Thursday, November 25, 2010

Indonesian Soldiers Torture Papuan Men



I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.

Spanish translation (en Español). Italian translation (traduzione in Italiano). French translation (en Français). Norwegian translation (på norsk).


This is extremely shocking footage of Indonesian soldiers in West Papua torturing a Papuan man and his father.

Indonesia stole West Papua from the Papuans in 1965, and has waged a genocidal and racist war against the Papuans ever since, a war that has killed 100,000 Papuans. Soldiers are extremely racist and view Papuans as little more than animals.

Papuans try to fight back using very primitive weapons, but they are no match for the modern Indonesian military. US imperialism has backed the Indonesians to the hilt in this war because US corporations want to exploit various raw materials in Papua.

The footage was filmed on a cellphone in May by one of the soldiers taking part in a military operation in the Punkak Jaya region of the Central Highlands of West Papua. The operation was launched against the Free Papua Movement, an armed group seeking freedom from Indonesian colonialism, but the troops are mostly just torturing, raping and murdering civilians like they always do.

It is apparently "trophy footage." This video is just a small part of a much larger video that shows the two men being tortured. In the bigger video, the older man is stripped naked, has a bag put over his head and has a burning stick applied to his genitals while he screams in agony. The young man has a knife held to his face.

Details of who the victims are hard to come by since the area is a closed military zone, and journalists are banned from the area. However, the older man is missing and probably dead, while the young man has been released.

Indonesian troops have been killing, torturing and raping Papuans with impunity since 1963. Victims have been as young as 3 years old.

For many years, Indonesian troops have been taking trophy photos, now escalating to films, of Papuans being killed and raped. They show this media to Papuans in order to humiliate them.

The footage appeared just recently, on October 20, 2010 and caused a bit of a media stir.

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