From: Musalkazim Ali [Musalkazim_Ali@fmi.com] Sent: Monday, December 20, 1999 3:26 PM To: Bu-Pun-Su@timika.wasantara.net.id Subject: INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND DEMO. Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 08:00:43 +0100 (BST) From: GEORGE ADITJONDRO Friends; This is an email interview which I have done with an Australian newspaper, which I doubt will be published in its full entity, and therefore I want to share it with those interested in Indonesian/East Timorese/West Papuan politics. George J. Aditjondro 1. Do the demonstrators have widespread popular support among the indigenous people? Yes, and by indigenous people, I mean both the urban-based students, intellectuals, and civil servants, as well as the highlanders in the interior, around the Freeport copper-gold-and silver mine, as well as among the rural lowlanders evicted from their traditional farming, hunting and gathering land by the sponsored migrants (transmigrants) and spontaneous migrants. This latest wave of pro-independence uprisings is the culmination of more than three decades of independence struggle, began by the Dutch-trained Papua Batallion, who mostly come from the Biak and Yapen (Serui) islands, then the ball was taken over by the Indonesian-trained Biak soldiers, then West Papuan soldiers and civil servants from the lowlands around Port Numbay, which the Indonesian government calls Jayapura, then the students from the Cenderawasih University (Uncen), which was set up by the Indonesian government to win the hearts and minds of the younger generation, then the Uncen intellectuals, led by the Biak-born intellectual, Arnold Clemens Ap, who was assasinated by the Red Berets (then called Kopassandha, now Kopassus),in April 1984, after lured to escape from the police detention centre in Jayapura, then, one of West Papua's handful number of Ph.D.s, Thomas Wanggai, a Serui-born civil servant, raised a new West Melanesian flag in the late 1980s. He was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison, sharing a cell near anana Gusmao in the well-known Cipinang prison, where he died in early 1996. When his body was flown back to Jayapura, the deceased was welcomed by West Papuan students and masses, who rioted for several days in Jayapura, to demand justice for their slain leader. This, plus the sufferings of the Amungme people in the hands of the Indonesian military and the security personnel of Freeport, led to the hostage taking by an Amungme-born OPM leader, Kelly Kwalik, who attracted the world's attention by kidnapping a group of Indonesian and European biologists near the Freeport mine site. Finally, the successful revolution of the Java-based student movement to oust Suharto from his presidential throne, encouraged the West Papuan students to begin their renewed struggle to demand the United Nations to review the 1969 act of free choice, which is seen by most West Papuans as a betrayel of the UN principles as well as their own right to self-determination, since it was manipulated by the Indonesian security personnel in West Papua to become an act of no choice, not an act of free choice. What also angered the students was the human rights violations against the Amungme people, by the Red Berets, after their successful operation to release the kidnapped biologists. These bloody events have been screened on Dateline, SBS, last night. Then, when the army shot students at Uncen, last week,killing one student and injuring another one, hell began to break lose, and demonstrations broke out all over the coastal towns of Jayapura, Sorong, and Biak, the old mythological heartland of the Koreri millenarian movement. 2. What do you understand their aims to be? Some of their aims are similar as the East Timorese independence movement, such as the complete withdrawal of all Indonesian troops from West Papua. Then, they also demand that the United Nations review the 1969 so-called 'act of free choice', which was not based on a one-person-one-vote principle, but a consultation of tribal leaders, where all leaders who had the slightest sympathy for an independent West Papuan state were terrorized into accepting West Papua's integration into Indonesia. At least, from what I have heard from their leaders in the Suva (Fiji)-based Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, they are aiming at persuading the UN to relist West Papua on the list of non-self governing territories, together with East Timor and French Polynesia. There are precedents that that has happened with some other colonies in the Pacific, so they are optimistic that that can happen to West Papua too, with the support from South Pacific countries, as well as the Caribbean and African countries which abstained during the 1969 vote at the UN General Assembly, to ratify the result of the so-called act of free choice. 