Australia and Indonesia have struck a new security pact that will lead to more joint military exercises and visits, prompting human rights advocates to call for safeguards.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Indonesian defence minister and president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, in Canberra on Tuesday that there was “no more important relationship than the one between our two great nations”.
The leaders announced the conclusion of treaty negotiations but did not allow reporters any opportunity to ask questions about the contents of the deal.
Australia and Indonesia said early last year they were negotiating to replace their existing defence cooperation arrangement with an upgraded agreement that was binding under international law.
Albanese said on Tuesday the “historic treaty” would “bolster our strong defence cooperation by deepening dialogue, strengthening interoperability and enhancing practical arrangements”.
The pact would help the countries to “support each other’s security” but would also contribute “to the stability of the region that we share”, he said.
Australia has been seeking to deepen economic and security ties with its neighbours in south-east Asia and the Pacific, in part as a response to China’s own push for greater influence across the region.
Prabowo said Indonesia and Australia had “had our ups and downs as the political situation and the geopolitical situation of course evolved” but had reached the new agreement after “several decades of very close cooperation”.
The Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, is expected to travel to Indonesia in the coming days to sign the agreement.
Marles said the agreement was “a profoundly significant moment for the national security of both of our countries” and would pave the way for more exercises between the two militaries.
“Importantly, it will allow us to operate from each other’s countries, and in that sense this agreement will be the deepest, the most significant agreement that our two countries have ever made,” Marles said.
Marles said Australia and Indonesia were “the closest of neighbours” and therefore had a “shared destiny”, but the agreement showed that the relationship was now “very much defined by deep strategic trust”.
“And when you consider the journeys of Indonesia and Australia over the decades, it is profoundly historic that we have reached this moment where we find security in each other,” Marles said.
Neither Albanese nor Marles mentioned human rights in their statements.
Human Rights Watch had urged the Australian government to use its meetings with Prabowo to urge him to “fulfil the human rights-related commitments that previous Indonesian administrations had made but failed to meet”.
“These include some difficult issues such as the mandatory hijab rules, the crackdown on LGBT people, and the government’s unwillingness to allow foreign journalists and United Nations officials to visit West Papua,” said Daniela Gavshon, Australia director at Human Rights Watch.
During a visit to Melbourne, Andreas Harsono, an Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch, called the human rights situation in West Papua “very concerning”.
Harsono said it was “absolutely” important for Australia to seek guarantees that its military equipment or support was not used to further human rights abuses in West Papua.
HRW cites figures from the UN indicating that up to 100,000 Papuans have been displaced since late 2018, when violence between Indonesian security forces and West Papuan militants escalated.
The organisation also highlights reports of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Further comment has been sought from the Australian government and the Indonesian embassy.
The Australian government has previously defended its engagement with Prabowo, insisting that it has “regular and open discussions with Indonesia on a range of issues including the Papua provinces and human rights”.
In September 2023, Guardian Australia published an investigation into reports of brutality by the Indonesian military – including the torture and murder of civilians – in West Papua.
At the time the Australian Department of Defence said bilateral defence activities include “training on professionalism and the laws of armed conflict”.
At Tuesday’s media event, Albanese said Australia’s partnership with Indonesia was “underpinned by mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity as enshrined in the Lombok treaty”.
That treaty, signed in 2006, included a pledge by Australia not to support separatism and it was seen as a clear reference to West Papua independence movements.
The full text of the new agreement has yet to be released, but Marles and Prabowo said in a joint written statement that they were “strengthening the bilateral defence relationship across many dimensions”.
That included “deeper education links and closer cooperation on maritime security”.
Indonesia was one of the early critics of the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine pact when it was announced by the Morrison government in 2021, but Australian diplomats have worked since then to allay those concerns.
