Jakarta – A number of organisations that make up the Civil Society Coalition for Security Sector Reform have condemned the shooting of senior Papuan advocate and human rights activists Yan Christian Warinussy.
The Coalition believes that the incident, which took place on Wednesday July 17 when Warinussy was leaving a bank in Manokwari, West Papua, represents a serious threat to human rights (HAM) defenders.
Warinussy who survived the attack, is currently being treated for gunshot wounds at a Navy hospital in Manokwari.
"The incident cannot be separated from the absence of the state in protecting HAM defenders in Indonesia. Because attacks on those to endeavour to protect their own or the rights of others such as this have occurred repeatedly", read a statement by the Coalition that was received on Thursday July 18.
Based on data compiled by Amnesty International Indonesia (AII) in 2023, the largest number of attacks on human rights defenders occurred in Papua, namely 103 people.
Based on the Democracy Alliance for Papua's (AIDP) records, there were at least four attacks on human rights defenders that included physical and non-physical attacks such as lawyer Latifah Anum Siregar, lawyer Yuliana Yabansabra, senor journalist Victor Mambor and Papua Justice and Human Integrity Foundation Director Theo Hesegem.
"These attacks have never seriously investigated by the police, not infrequently there have been reports of investigations into attacks on HAM defenders that been halted", the statement continued.
Therefore the Coalition, which is made up of the AIDP, Indonesian Human Rights Watch (Imparsial), the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), the Institute for Public Research and Advocacy (Elsam), the Centra Initiative, the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI), the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), Public Virtue, Amnesty International Indonesia, Forum de Facto, the Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers), Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), the Community Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Masyarakat), the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG), the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR), LBH Jakarta, the Malang LBH Post, the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy and the Jakarta Alliance of Independent Journalist's (AJI), is urging the police to fully and transparently investigate the shooting based on prevailing laws.
"In addition, it is also important for Komnas HAM [the National Human Rights Commission] to conduct a separate investigation into HAM defender attacks that have happened in Papua which have occurred systematically, repeatedly and extensively and have been carried out with the same pattern. Therefore we also urge Komnas HAM to form a fact-finding team that will work independently and transparently to investigate all attacks on HAM defenders in Papua", the Coalition demanded. (team/isn)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was " Koalisi Sipil Desak Polri Usut Tuntas Penembakan Aktivis HAM Papua".]
