2024 was always going to be a year of political change and a dynamic situation, given the presidential and parliamentary elections. With Prabowo's election, the decline of rights to free expression and assembly that had already happened during President Joko Widodo's time in office, looks set to continue.

In addition, international scrutiny of the situation has increased, with the notable mention of the Permanent People's Tribunal on West Papua, hosted in June, finding the Indonesian government guilty of violent repression and human rights violations, in addition to other abuses, in October.

TAPOL's latest report "2024 West Papua Freedom of Expression and Assembly" saw the following major trends developing last year compared with 2023:

• 42.9 per cent increase in incidents of arbitrary dispersals
• 51.4 per cent more individuals being arrested
• 12.9 per cent increase in intimidation and harassment incidents, including torture and killings.

The report also shows in numbers that:

Incidents were recorded in 10 provinces across Indonesia, with the highest proportion (27.1 per cent) taking place in Papua province, highlighting the amount of incidents that take place in Jayapura. Looking at the whole region of West Papua (79.1 per cent of all Papua-related violations across Indonesia actually occurred in West Papua. Noticeably this year, 3 countries: Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea and Australia, also had West Papua-related incidents.

With regard to perpetrators of incidents described in the report, the Indonesian police were involved in the vast majority, or a total of 65.6 per cent of all incidents. Unknown perpetrators make up the second biggest group of perpetrators, with involvement in 10.4 per cent of all incidents, often involving intimidation, both online and offline, and targeting activists, the media and human rights defenders. Civilians have also contributed to almost 6.3 per cent of incidents this year, mainly involved again in intimidation of activists and election officials. There has also been an uptick in the number of incidents involving corporate actors.

West Papuan Campaign groups, such as the Komite Nasional Papua Barat (National Committee for West Papua, KNPB), Aliansi Mahasiswa Papua (Papuan Student Alliance, AMP) and the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), as well as other smaller groups and individual activists, have borne the brunt of incidents, having been affected in 59.3 per cent of all incidents. They bore the brunt of all sorts of incidents, but particularly arbitrary arrests and dispersals. Outside these groups, journalists make up the second biggest group, affected by 13.5 per cent of all incidents, whilst civilians not in any other category make up the third largest at 11.5 per cent.

We can discern certain important trends from the data we have collected and analysed:

Firstly, a trend towards harsher repression of protests and mass events can be discerned in the 2024 data, through the increase of dispersals and the number of people arrested in 2024, even with lower numbers of actual arrest incidents. Given almost half of the events had more than 10 people arrested in them, these add together to point to more people going out during mass protest events, as well as the security forces' tendency to treat these protests more harshly, through dispersals or through the arresting of more participants.

Secondly, there has been a distinctive shift in some of the issues being campaigned on by West Papuan activists and students, as well as some of the security force and civilian militia tactics used to repress dissent. These include the increasing involvement of companies in repression in West Papua. West Papuans have empowered themselves to campaign and act with renewed spirit and in new ways, in response to the authorities bringing issues to the fore against them, such as the renewal of transmigration, food estates, environmental damage and military excesses.

Thirdly, there continues to be a shift to internationalising the suppression of dissent on West Papua. Actors of all different persuasions – national government, Indonesian and international business – violated freedom of expression on West Papua in three separate countries (Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea & Australia) over the course of 2024, the highest single year total that we have recorded since the report started to be compiled in 2019.

Check out the full report by clicking on the link below:

2024 TAPOL West Papua Freedom of Expression and Assembly Report: https://tapol.org/sites/default/files/2024%20TAPOL%20West%20Papua%20Freedom%20of%20Expression%20and%20Assembly%20Report.pdf

Source: https://tapol.org/publications/west-papua-2024-freedom-expression-and-assembly-full-repor