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Subj: Papua in danger of becoming a second Ambon
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Subj: Protests against arrival of Ambonese refugees in Papua
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Subj: SCMP: Stranded Indon settlers sleep under 'enemy' watch To: westpapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
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Subj: [wp] PERTAMINA REFUTES RUMOURS OF REMOVAL TO IRIAN JAYA
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Subj: [wp] Time to Punish the Usual Suspects in Indonesia
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Subj: [wp] JP: Irian Jaya in the eyes of a pro-integration leader
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Subj: [wp] Walhi sues Freeport over fatal accident
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Subj: [wp] Two shot dead over flag raising in Irian Jaya
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Subj: [wp] WALHI demands that Freeport inspection team be set up
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Subj: Refugees from Maluku undergoing military training in WPapua
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Subj: [wp] IHT: Autonomy for an Indonesian Land
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Subj: [wp] Papuan flags must go down next month: Gus Dur
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Subj: [wp] IHT: Still Time for an Irian Jaya Compromise That Saves the Peace
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Subj: [wp] Region urged to support Wahid
======================================================= Subj: [wp] VICTIMS OF MALUKU CONFLICTS TO BE MOVED TO IRIAN JAYA
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Subj: Indonesia's next East Timor?
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Subj: [wp] Irianese leader seeks special autonomy
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Subj: [wp] Jihad warriors reportedly move into West Papua
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Subj: [wp] *Business Week report from W. Papua on Freeport's Troubles
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Subj: *Business Week report from W. Papua on Freeport's Troubles
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Subj: [wp] Irianese leader seeks special autonomy
Date: 7/30/00 2:03:18 AM Central Daylight Time
From: tapol@gn.apc.org (TAPOL)
To: westpapua@topica.com
CC: plovers@gn.apc.org, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk, jonathan.head@bbc.co.uk (Jonathan Head-Singapore)
Suara Pembaruan, Friday, 28-7-2000
Drs Aloysius Renwarin : Papua could become a second Ambon
Drs Aloysius Renwarin, Director of the human rights NGO, ELS-HAM Papua, is
afraid that there are signs that Papua could become a second Ambon. He said
that a large quantity of weapons has been seized while criminal activities are
rampant with the security forces doing nothing to stop them.
He told Suara Pembaruan on Friday that investigations undertaken during the
past two weeks, along with reports from the people, had revealed that many
automatic weapons, home-made weapons, explosives and bombs had been discovered
in a number of places.
He said that present conditions in Papua could be described as a time-bomb
waiting to explode; reports of the discovery of weapons were being received
from many places.
‘All the ingredients are there for a bitter horizontal conflict,’ said
Aloysius. There has been an increase in such activities as gambling, thefts,
hijacking taxis and the like, all of which could trigger such conflicts, he
said.
He also urged the provincial chief of police to tell the public what
exactly he
means by his so-called ‘friendly approach’ on matters of law and order. The
general public interpret this as being a policy of allowing any acts of public
disorder to happen.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 020 8771-2904 Fax: 020 8653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, West Papua and Aceh
26 years - and still going strong
Date: 7/30/00 2:03:36 AM Central Daylight Time
From: tapol@gn.apc.org (TAPOL)
To: westpapua@topica.com
CC: jonathan.head@bbc.co.uk (Jonathan Head-Singapore), taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk, plovers@gn.apc.org, slliem@xs4all.nl, mallison@amnesty.org
Saturday, 29-7-2000
Papua Taskforce protests against the arrival of refugees from Ambon
Jayapura, About a hundred members of Papua Taskforce held a demonstration at
the provincial assembly building in Jayapura protesting against the arrival of
Ambonese refugees who are now on their way to Jayapura aboard the KM
Dobonsolo.
The taskforce members, dressed in black uniforms and wielding traditional
weapons, demanded to have a meeting with the speaker of the asembly, Nataniel
Kaiway SH.
They are demanding that the assembly and the provincial government should
refuse to allow the Ambonese refugees to remain in Papua because they fear
that
their presence could lead to riots and unrest.
Members of the taskforce earlier held protests in Sorong, Manokwari and Biak,
rejecting the arrival of these refugees. The protest in Sorong led to a clash
between taskforce members and the local security forces which resulted in five
civilians receiving gunshot wounds.
At the time this report was written, taskforce members were still inside the
assembly building while members of the assembly and of the local government
were discussing their response to the demands.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 020 8771-2904 Fax: 020 8653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, West Papua and Aceh
26 years - and still going strong
Date: 7/29/00 3:44:39 PM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
South China Morning Post
Friday, July 28, 2000
INDONESIA
Stranded settlers sleep under 'enemy' watch
VAUDINE ENGLAND in Jayapura, Irian Jaya
About 200 Indonesian transmigrants took shelter under the Papuan independence
flag in Jayapura this week, following the failure of the central Government
to care for them.
Sent by Jakarta 1½ years ago to settle on land near the Irian Jaya capital
under the transmigration programme, the Javanese settlers had had enough of
their new life.
Hungry and homeless, the settlers bunked down in what has become known as the
headquarters of the Papuan independence movement.
The Javanese had walked for two days to reach Jayapura to ask the Government
to help them return to Java.
Since becoming transmigrants, 22 of the group have died. Many of the
survivors are ill and complain that the Government has not provided schools,
health centres or other facilities for them.
Last week, the latest death from illness prompted a seven-hour long
demonstration, complete with a corpse, in front of the regional government
office. The local representative of the Transmigration Department, Budi
Singulinga, was punched in the face at the tense stand-off.
At a meeting with the Governor on Monday, they were told they were free to go
home, but had to find the money for the sea passage themselves.
It was a perfect opportunity for Satgas Papua - a pro-independence
paramilitary organisation. Dressed in combat fatigues adorned with the Papuan
independence flag and pictures of Jesus Christ, these men made available
their office in the main street of Jayapura.
It is named the Irian Cultural Centre and features two flag-poles on its
roof. The slightly taller pole carries the Indonesian flag, with the second
pole flaunting the Papuan flag. After a couple of nights sleeping on the
street after the shops and night market had closed, the Javanese appeared
happy to have a night under shelter, and under the benign guard of Satgas
Papua.
"The transmigrants had problems with the police and the Government, so we
offered them shelter, food and help," said Benny Sawai, a Satgas Papua
member. "The Government brought them here [to Irian Jaya] but then gave them
no money or facilities to live."
Only after the Javanese accepted Papuan protection did the Government move to
help them.
On Tuesday, staff of the Department of Social Welfare arrived to take the
Javanese to a new settlement area near Sentani, 45 minutes' drive from
Jayapura.
Although the Department of Social Welfare has found a building to house the
displaced people, they have yet to provide any food, forcing the group to
rely on handouts.
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
Date: 7/29/00 12:37:20 AM Central Standard Time
From: iris@matra.com.au (Anne Noonan)
Reply-to: iris@matra.com.au
To: WestPapua@topica.com
from AWPA
PERTAMINA REFUTES RUMOURS OF REMOVAL TO IRIAN JAYA
Friday, July 28, 2000/4:11:08 PM
Ambon, Maluku, Jul 28 (ANTARA) - State oil company Pertamina`s unit for
domestic supply
and marketing in Ambon has refuted rumours that it will be removed to
Irian Jaya.
"Pertamina`s unit in Ambon and the fuel terminal depot in Wayame are not
going to be removed to Papua (Irian Jaya). "A provisional policy
directs that fuel supply in Wayame will be temporarily removed to Biak
(Papua), Bitung (North Sulawesi) and Ternate (North Maluku) because the
security condition there is not conducive," Pertamina`s chief in Ambon,
Bambang Saritomo, disclosed here Friday.
Following the escalation of sectarian clashes in Ambon, rumours have
made their rounds during the past two weeks that Pertamina`s unit in
Ambon will be removed to Papua. Bambang called on the people not to be
provoked by the rumours. He admitted, however, that 96 of the unit`s 151
employees have been evacuated to safe areas. On being asked about the
standing fuel supply in the Ambon unit, Bambang said that there was
enough.
The local Pertamina chief regretted that fuel distribution to some
living areas had been hampered because of the closing of some roads due
to the escalating riots.
According to Bambang, there was supply in Ambon city of 10,777
kiloliters of petrol, which was enough for 207 days; 11,556 kiloliters
of kerosene, enough for 70 days; and 10,913 kiloliters of diesel fuel,
enough for seven days. "But, hindrance in the land transportation has
made the distribution only possible by 40 to 50 percent, thus making the
standing supply enough for twice as long," he said.
On the occasion, Bambang also admitted that the security condition
around the Wayame fuel depot was not conducive, thus forcing Pertamina
to temporarily shut down its distribution port in the area. "People
should realize that fuel cannot be kept for long in the tanks, because
it would require extra security precautions," Bambang Saritomo said.
________________________________
Australia West Papua Association
PO BOX 65
Millers Point
Australia 2000
Tele/fax 61.2. 99601696
_________________________________
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Date: 7/29/00 4:48:00 AM Central Standard Time
From: iris@matra.com.au (Anne Noonan)
Reply-to: iris@matra.com.au
To: WestPapua@topica.com
from AWPA
Paris, Monday, July 24, 2000
Time to Punish the Usual Suspects in Indonesia
By José Ramos-Horta International Herald Tribune
BANGKOK - Who is behind the wave of sectarian violence in Ambon and
other parts of the Moluccan Islands that has cost hundreds of lives in
the past 18 months? Who is responsible for the upsurge in separatist
sentiment in Aceh and Irian Jaya, two of the richest provinces of
Indonesia?
There is mounting evidence that the same conservative, hard-line
nationalist forces (and even
some of the same senior Indonesian military officers) who helped
alienate East Timorese with their abuses are fomenting unrest in the
Moluccas, Aceh and Irian Jaya. Senior members of the civilian government
of President Abdurrahman Wahid have said as much in recent days.
In an attempt to terrorize East Timorese into voting for autonomy
instead of independence in the
plebiscite in August organized by the United Nations, the Indonesian
army's special forces and
intelligence network mobilized militia gangs and gave them training,
arms and directives.
Large numbers of these militiamen were recruited not in East Timor but
in neighboring West
Timor, in Ambon and from the main Indonesian island of Java. Indonesian
police and army
personnel in disguise led some of the militia units in East Timor. What
we are seeing in the troubled parts of Indonesia now is a well
orchestrated campaign by a faction in the Indonesian army that has
strong connections to the family of former President Suharto, former
Defense Minister Wiranto, wealthy businessmen and prominent members of
the Golkar party that Mr. Suharto used, along with the military, to keep
himself and his supporters in power for 32 years.
This group fears the anti-corruption drive and investigations into past
abuses of power launched
by Mr. Wahid's government. It wants to discredit his attempts to
establish the rule of law in
Indonesia.
In Ambon, rogue elements in the military and police have taken sides in
the fighting. In Irian
Jaya, ''pro-Jakarta'' militias are being recruited, trained and funded
just as they were in East
Timor. In Aceh, despite a cease-fire agreement negotiated by Mr. Wahid's
government, the army
and police continue to launch sweeps in the countryside, terrorizing
villagers.
