Word: papua
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...done to improve their human rights record and stop the abuses? SBY: The military's respect for human rights is getting better. The number of cases of human rights abuses in conflict areas is much less now. If there's still violation in places like Aceh and Papua we will hold military trials. None of these cases will be delayed or suspended just because they're in operational areas. We want to keep improving the military and police's respect for human rights...
...DIED. LEONARDUS BENYAMIN (BENNY) MURDANI, 71, Indonesian general who plotted the 1975 invasion of East Timor; in Jakarta. A lifelong soldier, Murdani rose to prominence as a member of Indonesia's ?lite parachute battalion during the 1962 invasion of then Dutch-controlled West Papua. The attack on East Timor and subsequent occupation sparked a guerrilla war and led to the deaths of some 200,000 East Timorese over two decades. Jakarta withdrew its forces after a U.N. supervised referendum in 1999 in which the onetime Portuguese colony voted overwhelmingly for independence...
...other part of Australia's frontier is as closely watched by authorities as the Torres Strait, a shallow sea spanning the 150 km from the tip of Cape York to the coast of Papua New Guinea and flanked by the Coral Sea to the east and the Arafura Sea to the west. Scattered across the Strait like stepping stones are 138 islands, only 17 of which are inhabited. This region, many of whose 8,000 Australian residents follow traditional indigenous lifestyles, seems a tranquil tropical idyll. But for professional border-watchers - officials of the Australian Customs Service, Federal Police, Quarantine...
...Isolated though it is, the Strait is alive with activity: there are container vessels, fishing trawlers, supply barges, pleasure yachts and the small craft of Torres Strait Islanders and visiting Papua New Guineans. Among them are the boats of people trying to exploit cracks in the system to fish illegally and traffic in drugs, firearms and people. Starting on Thursday Island, the region's administrative hub, Time tags along with marine and land-based Customs officers to find out exactly what border protection means in this key outpost. "It's busy - or it's busier," says Steve Jeffs, Customs' Torres...
Like politicians everywhere, Papua New Guinean M.P.s are programmed to plot. Eighteen months after a national election, a new government loses its immunity from votes of no confidence - and disgruntled M.P.s on both sides of Parliament start conspiring to unseat it. Of 11 governments since Independence in 1975, only six have been elected. Five won power through no-confidence votes or the threat of them; none has lasted a full five-year term. "Abusing the 18-month grace period is like a disease in P.N.G. politics," says Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare. "Those who feel they've missed out always...