merauke five
19 Mar 2009
Stranded At A West Papuan Airport
As Indonesian prosecutors push for jail terms for the Merauke Five, our Foreign Minister says he won't put pressure on the Indonesian Government just yet
Five Australians remain stranded at Mopah Airport in Merauke, West Papua, six months after they were first detained for illegally landing their light plane in the Indonesian province.William Scott-Bloxam, 62, his wife Vera, 54, and their friends Karen Burke, 51, Hubert Hofer, 57, and Keith Mortimer, 60, all residents of Horn Island in Queensland, made the one-hour journey to West Papua in September last year, with the mistaken belief that they could obtain visas on arrival. The five friends, all in the tourism industry, planned to stay for the weekend, and perhaps discover some new business opportunities.
Upon landing, however, they were arrested and accused of being spies, a charge that was soon dismissed. On January 15, after spending four months confined to a community detention facility, the "Merauke Five" were convicted of visa violations and sentenced to jail: two years for each passenger and three years for pilot Scott-Bloxam, who received an extra year for landing without flight approval or security clearance.
The sentence was unusually heavy-handed. Although visa violations can attract jail terms in Indonesia, it's much more common for offenders to be deported immediately. On 29 January, writing for newmatilda.com, Torres News editor Mark Bousen accused the Indonesian Government of using the Merauke Five as a "tit-for-tat" for the asylum granted to the 43 West Papuans who fled to Australia in 2006. Other commentators have blamed Indonesia's paranoid approach to West Papua, which is home to a separatist movement and hosts the highest concentration of military troops of any Indonesian province.
After being sentenced, the five Australians were put in jail, where they were confined to cramped cells 23 hours a day and granted just one hour outdoors. They were released on "humanitarian grounds" on 2 March while their lawyers prepared an appeal, but were still banned from leaving Merauke. Then, last week, Jayapura's High Court overturned the convictions, on the proviso that they leave immediately in the plane they arrived in. They travelled immediately to the airport in Merauke, where their plane had been impounded since September.
When they arrived, however, they found their plane surrounded by Indonesian security, who had confiscated it on behalf of the prosecutors, now lodging an appeal to overturn the High Court ruling. The plane, they say, is required for evidence. And as the court ruling stipulates they must leave in their own plane, the Merauke Five are now trapped at Mopah Airport — too afraid to leave in case they are charged again for not having visas.
Defence lawyer Mohammad Rifan told AAP last week that under Indonesian law, the prosecutors are not permitted to appeal against a High Court decision. "Under the law of the criminal code, article 244, if the court orders the release as soon as possible, right now, you cannot appeal to the Supreme Court," he said. "If this happened for an Indonesian national, they would be free straight away. Why not for an Australian national?"
But an Indonesian law expert here in Australia said that while it's true the country doesn't allow appeal of absolute acquittals, they do allow it in other cases — such as, for example, if someone is acquitted because they were found to be under duress. "The question is whether [the Merauke Five's] is an absolute acquittal for the purposes of Indonesian law", said Director of the Asian Law Centre at Melbourne University, Professor Tim Lindsey. "That will be a first issue that will be raised when the issue comes back before the courts."
Lindsey noted, however, that Indonesian courts have been "quite inconsistent in how they interpret [article 244]", and have "tended to read it in a way that will allow the appeal to go ahead". He also said that in Australia, it is unusual for a prosecutor to appeal.
According to a friend of the Five, Bob Slyney, who is now with them in Merauke, the appeal is now being processed. Speaking from the airport he told newmatilda.com that the Five have no idea when they will be free to leave. "We have no news, just that the appeal is going through. The Supreme Court could take anywhere from three months to two years."
On Tuesday night, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, indicated on ABC TV's Lateline that at this point he would not put pressure on the Indonesian Government to release the Five. "We have to go through and respect the Indonesian legal processes, and currently they are subject to an appeal to the Indonesian Supreme Court," he said. "Their status now is what is described as 'city detention'. So they effectively have what is described as a licence to the city, but we are giving them consular assistance."
