Timor-Leste draws flak for arresting activists during papal visit

Sep 10, 2024

DILI: Rights activists have criticized the Timor-Leste government for arresting activists who expressed solidarity with West Papuans’ independence struggle during Pope Francis' visit.

Police arrested physically disabled Nelson Barros Pereira Xavier on Sept. 10, a day after Pope Francis arrived in the national capital for a three-day visit.

Xavier was arrested for holding flags of the Vatican and Timor-Leste with writings “Free West Papua” and “Free Palestine” on them at a papal program in the cathedral in Dili, local media reports said.

He was released after a few hours but told “that the case will be forwarded to the public prosecutor's office,” news outlet Neonmetin.info said, quoting Cesario da Silva, coordinator of the Association of Disabled Persons’ Organization.

The arrest was an “act that can't be justified,” said Ivo Mateus Goncalves da Cruz Fernandes, who researched at the Australian National University on Timor-Leste’s history.

This is the second arrest for showing solidarity with West Papua in recent days in the Catholic-majority nation.

On Sept. 2, Nelson Roldão, a Timorese rights activist supporting Papuans, was arrested at Nicolau Lobato International Airport in Dili for displaying the Morning Star flag of Papua. He was released later.

The freedom of West Papua, which is part of Indonesia, is a politically sensitive subject. Indonesia considers the freedom movement a secessionist movement and wants to crush it militarily.

Timor-Leste was under Indonesian occupation until 2002 when it gained independence and became a free nation.

Fernandes told UCA News that the constitution of Timor-Leste requires the country “to show solidarity with the people of any country that is fighting for its freedom. "

“The authorities are violating the constitution” by such arrests, he said.

Armindo Moniz Amaral, a lecturer at Dom Jaime Garcia Goulart Dili College of Philosophy and Theology, said the arrests were “illegal and arbitrary.”

Timor-Leste officials seemed to act like the Indonesian state that prohibits Papuans from wearing attributes such as the Morning Star flag, he told UCA News.

Earlier too, Timor-Leste has stifled efforts to show solidarity with Papua.

In August 2019, police arrested 47 youths when they were about to hold a demonstration to express support for Papua before the embassies of Indonesia and the US.

Indonesia's Christian-majority Papua region has been a hotbed of conflict and death for more than six decades since it became a part of Muslim-Majority Indonesia following the end of Dutch rule in the 1960s.

The Papuan freedom struggle and the Indonesian efforts to suppress it have killed up to 500,000 people.

The Papuan activists are trying to get the pope to talk about the Papuan issue and exert political pressure. But the government is trying to keep the issue away from the pope, he said.

Papuan activities planned to present the pope with a 124-page book, titled "The Prayers and Hopes of Papuans to the Holy Father Pope Francis," written by 34 Papuans, including priests, and translated into Italian.

However, the book was not allowed to be presented wrapped in an open Papuan bag (a traditional Papuan bag woven from dried tree bark).--ucanews.com