AIUSA Group 48

Legislative work on Indonesia and West Papua

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by

joanne
in ,

Group 48 member and also AIUSA Country Specialist for Indonesia and Timor-Lesté, Max White recently spent one week in Washington DC visiting Congressional offices. Below is a summary of his visit.

On December 3rd through 5th, we visited 12 US Representatives, one Senator, and two State Department Desk Officers.

“We” were:

  • Edmund McWilliams, Coordinator of West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT)
  • Dr. Eben Kirksey, East Timor and Indonesian Action Network (ETAN) and WPAT
  • Max White, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA)

and in certain meetings:

  • T. Kumar, AIUSA
  • Carl Ross, Save America’s Forests

Each of us had particular issues to discuss, but in common we focused on three issues:

  1. Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage, AI Prisoners of Conscience (and similar cases),
  2. US ties to, and funds for the Indonesian military (TNI),
  3. Illegal logging in Papua, Indonesia and confluence with the first two issues above.

Most visits were with Representatives who had signed onto a Congressional Letter sent to the President of Indonesia. Everyone – we and the aides – speculated about what changes we can expect with a new Administration and Congress.

Going into meetings we wore Amnesty’s “FREE FILEP AND YUSAK” pins and gave out lots of them. (We were occasionally, annoyingly caught by metal detectors because of wearing the pins.) Dr. Eben Kirksey distributed many of our postcards. I thought Eben (Yusak’s personal friend and once his teacher in Papua) intended an airdrop over DC of pins and postcards. The more I gave him, the more disappeared. As a current cliché goes, it was all good. Thanks to all at Amnesty who worked on these materials!

The first thing an aide to Representative Sires of New Jersey mentioned was that they had “been in contact with” a member of Amnesty International from a group in Sires’ district encouraging Representative Sires to sign the letter to Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. I believe the person’s name is Larry Ludosky. He deserves a thank you!

When I was making appointments, an aide in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, cited the letter to Speaker Pelosi sent by Amnesty Group 30 in San Francisco (Pelosi’s district). Eben Kirksey had met with the group, and subsequently Sasha Price from Group 30 coordinated that letter to the Congresswoman. Good. Sasha Price deserves a thank you!

I remain impressed by how Amnesty members and groups can make a difference.

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