The Indonesia Project: Ten Years on

This past August, the PBI Indonesia Project commemorated its tenth year of service to the people of Indonesia with celebrations in Wamena, Jayapura and Jakarta. Since 1999, nearly two hundred volunteers from twenty nine countries have served with the IP, providing protective accompaniment and peace education services to 27 Indonesian client NGOs, as well as running countless workshops with various other civil society groups and government organizations. The IP has worked in seven provinces, from the westernmost province of Aceh, to Papua on the far eastern fringe of the Archipelago.

PBI first received requests from Indonesian civil society groups for protective services in 1998 and following a two month exploratory visit, established the PBI East Timor Project in Dili in August of 1999. However later that year, due to widespread violence following the East Timor referendum for independence, the team evacuated to Jakarta, Bali, Flores and West Timor. The IP continued to provide support for client organizations in both East and West Timor, such as TRuK-F and LAP Timoris, until the West Timor sub-team was formally closed in May 2002.

The first year of the new millennium saw the expansion of the IP with the establishment of permanent teams in both Jakarta and Banda Aceh. From Jakarta, PBI could more thoroughly integrate with the international community and the national government of Indonesia. Better integration would lead to better support for PBI clients like Suciwati, who for years has relentlessly sought justice in the case of the 2004 assassination of her husband, human rights defender Munir Sahid Thalib, aboard a Garuda Airlines flight to Amsterdam. Munir’s unresolved case is perhaps the highest profile human rights case in Indonesia.

PBI opened a second Aceh team in Lhokseumawe in 2002, and in the same year ran workshops in Flores and West Timor on conflict resolution and management. By the summer of 2003, when the declaration of Martial law forced the evacuation of both sub-teams to Medan, PBI was serving 7 local NGOs in Aceh. From Medan and Jakarta, PBI worked hard to provide continued support to clients in Aceh, primarily via frequent check in calls to each organization to monitor the safety and situation of clients and the civilian population.

The unspeakable tragedy of the Boxing Day Tsunami, which left 153,000 Acehnese dead and perhaps a million without home or livelihood, added new dimensions and pressing demands to the challenges facing PBI and our clients in Aceh. We were terribly saddened by the loss of some Indonesian colleagues in this disaster, and so hardened our resolve to provide a protective presence for their organizations while they began rebuilding and undertaking the humanitarian and human rights work they were uniquely qualified to do. 

PBI was finally able to return to Aceh in January 2005. Eight months later, the Aceh Peace Agreement was signed in Helsinki. This agreement effectively ended the fighting between GAM and the RI. The agreement also created the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), which was tasked to monitor human rights and the implementation of the terms of peace. The PBI sub-team based in Banda Aceh worked closely with the AMM; monitoring  clients’ security while at the same time building up networks in the province to increase cooperation between local and international bodies working on the peace process, in particular between the AMM and our client organizations.

As the situation in Aceh stabilized PBI received fewer and fewer requests for protective accompaniment from our clients, and so we were able to focus and expand our participatory peace education program. From 2006 onwards, the Aceh sub team ran numerous youth camps, capacity building, peace building, transparency, and gender equality work shops in cooperation with both local and international partners. PBI formally closed the Aceh sub team in 2008 with the consent of our clients. Nevertheless, we continue to stay in close contact and to monitor the peace in Aceh with yearly fieldtrips to the province.

Over the past five years PBI has also had field teams in Papua, one of the most conflict-prone regions in Indonesia. In 2004 ElsHam, a Papuan NGO based in Jayapura, asked to become a PBI client. The following year, after an initial exploratory field trip, PBI established the Jayapura sub team. The sub team began building a security network, socializing with local NGOs and government authorities, and considering the need for another office in Wamena.  PBI quickly decided that another Papuan team based in Wamena was necessary to serve the isolated and vulnerable people of the surrounding Baliem Valley, and so in 2006 PBI created the Wamena sub team.

PBI has worked with a number of clients in Papua, including JAPH&HAM, SKP, Pastor John Djonga, LP3BH, and FOKER on issues ranging from impunity, access to justice, and security sector reform to land rights, natural resources and cultural/traditional rights. Historically, the Jayapura team has tended to focus on protective accompaniment, including regular field trips to many different cities and villages around Papua in support of our clients. On the other hand, the Wamena team has focused on participatory peace education activities in partnership with client and local NGOs.

In Wamena, Peace Day holds particular cultural and social importance. Over the past few years, PBI has helped develop and fund events around this celebration, perhaps culminating in 2009’s celebration with a month of peace related activities, discussions, and debates all planned and carried out by local organizers and PBI client organizations. 2009 also saw the formal reopening of the Wamena peace library, which is now run by a local staff. The staff has succeeded in attracting a much wider range of people to the library through an expanded collection of children books, comics, and novels, and a program of activities including handicrafts, beading, short story writing and film screenings.

The Jayapura team throughout its history has provided support for PBI clients with offices all around Papua. In 2007, the Jayapura team visited client SKP in Timika for one week to socialize with local authorities and reassess SKP’s security situation. The following year PBI spent ten days with client organization LP3BH in and around Manokwari, as well as making various other trips with clients to Bituni Bay, Puncak Jaya and Merauke. The Jayapura team made several field trips Meroke and several more to Nabire in 2009 to provide a proactive presence for clients like Emmanual Goo.

No one knows what the future will bring in 2010, but we hope to continue supporting our clients and provide the sort of proactive presence and peace education expertise we are uniquely qualified to give.