The Australian Government must come clean on its intelligence knowledge of the August, 2002 Timika shooting murders of two American teachers. (See article below.) The American FBI must also be given the opportunity to interview Australian Intelligence Officers in the Australian Defence Signals Directorate, which routinely monitors Indonesian Military radio communications. The FBI is currently investigating the murder of the two American teachers and has requested extradition of the offenders. The FBI must also be given the opportunity to access the US controlled Pine Gap intelligence information.
There is overwhelming evidence that Indonesian Military and Militia organized and carried out the August, 2002 shootings of the two Americans and the WPNGNC has previously proposed the following question:-
Why was Police Chief Pastika taken off the case by the Indonesian Government?
The answer is obvious - His investigation would have concluded, that, the Indonesian Military orchestrated the Freeport Mine ambush on the Americans.
There is one more important fact - Pastika, who was responsible for the investigation of the Bali bombings, was from Bali not Java.
Javanese make up the majority of the Indonesian military.
This Timika incident bears a striking similarity to the 1975 Balibo Five incident which resulted in the murder of five Australian, British and New Zealand journalists at the hands of the Indonesian Military. Australian Military intercepts of Indonesian Military radio signals during the 1975 Balibo incident were suppressed at the direction of the 1975 Whitlam Government. The Indonesian Officer who ordered the shooting of the five journalists in 1975 rose to the position of Minister for Information in the Indonesian Government. He was responsible for funding the Indonesian sponsored militia in East Timor and was directly involved the 1999 sacking of East Timor. He is a war criminal.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs has been compromised and is a security risk to Australia. They appear to be as keen as ever, to pander to the interests of the ruling Indonesian Elite and Corrupt Military.
In recent years a senior former Australian Department of Foreign Affairs Official, resident in Indonesia, was convicted of pedophilia and committed suicide in a Indonesian prison.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs is a known hotspot for pedophiles. It is also known that these individuals, with pedophile tendencies, seek out postings to some Asian countries (particularly Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia) because of the easy access to young individuals.
It has also been reported to the WPNGNC, that an Australian Department of Foreign Affairs Official, was given twenty four hours to leave China, in the mid 1980's for inappropriate sexual activity with young Chinese citizens. This individual has since left the diplomatic service and pursued a higher profile career.
The WPNGNC has been provided with a first hand account where $5,000 cash in US currency was paid as hush money in the early 1990's. This payment was preceded by, a roughing up of the individual involved, by a Chinese gentleman of "sumo" type proportions.
It is also well known that many of the Indonesian Military Elite maintain young boys for sexual favours. This was made known to the WPNGNC from irrefutable, eyewitness, sources within East Timor.
See also Global Witness Report - Paying for Protection. (July 2005). - Home Page - REPORTS ON WEST PAPUA - HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE .
For additional information of Australian Department of Foreign Affairs pedophile activity - see this LINK
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West Papua: FBI Accused of Bait-Switch Tactics in Indonesia13-01-2006
Eleven men and a teenager met with two FBI agents at a small hotel in the remote Indonesian province of Papua on Wednesday night, expecting, they said, to be flown to the United States.
They said they had been assured by intermediaries working with the agents that in U.S. custody they would be able to defend themselves against accusations that they killed two American teachers on a mountain in Papua one warm August morning in 2002.Indicted in U.S.
Among them was a Papuan separatist fighter, Anthonius Wamang, indicted in 2004 by a U.S. grand jury for murder in connection with the killings. Wamang has acknowledged firing at the vehicle in which the teachers were riding on Aug. 31, 2002, but he said he thought he was shooting at Indonesian soldiers and is not sure whether the shots he fired were fatal, said his attorney, Albert Rumbekwan.On Wednesday night, Wamang and the others were ready to leave for the United States, suitcases packed.
"Hurry, hurry," the FBI agents told them, several recounted, as they were hustled into a windowless container truck. "The plane is waiting on the runway."
The agents and a U.S. Embassy official, after coaxing the men into the truck, handed the vehicle over to Indonesian police officers and left for the airport, according to an intermediary. The Indonesian police took the men to the local police station, where authorities interrogated them until morning.
Eight of them, including the teenager, were still in custody on Friday. Police said the government intended to charge them with the murder of Ricky Lynn Spier, 44, and Edwin Burgon, 71, who was the principal of a school run by Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, a U.S. mining company.
Cooperative effort
U.S. officials here declined to confirm details of the arrest, but acknowledged that the FBI and Indonesian authorities have been cooperating in the case.The alleged bait-and-switch tactic angered human rights activists and the four men, part of the original group of 12, who were released.
WPNGNC Comment: The WPNGNC has been advised by the OPM that it was not involved in the Timika shootings in August, 2002. In fact the OPM has been in a state of stand-down since 2000.
There is overwhelming evidence that the Indonesian Military and or Militia was involved in the shootings in order to extract protection payments from Freeport.
The FBI have been made aware of the situation - yet they continue to ignore the facts of the Timika incident.
The recent actions of deception by the FBI will not be forgotten in West Papua.
The WPNGNC has no sympathy for West Papuan Militia working for the Indonesian Military or those who collaborate with the corrupt Indonesian Military or Police.
West Papua: Uncertainty Over Killings12-01-2006 - Source: BBC News
Police in Indonesia's Papua province have detained 12 people over the 2002 murder of two American schoolteachers and their Indonesian companion. The three victims were ambushed and shot dead near the US-owned Freeport gold mine where they worked.Human rights groups have consistently said they suspected that the Indonesian military was involved in the killings. But they say that such allegations have never been properly followed up.
Local police say further questioning is needed to determine how many of the 12 detainees may have had a role in the killing of the schoolteachers. They have confirmed, however, that Antonious Wamang, who was indicted by a United States grand jury in 2004 following a lengthy FBI investigation, is among those being held.
