TAPOL writes to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in advance of his visit to Indonesia

The following is the text of a letter sent to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook today, 25 August, by TAPOL:

25 August 1997

The Rt Hon. Robin Cook MP,
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
F.C.O,
Whitehall,
London SW1

Dear Mr Cook,

Further to my letter to you of 22 August regarding your visit to Indonesia this week, I welcome your decision, as reported in yesterday's Observer, to meet the jailed trade union leader, Muchtar Pakpahan. As you may know, his doctors at Cikini Hospital have advised that he go abroad for Lung Imagy Fluorescent Endoscopy (LIFE), as this treatment is unavailable in Indonesia. However, the authorities have refused to grant him permission to go abroad. We hope that you will add your voice to that of the US State Department in calling on the Indonesian authorities to allow Mr Pakpahan to go abroad.

I take this opportunity of raising several other points with you, regarding your visit:

1. There has been serious unrest in the past week around the Freeport/Rio Tinto copper-and-gold mine in the region of Timika, Irian Jaya (West Papua) (West Papua). Following a blockade set up along the access road to the mine last Thursday, many hundreds of troop reinforcements have been flown into the region, further intensifying the atmosphere of fear that has prevailed there since the unrest of March 1996. Two people were shot dead by troops on Friday, and two others died as the result of an accident two days earlier, involving a Freeport vehicle. The circumstances of the deaths on Wednesday are a matter of controversy, which has led to renewed anxieties among the local tribal people. They are demanding that the National Human Rights Commission visit the region without delay to investigate the two deaths and the two fatal shootings by the army and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice. We urge you to ask the Commission to comply with this request, when you meet Commission members in Jakarta this week.
2. You told The Observer that you would be 'present(ing) books and promising computer equipment to help local human rights activists monitor abuses by the government'. We hope that the recipients of such assistance will be non-governmental organisations, not the government-appointed National Human Rights Commission which functions under considerable restraint from government circles. In my letter of 22 August, I provided you with a list of human rights organisations which you should try to meet during your visit. These in our opinion would be the legitimate recipients of such support.
3. In our opinion, your visit to Indonesia should properly reflect your Mission Statement about putting human rights at the heart of British foreign policy. This can only mean that you should make public your grave concern about the human rights situation in Indonesia while in Jakarta. The abuses are manifold but to mention the key problems: the government-sponsored ousting of Megawati Sukarnoputri from the leadership of the PDI and the exclusion of her party from the general elections, the use of force to oust Megawati supporters from the PDI head office on 27 July last year leading to at least five deaths, many wounded and at least twenty disappearances, the use of the anti-subversion law to convict and jail fifteen people simply because they support the principle of creating a multi-party system in Indonesia. In this connection, we remind you that virtually all the recommendations made by the National Human Rights Commission in its report published last October about the 27 July incident have been ignored by the government.

In our opinion, failure to speak out about human rights abuses in Indonesia during your visit will be a betrayal of your own Mission Statement.

Yours sincerely,
Carmel Budiardjo

Note: In our earlier letter, dated 22 August, TAPOL called on Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to support President Nelson Mandela's initiative to resolve the question of East Timor and to stress the need for the unconditional release of East Timorese resistance leader, Xanana Gusmao, in accordance with the request by President Mandela.

We also submitted a list of human rights NGOs, urging the Foreign Secretary to meet representatives of these organisations during his stay in Jakarta.