3.Is there any likelihood the regime will concede anything to them? Was there any likelihood that the Greater Serbian state called Yugoslavia conceded to Croatian, Bosnian, and now, Kosovoian independence? Was there any likelihood that Moscow conceded to the Baltic republics' independence? Was there any likelihood for the US troops to withdraw voluntarily from Vietnam, or the Soviet troops to withdraw voluntarily from Afganistan? History is full with surprises. If after nearly thirty years (1969-1998), or nearly fourty years, counting the beginning of the UN Temporary Administration (UNTEA) in West Papua in 1962, the Indonesian state has still not won the hearts and minds of the West Papuan people, the West Papuan independence struggle has now reached a point of no return. It is not simply a war of Stone Age hill-tribes fighting against all odds against the Indonesian army, as the Western media loves to portray it, including SBS' Dateline's producers, but a struggle of an entire people, lowlanders and highlanders, islanders and mainlanders, urban-university educated and rural hunter-gatherers and sweet potato farmers, who are now fighting for their right to be counted as a people with their own right to self determination. The Indonesian army cannot just continue killing students, farmers, and petty traders, who have all rallied around their sacred symbol, the Morning Star flag. 4. Is the situation different from East Timor because Jakarta earns a from IJ/WP? It is not so much the natural resources wealth of West Papua which makes the situation different from East Timor. It is more the socio-cultural and political context. The West Papuan people are much more diverse than the East Timorese people, with more than 200 ethno-linguistic groups (compared to East Timor's 24 to 36 ethno-linguistic groups), there are several Christian groups plus indigenous Muslim minority in the Sorong and Fakfak area, and the natural religions are still much more alive in most of the territory than in East Timor. The geographical area is also much more challenging than in East Timor. All those social and geographical diversity is making it also more difficult for the Indonesian state to pacify the West Papuan into becoming Indonesian subjects, but on the other hand, it is also more difficult to unite them into a solid united front against the Indonesian state. They have no Catholic church to unite them, as the East Timorese people have, and after a nearly 40 years struggle, they have also not been able to form a united front, as the CNRT (Convergencia Nacional do Resistencia de Timor), with a leader as Xanana Gusmao to lead their struggle for independence. But who can guarantee that they are not in that process at this very moment, while we speak? 5. Do you think independence is on the horizon-- are there any powerful political figures who support a change in status in IJ/wp? The two banned opposition parties in Indonesia, PUDI (Partai Uni Demokrasi Indonesia) and PRD (People's Democratic Party) both support the right of the West Papuan people to self-determination, side by side with the East Timorese and Acehnese people. 6. How has IJ?WP suffered /prospered in the past three and half decades? West Papuan physical development is much behind Java, or Sulawesi and Sumatra for that matter, which is not only caused by the difficult physical terrain, but more by the lack of attention from Jakarta for the indigenous population, which only amount to a tiny fraction of the total Indonesian population (less than one million, out of a population of 200 million). Physical development has mainly been focused at the urban areas and the transmigration areas and around the mining sites, all places dominated by the newcomers from Indonesia and elsewhere. For nearly 30 years, the indigenous population of West Papua has had to suffer from numerous military operations, physically losing their lives, catching new diseases, facing humiliation by their rulers who see them as less culturally advanced beings. In 1977, the Amungme people around the Freeport copper mine and the Dani people around the Great Balim Valley lost thousands of lives from air raids by the counter-insurgency OV 10F Bronco planes, bought by Indonesia from the US to quell the East Timorese independence movement. In 1984, they lost one of their finest artist and fighter for West Papuan cultural rights, Arnold Ap, a neighbour and good friend of mine, then in 1996, they lost one the few West Papuan Ph.D.s, an adopted prisoner of conscience of an Amnesty International (AI) branch. The major companies mining and harvesting their resources are mostly Jakarta or even foreign country controlled. 7. What should Australian government do? Australia, being a South Pacific country as well as a good neighbour of Indonesia,should be one of the first countries in the world to push for a re-listing of West Papua on the UN list of non-self-governing territories, and convince Papua New Guinea, which is now towing the Indonesian line, to do likewise. Australia, which is indirectly benefitting from the Freeport copper-gold-and- silver mine through Freeport's supply point in Cairns, should finally put human rights over US dollars. Australia, should invest in a future more peaceful relationship between Indonesia and its Melanesian colonies of West Papua and East Timor, rather than being involved in a new type of proxy colonialism by supporting Indonesia's oppression of its Melanesian, Dayak, and Acehnese colonies. Thank you for your attention to the plight of the West Papuan people. I did immediately tried to answer all your questions, since you are the first -- and until now -- the only Oz newspaper to give a serious coverage to the island- wide, and not just highland-wide coverage of their independence struggle. Good on you, and keep up your excellent reporting on the Indonesian archipelago. Dr. George J. Aditjondro ------------------------ Lecturer in the Sociology of Post-colonial Liberation Movements Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Newcastle Phone/fax: (h) (02) 4965 3709 Phone: (w) (02) 4921 6536 Fax: (w) (02) 4921 6902