Beyond that, much is still unclear. For instance, what prompted the police to act now, four years after the incident and two years after the US indictment?
Speaking to local radio, the police chief in Papua referred only to what he called "old evidence", such as fingerprints found at the crime scene.
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One can only boggle at the folly of the Federal Government’s (Australian) decision to resume co-operation with the Indonesian Special Forces unit, Kopassus.
Online Opinion 3 January, 2006
Gary Brown
Until June 2002 Gary Brown was a Defence Advisor with the Parliamentary Information and Research Service at Parliament House, Canberra, where he provided confidential advice and research at request to members and staffs of all parties and Parliamentary committees, and produced regular publications on a wide range of defence issues. Many are available at here.
Working on defence and national security topics since the early seventies, he has published two books, and many shorter pieces on Australian higher defence organisation and management, international strategic issues and many other aspects of strategic studies and defence in various journals, through the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) and the Australian Defence Studies Centre (ADSC). He has been a Visiting Fellow at both SDSC and at ADSC in the Australian Defence Force Academy.He regularly lectured at the former Australian Joint Services Staff College (JSSC), and then at the restructured ADF colleges at Weston Creek.
Gary Brown is an Honours graduate of the University of Newcastle, NSW, and also a JSSC civilian graduate. His most recent substantial work, Regaining Relevance: Fitting Australia's Defence Force Structure to the Contemporary Strategic Environment, was published by ADSC in late 2002 and attracted considerable attention. He has been writing for On Line Opinion since January 2003.
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One can only boggle at the folly of the Federal Government’s decision to resume co-operation with the Indonesian Special Forces unit, Kopassus.
This unit’s atrocious human rights record is one thing; and certainly I agree with those who argue that this of itself is sufficient reason to refrain from co-operation. But, as I will show, this is by no means the only reason.
It is true, as the government argues, that Kopassus is the principal repository of counter-terrorist capability in the Indonesian Armed Forces. This is the principal reason offered for the resumption of co-operation.
It is also true Indonesia is trying very hard to establish democratic principles and the rule of law, in place of the arbitrary and corrupt authoritarianism which characterised the Suharto era. In that era Kopassus was a principal instrument of repression and coercion. It was the hard core enforcement unit in support of the notorious dwi fungsi (dual-function) pseudo-doctrine, which was manufactured solely to legitimise military dominance of Indonesian politics, censorship, brutal repression and the rest of the authoritarian smorgasbord.
The Indonesian military as a whole was then a vast corrupt business enterprise. Nominal salaries, even for officers, were low and were routinely supplemented by corrupt payments. This became an entrenched and institutionalised system. We saw the sort of military this produced in East Timor after the independence referendum and notably during the Indonesian pullout, when the military trashed everything not already destroyed by its militia stooges.
Despite the best efforts of the Jakarta government, democratic principles, in particular the primacy of the elected civilian authority over the military, are being assimilated by the amed forces much more slowly than by most other areas of the Indonesian body politic. It is proving particularly difficult to wean the military away from corrupt practices, while it certainly worked to sabotage the late 2002 peace process in Aceh, which eventually collapsed. The military was also accused - allegedly on the basis of communications intercepts by an Australian intelligence agency - of involvement in the attack on Freeport mine personnel in August 2002, which Indonesia vociferously blamed on the OPM, the Papuan independence movement. The present post-tsunami Aceh peace process depends heavily on military compliance with the new agreement.
Within the armed forces, it is probably Kopassus, due to its position at the core of the old regime’s system, which is the slowest of all to develop a real and effective commitment to the principles of civilian and democratic government.
These might indeed be considered adequate reasons to refrain from co-operation with Kopassus, and I would not disagree.
But there is another equally compelling reason having nothing to do with the human rights issue. I outlined this at some length in an earlier On Line Opinion contribution warning against co-operation with Kopassus, and will not repeat it all here. Suffice it to say there is reason to fear that Kopassus itself harbours elements which would not be averse to the use of terrorist tactics, and that it may even harbour some who are sympathetic to the kind of extremist Islamism which drives much contemporary terrorism.
One problem is that while Kopassus is well-equipped and trained for counter-terrorist operations, such capabilities are equally useful for the commission of clandestine acts of terror. Even in the West, an undisciplined French intelligence agency committed an act of lethal terrorism, bombing the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in a New Zealand port. That Kopassus is still significantly less “disciplined” - subject to complete control by the civilian government - than most Western forces, is I think, hard to dispute.
It is well to recall the case of Pakistan, where for decades the military intelligence organisation ran its own agenda and operations in complete disregard of any policies enunciated by the government of the day. Indeed, as a Muslim country with a secular regime often dominated by the military (as Pakistan is today), Indonesia has certain parallels with Pakistan. Even now it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that if the democratic regime in Jakarta got into serious difficulties the military might yet step in and resume control in the name of “order and stability”.
The issue is further complicated by the question of what hold religious fundamentalism, or support for extremist acts, might have on Kopassus personnel. It takes only one such individual, strategically placed in Kopassus’ intelligence section, for an intelligence feed from Australia or elsewhere to be compromised.
The core of the case I advanced in my earlier article, and which I still believe to be valid, is this: if we help Kopassus develop its military skills, we might be helping those who will later covertly attack us, our friends or interests. If we share intelligence with Kopassus, we might be providing a pipeline for Jemah Islamiya or even Al-Qaida straight into sensitive western counter-terrorist intelligence material.
The government is making a potentially disastrous mistake if it believes that Kopassus has truly changed its spots. This decision is bad enough on human rights grounds; on intelligence and security grounds it is simply insupportable and we may yet have reason to regret it.
