Indonesia's World Peace Event Contradicted by Arrests of Peaceful Activists

Published November 27, 2009 @ 10:13AM PT

On Wednesday November 25th, Indonesian President Yudhoyono opened a World Peace Day event in Ambon, But his prized guests Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Yunus cancelled their trips. More importantly, my colleague, Nick Chesterfield, a human rights activist who focuses on minority rights in Indonesia and neighboring island nations, reports that twelve Ambonese activists were arrested by Indonesian police before the peace event.

The gong came as a Papuan political prisoner, among many peaceful activists put in jail for advocating greater self-determination for Melanesians in eastern Indonesia, as beaten by four jailed former security men.

If you want to write to authorities about these issues and keep up on Indonesian peace and contradictions, see the latest reports here. If you'd like to subscribe to alerts, write here: west_papua_media_alerts-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

[Photo: Indonesian President Yudhoyono at London Summit, Hugo Philpott]

Spread the Word

More You Can Do

Get action and news alerts about War and Peace »
Browse top War and Peace organizations to support »
Find out more about War and Peace and what you can do to help »

Add a Comment

For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

Comment

Check Spelling

Email me when there are new posts to this thread
Comment Policy

Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.

Author

Daniel J Gerstle is a creative long form crisis journalist, human rights researcher, and humanitarian aid consultant who's covered Bosnia, Croatia, Karabakh, Chechnya, Ingushetia, the Ossetias, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia very deeply, spiced with highlights of Sudan, Palestine, Jordan, Tajikistan, and Georgia. Prior to all this, he served as a US Marine reservist stateside.