That may be, but according to Keith Mortimer, they are too afraid to leave the airport. "We've been shafted too many times. We're not going anywhere until we get everything in writing," he told us, speaking from the departure lounge at Mopah Airport late last week. "It's been a roller coaster — we've had the highs of highs and the lows of lows. But the conditions are much, much better than at the jail, and the consular officials support us. It's best for our safety." The five Australians are now being accommodated in temporary housing in the airport compound.
Mortimer, who praised airport staff for being "supportive and understanding", wished to thank their network of friends and family. "They have lobbied on our behalf, to their local members, the Minister, and also the shadow cabinet," he said. "All our friends in Indonesia, who have carried us, fetched us, done everything; without people like that we'd be nowhere. All the Indonesian people; the officials we've dealt with on the ground have been kind and courteous. But their hands are tied."
Mortimer said the Five planned to stay at the airport "indefinitely", and stressed that the legal team would not be able to solve the problem unaided.
"At this point I think it's got to be legal as well as political," he said. "Keep us in the public eye, keep fighting for us," he said. "We don't have — we don't know — our future."
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Just another instance of an Australian Government grovelling at the feet of Indonesia. Indonesia’s so-called legal system is pretty much anarchy incarnate, and is controlled completely by either the Indonesian Armed Forces, or if they do not want to be involved, some two-bit regional politician. I am sure that if Smith wanted to do anything, he could talk with the President quietly, and, although then incurring a Government to Government debt, these people could be released. However, I do not have much sympathy generally for this group. They displayed total ignorance and arrogance by their actions.
A quiet holiday to do some serious thinking may be something they need, badly. Dazza.
Pity Jess Hill did not look into this case in any detail. Her article is just a rehash of stuff anyone could have harvested from the major news feeds and from ‘talking to the families. Boring.
There is buckets of dodgy activity in this region ranging from trafficking in compressed dope from PNG and IJ, gun running into PNG rascol gangs and to the IJ resistance, shipping of illegally logged specialty woods destined for high cost furniture in the mansions of Tooraks and Double Bay, hard drug drop offs/pickups from the merchant shipping passing through the Strait, outrageous rorting of government-subsidised activities etc.
It is by far Australia’s wildest border and the fact that 99% of Australians (and presumably Jess Hill too) are blithely unaware of that fact is a mere yawn.
Bill Scott-Bloxam has run Cape York Air for many years as well as other enterprises in the Strait. It is untenable to believe he has not long been ‘in sweet’ with the relatively small and well known number of wontoks who control more or less everything that goes in the region on each side of all 3 borders (and I really do mean everywhere from Cairns to Wasua to Merauke)
Additionally, as a very highly experienced pilot Bill would have had the ‘maintenance related’ explanation for landing option open to him if something went awry in his dealings. This would have put him under the protection of the obligations contained in bilateral and international aviation agreements. Again it is untenable to suggest he would be ignorant of those.
Nah, more likely something went wrong in some deal or other involving a Merauke wontok. It may have even been something which was not illegal by Australian standards. As can easily happen in Indonesia, a local police or army commander pulled the plug because he hadn’t got his palms greased thoroughly enough. Unfortunately one can hardly do anything in that part of the world without some goon in a uniform wanting his cut of the action. It’s a jungle up there.
To anyone familiar with the Torres, in particular the GA and sea traffic which applies between Cape York, PNG and Irian Jaya it is crystal clear there has to be more to this story than meets the eye. I would hazard a guess Stephen Smith has at least a rough idea what it is.
ecoeng, count yourself among that clueless crowd there. Your stereotype of the Indonesian "goon in uniform" is around a decade out of date, when it was still only an imperial white-racist stereotype anyway. Besides, that was when western toady Soeharto had not long been ejected by the IMF-led financier oligarchy; previously, such abject corrupt weakness in Indonesia had served those powers very nicely indeed.
From five years ago, Indonesian news began detailed coverage of many arrests and imprisonment of quite senior cops and other bureaucrats, especially in the West Papua provinces. Jakarta started cleaning up its old, notorious Customs service several years ago too.