As a result, Indonesia's fledgling but vibrant democracy is in grave
danger. The hard-liners hope that the Indonesian people, disappointed
with the inability of the civilian government to improve the economy and
resolve the conflicts, will sooner or later support a Pakistan-style
coup.
But as the foreign ministers of the Association of South East Asian
Nations and their major trading partners, including the United States,
the European Union and Japan, hold their annual meetings in Bangkok this
week, they can take action to help prevent Indonesia from sliding into
civil war and military takeover.
The international community must intensify its support for Mr. Wahid's
government. It should
increase economic and financial assistance to the Indonesian economy,
write off government debt
and channel the money to credit programs to help the poor, as well as
small and medium-size
businesses, become self-sufficient.
Foreign governments should identify the good elements in the Indonesian
armed forces, the pro-reform group, and offer them serious support. The
United States and the European Union should lead efforts to have the
foreign assets of the Suharto family frozen. Indonesian military
officers known to have been involved in the violence in East Timor,
Aceh, the Moluccas and Irian Jaya should be blacklisted and denied entry
visas.
Their names should be publicized and circulated via Interpol for
immediate arrest abroad. Their
overseas assets should be seized. After all, it is the wealth that these
anti-reform groups have accumulated that is being used to pay for the
current campaign to destroy democracy in the world's fourth most
populous nation.
The writer, an East Timorese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, contributed
this comment to the
International Herald Tribune.
________________________________
Australia West Papua Association
PO BOX 65
Millers Point
Australia 2000
Tele/fax 61.2. 99601696
_________________________________
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Date: 7/28/00 2:34:22 PM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
Jakarta Post
July 28, 2000
Editorial and Opinion
Irian Jaya in the eyes of a prointegration figure
JAKARTA (JP): Irianese who are proindependence have pointed out that alleged
human rights violations and unfair revenue sharing from mining activities
have resulted in the demand for independence.
In an interview in Jakarta with The Jakarta Post's reporter Neles Tebay,
Elias Paprindey, 64, a leader of prointegration Irianese shares his views and
offers a way out for the government.
Paprindey and his compatriots fought against the Dutch colonial government in
West New Guinea (now Irian Jaya) in the 1950s. He led an underground
movement, fighting to keep West New Guinea in the embrace of the fledgling
Republic. He was jailed by the Dutch in 1960 in the notorious Digul prison in
Merauke regency and was released in 1962, seven years before the 1969
plebiscite which formally included Irian Jaya as part of Indonesia.
Paprindey then worked at the ministry of communications and was also elected
a member of the provincial legislative council from 1971 to 1973 before
chairing the council from 1973 to 1977. In 1977, he became deputy governor of
Irian Jaya, a post he held for five years.
In 1993, he retired from the ministry of communications.
Question: How do you view the demand for independence?
Answer: The demand is an undeniable fact. But do not blame the Irianese. On
the contrary, the central government should reflect on why the Irianese
raised the demand for independence.
You mean much of the blame should be placed on the government?
Yes. It is the central government, through its policies, that has encouraged
the Irianese to call for independence. (The demand) did not start with the
Irianese, because we decided to join Indonesia in 1969. But the government
has been neglecting Irianese rights for more than 30 years. I was fighting
for Irian Jaya's integration into Indonesia in the past for a better life for
the people. But the reality for more than 30 years has been different:
Irianese have suffered within the Republic.
Do you agree with the Irianese voice for freedom?
I always speak of the necessity of freedom for the Irianese, but within the
frame of the unitary republic.
Give us the rights and full authority to govern and manage our land and its
natural resources. We want to be the lords of our land. And do not keep
exploiting at will our natural resources such as gold, oil and the forests
without permission from the Irianese, the holder of ancestral rights.
The government should realize that our suffering has been caused by the
economic and political exploitation by the powerful in Jakarta.
So what is the purpose of your visit to the capital?
As Indonesian citizens, we want to communicate the cause of the Irian case
and its solution. As an Indonesian, I have rights to fight on what should
have been our rights.
My entourage and I have met with President Abdurrahman Wahid, Vice President
Megawati Soekarnoputri, National Resilience Institute Governor Johny
Lumintang, Minister of Home Affairs Surjadi Soedirdja, (a representative) of
the Office of the State Ministry of Regional Autonomy and with Minister of
Defense Juwono Sudarsono.
What would you suggest to overcome the demand of independence?
I have proposed that the central government facilitate a special meeting
between the proindependence Papuans (local name for Irianese) and the
prointegration Irianese.
The government should be the facilitator ... those representing the
executives, the legislature and the judiciary should attend, so they could
realize the main causes and problems, and along with the Papuans find ways to
settle the problem.
The central government should not leave the Irianese struggle alone, or else
a conflict would occur between the proindependence and prointegration groups,
while the cause of those demands are the attitudes and policies of the
central government. I personally do not expect conflicts in the future. What
policies of the central government should be revoked?
First of all, the work contract with PT Freeport Indonesia should be revoked
and improved. Because the existing contract excludes locals' rights. And
locals, who own the ancestral lands, should be involved in working out the
new contracts.
Second, the rich and politically powerful people in Jakarta should return the
forest areas and other natural resources to the indigenous people.
The central government should stop issuing new forest concessions in Irian
Jaya. It is the local government and the local people who have to decide if a
private business could be given a concession.
In the last few years, the presence and exploitation of the forest
concessions have not made any positive impact on improving locals' welfare
and the local government has no authority to control their activities because
they gained permits from the central government.
Based on experience, I have demanded that the central government should allow
us to manage and control our natural resources. The central government
should, therefore, quickly work out the draft of law and operational
regulations to implement special autonomy.
Some people say the lack of human resources in Irian Jaya would make it
difficult to implement special autonomy.
It is again the central government which has led to the lack of human
resources. The government has gained so much of our natural resources, but
what it has done for Irianese in terms of human resource development?
Nothing.
That's why I have demanded that the government give scholarships to Irianese
youths to take masters and doctorate programs, either in Indonesia or abroad.
I said that 100 Irianese youths should be sent each year to take those
programs.
There are many Irianese who have become heroes in integrating Irian Jaya into
Indonesia, including yourself. Do you think that the government has paid
enough attention to people like you?
The government has never given serious attention to Irianese who fought for
integration. They feel neglected and disrespected ... That's why I've also
come to Jakarta, to discuss their fate with the government.
I told the President and Vice President that the central government should
pay attention to the life of the 1945 Trikora fighters and those involved in
the 1969 (UN sponsored) plebiscite.
There were 5,000 integration fighters. If their contributions are indeed
respected, they should be recognized as heroes by the government in a law.
Their proper rights should be given, beginning from 2000.
If not, this means our contribution is not respected. Then I would tell the
government that we do not need to be invited to talks on how to preserve
Irian Jaya within the Republic.
President Abdurrahman Wahid has changed the name of Irian Jaya to Papua. Do
you agree with that?
The President made the change verbally. So I don't believe Irian Jaya has
been really changed. Irianese are also confused now about the terms.
So I've demanded that the central government should immediately formalize the
name change in a law. If not, it would mean the President was just playing
tricks on us.
Even before the 1969 plebiscite, you strived to raise the Indonesian red and
white flag. Now the government has permitted Papuans to hoist the West Papua
Morning Star flag in Irian Jaya.
In Indonesia's history, we only know one national flag ... Two flags in one
nation has never happened. I heard that this permission was also given
verbally. We are a state of law so the permission should also be made into a
law.
The law should clarify the reason for the permission to hoist the Morning
Star along with the Red and White, and for how long. The government should
also explain what the meaning of the permission is.
Does it mean the government wants to set up a federal state in Irian Jaya, or
one nation with two systems as applied in Hong Kong? Or does it mean that the
government is unable to develop Irian Jaya, thus letting it become
independent?
Without written clarification, the Irianese would be confused because it is
the government which banned the raising of the Morning Star in the past.
Would you like to comment on anything else?
Yes. There is one important thing. Tell the members of the People's
Consultative Assembly and the House of Representatives not to amend the 1945
Constitution and Pancasila. Or else I'm ready to separate from Indonesia.
What else would we have as the state's foundation if it is altered?
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
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Date: 7/28/00 12:42:15 PM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: indonesia-act@igc.apc.org, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk, jonathan.head@bbc.co.uk, tapol@gn.apc.org, WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
Indonesian Observer
Friday, July 28 - 2000
Walhi sues Freeport over fatal accident
JAKARTA (IO) The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has sued
mining giant PT Freeport Indonesia over an accident that killed four of
the company’s workers.
The employees died on May 4 at the hugely profitable mining company’s base
in West Papua (Irian Jaya) province when a pile of waste rock collapsed on
them following several days of heavy rainfall.
Walhi yesterday submitted a lawsuit to the South Jakarta District Court,
complaining that Freeport had failed to disclose information about the
accident.
Walhi Director Executive Emmy Hafild told reporters the public has a right
to know about Freeport’s environmental conservation policies, especially
its disposal of waste materials.
"The company has not given true information about its environmental
program, therefore it has violated Article 6 of the Environment Management
Law," she said.
Freeport officials insist the May landslide at the banks of Lake Wanagon
was caused by heavy rainfall, but conservationists accuse the company of
unsafe waste disposal practices.
Walhi lawyer Erdwiyanto Pihartono said Freeport should go to court because
it had no permit to dump waste at Lake Wanagon.
But he said Walhi cannot sue the company from an environmental point of
view, because the forum has accepted the mining company’s environmental
impact analysis.
Walhi said Freeport should apologize for the May accident by placing
advertisements in the national and international mass media.
Freeport, a subsidiary of New Orleans-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold
Inc, made an average profit of just under US$2 million a week in 1999 from
the vast mine it operates in mountains near Timika.
Shortly after the May landslide, Environment Minister Sonny Keraf mulled
suspending production at the Grasberg copper and gold mine. However,
production has continued.
The lucrative Grasberg mine has been at the center of controversy in Irian
Jaya for years. Critics accuse Freeport of environmental damage,
exploitation, cultural insensitivity and failure to share enough of the
benefits from the mine with local people.
But Freeport insists it maintains the highest environmental and safety
standards and says it has made strenuous efforts to promote social
improvements in Irian Jaya.
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
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Date: 7/28/00 12:41:56 PM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Two shot dead over flag raising in Irian Jaya
JAKARTA, July 28 (AFP) - Two men attempting to hoist a separatist flag in
Irian Jaya were shot dead by Indonesian police Friday, hospital staff said.
The two men were killed during a raid on residents who had raised the
"Morning Star" rebel flag in the coastal city of Sorong, Ari Dimara a worker
at the town's hospital told AFP by phone.
"This morning we received the bodies of two wen who died from a flag-raising
incident in the city's eastern sub-district. There was a skirmish with
police, they broke the flag poles and pulled the flags down," Dimara said.
