OPM Founder Nicholas Youwe: Veronica Koman… You have no right to talk about Papua issues – This news is HOAX ?

Agent Provocateur Veronica Koman

This blog published a lot of news links from Indonesian National News Agency ANTARA. Yesterday was the first time that we have to critically read the news and tried to find a confirmation about the statement by Nicholas Youwe or Nicolaas Jouwe about Veronica Koman.

The questions are:

1. Who was the person who talked about Veronica Koman during a webinar on May 8, 2021? Is he really Nicholas Youwe the founder of Free Papua Movement (OPM) who died in 2017?

2. If yes, then the news is a HOAX.

3. If not, who said Veronica Koman has no right to talk about Papua issues?

We from West Papua Blog agrees that we can’t trust Veronica Koman because of her erratic behaviour and personal motivation to live abroad and get global attention. We questioned her sincerity and honesty in her personal black campaign against Indonesia.

However, going as far as spreading lies against Veronica Koman is not good for Indonesia. It will effectively increase her popularity because the world can clearly see the fatal mistakes of quoting a statement from a dead man as if the man is still alive.

In addition, Veronica cleverly took an advantage of such mistake in many Indonesian national and local news by tweeting:

More than a dozen Indonesian media, including state-owned, published stories quoting a person who died 4 years ago to corner me.

Should I go to the Press Council *again*? I don’t care about the smear, but this should be a lesson to media to be careful about Papua propaganda.

Isn’t that clever?

Dozen Indonesian media successfully created free propaganda for Veronica Koman.

ANTARA News Agency later corrected the mistake by publishing this Pendiri OPM sebut Veronica Koman tak berhak bicara masalah Papua. It seemed that ANTARA journalist mistaken Nicholas Messet with Nicolaas Jouwe (it written Nicholas Youwe). By this correction, we understand how cunning is Veronica with her propaganda by playing victim and maximize it for her popularity on social media.

In the era of social media, online media and fast delivery of information to public, the competing narrative of propaganda on Papua is very dynamic. In one side, the government of Indonesia and its supporters want to create an image of successful integration of Papua as part of Indonesia. On the other side, Free Papua campaign and its supporters want to create an image of the failure of governance of Papua by Indonesia. The different views of historical background and human rights cases play its role as a foundation for debate between self-determination campaign and territorial integrity.

Both sides forgot the importance of creating vision for peaceful Papua for the sake of the people. It is not about a single person like Veronica Koman. In the beginning, she was just a female lawyer who has personal interest mixed with opportunities. Perhaps she has a little bit concern about what’s going on in Papua. However, she took the opportunity to become famous and flew to Australia to continue her role as agent provocateur.

Agent Provocateur Veronica Koman