ALLAN NAIRN
Currently in Indonesia, Nairn is available for a limited number of interviews with major media outlets. He just wrote the piece “Breaking News: Secret Files Show Kopassus, Indonesia’s Special Forces, Targets Papuan Churches, Civilians. Documents Leak from Notorious U.S.-Backed Unit as Obama Lands in Indonesia.”

The piece states: “Secret documents have leaked from inside Kopassus, Indonesia’s red berets, which say that Indonesia’s U.S.-backed security forces engage in ‘murder [and] abduction’ and show that Kopassus targets churches in West Papua and defines civilian dissidents as the ‘enemy.’

“The documents include a Kopassus enemies list headed by Papua’s top Baptist minister and describe a covert network of surveillance, infiltration and disruption of Papuan institutions. …

“When the U.S. restored Kopassus aid last July the rationale was fighting terrorism, but the documents show that Kopassus in fact systematically targets civilians.”

See IPA release of March 24, 2010: “Exposing U.S.-backed Indonesian Military Assassinations Leads to Arrest Threats and Censorship for Journalist”

JOHN M. MILLER
National coordinator for the East Timor & Indonesia Action Network, Miller said today: “We urge President Obama to use the opportunity of his visit to decisively break with past U.S. support for torture, disappearances, rape, invasion and illegal occupation, extrajudicial murder, environmental devastation and more. U.S. weapons, training, political backing and economic support of Indonesia facilitated these crimes.”

Nairn and Miller appeared on the program Democracy Now this morning:

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167