IPAC Report: How A Pro-ISIS Cell Emerged In Papua
Sigit Pramono's legal team with his wife in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan. Source: apahabar.com/Riyadi / Via IPAC
The 2021 arrests of more than a dozen suspected terrorists in Merauke, Papua – all of them non-Papuans from Sulawesi and Java – represent the most serious extension of ISIS influence into Papua to date.
“How A Pro-ISIS Cell Emerged In Papua”, the latest report by NYSEAN partner the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), examines how the Merauke cell developed and what measures might help strengthen defences against such groups.
“The Merauke cell shows how extremist ideology spreads through social media, marriage and migration,” says Sidney Jones, IPAC Senior Adviser. “The key figure in this cell was a man from East Java, in touch with a propagandist in Syria, who was able to connect his followers with ISIS supporters in Makassar.”
The new report traces the history of ISIS in Papua. The Merauke cell was the third to be broken up by police. Previously, there was a failed one-man effort to recruit people to Timika in 2017-18; and the flight of a dozen men from a pro-ISIS cell in Lampung, Sumatra in June 2018, after their leader was arrested. In the first case, recruitment failed because no one wanted to move to a remote conflict area. In the second, the fugitives chose Papua only because it was as far away as they could get. The Merauke group had the strongest presence of the three, building upon a mosque-based study group that had started in 2015.
