OPM uses village funds to buy weapons, threatens civilian security and increasingly hampers Papua development
By: Hugo Steve Momoribo)*
The Papua Merdeka Organization (OPM) uses village funds to buy weapons. By purchasing such weapons, they threaten the security and security of civilians and clearly further hinder efforts to accelerate the development of the Cinderella Guard region.
The dismissal of the village funds from the OPM should be a matter for the whole party and all elements should be vigilant. Not without reason, it’s already very clear that if the activity continues, it threatens the future of the Papua Land itself.
Indeed, the government has allocated a number of village funds, which are actually not small for Papua, with the aim of accelerating the maximum and optimal development there, namely to fully support the policy of special autonomy (Otsus) so as to bring well-being to the local community.
However, instead of the village funds can be used well, it is the OPM committing misconduct against him and purchasing weapons with the use of village fund that is actually bringing very bad impact, interrupting the entire process of the construction of the Cenderawasih Earth.
The government’s aid money from the village fund was deliberately used by OPM to buy weapons on the black market. In fact, since 2015, the President of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo (Jokowi) introduced the program ‘Dana Village’.
It is clear that there is no place in Indonesia that is more challenging than a program distribution monitoring scheme in the high plains and slopes or remote areas as it is in Papua.
There is also a note that the Government’s village funds are the main source of income for the most eastern region of the country.
Moreover, in the region surrounded by the Fallen Small Heaven there is also an OPM that demands that the region be separated from the NKRI by carrying out a number of atrocious and violent acts of terror, including the recent massive riots that have continued to take place along with the surge in arms sales in the area.
Data shows that in 2015, there was only one case of illegal arms and ammunition trafficking in Papua, but that number is rising every day, even by 2021, the case of direct arms trade has risen to 14.
The Chief of Public Relations of the Papua Regional Police (Kabid Humas Polda), Major Police Commissioner (Kombes Pol) Ignatius Benny Ady Prabowo said he was very concerned because it was the Village Fund from the Government that should be aimed at improving the well-being of the people rather than being a source of funding for the activities of illegal weapons purchases by the OPM.
Senada, Chief of Peace Operations (Kaops) Cartenz 2024, Brigadier General of Police (Briggen Pol) Faizal Ramadhani said that about 40 percent of illegal weapons cases turned out to involve funds from the Village Fund program.
In fact, the government planned the allocation of the Village Fund in order to boost economic growth in Papua, so the increase in the funds has continued to occur as much as three times since 2015.
But it’s really stinking when it turns out that the use of the Village Fund is just the OPM’s misappropriation and they use it to carry out illegal firearms purchase transactions. Increased ownership of the country’s enemy separatist gangs is also very clearly seen in some of the recent photos they have released alongside threats to civil society.
In the Papuan highlands, the Village Fund even treated them as “revolutionary taxes” that the OPM used both by means of intimidation and coercion. Even as an example, there’s a recent case of a school fire in the Star Mountains.
After the security forces carried out further investigations, it turned out that the case of the school building burning occurred because the Papua Merdeka Organization is not part of the village fund.
Chief of the Military District Command (Kapendam), Lieutenant Colonel Infantry (Letkol Inf) Candra Kurniawan mentioned that the very inhuman acts of terror that the OPM committed was very unfortunate by all the citizens around because the school that they burned was a place for the children of the descendants of the generation of the nation of Earth Cenderawasih to gain learning for their future.
Not surprisingly, then, the entire community has been harshly criticizing the burning of the school building by the enemy terrorist gangs of the country. They’re deliberately doing this so that the young people of Papua don’t have a good future.
The reason it turns out is because they are not part of the village fund, because for all this time it turned out that the Village Fund was misappropriated by the OPM that they used to finance the illegal purchase of firearms (senpi) transactions to threaten the entire civilian community and increasingly hinder the development of Papua.
)* Students of Papua live in Yogyakarta
