Biological weapons have been developed on Russia's borders, stated Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on November 25.
"[Moscow] has every reason to believe that components of biological weapons have been developed in the immediate vicinity of Russian borders”, he explained, pointing at dozens of US-sponsored biolabs in Ukraine. Russia promised to present evidence at the 9th Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention in Switzerland in December.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, some of these laboratories worked with Gilead, a Pentagon-affiliated subcontractor – a company that has also cooperated with the US Navy's biological laboratory NAMRU-2 - the Naval Medical Research Unit, which operated in Indonesia from 1970 to 2009.
Two former Indonesian officials familiar with NAMRU-2 have told Sputnik on conditions of anonymity that the Jakarta-based lab, which the Americans and some members of the Indonesian elite saw as a strategic asset, was involved in questionable research practices and breached Indonesia’s national security.
The American Lab and the Bird Flu Pandemic
In the late 2000s, the H5N1 strain of Avian Influenza (AI) was raging in several countries across Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. Jakarta’s NAMRU-2 was tasked by the World Health Organization (WHO) to gather, analyze and send AI samples collected across the country.
In 2008, the Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari became dissatisfied with the US laboratory as virus samples that NAMRU was sharing with the WHO were used by western private companies to produce AI vaccines. At the same time, Jakarta wasn’t getting access to AI specimens collected on the Indonesian soil by NAMRU, and could not accelerate its own vaccine research as a result. As a result, Supari suspended all sample sharing.
Supari also had other concerns, saying that Indonesians never knew what NAMRU’s staff – American marines with diplomatic immunity - were carrying in their briefcases, and also pointing out that there were “several things that [the US] can’t explain about [NAMRU’s] role in the avian flu pandemic.”
A senior Indonesian biological defense researcher stated back in 2008 that the US could have been using AI samples from Indonesia to develop weapons at the Los Alamos Laboratory, a claim that – hardly surprisingly – was denied by the US.
In October 2009, Siti Fadilah Supari wrote a letter to the US government ordering NAMRU’s shutdown.
'Enemies Within' and Pressure Outside
Shutting NAMRU-2 down wasn’t easy. There was a lot of lobbying of US interests and the elites split over the final decision.
“It was 50/50, or perhaps, more than 50 percent of those who were against rather than pro- Siti Fadilah’s policy, and they got the benefits from different parties to be against,” said an anonymous former Indonesian official, who requested to call him “Sutrisno”. “And the most difficult element for me was how to handle our own people."
There was also direct pressure from the US, as per diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010, in which the Jakarta embassy considered keeping NAMRU-2 functional as one of its priorities. The US also tried to get the WHO on board in persuading Minister Supari to back down.
But by the end of 2009, NAMRU’s fate was already decided, with Siti Fadilah Supari calling for its closure due to a lack of transparency, debatable performance and disagreements over insufficient participation by Indonesian staff in the lab’s work.
The Roots of NAMRU-2
Just like NAMRU’s closure, its birth was also marked by an upsurge of a disease. In 1968, rodent plague, which was typical for Central Java’s Boyolali Regency, “jumped” from infected rats and flees to humans, sparking an outbreak. Indonesia didn’t have sufficient resources to counter the threat and requested international help.
“If you ask me if this outbreak looked unnatural, I’d say yes,” says another former Indonesian official who is familiar with NAMRU-2’s functioning, and who requested to call him by the pseudonym “Suprapto”.
In 1970, the US and Indonesia signed an agreement on establishing a detachment of NAMRU-2 in Jakarta staffed by the US NAVY’s personnel with diplomatic immunity, with the plague becoming the primary target - a goal which wasn’t mentioned in the agreement. Indonesia had an obligation to provide NAMRU-2 with lab space for at least ten years and gained a right to terminate the deal after January 16, 1980.
'Disease Agents of Interest'
Through NAMRU-2 the Americans gained access to “disease agents of interest” from endemic territories for rabies, malaria, H5N1 and other dangerous pathogens across Indonesia.
Besides the plague, the lab later worked on malaria and tuberculosis, with Minister Supari saying that the results “were not significant”. Suprapto shared her pessimism over the lab’s performance while criticizing NAMRU’s practice of taking blood samples from Indonesian soldiers as being unethical:
“It wasn’t worthy. From the Ministry of Health point of view it was Ok. They got money, they got the facility. But from the security point of view – it was a breach: [the Americans] had aircraft, they built a branch lab in Papua, and they were doing many bad things like taking blood from military personnel. In the 1990s, the status of detachment was upgraded into a command without any amendment of the Memorandum of Understanding”.