As for an Indonesian "uniformed corruption" in general, that has long degraded from being mere imperial-colonial, patronizing stereotype into the tired cliche we still here from our corrupt media pundits, and their often interchangeable academic frauds. The actual, dramatically changed situation is the reason why Schapelle and Oz’s more seriously committed, callous smack-smugglers got such a shock.
Obviously not someone who has ever spent any part of their life living, trading, working, surfing or just ‘hanging around’ in Indonesia, much less the semi-closed province of West Papua.
Even if post-Yudyono there may have been some cleanup of corruption in West Papua (noting of course that it is a long, long way from Denpasar to Merauke etc), I seriously doubt whether mil-observer would be able to adequately describe (in Kriol say) the level of improvement to the indigeneous population.
www.freewestpapua.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=286&Item…
www.fpcn-global.org/node/204
www.balibs.org/free-west-papua-irian-jaya.html
www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-85472921.html
www.newssafety.com/index.php?view=article&catid=140%3Aindonesia-media-sa…
mil-observer dishes up the usual pasty-white whingeing left academic Labor goon stereotype stuff we routinely expect of some New Matilda readers.
More pertinently, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual reality of the social environment of the area. Perhaps that is also what the Merauke Five were trapped by - simple disconnection from a local reality?
For a more mature view than we could expect from Jess Hill (or mil-observer), go to Crikey:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090127-Why-five-Australians-are-in-a…
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"ecoeng, count yourself among that clueless crowd there. Your stereotype of the Indonesian "goon in uniform" is around a decade out of date, when it was still only an imperial white-racist stereotype anyway."
Hmmmm - well I replied on topic giving numerous web references to ongoing corruption in West Papua but got the the dreaded under moderation ‘pink slip’.
Guess I’m just not clueless enough to comment here.
Does this mean even New Matilda has now adopted its own ‘clean feed’ filter?
EIA/Telapak - March 28, 2007 Jakarta
One of the world’s biggest environmental crimes continues to unfold in Indonesia as efforts by the government to curb massive illegal logging are being severely undermined by a weak and corrupt justice system, environmentalists revealed today.
A new report released by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telapak – entitled “The Thousand-Headed Snake” – exposes how corruption and collusion at all stages of the justice system, from the police and prosecutors to judges, conspires to ensure that the main culprits behind illegal logging in Indonesia remain at liberty.
Illegal logging has cost Indonesia around US$4 billion a year since the beginning of the decade, and is responsible for around 2.8 million hectares of forests being lost annually – one of the world’s worst deforestation rates. Despite such a huge crime taking place, there have only been a handful of successful prosecutions in the country.
The report reveals how an unprecedented anti-illegal logging operation in Papua Province in March 2005 failed to snare the powerful timber barons and their protectors in the police and military. Although the operation identified 186 suspects, by January 2007 only 13 convictions had been secured and none of these were the ringleaders. Of 18 major cases which made it to trial, all the defendants were cleared by the courts.
The report analyses the case of police officer Marthen Renouw, accused of corruption and money-laundering after payments of over US$100, 000 were made to his account by individuals involved in illegal logging. Despite overwhelming evidence Renouw walked free.
M Yayat Afianto of Telapak said: “The government has made some progress in combating illegal logging, but the results in terms of prosecution of the main culprits have been very poor. Without a strong deterrent the problem will get worse again as the timber barons realise they have nothing to fear.”
Recent investigations by EIA/Telapak in Indonesia, Malaysia and China reveal that after a dramatic reduction in timber smuggling from Indonesia in 2005, illicit timber is flowing out of the country again in increasing amounts. EIA/Telapak have identified new smuggling routes and methods, such as concealing stolen timber in shipping containers.
Hi Econg.
Your comment got caught in our spam filter because it had too many links in it. It’s been published now. If this happens in future it’s best to wait ten minutes or so before posting again.
