Advertisement
Indonesia
This Week in AsiaPolitics

Indonesian diplomat rebukes Vanuatu PM over Papua comments at United Nations meeting

  • China’s largesse has been one of the factors leading to Pacific island nations speaking up about Jakarta’s handling of its restive easternmost provinces
  • Vanuatu’s premier Bob Loughman had previously called for Indonesia to address allegations of human rights abuses in the Papua region

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
An armed Indonesian policeman stands guard near a burning building after hundreds of demonstrators marched near Papua's biggest city, Jayapura, on August 29 last year. Photo: AFP
Randy Mulyanto
An Indonesian diplomat’s rebuke of calls from Vanuatu for an investigation into human rights abuses in West Papua has cast a spotlight on how Pacific island nations are banding together to speak out against Jakarta’s handling of its restive easternmost provinces, where there are calls for independence by some groups.
Advertisement
Silvany Austin Pasaribu, a representative from Indonesia’s permanent mission to the United Nations, on Saturday at a meeting of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly criticised Vanuatu for having an “excessive and unhealthy obsession about how Indonesia should act or govern itself”.

She was responding to Vanuatu Prime Minister Bob Loughman’s earlier speech in which he urged Jakarta to address allegations of human rights abuses in West Papua – which, together with its neighbouring Indonesian province of Papua, shares the same island as independent Papua New Guinea.

Loughman said the Pacific Islands Forum – which is made up of 18 countries and territories in the region, including Australia, New Zealand and French Polynesia – had last year asked that Jakarta allow the UN human rights office to visit the Indonesian half of the island, but there had been little progress on the matter. Foreign journalists and rights groups do not have easy access to the Papua region.

Silvany said Vanuatu was an “ignorant” country that should keep its “sermon” to itself and practise the principles of non-interference enshrined in the UN charter.

Advertisement
Advertisement