By Kevin Freedman, alumni, University of Winnipeg
It was the first night that I had not worn an official shirt in almost a week and it would be the last time for another week yet. After five days straight of providing protective accompaniment to Yan Christian Warinussy, winner of the 2005 John Humphrey’s Freedom Award(1), we got to relax a little and attend his 43rd birthday party. Since June 2006, Mr. Warinussy and the legal aid NGO, LP3BH (Institute of Research, Investigation and Development of Legal Aid), of which he is founder and Executive Director, has been a client of Peace Brigades International (PBI), the human rights organisation with which I have been volunteering for the past seven months in Indonesia.
PBI only enters a country upon invitation from a local organisation. We utilise our strong international and domestic networks to provide moral and physical support to organisations, all of whom must work legally and non-violently to be a partner of PBI. Through our constant monitoring of the local situation, the sharing of information within our network and through physical protective accompaniment, PBI volunteers endeavour to create more space for HRDs to work in safety and comfort.
While the question “who will police the police” is a common one, rarely do people ask, “who defends the human rights defenders”. This is the issue that PBI works to address. In conflict regions around the world, human rights defenders (HRDs) including lawyers, environmental activists, journalists, victims’ advocates and many other non-violent actors are often in a state of permanent threat from a variety of powerful entities whose interests clash with those of the public.
I first found out about PBI in the summer of 2005, and finally joined the Indonesia Project (IP) after more than a year of preparation that included a two-week evaluation seminar in Germany, several workbooks, dozens of articles and essays to read and four months in language school. I was deployed to the province of Papua, the largest and easternmost in all of Indonesia, which is about as close to the last frontier as anywhere in the world. It is a land of beautiful cultures, more than 250 languages (not dialects, languages!), and some of the most diverse and unique fauna and flora on the planet. Many of its Melanesian inhabitants used stone tools until as recently as a few decades ago and the national language of Indonesia, let alone modern education, has yet to reach many of the more isolated communities.
In the 1960s, after the Dutch government relinquished control of this vast area and despite the wishes of many Papuans who had dreams of independence, Indonesia annexed it. Through a series of events still considered unfair by most observers, Indonesia gained internationally recognised control of Papua. Since this time, there has been a series of movements to bring about independence, some of them violent, most of them peaceful. To quash these small revolutions the Indonesian military uses what many believe to be undue force and have been accused of committing grave human rights violations. For the last 40 years, and especially in more recent times, there has been a communal cry for justice, and many Papuans, including Yan Christian Warinussy have heeded that call. For his outspoken nature and the work in which he everyday engages, Mr. Warinussy, his family and his co-workers have experienced anonymous (and not so anonymous) physical threats and acts of intimidation; there is rarely a moment when the authorities do not know his whereabouts. Even through all of this, he does not let up and does not let those who wish to scare him get the best of him.
I consider all this while sitting behind him at his birthday party. For the next week my accompaniment partner from PBI and I will don our bright blue protective accompaniment shirts and travel to several villages with Mr. Warinussy to provide him with what he says is “a higher level of comfort and safety”. He is not scared, quite the opposite in fact, but the topic of his possible death at the hands of the authorities has come up in discussions with him and his wife more than once. It seems to be something that he is prepared for, but is comforted in his cause by his faith and confidence.
The concept of risking my life for what I believe in is difficult for me to grasp, as it probably is for almost anyone in the western world. If I had people who wanted to kill me for doing what I believe in, would I continue along the same path as Yan Christian has? Would I be able to put aside any fear that inhibits my ability to work at peak form and could I persist, working such a difficult and thankless job, while constantly being reminded of all the barriers in place to ensure my failure? I hope I could answer yes, but for now, I find inspiration in, and am fascinated by, the HRDs that PBI works daily with here in Papua, and hope some day I may be able to make an anonymous impact the way they do.
(1) Rights & Democracy presents the John Humphrey Freedom Award each year to an organization or individual from any country or region of the world, including Canada, for exceptional achievement in the promotion of human rights and democratic development. www.dd-rd.ca