"The situation has calmed down after the morning incident but people are
still afraid," he added.
For years raising the Morning Star flag was outlawed in Irian Jaya, now
officially known as West Papua.
However under an agreement earlier this year Jakarta and local authorities
said the flag could be raised if it were not higher than the Indonesian
national flag.
It was not immediately clear why police opened fire on the flag-raisers on
Friday.
Meanwhile in a separate incident on Thursday police wounded six members of
the civilian Papua Task Force (Satgas) who had attempted to prevent a boat
carrying refugees from the strife-torn city of Ambon from berthing at Sorong
port.
The boat left Ambon on Wednesday with some 3,000 refugees on board fleeing
fierce Muslim-Christian battles in the region, the state Antara news agency
reported.
Second Sergeant Kaimuddin (eds: one name) told AFP from Sorong that the clash
took place late Thursday afternoon when police tried to disperse the group
blocking the ship from docking.
"Rubber bullets were fired against the Satgas group, they were massing the
port trying to stop the ship from entering the dock, although it was still
some 300 meters (300 yards) from the port," he said by telephone.
"Refugees aboard the ship numbered about 3,000 people, but the Dobonsolo
never made it to the port, and was sent away," he said.
Police also detained some 30 men from the Satgas group, Kaimuddin said,
adding the Sorong regional administration has rejected the refugees.
Independent sources have told AFP that some 18,000 Maluku refugees have
already poured into Irian Jaya.
The Indonesian government has estimated that half a million internal refugees
have been created by the fighting in Ambon since it broke out 18 months ago,
leaving some 4,000 dead.
Irian Jaya has a population of some 2.5 million people, about one quarter of
whom are made up of immigrants shipped by the government from other more
crowded islands.
Formerly Dutch New Guinea, it declared independence in 1961, but under an
interim arrangement with the United Nations was ruled by Indonesia after 1963
and incorporated into the republic in 1969.
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
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Date: 7/28/00 12:41:19 PM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
sent July 25, 2000 by Down to Earth - The International Campaign for
Ecological Justice in Indonesia
Source: detikcom - Jakarta 28th June 2000 (original in Bahasa Indonesia)
WALHI DEMANDS A FREEPORT INSPECTION TEAM IS SET UP
WALHI is demanding that an independent inspection team be set up for PT
Freeport Indonesia's operations. WALHI's Executive Director Emmy Hafild
said that her organisation would be taking legal action against the
government over the company's negligence in the Lake Wanagon dam burst
incident in West Papua. Ms Hafild was speaking during a break in a hearing
with Parliament's Commission VIII in Jakarta on Tuesday 27th June.
The purpose of this Inspection team should be to examine all aspects of PT
Freeport Indonesia's activities and its impacts on the surrounding
environment and communities. To date, it seems that PT FI is a law unto
itself and negligent about environmental management. This is quite evident
from the incident at Lake Wanagon when a waste dam burst. Ms Hafild said
that team members should be approved by the Papuan people, parliament and
government and non-government organisations, not PT FI.
Ms Hafild also explained that PT FI's Contract of Work needed to be
renegotiated because the first CoW, signed by Gen. Soeharto in 1967, was
illegal and invalid since West Papua had not been incorporated into the
Indonesian Republic. As the first CoW was invalid, the second (1991) CoW
was also invalid. The new government should negotiate a new Contract of Work.
She also said that WALHI would be taking legal action against the
government to renegotiate PT FI's contract immediately because of the
company's negligence which led to the Lake Wanagon incident. "We will be
submitting the case to the courts in the next few days. The draft is at the
final stage." When asked if it would be a criminal or civil action, Ms
Hafild replied that it would probably be a civil case. She is not convinced
that PT FI will limit its production to 200,000 tonnes per day as
instructed by the Minister for Mining and Energy after the waste dam burst.
Apparently production is still 220,000 tonnes per day.
FREEPORT REQUIRED TO SUBMIT NEW PLANS FOR WASTE DAM
Source: satunet.com/WalhiNews 24th June 2000-07-24
Pt Freeport Indonesia was given until Saturday 24th June to submit to the
government its geotechnical design for Lake Wanagon. The plan needed to
incorporate a greater safety factor for the retaining wall, said Director
General for Mining Surna Tjahja Djajadiningrat. The safety factor depended
on the ratio of the strength of ground on the slopes around Lake Wanagon
compared with the load of the over burden. The overburden heap was greater
than the environment could support. This was causing a worrying degree of
cracking which could lead more widespread landslides unless immediate
action was taken. Geotechnical experts from Bandung Institute of Technology
have suggested reducing the slope of the overburden heap as a temporary
measure.
Since the incident in which some of the overburden slid into Lake Wanagon
(when at least 4 people died), the government has asked PT Freeport
Indonesia to reduce production from 300,000 tonnes/day to 200,000 tonnes
per day. Instead of using Lake Wanagon, PT FI is using the Cartenz valley
to dump the overburden but this can only hold about 5% of the total waste
produced.
---------------------------
Down to Earth - The International Campaign for Ecological Justice in
Indonesia
Liz Chidley (dtecampaign@gn.apc.org)
Down to Earth works with Indonesian NGOs and community groups striving for
a socially just and environmentally sound future by increasing
international awareness of their struggles. We speak and read English and
Bahasa Indonesia. Down to Earth produces a quarterly newsletter in English
and updates on International Financial Institutions. For subscription
rates, please contact DtE's Main Office. An rtf version (in English) and
translations of selected articles (dlm BI) are available by email. DtE is a
project of APPEN.
Main Office:
59 Athenlay Rd, London SE15 3EN, England/Inggeris Tel/fax: +44 (0) 207 732
7984 Email: dte@gn.apc.org
Campaigns Office:
Tel/fax: + 44 (0) 1508 471413 Email: dtecampaign@gn.apc.org
Visit our new Website: www.gn.apc.org/dte
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
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Date: 7/27/00 4:04:00 PM Central Daylight Time
From: tapol@gn.apc.org (TAPOL)
To: westpapua@topica.com
CC: jonathan.head@bbc.co.uk (Jonathan Head-Singapore), plovers@gn.apc.org, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Refugees from Maluku undergo military training in Sorong
Kompas, 27 July 2000
Nothing is being done to handle the thousands of refugees who have flooded
into West Papua from Maluku since the outbreak of unrest there, and local
people are particularly worried because some of these refugees are
undergoing military training.
Addressing the press at the office of the human rights organisation
ELS-HAM, John Rumbiak said that the refugees had been arriving since the
escalation of the conflict in Maluku in 1999, while the numbers still
continue to rise.
They are arriving in Sorong, Fak-Fak, Manokwari, Biak and Jayapura, aboard
PELNI passenger ships as well as on sailing boats and other privately-owned
vessels. Those coming by boat are being landed anywhere along the coast,
not necessarily in the officially designated harbours.
ELS-HAM has been unable to obtain accurate figures of the number of
refugees who have arrived because many of them go and stay with relatives
or find accommodation in refugee centres or build their own barracks. The
organisation estimates that as many as five thousand have arrived since
October 1999.
‘Many are taken in by relatives even though this represents a strain on
already stretched economic resources,’ said Rumbiak. ‘Some families in
Sorong have taken in as many as 12 families despite the heavy strain this
imposes,’ he said.
Rumbiak said that the local government had regrettably done nothing to
discuss what to do about the arrival of all these refugees. He said that
members of Papuan Satgas in Sorong had come across about one hundred
refugees from Seram, Maluku, who were undergoing military training in the
middle of the night. The men were armed with home-made weapons and molotov
bombs.
In Fak-Fak, there was a red-and-white Satgas unit consisting of thousands
of men, some of whom were refugees from Seram. In advance of a rally which
had been planned by members of Papua Satgas, Red-and-white Satgas members
drove through the city in seven trucks. However, there were no clashes
between the two groups as the Papuan Satgas decided to cancel their
planned rally.
Meanwhile doctors who have just returned to Jakarta from Maluku said that
the condition of thousands of refugee children was alarming; most are
suffering from malnutrition. Respiratory diseases are widespread, with many
of the children suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, as well
as malaria.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 020 8771-2904 Fax: 020 8653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, West Papua and Aceh
26 years - and still going strong
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Date: 7/26/00 3:38:20 AM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, July 26, 2000
Opinion
Autonomy for an Indonesian Land
By Arif Havas Oegroseno International Herald Tribune
LISBON - There can be no doubt that Irian Jaya is a legitimate part of
Indonesia. It was part of the Dutch colonial empire that became Indonesia.
Under international law, colonial boundaries constitute the borders of the
newly independent successor state.
The roots of Indonesian nationalism in Irian Jaya go back to 1946, when
Papuan nationalist leaders created a political organization that sought to
reunite the western half of New Guinea island controlled by the Dutch with
Indonesia.
On Aug. 17, 1947, in defiance of the Dutch, Irian nationalists gathered to
celebrate Indonesia's independence. They were arrested and exiled.
Anti-Indonesian sentiment was encouraged, pro-Dutch political organizations
were set up and a promise of independence was offered by The Hague.
The Dutch refusal to hand over West New Guinea to Indonesia created a serious
diplomatic and military standoff between Indonesia and the Netherlands. The
United Nations secretary-general, U Thant, appointed U.S. Ambassador Elsworth
Bunker as mediator in negotiations.
On Aug. 15, 1962, the two parties signed the New York Agreement, which was
later adopted by the UN General Assembly. Administration was transferred from
the Dutch to the United Nations and subsequently to Indonesia.
Some anti-Indonesian Papuans who felt betrayed followed their masters to the
Netherlands; others stayed to carry out an armed insurgency. The time bomb
created by the Dutch has exploded periodically in small-scale violence since
then, triggering counterinsurgency operations by the Indonesian military that
have often led to human rights abuses. Economic inequalities have exacerbated
the situation.
The commitment of Indonesia's current government to redress the situation is
strong and clear. Past human rights abuses are being investigated, and
regional autonomy is on the way.
- Arif Havas Oegroseno, a diplomat at the Indonesian Embassy in Lisbon, in a
personal commentary for the International Herald Tribune.
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
___________________________________________________________
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Date: 7/26/00 3:37:52 AM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: indonesia-act@igc.apc.org, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk, jonathan.head@bbc.co.uk, WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
Indonesian Observer
July 25, 2000
Papuan flags must go down next month: Gus Dur
JAKARTA (IO) - President Abdurrahman Wahid says the government will
continue its policy of avoiding oppressive measures in dealing with the Free
Papua Movement (OPM) in Irian Jaya (West Papua) and let the separatists
fly their Morning Star flag until the annual People's Consultative Assembly
(MPR) meeting in August.
"The government will continue to negotiate with them and avoid using force
in Irian Jaya, Maluku, North Maluku and Aceh," he was quoted as saying by
Antara yesterday.
He was speaking after addressing battalion commanders of the Army's elite
Special Forces (Kopassus) and Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad) at an
artillery air defense training center in Batu, Malang, East Java.
