| | Report claims US officials covered up involvement of Indonesian military in death of two Americans
A report released on Monday, April 9 claims that the Indonesian military was involved in the shooting deaths of two American schoolteachers in 2002 and that high US officials have helped to suppress this information because military cooperation with Indonesia is considered essential in the War on Terror.
The report, issued by Joyo Indonesian News Service and the Pantau Foundation, states that following the incident FBI agents in Papua detained an elderly human rights advocate, who was handed over to Indonesian authorities and was found guilty last fall on the basis of a coerced confession. Convicted along with him were six Papuan guerrillas, who acknowledge having been present at the shootout but state that they were not the murderers.
The assault took place in the remote Indonesian province of Papua, near a gold and copper mine belonging to Freeport McMoRan, which is said to hold the largest gold deposit in the world. The men convicted of the crime were then in the process of negotiating a profit-sharing deal with Freeport's management.
According to a 2004 article for Asia Times, written by Michael Roston, who is now with RAW STORY:
Unfortunately, the George W Bush administration appears not only to have given up on restoring its legitimacy on human rights, but has shifted the balance to encourage human rights violations by the Indonesian military in the name of fighting terror. Such capitulation is the only credible explanation for the June 24 press release by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department on its indictment of an Indonesian for the murder of two American schoolteachers employed by the Freeport McMoRan corporation in the distant province of West Papua. The release sent a stark message that US policy will exclusively promote counter-terrorism, even at the cost of important human rights goals.
The deadly August 2002 attack in restive West Papua resulted in difficulties for US-Indonesia relations. The US Congress subsequently approved legislation suspending some military ties between the two states until the perpetrators of the murders in West Papua were brought to justice. US legislators were spurred into this action based in part on the belief that elements of the Indonesian armed forces (known by the Indonesian acronym TNI) had been involved in the attacks. However, the FBI's release concludes that a single individual, Anthonius Wamang, identified as a commander of the military arm of the Free Papua Movement (known by its Indonesian acronym OPM), an organization promoting Papuan independence from Indonesia, was responsible for the killings and is to be solely indicted in the case.
The authors of the report state that they have now obtained a ballistics report which tends to exonerate Wamang and the other guerrillas and lay the responsibility on the Indonesian soldiers who were also at the scene of the crime.
The full report is available at the website of the East Timor Action Network.
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