Open season again for Indonesian military trolls and ‘fake news’ campaign on West Papua

Censured or punished? Conflicting reports about the alleged punishment of the two
Indonesian Air Force military policemen who stomped on the head
of young Papuan Steven Yadohamang at Merauke last week. IMAGE: Yumi Toktok Stret

 
By DAVID ROBIE in Asia Pacific Report

IT IS open season again for Indonesian trolls targeting Asia Pacific Report and other media with fake news and disinformation dispatches in a crude attempt to gloss over human rights violations.

Just three months ago I wrote about this issue in my “Dear editor” article exposing the disinformation campaign. There was silence for a while but now the fake letters to the editor – and other media outlets — have started again in earnest.

The latest four lengthy letters emailed to APR canvas the following topics — Jakarta’s controversial special autonomy status revised law for Papua, a brutal assault by Indonesian Air Force military policemen on a deaf Papuan man, and a shooting incident allegedly committed by pro-independence rebels – and they appear to have been written from a stock template.

• READ MORE: Outrage over Indonesian officers for stomping on disabled Papuan teen’s head
• ULMWP calls for suspension of Indonesia from UN rights council over assault on deaf Papuan
• Indonesian military duo to be punished for attack on deaf Papuan
• Other West Papua human rights reports

And they all purport to have been written by “Papuan students” or “Papuans”. Are they their real names, and do they even exist?

Dear editor, we have you in our sights for reporting ‘the truth’ on Papua

A security forces surveillance camera "eyes" on Papuans outside a Malang
police station in East Java. Image: ULMWP

By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report

ASIA PACIFIC REPORT, the Auckland-based independent news and analysis website, has been increasingly targeted by Indonesian trolls over the past three months, involving a spate of “letters to the editor” and social media attacks.

One of the most frequent letter writers, an “Abel Lekahena”, who claims to be a “student” or “writing on behalf of the people of Papua”, has accused APR of “only taking the separatists’ narrative as they played the victim”.

Sometimes he is purportedly a student living in “Yogyakarta”, West Java; at other times he is a migrant from East Nusa Tenggara “currently living in Manokwari, West Papua”. He has written to Asia Pacific Report 10 times in the past eight weeks – twice in one day on December 29, 2020.

• READ MORE: Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence
• Vanuatu Daily Post: Indonesia online propaganda undermining West Papua
• Indonesian double standards over press freedom endanger safety of Papuan journalists

“Lekahena”, if that is even his real name, claims in his latest “template” letter on Monday that since January, “the armed separatists prowled in Intan Jaya” and burned a missionary plane on January 6 and he has cited several clashes between pro-independence militants seeking independence for West Papua and the colonial Indonesian security forces.