On the occasion, the president was accompanied by former vice president
Try Sutrisno, Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI) Commander Admiral Widodo
Adisutjipto and Army Chief General Tyasno Sudarto.
Try was allegedly involved in the 1984 Tanjung Priok massacre when he was
Jakarta Military commander.
The president, who often goes by the moniker of Gus Dur, said if the
government uses force in handling the many cases of unrest, the energies
of TNI would be drained.
He said the government's preference for negotiations with dissenting
groups is expected to yield more positive results than resorting to force
would.
Commenting on the fact that many people in West Papua are still flying the
OPM's Morning Star flag, Wahid said there are two choices: lowering the
flag now or allowing it be flown for a while.
"We are negotiating, thus we will let them fly the flag until the
completion of the annual MPR meeting. After that, we will lower the flag."
Gus Dur said the government's stance might not satisfy everybody in the
military establishment but TNI must abide by it because the government is
the people's representative.
A gathering of tribal leaders and separatists on June 4 ended their
congress with the declaration that West Papua was not part of Indonesia.
But Wahid has affirmed that the government does not recognize the
congress' resolutions because the gathering was not inclusive of all
groups in the province.
Local police have questioned five figures for the organization of the
congress. Recently, the Papuan People's Congress figures issued new
statements, saying they would remain part of Indonesia as long as Wahid is
in office, but separate from the nation if he is toppled.
The head of state said the government is now trying to improve TNI's
capability by providing sufficient equipment, expanding its personnel and
increasing its members' welfare.
But at the same time, TNI is required to remain a professional force.
"Frankly speaking, I will not tolerate people in the military who engage
in conspiracies. Such people are not professional," he said.
He also said every serviceman must obey his commander and the commanders,
in turn, must obey the president and the government.
The president further told the 200-odd assembled Army officers that TNI
members should hold their seniors in high respect and they could show this
by seeking their seniors' suggestions on problems at hand.
On the occasion, the president symbolically presented the Army with a
supply of new uniforms.
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
___________________________________________________________
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Date: 7/26/00 3:38:49 AM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: indonesia-act@igc.apc.org, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk, jonathan.head@bbc.co.uk, WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, July 26, 2000
Opinion
Still Time for an Irian Jaya Compromise That Saves the Peace
By David L. Phillips International Herald Tribune
JAKARTA - Hard-liners in Irian Jaya are provoking violence to justify
Indonesian military intervention. But there is still room for compromise.
For decades Irian Jaya has suffered tyranny while its great natural wealth
(minerals, oil, natural gas and timber) was plundered. Acknowledging that
years of abuse have fueled the Papuan independence movement, President
Abdurrahman Wahid has taken steps to appease separatist sentiment.
But the situation is heating up. A 2,000-strong mobile police brigade has
been sent to the province.
Papuan leaders stand by their pledge to resolve differences with Jakarta
through dialogue and nonviolence, but they threaten a unilateral declaration
of independence if Mr. Wahid is forced from the presidency.
Last year the Indonesian Parliament passed legislation laying out guidelines
for special autonomy arrangements and resource sharing. A Ministry for
Regional Autonomy was established, and constitutional reforms, including
federalism, are being debated.
But requirements in Indonesia vary among regions, whereas federal systems
tend to be the same for all regions in a country. For Irian Jaya, meaningful
self-governance can be achieved via an interim power-sharing agreement which
preserves the unitary Indonesian state, decentralizes authority and defers a
determination of final status. Such an agreement would enable the Papuans to
control their own affairs without abandoning their dream of independence.
Jakarta would retain control over defense and foreign affairs. Irian Jaya
would use Indonesian currency, maintain trade ties, enforce existing laws,
abide by commercial contracts and continue to use the Bahasa Indonesia
language for education.
Foreign governments and organizations providing aid to Indonesia could help
in such a settlement. They could provide more humanitarian assistance, write
off debt or ease repayment terms, aid economic reconstruction and invest in
strengthening civil society.
The stakes are high. Separatist violence in Irian Jaya would probably
precipitate a bloody military crackdown. Conflict could spread and undermine
Mr. Wahid's overall reform agenda. Indonesia's hard-liners would welcome the
opportunity to derail democracy and reassert control.
The writer is a senior fellow at Columbia University's International Conflict
Resolution Program, He contributed this comment to the Herald Tribune.
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
___________________________________________________________
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Date: 7/26/00 2:59:36 PM Central Daylight Time
From: iris@matra.com.au (Anne Noonan)
Reply-to: iris@matra.com.au
To: WestPapua@topica.com, iris@matra.com.au
>From AWPA
Region urged to support Wahid
Date: 27/07/2000
By CRAIG SKEHAN, Herald Correspondent in Bangkok, and agencies
Indonesian military personnel are still trying to destabilise President
Abdurrahman Wahid, partly by encouraging militias along the East Timor
border, the Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, said yesterday.
Warning that the Asia/Pacific region could not afford to see Indonesia
fragmented, Mr Downer said Australia would encourage the more than 20
nations attending the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
forum to support its existing borders.
At a press conference, Mr Downer expressed "deep concern" over Monday's
killing by militiamen in East Timor of the New Zealand peacekeeper
Private Leonard Manning.
He called on other nations to give their support for the maintenance of
Indonesia's unity and territorial integrity.
Separatist movements in the staunchly Muslim province of Aceh in
Indonesia's west and in the eastern-most province of Irian Jaya have
been gaining in strength, encouraged by last year's independence ballot
in East Timor.
Mr Downer referred to them as "so-called independence movements" and
said they must not be given any encouragement.
"The last thing we want is equivocation from the international
community, or any indication of support from the international community
for so-called independence movements in different parts of Indonesia,"
he said.
"The international community ... mustn't give any comfort to those
elements in Indonesia who want to break it up."
Mr Downer pledged to press Indonesian authorities to "increase their
efforts" to avoid any further peacekeepers' deaths in East Timor and
conceded there were "clearly some links between some people in TNI [the
Indonesian military] ... and some of the militia there".
Mr Downer said he suspected some people in the TNI opposed Mr Wahid, but
he believed that ultimately such elements would not have sufficient
power or influence to unseat him or abrogate democratic rule.
Earlier, the New Zealand Foreign Minister, Mr Phil Goff, said he did not
believe there was any TNI involvement or support for the militiamen who
shot Private Manning. Mr Goff and Mr Downer will urge Indonesia's
Foreign
Minister, Mr Alwi Shihab, to ensure that the refugee camps in West Timor
are closed and the militias prevented from terrorising the refugees or
going on cross-border forays into East Timor.
Mr Goff said the camps risked becoming "effectively another Gaza Strip -
a permanent encampment of people that are in effect stateless, where
young people become fodder for future militia activity".
________________________________
Australia West Papua Association
PO BOX 65
Millers Point
Australia 2000
Tele/fax 61.2. 99601696
_________________________________
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Date: 7/25/00 10:50:12 PM Central Daylight Time
From: iris@matra.com.au (Anne Noonan)
Reply-to: iris@matra.com.au
To: WestPapua@topica.com
>From AWPA
VICTIMS OF MALUKU CONFLICTS TO BE MOVED TO IRIAN JAYA
Wednesday, July 26, 2000/9:34:02 AM
Jayapura, Irian Jaya, Jul 26 (ANTARA) - As many as 3,124 victims of the
sectarian conflicts
in the provinces of Maluku and North Maluku who are now being
accomodated at some
security posts in the two regions will be brought to Irian Jaya, a
police officer said on Tuesday.
"They will be brought here on board some PT Pelni ships such as KM
Rinjani and KM Dobonsolo," chief of the Sorong police Lt Col Ch V
Sitorus said. Meanwhile, the number of Maluku unrest victims already in
Sorong, Irian Jaya, has reached 900 , he said, adding that these
refugees had been checked intensively before enterring the region for
security reasons.
"But most of them have been picked up by their relatives, and the rest
are still being accommodated at some churches in Sorong," he said.
Sitorus added his office would also conduct coordination with the Sorong
municipality officials to help the refugees from strife-torn Maluku and
North Maluku.
________________________________
Australia West Papua Association
PO BOX 65
Millers Point
Australia 2000
Tele/fax 61.2. 99601696
_________________________________
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Date: 7/24/00 5:36:34 AM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
To: westpapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
[This is the unedited version of an article which appeared in the UK
journal, the New Statesman, on 10 July 2000]
Indonesia's next East Timor?
by
Julian Evans
The bird-shaped island of New Guinea - the third largest in the world - is
a place we seem to wish to know little of. Papua New Guinea, the eastern
half, is most often viewed as Australia's problem child, independent but
not self-reliant, with a sketchy reputation for drunkenness, raskol gangs
and economic catastrophe. In the western half, West Papua, even such scant
outlines are missing. Fifteen years after my first visit to the damp
magnificence of the West Papuan highlands, I've come to the conclusion that
it may be one of the places that we choose to keep dark: an ancient,
Conradian land that, for us, is more a proof of our obscure need for 'the
primitive' than a country struggling to emancipate itself. Even when the
country blipped onto the Western news-map in 1996, as the British media
reported the hostage-taking of four British science graduates by 'Free
Papua' guerrillas, newspapers were apt to designate the Papuans as 'Stone
Age terrorists'. Small wonder that there was barely a murmur in the press
when, earlier this month, on 4th June, the 2nd Papuan People's Congress
unanimously declared West Papua's independence from Indonesia.
The reaction in Jakarta was more forceful, condemning the Congress as
'illegitimate', warning Papuans that independence is 'not an option' and
that security forces will act to maintain order. The United States and
Japan have backed Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, as has the
European Union; Australia has issued a statement acknowledging Indonesia's
territorial integrity. Indonesian army and police numbers in West Papua
have been reinforced in the past few months from 8000 to 12,000, and
Jakarta has warned that further army and mobile police personnel will be
drafted in. There are reports in the Asian press that, as in East Timor,
pro-Indonesian militias have reappeared - although pro-independence Papuans
have learnt from the East Timorese' experience and assembled their own
militia. On the street, where there have already been regular disturbances,
the sides appear to be evenly matched.
For Indonesia, another proclamation of independence so soon after the loss
of East Timor is hard to swallow. But is that what is really at stake in
the territory? Loss of face of course plays a part, plus the fear of a
domino effect on Aceh and other provinces. There is also the fate of
several hundred thousand Indonesian transmigrants to the island. But the
least talked-about reason, and by far the most important, is West Papua's
extraordinary natural resources.
Hidden at 4000 metres in the blue-black ranges of its interior, West Papua
possesses the largest reserve of gold on the planet. In the British mining
company Rio Tinto plc's annual report for 1998, its gold stocks in New
Guinea are given as just over 19m ounces. Rio Tinto has a 12.5%
shareholding in Papua's Grasberg mine, plus a further 40% share in
Grasberg's expansion. The mine is owned by Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold,
based in New Orleans, whose gold reserves at Grasberg stand at 85 million
ounces. Grasberg is also not just a gold mine, but the world's third
largest source of copper. It's said that the mine's $21.5bn-worth of gold
exceeds its running costs, so that every one of its 32 million tonnes of
copper is free.
