Transcript
MAIRE LEADBETTER: In 2016 and 2017 there were two or three visits. You might remember there was a visit in the middle of 2016 when our ambassador Trevor Matheson actually went to meet with the Indonesian Security minster Luhut Pandjaitan. And that was a sort of slightly controversial kind of visit because at the time the Pacific Islands Forum was pushing for a fact-funding mission for Pacific Islands Forum leaders to be able to go to West Papua. and the Indonesian government offered this other meeting in West papua which seemed to outsiders, at least like me, as a bit of an attempt to sort of fob off the idea of an official Pacific Islands Forum fact-finding mission. So the ambassador's participation in that meeting with Pandjaitan was pretty carefully considered by officials, and they could see that there were some risks to the visit. But when I asked for the official report of the visit and so on, sections such as 'risks and opportunities', where presumably they looked openly at what the risks might be, had all been redacted out. So that's what frustrates me in essence: I get the report of our diplomat visits, and so you can get a bit of an idea what they looked at and who they met with and so on. But when it comes to the really nitty-gritty stuff, like human rights issues, like issues to do with impunity for security forces, or things like risks and opportunities, or political prisoners, or freedom of assembly, any of those sort of really critical things, the passages seem to be redacted out.
JOHNNY BLADES: In this brief about the May 2017 visit, the whole section under the heading 'Impunity for security forces' is redacted. Do you have any idea why?
ML: Well the reason why they will say is because they are entitled to under the relevant sections of the Official Information Act, and in particular there is a section in the the Official Information Act 6A, which is fairly broad and kind of gives them the right to redact things if they feel that putting them in would be prejudicial to New Zealand's international relations. So that's obviously a phrase which is open to all kinds of interpretations and is very broad. So under that they can say we're entitled to redact that. But when you look at our government's relations they're concerned with all the time, bilateral relations with Indonesia, what they don't seem to be sufficiently concerned with in my opinion is the rights and wellbeing of the people of West Papua. Especially when you look at how some of these visits took place and when they took place. Because the context of things in 2016 and 2017 is that there were mass arrests of peaceful protesters.
JB: It does talk about that, doesn't it, the papers you were given, it does acknowledge that there was a lot of arrests given that these were largely peaceful protests.
ML: Yeah in 2016, some five thousand (arrests). That's mentioned in the reports. So our politicians and our diplomats are well aware of this. But what are they doing about it? It's serious, this level of limitation on the freedom of expression in West Papua is quite shocking. The fact that there's even a police chief issuing an edict, saying that any demonstration that has any possible association with what they call 'separatism' just can't take place.
JB: The files also say that against the challenging background around Papua, that New Zealand's voice is respected and trusted in this region; and the delegation was asked to step up relations with Papua. What area is New Zealand being asked to step up in?
ML: Well again it's rather hard to tease that out. You also have to remember that last year there was a ministerial visit from our Defence Minister at the time, Mark Mitchell... to Jakarta... which was to talk about our defence relationship. And again I asked for all the briefings and notes from that visit to Jakarta by our Defence Minister. And again of course critical things are redacted. And all I can take out of that is that it's kind of underlining how important the bilateral relationship with Indonesia is, and how we are going to continue with our defence relationship. To put it in proportion, our defence relationship is not that extensive. But every year we are training Indonesian officers in our defence staff college near Wellington. And we're sending people over there to course and conferences, that type of thing. And what Mark Mitchell's visit said was that this is very important to the New Zealand government. But at the same time, we know that the Indonesian military still has impunity for all past human rights crimes in West Papua and in other parts of Indonesia; and for that matter has never been held to account for all terrible things that happened in East Timor. So why are we so keen to cement and uphold a defence relationship with Indonesia? Does that help the people of West Papua or any other part of Indonesia? I don't think it does. The fact that their (the Indonesian government's) voice is listened to isn't necessarily a good thing for the people of West Papua if it simply means we're listening to the voices of the established order. We need to be listening to other voices in West Papua. We need to be listening to those young people who currently can't even unfurl a banner or stand on the street to say what they want."
