Indonesia's special forces target churches, civilians

Secret documents have leaked from inside Indonesia's Special Forces unit Kopassus. The documents say that the US-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. The disclosure came as President Barack Obama touched down in Indonesia. His administration recently announced the restoration of US aid to Kopassus, despite the organization's well-documented history of abuses. Kopassus is the most notorious unit of Indonesia's armed forces, which along with the national police, have killed civilians by the hundreds of thousands. The leaked cache of secret Kopassus documents includes operational, intelligence and field reports as well as personnel records, which list the names and details of Kopassus "agents." The authenticity of the documents has been verified by Kopassus personnel who have seen them and by external evidence regarding the authors and the internal characteristics of the documents. When the US restored Kopassus aid last July the rationale was fighting terrorism, but the documents show that Kopassus in fact systematically targets civilians.