As big as Spain, large parts of West Papua remain such dense jungle and
swamp that they have never been properly mapped. Just over a million
Papuans (the rest are transmigrants) belong to hundreds of tribal clans,
many living deep in the bush, Melanesians with no ethnic or religious ties
to their Muslim rulers. In the highlands, the men hunt cassowary and tree
kangaroos with bows and arrows, while the women labour in the gardens, cook
and nurse: it isn't uncommon to find a nursing mother with a child at one
breast and a piglet at the other. To see these things is to glimpse our
earliest humanity. It was to this wilderness that Freeport-McMoran came in
1967, with the blessing of the Indonesian government. It is not an edifying
story.
To understand Freeport's activities in West Papua, you need to understand
the scale of its operations and their geo-political context. No mine on
Earth moves as much rock every day as Grasberg. When I visited West Papua
in 1986, the company was producing 16,000 tonnes of ore a day from a mine
nearby. Two years later the 14,000-foot Grasberg disclosed its huge plug of
copper-gold ore, that had stood in the rock for 3 million years as
equatorial glaciers advanced and retreated around it. A decade later,
production is 200-300,000 tonnes of ore a day.
Freeport's first contract of work was signed with Indonesia in April 1967.
Four years earlier, in 1963, West Papua had come under interim Indonesian
rule. The Dutch had not wanted to hand it over with the rest of their East
Indies empire, but President Sukarno began to flaunt his new friendship
with the Soviet Union and the United States took fright. The New York
Agreement of 1962, brokered by the UN but choreographed by Washington, paid
lip service to Dutch insistence on self-determination. Under the agreement
Indonesia was allowed a full six years of interim rule before it had to
consult the Papuans as to whether or not they wanted to be annexed. It was
a sign of what was to come that, as in East Timor, Indonesian troops were
entrusted with responsibility for security.
That consultation, know as the 'Act of Free Choice', was held on Saturday 2
August 1969. There was no free vote: the 1025 Papuan council members who
assembled at Army headquarters in the capital, Jayapura, were told by
President Suharto's envoy that anyone who voted against Indonesia would
have his tongue torn out or be shot on the spot. The vote for integration
was unanimous. The province of Irian Jaya was created, and the world was
treated to a geopolitical absurdity: anti-colonialism and neo-colonialism
being used interchangeably in the interests of America's obsession with
Communism. Washington knew what it was doing, as a US Embassy memo to the
Australian government, released last year under Australia's 30-year rule,
shows. 'Personal political views of the UN team are [that]... 95% of
Irianese (West Papuans) support the independence movement and that the Act
of Free Choice is a mockery.' Another Western diplomat wrote: 'It was
eyewash, everyone knew that. Nobody cared about the West Irianese.'
Between 1963 and 1969 there were countless Indonesian 'security operations'
to break Papuan protests against the occupation, including a bloody bush
war by OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, 'Free Papua Movement') resistance
fighters. The precise number of Papuans who have died in the 37 years since
Indonesian troops arrived is unknown, but at least 45,000 are believed to
have killed, mostly in villages bombed and burned and in the systematic
depopulation, rape and extra-judicial murder of the population. In 1967
alone 3500 Papuans were killed. Reports of atrocities by Indonesian
soldiers had become so persistent that on 5 April 1967 in the House of
Lords, Lord Ogmore called for a UN investigation - the same day that
Freeport celebrated the signing of its contract.
The connection between these two events is more than coincidental. Mining
companies exist to pile on value. It is a serious error to believe that
economic or engineering values have anything to do with ethics. But the
Grasberg mine's development - not forgetting the contribution of Rio Tinto,
which incidentally sponsors an annual prize for 'socially committed
journalism' - so closely mirrors Indonesia's career in West Papua that it
is worth considering the two in parallel. There is the question, for
example, of the legality of Freeport's 1967 contract, a contract Indonesia
probably had no legal right to grant as an interim power. There have also
been revelations that, between 1991 and 1997, the company provided loan
guarantees of $673 million for the purpose of buying Freeport stock to
three Indonesians with close ties to President Suharto or his ministers
(one of the businessmen involved, Mohammed 'Bob' Hasan, the Suharto aide
who introduced Freeport's CEO Jim-Bob Moffett into the president's family
circle, was arrested this year on fraud charges). Accusations of grave
environmental damage around the mine area have been increasing, and so has
the conviction among Papuans that the company's easy relationship with
Jakarta has been bought in covert contributions to the military and alleged
connivance in human rights abuses.
On my last visit to West Papua, in July 1999, I visited the Grasberg mine.
I flew from Darwin across the Arafura Sea to Timika, the flapping tin and
concrete mess that is the nearest approach point to the mine. Papuans and
Indonesian migrants, attracted by its economic magnet, are arriving in
Timika at the rate of 300 a week; from a village of 200 twenty-five years
ago, it now has a population approaching 80,000.
It was several days before I got permission to visit. I travelled first to
the Aikwa river, a cement-coloured throat of water several kilometres wide
that receives thousands of tonnes of mine tailings (the rock powder left
from the milling process) per day. I stood on the levee with Freeport's
environmental manager, surveying a desolate spectacle under a thunderous
sky. (It's calculated that the Aikwa's levees will have to be raised to a
height of 75 metres by the time Grasberg is mined out, and that eventually
220 square kilometres of Papuan lowlands will be drowned by tailings. I
pointed to the horizon on the far bank, scarred by kilometres of dead
trees. The manager said cheerfully: 'Oh, those haven't been killed by
pollution, they've just had their root systems suffocated by tailings.
Unsightly, aren't they? But we'll be cutting them down.'
The sight downriver cannot prepare you for the mine. First, there is the
spectacular access road. There are no foothills: the blue peaks of the
Jayawijaya range burst vertically upwards through the freezing silken
mists, so Freeport engineers simply shaved off the crests of a line of
knife-edge ridges until the surface was wide enough for two 40-tonne trucks
to pass. Higher up, the mine's pipeline runs bare by the roadside, carrying
away the ore concentrate to the waiting tankers at the coast. In 1977, in
retaliation for land expropriations and armed only with hacksaw blades, OPM
fighters and villagers cut this pipe. The Army retaliated with Operasi
Tumpas ('Operation Annihilation'), bombing, rocketing and strafing villages
with US-supplied OV-10 Bronco warplanes.
At Mile 68 there is Tembagapura, the mine's dull-looking township; at Mile
74 a cable tramway casually transports you the last kilometre and a half
through the clouds to the Grasberg's summit. Sliced like a boiled egg, the
huge inverted cone at its centre is deepening year by year as the ore is
blasted out and borne to the surface in a never-ending caravan of 200-tonne
trucks. (For the highland Amungme tribe on whose land the mine stands, the
result has been a spiritual cataclysm. The earth they walk on is their
ancestral mother, the mountain her head. Before, whenever someone died they
were taken up to the Grasberg's summit. For the Amungme, the mine is
gouging out their mother's brains before their eyes.)
The mine and its infrastructure are an undoubted engineering masterpiece,
in one of the highest and remotest places on Earth, yet the Papuans
continue to see Freeport as an adversary. Their resentment comes under
several headings: the company's forcible resettlement of highlanders in the
swampy lowlands; the rumours of over-close ties to the Indonesian military;
its environmental record and alleged responsibility for human rights
abuses; and money. Where is the money? By any standard, West Papua should
be the most bankable province in the republic, but it remains economically
backward, its riches siphoned off to Freeport stockholders and to Jakarta.
Yet perhaps the main question is not even about money. Freeport has built
hospitals and schools and initiated community and business development
programmes, but all the Amungme I talked to distrusted these improvements.
The head of the Catholic diocese office, Brother Theo van den Broek,
thought he knew why. 'It is not answering the main question. Which is: my
land. Me. Where am I in this whole story? I am nowhere.'
Possibly because Freeport has smelt political change coming, in the past
year it has been moving rock as fast as it can. A month ago a slide of rock
waste into Lake Wanagon buried four contractors' employees and injured 18
others. Brother Theo believes the massive extraction rate is a prime cause
of environmental problems. Despite the company claiming a clean bill of
health from an independent environmental audit, during my stay the mayor of
the Timika region ordered local people to stop eating tambelo - a water
snail that is a staple of the lowland diet - because of reported illness
from suspected high copper levels. Copper is capable at concentrations of
less than 2ppm of causing intestinal and other damage. The Aikwa's copper
level is around 10ppm; other metals associated with gold-bearing ores
include mercury, arsenic, barium, cadmium and lead. Their impact is hard to
detect until they begin to destroy nervous and respiratory systems and
produce foetal abnormalities. Perhaps a truer view of Freeport's attitude
to ecological issues can be found in its ebullient CEO's dismissal of the
environmental impact of the mine as 'the equivalent of me pissing in the
Arafura Sea'.
But the chief source of anger remains the company's ties with the
Indonesian military. Freeport cannot dissociate itself from the Army, the
Army is there because Freeport is there, but Freeport's most lasting
mistake must be to have recognised the existence of the Papuans only when
forced to - as long as the Army was taking care of business, it asked no
questions. Regular protests against the mine are routinely met by Army
reprisals. A series of Army attacks in 1994-5, part of a 'cleansing
operation' against the OPM, elicited a Catholic church report listing
killings, torture, detention and disappearance of Papuans. The most
notorious case was of five men from the Kwalik family. Arrested and
tortured, they subsequently vanished (they have not been found). Several
months later it was another Kwalik, an ex-teacher named Kelly, who abducted
and held hostage the group of British research scientists.
The day before I left Timka I met Kelly Kwalik's mother. Ibu Josefa is an
old-fashioned figure bound in bright cloth, like a polished and carefully
wrapped antique. She too had found herself in jail in 1995, 'because they
thought I was giving orders. I was in jail for a month and three days. It
was a toilet with water up to my knees.' The 'toilet' Josefa mentioned was
a freezing steel freight container. She and nine others had had to stand in
their own excrement for a month. She was blind in her left eye as a result.
Is there direct evidence to link Freeport to the Army? Brother Theo
confirmed that there are now reckoned to be 2-4000 Army and special forces
troops around Timika, more in the hamlets surrounding the mine. 'They ask
for cars and facilities, and Freeport agree. One senior executive said to
me, "We don't like it either but we feel safe."' During my own visit I was
introduced to a number of Freeport officials including an American called
Tom Green, in charge of the 'community liaison office'. Something
interestingly decisive about Green's manner made me ask around. Later I
found that prior to joining Freeport he had been a military attaché at the
US Embassy in Jakarta. One supposes that the presence of ex-military,
ex-CIA personnel might be viewed as part of the company's desire to talk
the same language to the Army and the local people - but it's not an easy
argument to find convincing.
