Indonesia: OPM Uses Village Funds to Buy Weapons, Threatens Civil Society Security and Obstacles Papua’s Development
By : Hugo Steve Momoribo )*
The Free Papua Organization (OPM) uses village funds to buy weapons. By purchasing these weapons, they are threatening the security and safety of civilians and are clearly increasingly hampering efforts to accelerate development in the region nicknamed Bumi Cenderawasih.
Misappropriation of village funds from OPM deserves to be monitored by all parties and all elements should be aware of this. Not without reason, the article is very clear that if this activity continues to occur, it will seriously threaten the future of the Land of Papua itself.
In fact, the Government has disbursed a number of village funds, the amount of which is actually not small, for Papua, with the aim of accelerating maximum and optimal development there, namely to fully support the special autonomy policy so as to bring prosperity to the local community.
OPM deliberately misappropriated the government’s aid money in the form of village funds by purchasing weapons on the black market. In fact, since 2015, the President of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo (Jokowi) introduced the ‘Village Fund’ program.
It is clear that there is no place in Indonesia that is more challenging than the monitoring scheme for program distribution in highland and remote areas such as Papua.
There is something that is also worth noting, namely that it turns out that Village Funds from the Government are the main source of income for the region which is located in the easternmost part of the country.
Moreover, in the area nicknamed Little Heaven that Fell to Earth, there is also the OPM which demands that the region be separated from the Republic of Indonesia by carrying out a number of heinous and barbaric acts of terror, including rebellions which have recently continued to be massive in line with the surge in arms sales in the region. .
Data shows that in 2015, there was only 1 case of illegal arms and ammunition trafficking in Papua, but this number is increasing day by day, in fact, in 2021 cases of arms trafficking will immediately skyrocket to 14.
Head of the Public Relations Division of the Papua Regional Police, Police Commissioner Ignatius Benny Ady Prabowo, admitted that he was very concerned because the Government’s Village Fund, which should aim to improve community welfare, had actually become a source of funding for OPM’s illegal weapons purchasing activities.
Head of Operations (Kaops) Damai Cartenz 2024, Police Brigadier General (Brigjen Pol) Faizal Ramadhani said that around 40 percent of illegal weapons cases apparently involved funds from the Village Fund program.
In fact, the Government designed the allocation of Village Funds to spur economic growth in the Land of Papua, so that the increase in these funds has continued to occur up to 3 times since 2015.
However, it would be very sad if it turned out that OPM was misusing Village Funds and using them to carry out illegal firearms purchase transactions. Increasing gun ownership among separatist gangs who are enemies of the country is also very clearly visible in several recent photos they released along with threats to civil society.
In the Papuan highlands, they even treat Village Funds like a ‘revolutionary tax’ which the OPM confiscates both through intimidation and coercion. In fact, as an example, there is a recent case that recently occurred, namely the school burning incident in the Bintang Mountains.
After the security forces carried out further investigations, it turned out that the case of burning down the school building occurred because the Free Papua Organization did not receive Village Funds. So they went on a rampage by carrying out cruel and barbaric actions by burning down the one-roof elementary, middle and high school buildings in Borban Village, Okbab District.
The Head of Information for the Regional Military Command, Lieutenant Colonel Infantry Candra Kurniawan, said that the very inhumane act of terror that OPM carried out was very unfortunate for all local residents because the school they burned was a place for the children of the next generation of the nation from Cenderawasih Earth to obtain learning for the sake of their future.
It is not surprising why the entire community strongly condemned the burning of school buildings by terrorist groups that were enemies of the country. They deliberately do this so that young Papuan people do not have a good future.
The reason turns out to be because they did not receive Village Funds, because so far it turns out that OPM has misappropriated Village Funds which they use for funding to carry out illegal firearms (senpi) purchase transactions to threaten all civil society and further hamper the development of Papua.
)* Papuan Students Live in Yogyakarta