No one is denying that there are bad things going down in west papua. However, this article is about the Merauke five and, more broadly, the indonesian justice system. We’ve published a number of articles on the situation in west papua - more than most media outlets (including the "more mature" Crikey!) i think you’ll find.
cheers marni
Hi Marni
Thank you for the courtesy of your comment.
One can fly essentially anywhere in this region over at most about two hours. This is not a particularly big region and the commercial/social/’contra’-type links between prominent wontoks across all 3 borders are deep, diverse and in some cases very longstanding. I have family connections which allow me to state this as a truism. Given then the backgrounds of the Scott-Bloxams and Hofer, to infer/suggest/believe that they flew blindly and innocently into the situation they found themselves in is to stretch the credulity of anyone familiar with the region too far.
Ergo, the Australian public (and the NM readership) are receiving only a primitive, ‘sanitised’ view of the root cause of this situation.
It is a well known fact that West Papua is a deeply corrupt place and the ‘local authorities’ are part of that problem. By the same token the dodgy ‘bizniss’ that corruption feeds on is not restricted to West Papua. As I have shown the government and NGOs in Jakarta are well aware of that.
Indonesia is a diverse, large, in many parts backward and hard to govern archipelago. I don’t accept the crude theory that this is some sort of ‘payback’ by the Indonesian authorities for Australia’s refusal to return the West Papuan boat people. That suggestion is actually more insulting to the Yudyono government than a bit of juvenile nonsense that stating there is contemporary corruption in West Papua is a passe white imperialist prejudice.
The network strikes back! The "riot act" recitation is funny given the previous comments, which made a quite sleazy dig compared to my merely direct and honest comment i.e., "clueless". Instead, ecoeng prefers expression like "blithely unaware…boring" on the article itself. Double standards? Hah! Not at all. It’s the usual standards of class pretences around language itself. So long as the comments are not open and direct, but are rather verbose with enough sly condescension - now that’s OK instead, apparently. It’s a common trait among the middle class apparatchiks on this site now (and many others besides, of course).
And what of the "asylum seekers" who went home under the requested protection and help of the Indonesian Foreign Ministry? C’mon, don’t hold back! Give us the spin there!
Anyway, I read OPM and Indonesian sources on this subject. Have done for years.
Like many countries, many in Indonesia has been infiltrated and prostituted by various western-based NGOs. The EIA one referred above is UK-based, many others are elsewhere in the EU. The clinch is the money. That’s why most young Indonesians I know regard such parasitic pursuits with revulsion.
And a "corrupt military"? Hah! Got the bottle to bring that up about the latest multi-billion-dollar white elephants screwed out of western taxpayers?
Always a laugh to see the decadent middle class gravitate to "regime change"-style intrigues to try manipulating and subverting under-developed, western-exploited countries (not to forget the anti-Chinese paranoia generated around Sudan, the Congo and Tibet, for example). In fact, Chinese timber deals in West Papua have taken on increasing prominence as Indonesia squeezes the west further and further into irrelevancy.
But keep your games going: we need the laughs here at least (the Indons themselves are already into yawn mode, though). But the girls and boys can play at being spies! How exciting!
On this issue in particular, remember: ACADEMIC FRAUDS. They’ve proven it themselves, by their own hands, on the record for posterity.
I have absolutely no sympathy for people who get caught breaking another country’s laws.
Would we be so chartiable here in the reverse?
I think not.
No I don’t think our government has any business stepping in.
When is the message going to get through that you just can’t get away with it?
NEVER.
If they get jail terms then that is the hard line that needs to be taken.
You do the crime, you do the time.
Always curious to observe rabidity in the human.
Back to reality: Calophyllum, Kauri, Malas, Merwan, Merbau, Narra (Rosewood), New Guinea Beech, Paldao, Planchonella, Spondias, Taun, Teak, Vitex, Walnut, Watergum, Wau Beech. Rough, quick short list of high quality woods ‘dodgily’ shipped/air lifted out of West Papua to ‘top class’ furniture and joinery factories of Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Guam etc. Google these names to check conservation/endangered species status.
Oh no! A logging industry! What would Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Sting and the WWF say?!