I carried out further research when I got back to London. After a long
wait, I received some papers from an American lawyer who had represented
the Amungme. Incomplete but revealing, they contained evidence that
Freeport has budgeted to equip the military to perform its violent role. In
the year in question - probably the second half of the 1990s - the company
was budgeting to finance headquarters buildings, guard houses and guard
posts, barracks, parade grounds and ammunition storage facilities. The list
also included expenditure for messrooms, water, power and fuel
installations, tennis and volleyball courts, flagpoles and signwriting.
Another table enumerated office requirements for Freeport project staff -
architects, draughtsmen and engineers - among whom provision had been made
for two ABRI (Army) advisers. The amounts are substantial, given that the
papers weren't complete: for the Army $5,160,770, for the police
$4,060,000.
To return to today, it isn't difficult to foresee the course of West
Papua's independence proclamation. The chairman of the Papuan People's
Congress, Theys Eluay, and his deputy Tom Beanal are due to meet President
Abdurrahman Wahid in Jakarta on 25 June to present the Congress's unanimous
decision. Neither side has room for manoeuvre. If West Papua's fate is
allowed to remain an internal matter, President Wahid is likely to have to
defer to his generals, and Papuan nationalism will continue to be contained
by military repression. It goes almost without saying, of course, that the
country's future should not be allowed to be merely an internal matter.
After the United Nations' traumatic blundering in the Sixties, allowing
itself to be dictated to by US interests, the most sensible, most legal,
most international way to decide the Papuans' right for emancipation must
now be to take the case and the arguments back to the UN.
But the real fear in pushing for a reassessment of West Papua's case, as
every UN diplomat knows, is not that Indonesia has had a recent lesson in
the concept of international justice, in East Timor, and will not tolerate
another - nor that there is a domino effect waiting to happen. The real
fear is that West Papua is far more vital than East Timor to the future of
Jakarta's empire, and thus more potentially destabilising, inside and
outside Indonesia. 4000 metres up in the south-west highlands, Grasberg is
an economic beachhead. Freeport is one of Indonesia's biggest tax and
royalty sources; its licence to prospect in another 2.6 million-hectare
area, as far as the Papua New Guinea border, is likely to show
mineralogical possibilities that Jakarta will not abandon without a fight.
As for the practicalities of mining in West Papua, there is one further
thing to say. In tactical terms it may have been a mistake on Freeport's
part to accept the Army's protection so readily. If political moves to
secure Papuan independence fail or falter too long, OPM commanders have
indicated that their future strategy will concentrate on economic
targeting. The company knows its mine (and any future expansion) is
vulnerable to guerrilla attack: Grasberg workers are aware, since some were
employed there, that to close the profitable Panguna mine on nearby
Bougainville island in the early Nineties, all the Bougainville
Revolutionary Army had to do was blow up a power plant and murder a couple
of expatriates. In such circumstances expatriate enterprise has a low risk
threshold (Panguna has not reopened). It is unarguable that without the
Indonesian Army's presence and readiness to inflict reprisals, the mighty
Grasberg mine would be as exposed as Panguna. And if Grasberg were to go
up, it would make Bougainville look like a picnic. Freeport and Rio Tinto
cannot say they haven't been warned.
(ends)
--
Flat 2, 41 Addison Gardens, London W14 0DP
+44 (0)207 602 6920
Mailto:jevans@ukonline.co.uk
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
Date: 7/24/00 3:18:51 PM Central Daylight Time
From: iris@matra.com.au (Anne Noonan)
Reply-to: iris@matra.com.au
To: WestPapua@topica.com
From AWPA
Jakarta Post 25/7/00
Irianese leader seeks special autonomy
JAKARTA (JP): The sooner the central government gives Irian Jaya special
autonomy, the better Jakarta's chance of silencing the demands for
independence emanating from the province, a political leader in Irian
Jaya said.
The deputy speaker of the Irian Jaya provincial legislature, John Ibo,
blames the increasing support for secession among the Papuans, as the
province's natives refer to themselves, on the central government's
failure to address the demand for autonomy.
"The central government should know that the Papuans do not need or
expect special autonomy at the level of discussion. They want to see and
experience this status materialize in the province," Ibo told The
Jakarta Post on Sunday. He said the speedy implementation of autonomy in
the province would convince Papuans to remain a part of the republic.
Irian Jaya is home to one of the world's largest gold mines. Alleged
human rights violations and unfair revenue sharing from mining
activities have cause many in the province to demand independence. The
700-member People's Consultative Assembly, in its General Session last
October, endorsed the proposal to grant the natural resource-rich
provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya special autonomy.
Ibo said the government's failure to follow up the Assembly's decision
and draft a law and operational regulations to implement the special
autonomy showed it was not serious in resolving the issue. The
government's recalcitrance is also manifested in other matters,
according to Ibo.
First, based on the unique nature of Irian Jaya, the provincial
legislative council proposed to the central government that four deputy
governors be appointed to the province. "But as of today, there has been
no response," Ibo said.
Second, he said, the legislative council requested the central
government to provide Irian Jaya Rp 350 billion of the Rp 2 trillion of
financial aid set aside in the state budget for the country's provinces.
"However, the central government never replied."
He said Papuans hailed President Abdurrahman Wahid's approval of Irian
Jaya being renamed Papua. "But there have been no steps taken by the
government or the House of Representatives to officially adopt the
name." Ibo warned that if Jakarta continued to procrastinate, Papuans
would lose their trust in the government. "Further delays in
implementing the special autonomy in Papua will only fuel the already
strong demand for establishing an independent state in the territory.
"The government has the obligation to carry out development in Irian
Jaya. If it fails to fulfill the needs of the Papuans, the people's
demand for independence will grow." (eba)
________________________________
Australia West Papua Association
PO BOX 65
Millers Point
Australia 2000
Tele/fax 61.2. 99601696
_________________________________
___________________________________________________________
T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16
Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
Date: 7/24/00 3:01:53 PM Central Daylight Time
From: iris@matra.com.au (Anne Noonan)
Reply-to: iris@matra.com.au
To: WestPapua@topica.com
>From AWPA
Radio Australia 25/7/00
Jihad warriors reportedly move into West Papua
One hundred Muslim militants from Indonesia's strife torn Maluku Islands
have reportedly been found training in West Papua
John Rumbiak from the human rights group, ELSHAM, says the fighters,
armed with both guns and grenades, had come across from the island of
Halmahera, to the north western town of Sorong.
He says the discovery indicates that the religious violence in the
Malukus could be spreading into West Papua, with the support of elements
of the Indonesian military.
________________________________
Australia West Papua Association
PO BOX 65
Millers Point
Australia 2000
Tele/fax 61.2. 99601696
_________________________________
Date: 7/24/00 5:36:25 AM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
Reply-to: plovers@gn.apc.org
To: WestPapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
Includes: Freeport's Checkered Record
Business Week
July 31, 2000
Freeport-McMoRan: A Pit of Trouble
Can the miners make peace with critics of its West Papua operation?
Gabrielle K. McDonald is the first African American woman to serve as a U.S.
District Court judge. For six years, she served on the Bosnia war-crimes
tribunal at The Hague. She's the last person you would expect to meet on a
jungle airstrip in West Papua--Indonesia's half of the island of New Guinea.
But on a steamy June day, here is McDonald, in one of the remotest spots on
earth. And she's here on official business. In November, McDonald was named
special counsel on human rights by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., the
New Orleans company mining the world's largest deposits of recoverable gold
in this mountainous region. She has landed in West Papua to figure out how
Freeport can make its peace with the 150,000 Papuans who live and work around
the mine, Freeport's most valuable asset.
McDonald's presence speaks volumes about all the changes that have come to
Indonesia--and to Freeport itself. James R. ``Jim Bob'' Moffett, Freeport's
combative chairman and CEO, knew how to protect the lucrative Freeport
concession during the long years when Suharto ruled Indonesia. But Suharto no
longer rules Indonesia: He's a disgraced old man fighting a government
investigation into allegations that he pilfered billions from the country. An
unstable democracy clings to power in Jakarta, while much of the rest of the
archipelago is being rocked by secessionist movements and ethnic unrest.
Suddenly, foreign companies that had negotiated cozy contracts decades ago
are finding themselves subject to new financial demands, public scrutiny, and
calls for drastic change.
The shifting climate is threatening Freeport's $4 billion investment in
West Papua, formerly Irian Jaya. Freeport has 15 years left in its contract
to recover gold from its mammoth Grasberg mine. But it stands accused by
tribal leaders and Western activists of polluting the environment, of not
sharing enough wealth with the indigenous people, and of abetting the
Indonesian military's suppression of a campaign for Papuan independence.
Foreign investors are watching to see how Freeport will fare as it negotiates
its future in Indonesia. ``Freeport is definitely considered a bellwether for
foreign investment prospects,'' says James Castle, president of the American
Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia.
No wonder Freeport is campaigning hard to improve its image. The energetic
Moffett has staked his reputation on it. Freeport's strategy is to convince
local residents and Western activists that it is addressing their concerns.
Moffett even vows to cut the Papuans a bigger piece of Freeport's $1.9
billion in annual revenues. ``It's our responsibility to ensure that the
local people benefit from our presence,'' said Moffett, who agreed only to
provide written answers to questions. ``Our aspirations are to develop
relationships based on honesty, equality, and justice.''
But many Papuans say Freeport's attempts so far to rectify past wrongs are
too little, too late. Tribal leaders say they want more financial
compensation, more protection of their rights, and more environmental
guarantees. Leaders of the Papuan separatist movement even want Freeport's
backing for their attempt to create an independent nation. These leaders
accuse Freeport of merely making policy without implementing it. ``What's
going on in conversations and what's happening in the field are two different
things,'' said Janes Natkime, one of four recognized leaders of the locally
dominant Amungme tribe, during a recent BUSINESS WEEK visit to Papua at the
invitation of Freeport. The Amungme have rights to the land where Freeport
operates. Natkime says the company should split 50-50 with ``the people of
Papua'' the 3 million ounces of gold it produces annually. Freeport, however,
just reported a second-quarter loss of $18.6 million on lower gold and copper
shipments.
By the end of this year, local leaders will get more say than ever. That's
when a new law giving greater power to regional governments is to go into
effect. It's unclear how Freeport's old agreement with Jakarta will be
affected. Freeport never had a contract with the government in the provincial
capital Jayapura, located 450 mountainous kilometers away from the mine. Also
unclear is the status of Freeport's 1974 pact with the Amungme, which granted
the company rights to mine on its land in exchange for community-development
programs. According to Moffett, Freeport is not considering any renegotiation
of its contract. But ahead of that date, Freeport is discussing with local
leaders ``an agreement for significant additional compensation,'' says
Moffett.
TRUST FUND. Papuans say Freeport's development efforts so far have been
insufficient. After Papuans rioted against a military crackdown in 1996,
Freeport increased its spending on such projects to 1% of annual net
revenues--$16 million last year. So far, it has built a hospital, extended an
existing school, built a relocation camp for tribespeople displaced in a
local conflict, and constructed houses to replace those destroyed in a May
accident that also killed four Freeport contractors. Freeport also set aside
an equity stake in its local subsidiary, Freeport Indonesia. The dividends
from those shares are supposed to go into a trust fund for Amungme elders.
