people’s aspirations who impaired by both parties. We are neutral, not taking sides and confronting certain party. We just want to solve this case thoroughly and harmless Yahukimo,” he said.
Meanwhile the special committee member Gerson Soma said the similar thing. According to him the Police are the main actors. He said the KNPB activities on the first day took place peacefully. But it changed in the next day when the local Police Chief instructed the troop to conduct the operation without acknowledgement to KNPB.
The Special Committee Secretary Lazarus Siep added the police and KNPB was blaming each other. The committee will use the information from witnesses and victims who directly experienced the violence as reference. (Arjuna Pademme/rom)