Yeah, dazza’s line "total ignorance and arrogance" kind of sums up most commentary allowed through the oligarchy’s filters for anything about Indonesia. But such "total ignorance and arrogance" applies to dazza’s blanket comments too about Indonesia’s judiciary, military, and the ugly diplomatic realities for the Oz DFAT crowd - de facto southern-hemisphere representatives of the British Crown and its Fabian Society lackeys (inter alia).
Hill: "…our Foreign Minister says he won’t put pressure on the Indonesian Government just yet". That’s because he’s terrified that the Indonesian state apparatus will devise yet more ways to rub the Australian Government’s nose in its own faeces. That’s exactly what happened with the "43 asylum-seekers" farce: at least four of them have already gone home with support from the Indonesian Foreign Ministry. The entire episode was one of the most blatant examples of profit-driven people smuggling in recent Australian immigration history. It also had no credibility as a "Papuan pro-independence" push. As I stated here previously: "Oz’s clumsy diplos and stasi just keep the silly charade going, guarding some delusions for consumption by naive constituents - especially the ‘Christian’, anti-Islam and ‘democrafreedom-spreading’ lobbies - while the globalizing-liberalist Whitehall and Soros flunkies try to keep their straight and brave faces after having been taken for one massive, anti-imperialist RIDE". Mark Bousen doesn’t have the remotest clue about the matter; check it out - it’s a good laugh (http://newmatilda.com/2009/01/29/papier-diplomats).
Furthermore, Hill can speak for herself there, because he’s not my foreign minister. I had nothing to do with his background, appointment, or luvvy network that got him onto the gravy train of this country’s pseudo-aristocracy. If it had been my call, he and his cronies would probably have to try working for a living instead (of course, the luvvies on this site would probably make their mindless fashion-statement retort of "fascist!" against such a draconian notion).
Tim Lindsay’s point about prosecutorial appeal being "unusual" seems a tad cute. Of all people, he’s one who should know that the Indonesian system traces itself to Papal and, more especially Napoleonic, codes and philosophies of jurisprudence. Unlike the feudal and barbaric adversarial English garbage Australians have to put up with in the law here, the Indonesian system (like the French) is at least founded on a principle of truth-seeking. That’s a very scary, radical and foreign notion to those brainwashed by the English adversarial system’s games of roulette, jeopardy and silly sophist tricks. In such a typical post-Napoleon European system, if new information comes to the prosecutors then they can appeal the hitherto acquitted case; in the fundamentally corrupt legal system here, the best they could hope for would be to conjure up a wholly new and separate charge!
And still on that subject of corruption, why does Jess Hill refer to that Crikey piece? But don’t expect the uni system to dare even investigate the vast public evidence of fraud around that unsavory thing; it’d be a scandal to damage their whorehouse marketability.
Amazing tirade! Yet strange as it seems even to myself I actually agree with most of the fundamental points made. Their relevance to this particular case is debatable though.
Back to the subject at hand, I’d bet a slab of beer (or more) that the so-called Merauke Five found themselves up s**t creek for a much more banal, prosaic and (for this region and the personalities involved) quite understandable reason. In a word - money.
Distraction via the tired rants alleging some exceptional corruption on the part of Indonesia, and after Australian bail-out and associated heists easily exceed the trillion barrier! And all to assert some equally spurious nudges about a "hidden motive" in the journey of the five. Clearly ecoeng wants to avoid any of my discussion of the centrally relevant diplomatic context. Has someone else been calling irrelevant and fraudulent academics to account?
Try sticking this edit of your lines into your distraction plan: "it is a well-known fact that Canberra is a deeply corrupt place".
Btw, urge any of those ACADEMIC FRAUDS you know to put up here too - you obviously know some very well. Then you’ll have even greater urgency to allege "tirade" and "irrelevant" when I spill their putrid entrails in this Fabian and Soros’ ass-kissing site.
Wow! That’s a real anger management issue you have going there. Have you considered medication? Yoga?
A real mastery of verbose, mealy-mouthed and gutless euphemism. No spine, and no brain except its reptilian excuse for one.