But so far, the dividends have not been invested, admits Leroy Hollenbeck,
Freeport's community-development manager in West Papua.
In addition, the Free Papua Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym OPM,
wants Freeport's support. ``We lost the gold from our land,'' says OPM Major
General Viktus Wangmang, who goes by ``Semal,'' his nom de guerre. ``To repay
the debt, Freeport and America should support our struggle for
independence.'' In an interview at a secret location outside Timika, he
admitted that the OPM was responsible for the murder of a Papuan Freeport
employee by a sniper in 1994--and defended it on grounds that the victim was
``a spy of Indonesia.''
With so many years of fractiousness, Freeport has a lot of animosity to
overcome. In February, 1999, it instituted a human rights policy requiring
Freeport's 6,000 employees in Papua to refrain from participating in human
rights abuses and to report any violations they might witness. Then in
November, Moffett appointed McDonald, a seven-year member of Freeport's board
of directors, to be his human rights troubleshooter in Indonesia. Moffett
said he told her: ``Gaby, you have full rein. You make recommendations, and
I'll take them.''
Seven months later, McDonald flew to Indonesia for a two-week visit. She
met with human rights groups in Jakarta, and held nearly a dozen meetings
with local leaders in West Papua. She also met with Freeport's local
managers, to impress upon them that the company's 15-month-old human rights
policy wasn't just a piece of paper issued from headquarters. ``They are told
that they must not violate a person's human rights and to report any
violation,'' says McDonald.
DEPORTED. But the human rights violations that taint Freeport involve the
Indonesian military's suppression of the Amungme-led secessionist campaign,
not Freeport's employees. Freeport's contract with Jakarta requires it to
``provide infrastructure'' for Indonesian government officials, including the
military. So Freeport has provided the Indonesian army with helicopters and
vehicles to transport troops and with funds to construct barracks and office
buildings. ``The concern has been the relationship between the company and
the military,'' says Abigail Abrush, a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School
who was asked by Freeport's board in 1998 to make an independent human rights
assessment, in conjunction with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for
Human Rights. Her first attempt to investigate was thwarted by local police,
who ordered her deported soon after she arrived. Freeport says it is
cooperating fully with the center to complete the audit.
Interviews with Freeport employees also indicate that the human rights
policy is being only partially implemented. Freeport's designated Papuan-born
compliance officer, Daniel C. Ajamiseba, says that he doesn't have enough
time even to count the bundles of forms that pour into his office, much less
study them, because he has more important duties. ``This is 10% of my time,''
says Ajamiseba. ``All of us are stretched so thin.'' Two Papuan employees,
one a truck driver at the Grasberg mine who says he is illiterate and the
other a civil engineer educated at the University of New Orleans by the
company, say they are unaware that Freeport had a human rights policy. The
truck driver, Masmus Tipagau, 19, says he once witnessed Freeport security
guards beat a man severely for playing cards in the street of the
high-altitude mining town of Tembagapura. But he says he did not report it
because he wasn't aware he was supposed to. Moffett responds that ``those
employees most directly in contact with local people have had human rights
training.'' All employees also have been given publications explaining the
policy, he adds.
The policy has resulted in at least one concrete action, following an
incident in which Indonesian security forces opened fire on civilians within
Freeport's project area. Sixteen were injured by gunshots, and a further 80
were beaten on Dec. 2 when secessionists tried to raise their flag of
independence, according to a Human Rights Watch report. After a Papuan
employee was beaten by soldiers for attempting to assist the victims of the
attack, Freeport filed a complaint with Indonesia's National Commission on
Human Rights. It's the first time Freeport has complained about abuses on
behalf of the people who populate its area of operations. ``It's the
beginning of Freeport trying to do the right thing,'' says Arvind Ganesan, a
program director at Human Rights Watch. ``But it's only a first step,'' he
adds. ``It's way too early to say Freeport has turned over a new leaf.''
GRAY, GRAY. Another obstacle Freeport faces in mending fences is
environmental degradation. Five years ago, the Grasberg mine was a
4,100-meter mountain with the top shaved off and a corkscrew-like road
wrapped around it. Today, Grasberg is the opposite: a deep hole in the ground
with a spiral road down the inside. The mine produces 220,000 tons of ore per
day--97% of which is the gray silt, or ``tailings,'' dumped into the nearby
river system. The tailings have turned a 230-square-kilometer lowland delta
into a gray desert of dead trees. The company is replanting only 75
hectares--less than 1 square kilometer--per year. Freeport says it will turn
the remaining treeless area into ``the most productive agricultural land'' in
West Papua, producing up to $100 million worth of crops a year.
Freeport also has tried to address Amungme concerns that its people have no
voice in the company and that only 3% of employees come from the tribe. This
year, Freeport put an Amungme chief, Tom Beanal, on the board of Freeport
Indonesia, the subsidiary operating the mine. Beanal had earlier brought an
unsuccessful $6 billion class action against Freeport on behalf of the
Amungme in a U.S. court. Now, other Amungme tribal leaders complain they no
longer trust Beanal. Beanal declined to be interviewed for this story.
If Freeport does negotiate a new deal in West Papua, it would have
difficulty deciding who the parties to any agreement would be. It's unclear
whether the local government consists of the bureaucrats in far away Jayapura
or the fractious tribal councils where Freeport operates. ``There is no
cohesive local elite to negotiate with,'' says Bruce Gale, a Singapore
political-risk consultant who recently conducted a survey in the province for
a multinational client. ``You could easily get into a situation where you
have a deal with the elders of a tribe, only to find that other tribes don't
respect it or the next generation won't respect it.'' Indeed, local tribes
honor deals only as long as the person who made them is alive.
Even after Indonesia's new local autonomy rules go into effect, the
quarrels between the tribes and Freeport are likely to go on. The wounds run
too deep to heal soon. And multinationals operating in Indonesia will
experience more such tumult as the archipelago lurches through its painful
transition.
By Michael Shari in West Papua, Indonesia, with Sheri Prasso in New York
-------------
Freeport's Checkered Record
HUMAN RIGHTS
PROBLEM
Human rights groups and local inhabitants accuse Freeport of complicity with
the Indonesian military's detention, torture, and murder of civilians.
RESPONSE
Freeport requires employees to report any abuses and to state in writing that
they have not seen or participated in any violations. Freeport has
commissioned an outside audit and appointed a human rights expert as special
counsel. But the audit was delayed, and local Freeport officials don't have
time to assure compliance.
ENVIRONMENT
PROBLEM
Freeport dumps 200,000 tons of silt into local rivers every day, turning a
230-square-kilometer lowland delta into a gray, treeless desert.
RESPONSE
Freeport built levees to prevent spills and pledged to replant 75 hectares a
year through 2015, when the mine will be depleted. Environmentalists assert
that the company isn't doing enough and that vast areas will remain
contaminated. But Freeport says that remaining land can be used for farming.
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
PROBLEM
The Amungme, who have traditional claim to the mine area, say that Freeport
doesn't share enough revenues for use of their land and employs too few
locals.
RESPONSE
In 1996, Freeport began spending 1% of net revenues a year, about $16
million, on community development projects. In addition, it named a tribal
chief to the board of its Indonesia subsidiary. In response to Amungme
demands for a 50-50 split of revenues, Freeport is negotiating with tribal
leaders to provide more compensation.
Graphic: Map of West Papua highlighting Freeport's operations
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
___________________________________________________________
T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16
Date: 7/24/00 5:36:27 AM Central Daylight Time
From: plovers@gn.apc.org (Tapol)
To: westpapua@topica.com, u.braun@xcc.de, slliem@xs4all.nl, taylorjb@vax.sbu.ac.uk
Received from Joyo Indonesian News
Includes: Freeport's Checkered Record
Business Week
July 31, 2000
Freeport-McMoRan: A Pit of Trouble
Can the miners make peace with critics of its West Papua operation?
Gabrielle K. McDonald is the first African American woman to serve as a U.S.
District Court judge. For six years, she served on the Bosnia war-crimes
tribunal at The Hague. She's the last person you would expect to meet on a
jungle airstrip in West Papua--Indonesia's half of the island of New Guinea.
But on a steamy June day, here is McDonald, in one of the remotest spots on
earth. And she's here on official business. In November, McDonald was named
special counsel on human rights by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., the
New Orleans company mining the world's largest deposits of recoverable gold
in this mountainous region. She has landed in West Papua to figure out how
Freeport can make its peace with the 150,000 Papuans who live and work around
the mine, Freeport's most valuable asset.
McDonald's presence speaks volumes about all the changes that have come to
Indonesia--and to Freeport itself. James R. ``Jim Bob'' Moffett, Freeport's
combative chairman and CEO, knew how to protect the lucrative Freeport
concession during the long years when Suharto ruled Indonesia. But Suharto no
longer rules Indonesia: He's a disgraced old man fighting a government
investigation into allegations that he pilfered billions from the country. An
unstable democracy clings to power in Jakarta, while much of the rest of the
archipelago is being rocked by secessionist movements and ethnic unrest.
Suddenly, foreign companies that had negotiated cozy contracts decades ago
are finding themselves subject to new financial demands, public scrutiny, and
calls for drastic change.
The shifting climate is threatening Freeport's $4 billion investment in
West Papua, formerly Irian Jaya. Freeport has 15 years left in its contract
to recover gold from its mammoth Grasberg mine. But it stands accused by
tribal leaders and Western activists of polluting the environment, of not
sharing enough wealth with the indigenous people, and of abetting the
Indonesian military's suppression of a campaign for Papuan independence.
Foreign investors are watching to see how Freeport will fare as it negotiates
its future in Indonesia. ``Freeport is definitely considered a bellwether for
foreign investment prospects,'' says James Castle, president of the American
Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia.
No wonder Freeport is campaigning hard to improve its image. The energetic
Moffett has staked his reputation on it. Freeport's strategy is to convince
local residents and Western activists that it is addressing their concerns.
Moffett even vows to cut the Papuans a bigger piece of Freeport's $1.9
billion in annual revenues. ``It's our responsibility to ensure that the
local people benefit from our presence,'' said Moffett, who agreed only to
provide written answers to questions. ``Our aspirations are to develop
relationships based on honesty, equality, and justice.''
But many Papuans say Freeport's attempts so far to rectify past wrongs are
too little, too late. Tribal leaders say they want more financial
compensation, more protection of their rights, and more environmental
guarantees. Leaders of the Papuan separatist movement even want Freeport's
backing for their attempt to create an independent nation. These leaders
accuse Freeport of merely making policy without implementing it. ``What's
going on in conversations and what's happening in the field are two different
things,'' said Janes Natkime, one of four recognized leaders of the locally
dominant Amungme tribe, during a recent BUSINESS WEEK visit to Papua at the
invitation of Freeport. The Amungme have rights to the land where Freeport
operates. Natkime says the company should split 50-50 with ``the people of
Papua'' the 3 million ounces of gold it produces annually. Freeport, however,
just reported a second-quarter loss of $18.6 million on lower gold and copper
shipments.
