The West Papua Advocacy Team or WPAT has praised continued US congressional attention to issues of human rights in Indonesia's Papua region.
The Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill for 2010 as passed last night by the House of Representatives withholds 2 million US dollars in military assistance to Indonesia pending a State Department report on human rights, accountability and military reform in Indonesia as well as access to Papua.
WPAT's Ed McWilliams says that with this legislation, the US Congress continues to reflect deep concern about the repression Papuans continue to suffer at the hands of Indonesian security forces.
He says a key problem is that the military remains a rogue operation particularly in Papua.
"Although Indonesia is democratising, we continue to see human rights abuses by the Indonesian military, Brimob and Kopassus, the special forces and so on. And our concern has been that the US ought to be using any kind of relationship it has with the Indonesian military essentially as leverage - both to end the abuses and also to see that the people who have committed abuses are held accountable."
Ed McWilliams.
