The PPT judgement on State and Environmental Violence in West Papua was presented on 1rst October at the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council (Download the full judgement).
The request which led to the public hearings held at Queen Mary University of London, from 27th to 29th June 2024, was put forward by the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice (CCCCJ) and a network of international and Indonesian human and environmental rights’ organizations and associations.
The task assumed by this Tribunal was to establish the truth about the criminal events in West Papua and the repression taking place there, but also to clarify and to reaffirm the inalienable rights of the Indigenous communities regarding land and the environment. The documentation submitted to this Tribunal, and most especially the testimonies heard in the public hearings, painted a picture of a devastating attack on West Papuan lives and livelihoods. West Papua represents an exemplary case of contemporary denial of the right of self-determination, principle that was recognised in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples which gave birth to this Tribunal in 1979.
The Tribunal was asked to deliberate on four charges levied against the Indonesian government, as well as foreign actors: land grabbing (a), violent repression and human rights violation (b), environmental degradation (c) and collusion between the Indonesian State and the national and foreign companies (d). The judgement, which consists of eight sections – including the procedures adopted, the responses to the charges, and the deliberation and recommendations -, can be summarised in the following points:
- The Indigenous communities have suffered painful dispossession and have been deprived of elementary freedoms, such as that of movement, and deprived as well of economic rights.
- The system of prior consultation of the populations concerned, acquisition and verification of their informed consent is, since the controversial annexation referendum in 1969, manipulated by the State of Indonesia to achieve its own purposes and fails to guarantee any respect for the special relationship, economic but also spiritual, between West Papuan populations and their environments.
- Very serious cases and concrete data of human rights abuses were presented to the Tribunal. The Indigenous communities of West Papua live, according to one witness, in “the shadow of fear”. This condition has been constructed over the time via State crimes as well as grants of impunity for the perpetrators of those crimes.
- The effects on land, water and forest has been severe, as result of the mining and agricultural activities, of the extraction and liquidification of natural gas, of deliberate deforestation for palm oil plantation and of the recent food estate projects.
- The Tribunal considers that the ecological degradation can’t be disaggregated from State and corporate projects which are tending toward the obliteration of a people, or what was called by more than one witness a “slow genocide”.
- The Tribunal hear the implication of the business-State military nexus that characterizes the industrial activity in the region. It consists in a regime of terror, militarization, legal impunity, irregularities and restrictions on the conduct of human and livelihood as well as on exchanges of thought and information.
- In particular, the Indonesian National Army has become instrumental in the protection of State and corporate interests, in a way that involves repression against those who oppose or denounce the widely documented abuses. According to one witness, “they couldn’t take the land, so they needed to create a conflict”.
- The corporation considered in the indictment – including, among others, Freeport McMoRan, British Petroleum and its partners, and eleven palm oil corporations –, are directly implicated in the violence perpetrated against the Indigenous communities. This Tribunal also learned that Western States’ are implicated in the training Indonesian security forces, responsible of human rights abuses. The Tribunal therefore finds that not only the Indonesian State, but also States where these companies are based, need to be brought under international scrutiny.
The PPT panel of judges made extensive recommendations to: the Indonesian government (regarding: ancestral land, environment and Indigenous Papuans; internally displaced peoples; justice and rule of law; and access to UN and humanitarian assistance), the private sector, the countries of the region, the international community and the private actors, and the national and international civil organisations.
The Tribunal finds it incontestable that the situation is very urgent. For six decades, the mindset of settler neocolonialism together with its concrete practices have led to a severe deterioration of the lives of West Papuans that has become overwhelming in recent years. The international community is therefore called upon to heed to their long-standing pleas. In particular, this Tribunal considers it imperative that a sizable UN investigation, with a broad mandate, is carried out as soon as possible in order to assess past and current violation committed against West Papuan Indigenous communities, as well as possible form of accountability and reparation.