By the end of this year, local leaders will get more say than ever. That's
when a new law giving greater power to regional governments is to go into
effect. It's unclear how Freeport's old agreement with Jakarta will be
affected. Freeport never had a contract with the government in the provincial
capital Jayapura, located 450 mountainous kilometers away from the mine. Also
unclear is the status of Freeport's 1974 pact with the Amungme, which granted
the company rights to mine on its land in exchange for community-development
programs. According to Moffett, Freeport is not considering any renegotiation
of its contract. But ahead of that date, Freeport is discussing with local
leaders ``an agreement for significant additional compensation,'' says
Moffett.
TRUST FUND. Papuans say Freeport's development efforts so far have been
insufficient. After Papuans rioted against a military crackdown in 1996,
Freeport increased its spending on such projects to 1% of annual net
revenues--$16 million last year. So far, it has built a hospital, extended an
existing school, built a relocation camp for tribespeople displaced in a
local conflict, and constructed houses to replace those destroyed in a May
accident that also killed four Freeport contractors. Freeport also set aside
an equity stake in its local subsidiary, Freeport Indonesia. The dividends
from those shares are supposed to go into a trust fund for Amungme elders.
But so far, the dividends have not been invested, admits Leroy Hollenbeck,
Freeport's community-development manager in West Papua.
In addition, the Free Papua Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym OPM,
wants Freeport's support. ``We lost the gold from our land,'' says OPM Major
General Viktus Wangmang, who goes by ``Semal,'' his nom de guerre. ``To repay
the debt, Freeport and America should support our struggle for
independence.'' In an interview at a secret location outside Timika, he
admitted that the OPM was responsible for the murder of a Papuan Freeport
employee by a sniper in 1994--and defended it on grounds that the victim was
``a spy of Indonesia.''
With so many years of fractiousness, Freeport has a lot of animosity to
overcome. In February, 1999, it instituted a human rights policy requiring
Freeport's 6,000 employees in Papua to refrain from participating in human
rights abuses and to report any violations they might witness. Then in
November, Moffett appointed McDonald, a seven-year member of Freeport's board
of directors, to be his human rights troubleshooter in Indonesia. Moffett
said he told her: ``Gaby, you have full rein. You make recommendations, and
I'll take them.''
Seven months later, McDonald flew to Indonesia for a two-week visit. She
met with human rights groups in Jakarta, and held nearly a dozen meetings
with local leaders in West Papua. She also met with Freeport's local
managers, to impress upon them that the company's 15-month-old human rights
policy wasn't just a piece of paper issued from headquarters. ``They are told
that they must not violate a person's human rights and to report any
violation,'' says McDonald.
DEPORTED. But the human rights violations that taint Freeport involve the
Indonesian military's suppression of the Amungme-led secessionist campaign,
not Freeport's employees. Freeport's contract with Jakarta requires it to
``provide infrastructure'' for Indonesian government officials, including the
military. So Freeport has provided the Indonesian army with helicopters and
vehicles to transport troops and with funds to construct barracks and office
buildings. ``The concern has been the relationship between the company and
the military,'' says Abigail Abrush, a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School
who was asked by Freeport's board in 1998 to make an independent human rights
assessment, in conjunction with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for
Human Rights. Her first attempt to investigate was thwarted by local police,
who ordered her deported soon after she arrived. Freeport says it is
cooperating fully with the center to complete the audit.
Interviews with Freeport employees also indicate that the human rights
policy is being only partially implemented. Freeport's designated Papuan-born
compliance officer, Daniel C. Ajamiseba, says that he doesn't have enough
time even to count the bundles of forms that pour into his office, much less
study them, because he has more important duties. ``This is 10% of my time,''
says Ajamiseba. ``All of us are stretched so thin.'' Two Papuan employees,
one a truck driver at the Grasberg mine who says he is illiterate and the
other a civil engineer educated at the University of New Orleans by the
company, say they are unaware that Freeport had a human rights policy. The
truck driver, Masmus Tipagau, 19, says he once witnessed Freeport security
guards beat a man severely for playing cards in the street of the
high-altitude mining town of Tembagapura. But he says he did not report it
because he wasn't aware he was supposed to. Moffett responds that ``those
employees most directly in contact with local people have had human rights
training.'' All employees also have been given publications explaining the
policy, he adds.
The policy has resulted in at least one concrete action, following an
incident in which Indonesian security forces opened fire on civilians within
Freeport's project area. Sixteen were injured by gunshots, and a further 80
were beaten on Dec. 2 when secessionists tried to raise their flag of
independence, according to a Human Rights Watch report. After a Papuan
employee was beaten by soldiers for attempting to assist the victims of the
attack, Freeport filed a complaint with Indonesia's National Commission on
Human Rights. It's the first time Freeport has complained about abuses on
behalf of the people who populate its area of operations. ``It's the
beginning of Freeport trying to do the right thing,'' says Arvind Ganesan, a
program director at Human Rights Watch. ``But it's only a first step,'' he
adds. ``It's way too early to say Freeport has turned over a new leaf.''
GRAY, GRAY. Another obstacle Freeport faces in mending fences is
environmental degradation. Five years ago, the Grasberg mine was a
4,100-meter mountain with the top shaved off and a corkscrew-like road
wrapped around it. Today, Grasberg is the opposite: a deep hole in the ground
with a spiral road down the inside. The mine produces 220,000 tons of ore per
day--97% of which is the gray silt, or ``tailings,'' dumped into the nearby
river system. The tailings have turned a 230-square-kilometer lowland delta
into a gray desert of dead trees. The company is replanting only 75
hectares--less than 1 square kilometer--per year. Freeport says it will turn
the remaining treeless area into ``the most productive agricultural land'' in
West Papua, producing up to $100 million worth of crops a year.
Freeport also has tried to address Amungme concerns that its people have no
voice in the company and that only 3% of employees come from the tribe. This
year, Freeport put an Amungme chief, Tom Beanal, on the board of Freeport
Indonesia, the subsidiary operating the mine. Beanal had earlier brought an
unsuccessful $6 billion class action against Freeport on behalf of the
Amungme in a U.S. court. Now, other Amungme tribal leaders complain they no
longer trust Beanal. Beanal declined to be interviewed for this story.
If Freeport does negotiate a new deal in West Papua, it would have
difficulty deciding who the parties to any agreement would be. It's unclear
whether the local government consists of the bureaucrats in far away Jayapura
or the fractious tribal councils where Freeport operates. ``There is no
cohesive local elite to negotiate with,'' says Bruce Gale, a Singapore
political-risk consultant who recently conducted a survey in the province for
a multinational client. ``You could easily get into a situation where you
have a deal with the elders of a tribe, only to find that other tribes don't
respect it or the next generation won't respect it.'' Indeed, local tribes
honor deals only as long as the person who made them is alive.
Even after Indonesia's new local autonomy rules go into effect, the
quarrels between the tribes and Freeport are likely to go on. The wounds run
too deep to heal soon. And multinationals operating in Indonesia will
experience more such tumult as the archipelago lurches through its painful
transition.
By Michael Shari in West Papua, Indonesia, with Sheri Prasso in New York
-------------
Freeport's Checkered Record
HUMAN RIGHTS
PROBLEM
Human rights groups and local inhabitants accuse Freeport of complicity with
the Indonesian military's detention, torture, and murder of civilians.
RESPONSE
Freeport requires employees to report any abuses and to state in writing that
they have not seen or participated in any violations. Freeport has
commissioned an outside audit and appointed a human rights expert as special
counsel. But the audit was delayed, and local Freeport officials don't have
time to assure compliance.
ENVIRONMENT
PROBLEM
Freeport dumps 200,000 tons of silt into local rivers every day, turning a
230-square-kilometer lowland delta into a gray, treeless desert.
RESPONSE
Freeport built levees to prevent spills and pledged to replant 75 hectares a
year through 2015, when the mine will be depleted. Environmentalists assert
that the company isn't doing enough and that vast areas will remain
contaminated. But Freeport says that remaining land can be used for farming.
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
PROBLEM
The Amungme, who have traditional claim to the mine area, say that Freeport
doesn't share enough revenues for use of their land and employs too few
locals.
RESPONSE
In 1996, Freeport began spending 1% of net revenues a year, about $16
million, on community development projects. In addition, it named a tribal
chief to the board of its Indonesia subsidiary. In response to Amungme
demands for a 50-50 split of revenues, Freeport is negotiating with tribal
leaders to provide more compensation.
Graphic: Map of West Papua highlighting Freeport's operations
**************************************************
Paul Barber
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign,
25 Plovers Way, Alton Hampshire GU34 2JJ
Tel/Fax: 01420 80153
Email: plovers@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Defending victims of oppression in Indonesia and
East Timor, 1973-2000
**************************************************
Date: 7/24/00 3:18:51 PM Central Daylight Time
From: iris@matra.com.au (Anne Noonan)
Reply-to: iris@matra.com.au
To: WestPapua@topica.com
From AWPA
Jakarta Post 25/7/00
Irianese leader seeks special autonomy
JAKARTA (JP): The sooner the central government gives Irian Jaya special
autonomy, the better Jakarta's chance of silencing the demands for
independence emanating from the province, a political leader in Irian
Jaya said.
The deputy speaker of the Irian Jaya provincial legislature, John Ibo,
blames the increasing support for secession among the Papuans, as the
province's natives refer to themselves, on the central government's
failure to address the demand for autonomy.
"The central government should know that the Papuans do not need or
expect special autonomy at the level of discussion. They want to see and
experience this status materialize in the province," Ibo told The
Jakarta Post on Sunday. He said the speedy implementation of autonomy in
the province would convince Papuans to remain a part of the republic.
Irian Jaya is home to one of the world's largest gold mines. Alleged
human rights violations and unfair revenue sharing from mining
activities have cause many in the province to demand independence. The
700-member People's Consultative Assembly, in its General Session last
October, endorsed the proposal to grant the natural resource-rich
provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya special autonomy.
Ibo said the government's failure to follow up the Assembly's decision
and draft a law and operational regulations to implement the special
autonomy showed it was not serious in resolving the issue. The
government's recalcitrance is also manifested in other matters,
according to Ibo.
First, based on the unique nature of Irian Jaya, the provincial
legislative council proposed to the central government that four deputy
governors be appointed to the province. "But as of today, there has been
no response," Ibo said.
Second, he said, the legislative council requested the central
government to provide Irian Jaya Rp 350 billion of the Rp 2 trillion of
financial aid set aside in the state budget for the country's provinces.
"However, the central government never replied."
He said Papuans hailed President Abdurrahman Wahid's approval of Irian
Jaya being renamed Papua. "But there have been no steps taken by the
government or the House of Representatives to officially adopt the
name." Ibo warned that if Jakarta continued