Christians and Muslims in Papua reject fundamentalists

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016

“In the case of our Pacific region, the hotspot is West Papua, the threat of ISIS, if there’s any degree of threat at all, it would be West Papua, because of the issue of West Papuan independence,” says John Tekwie, a community leader in Vanimo, the PNG town closest to the border.

All mainstream religions in Papua, Christian and Muslim, have agreed not to accept groups of fundamentalists in the region and have pushed for local police to expel them.

“They have not been identified as terrorist group but they need to be watched closely in order to prevent them from creating violence in the land of Papua,” said Father Neles Tebay of the West Papuan Catholic Justice and Peace Secretariat.

Melanesian leaders are wary of Indonesian security forces’ counter-terrorist efforts, knowing that in the past, these have targeted peaceful West Papuan pro-independence groups.

However, on the other side, the message is clear that Australia, and New Zealand, should be worried about PNG’s lack of capacity to control its side of the border.

Tekwie says it’s become easy for people to come over from Indonesia to live and work in PNG without visas.

“We have a problem with intelligence gathering, we have security problems and we do certainly need help from Australia and New Zealand, PNG defence force and the foreign affairs department and the border development authority up at the border to do intelligence gathering.”

“This is our main problem. The threat to our border is real and we cannot underestimate it.”

Source