Reading Amnesty International ‘Adopt’ Two Prisoners of Conscience

Reading Amnesty International (RAI) have continued their work to help those unjustly imprisoned by ‘adopting’ two West Papuan prisoners of conscience.

Defined by Amnesty International, a prisoner of conscience is a person who has been imprisoned because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality or political ideology, and who do not promote or partake in violence.

The West Papuans RAI have adopted, Yusak Pakage and Filep Karma, were arrested in 2004 for raising the Morning Star flag, the West Papuan flag of independence.

Although Pakage and Karma were arrested in 2004 for this offence, it was not until 2008 that a Presidential Decree declared it a crime to show a regional flag of independence in Indonesia, with which subsequent arrests have followed.

On 19 July 2008, 46 people were arrested by Indonesian police at a Morning Star Flag raising ceremony in what Paula Makabory from the Institute for Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights has described as “peaceful” and which was “not an act which could over throw the Government”. These flag raisers where apparently set upon by the local police who started ““beating them, kicking them with boots and torturing the demonstrators. The men in the group were then stripped to their underwear” (http://intercontinentalcry.org/46-arrested-for-raising-west-papua-independance-flag/)

Yusak Pakage and Filep Karma attended a peaceful protest on 1 December 2004 where the Morning Star flag was raised. Filep Karma, a civil servant, was arrested at the site. The arrest of Yusak Pakage followed later that day when a small group of protestors went to the police station to argue for Filep Karma’s release.

Karma and Pakage were sentenced to 15 years and 10 years imprisonment in May 2005.

Although RAI will not made any official comment about whether West Papua should be independent, RAI do express sincere concerns about the suppression of Yusak Pakage and Filep Karma’s freedom of expression and peaceful protest, guaranteed to them by international declarations such as the International Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

RAI also express their distress at reports that have come out of Indonesia of the inhumane treatment that these prisoners of conscience have experienced while locked away.

Reports have surfaced that Yusak Pakage along with five other political prisoners have been subjected to beatings, one such beating resulting in Pakage’s eyelid being torn.

Reports that have also suggested that these prisoners have been starved for days on end, locked in confined and darkened rooms and have been subjected to humiliations by being forced to remove all their clothes.

Regardless of the opinions as to whether West Papua should be independent, RAI know that the treatment of these prisoners of conscience is in complete violation of their human rights.

RAI will keep up to date with the status of Pakage and Karma and will work to ensure the knowledge of these abuses are kept within the public domain. Dr Sean O’Leary from RAI has commented that “we are asked why we write letters on behalf of people like Filep and Yusak. The Indonesian government wants us to forget about them - they want to be able to put such 'troublemakers' in prison and out of sight.  It is up to us to keep the spotlight on them, to publicize their plight, so that the World knows what is really happening in a 'civilized' country like Indonesia and everywhere else where such injustice occurs.”

Dr O’Leary went on to say that “If we do not stand up for other people's freedom of speech when we can do so, how can we say that we ourselves deserve it?”