The issue of the US research in Indonesia’s Papua province was a sensitive one for Jakarta, as foreign activity in that area has been restricted for many years by government orders because of “safety and security concerns” and the mere presence of NAMRU in that location was less than desirable.
The Indonesian government was also concerned about possible violations of international treaties regarding bacteriological and toxin weapons by the US. Some of these concerns were voiced by Indonesian officials during the talks on NAMRU’s future. A leaked US diplomatic cable from 2006 states that Jakarta insisted on requiring US compliance with the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction “ostensibly because of their concern that Indonesian scientists could be drawn into clandestine weapons research conducted at NAMRU-2 as an arm of the US military.“ According to the memo, the Americans have found this provision “irrelevant, if not offensive”.
NAMRU’s Top Secret Mission
Suprapto is certain that by building a military facility in Indonesia, the Pentagon was trying “to put boots on the ground” in order to keep the USSR from projecting its power in the region.
“They wanted to occupy. This is the only reason. They built this facility under the Navy. Why the Navy and not the Ministry of Health? My answer is because they wanted to build a sort of military base,” said Suprapto.
“The agreement on establishing the lab wasn’t fair. All of the NAMRU-2 personnel were military and they have diplomatic immunity. They also exported biological specimens from Indonesia without any notice. The agreement was signed in January 1970. It should have been reviewed every 10 years, but it never was. So there was no legal basis for them to stay. In my opinion, they were cheating, because the plague outbreak was the reason for them to come here and establish their facility.”
The lab remained in Indonesia well past the end of the plague outbreak, which was over by the end of 1970 and the proposed basis for NAMRU’s appearance, making it look for some Indonesians conscious of the facility’s military nature almost like the lab was overstaying its welcome.
Going Dark: Research in Post-NAMRU Era
NAMRU’s opponents hinted at personal repercussions for going against Washington’s will by shutting the Jakarta lab. Sutrisno said that he had to go through a very difficult period of his life following the lab’s closure and Minister Supari’s resignation in 2009:
“I don't think everybody was transparent on that, people didn’t want to talk about that. To be honest with you, when Siti Fadilah wasn’t minister anymore, I also tended to be quiet. I know a lot, but I don’t want to talk about it. Here in Indonesia, we can sense that the American influence is very, very dominant”.
Another factor, which may contribute to Indonesians’ silence about the US biolab is that US research activities in the country didn’t stop after NAMRU’s closure.
In April of 2022, Indonesian news outlet Detik wrote that the US Navy had allegedly violated the country’s laws during the 2016 Pacific Partnership exercise. During the exercises, US naval surgeons performed operations on 23 Indonesian patients on board hospital ship the USNS Mercy without coordination with Indonesia’s Ministry of Health. According to the report, they also secretly exported blood samples taken from dozens of Indonesian patients for unknown purposes. Detik journalists also uncovered attempts by the US Navy personnel to transport rabid dogs out of the area in West Sumatra, which is known as an endemic territory for rabies, without government permission, as well as US plans to obtain samples of dengue fever from mosquitoes.
According to Indonesian law, foreign healthcare activities, including blood sampling, must be done only with a foreign research permit. Blood sampling should be overviewed by Indonesian staff, with sample inspections carried out on Indonesian soil. Any cross-border specimen transfer need an official material transfer agreement (MTA). These regulations were reportedly ignored by the US Navy in Padang.
The Ukrainian Connection
In March 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense published dozens of documents about the Pentagon’s bioweapons research in Ukraine, with Washington denying any activities of the development of biological weapons in the country. In April, Russia presented more information on the US bioweapons research near its borders at the UN.
Russia’s findings supported suspicions which Minister Supari and her team had in 2008 about military aspects of the US overseas biological research, which were echoed by the Indonesian press.
When asked whether there is any likeness between Indonesia’s NAMRU and the US-funded biolabs in Ukraine based on Russia’s reports, Suprapto said that there may be indeed some similarities:
“In my opinion, it’s the same. When they closed NAMRU here, Americans tried to open NAMRU in Cambodia, in Vietnam and in other countries. And I’ve heard from somebody in the United States that similar labs were built in the former USSR – in Georgia and Ukraine. I didn’t see similarities from the technical point of view, but the philosophy behind them was the same – there was a desire to conquer.”
By presenting information on illegal activities at US-sponsored research facilities in Ukraine in Geneva, Russia is hoping to draw other country's attention, especially those that are hosting similar labs. This attention, Moscow hopes, may lead to extra scrutiny and, possibly, to further practical steps, just as in Indonesia – one of the first countries that took action against Washington’s biological experiments on its soil.