Obama's Indonesian Death Squads

Last July, Obama restored aid to a notorious Indonesian unit called Kopassus. The aid had been cut off at the time of East Timor because of the pile of evidence that this unit was involved in torture, killings and other atrocities. So, of course, Obama had to restore aid to this unit under the guise of 'fighting terrorism'.

Instead, what this unit does is to attack the people of Indonesia. Especially in the West Papua region where people are struggling for Independence.

Journalist Allain Nairn has released leaked documents detailing the crimes and atrocities of this US backed terror unit.

Kopassus is the most notorious unit of Indonesia's armed forces, TNI, which along with POLRI, the national police, have killed civilians by the hundreds of thousands.

Yep, that sounds like America's kind of people. US 'Intelligence' had of course maintained ties to Kopassus during the cutoff of aid to the killers. After all, we can't abandon our kind of people when they are faced with people demanding freedom.

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

A detailed 25-page secret report by a Kopassus task force in Kotaraja, Papua defines Kopassus' number-one "enemy" as unarmed civilians. It calls them the "separatist political movement" "GSP/P, " lists what they say are the top 15 leaders and discusses the "enemy order of battle."

All of those listed are civilians, starting with the head of the Baptist Synod of Papua. The others include evangelical ministers, activists, traditional leaders, legislators, students and intellectuals as well as local establishment figures and the head of the Papua Muslim Youth organization.

The secret Kopassus study says that in their 400,000 - person area of operations the civilians they target as being political are "much more dangerous than" any armed opposition since the armed groups "hardly do anything" but the civilians -- with popular support -- have "reached the outside world" with their "obsession" with "merdeka" (independence/ freedom) and persist in "propagating the issue of severe human rights violations in Papua," ie. "murders and abductions that are done by the security forces."

Yep, that's official US policy from the land of the free. We finance the killers of human beings whose only crime is that they want "merdeka" or "independence/freedom".

But hey, Indonesia has oil. Guess which side the US is on? Is it going to be on the side of the people who have oil? Or, is the US on the side of the people who are doing radical things like holding press conferences where they talk about independence or freedom? When that starts to occur in a country that has oil, one can expect to see Washington's bullets flying again. Doesn't matter if its Indonesia or Bahrain.

Given that the Kopassus report states as settled fact that security forces do "murder, abduction," those who they define as being the enemy can be presumed to be in some danger.

In its' discussion of "State of the enemy" Kopassus identifies the enemy with two kinds of actions: "the holding of press conferences" where they "always criticize the government and the work being done by the security forces" and the holding of private meetings where they engage in the same kind of prohibited speech. (LAPORAN TRIWULAN p. 9)

And yes Virginia, you are paying for this. Obama's administration re-started aid to this Kopassus group last year. The man does love his killers.