My Say
West Papua: The Festering Sore of the Region
Publishers Robert Keith-Reid on the festering sore of the region: West Papua.
Some interested parties attempt to whitewash the fact, but West Papua is clearly the festering sore of the Pacific Islands. The plight of several million Papuans exploited shamelessly by Indonesia for nearly 40 years is something Pacific Island governments cravenly ignored until it was at last squeezed on to the Pacific Islands Forum agenda at Tarawa in October on the insistence of Nauru and Vanuatu. Noting Indonesia's murderous record in East Timor the outlook for West Papua's independence fighters is bleak.
Indonesia seized West Papua simply by invading it. With the collusion of the United States, anxious to cultivate the dictatorial but anti-communist regime in Jakarta, Indonesia fudged the United Nations into a disgraceful referendum of just a thousand selected brainwashed Papuans. This produced a 100 percent vote for union with Indonesia.
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West Papuans have suffered ever since. Their land has been seized for settlement by people from overpopulated islands of Indonesia. Their forest and mineral resources have been ruthlessly gouged by foreign exploiters.
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West Papua independence movement, Operasi Papua Merdaki (OPM), began to make itself felt about 30 years ago. OPM leaders have been locked away for years. Numerous West Papuans have been slaughtered by Indonesian troops, culminating in a well-documented massacre in July 1998 at Biak. After local people raised the West Papua independence flag, the Council of Churches, an Indonesian human rights organization, Kosorair, and several independent witnesses reported that Indonesian troops tortured, raped and shot several hundred people. Many were taken away, tied up, in a boat. Later at least 70 bodies were found washed up.
The situation has deteriorated since November. There have been arrests, a flow of refugees into Papua New Guinea, movements of Indonesian warships to West Papua's coastal areas and the movement of up to 4,000 Indonesian troops to the border with Papua New Guinea.
The PNG government, nervously aware of the presence of OPM fighters on its side of the border, joins Australia in frequently assuring Jakarta of its acceptance of Indonesian sovereignty over the territory. Privately most Papua New Guineans deplore Indonesian rule but, like Australia, are petrified of antagonizing a Muslim-dominated and now unstable neighbor of 200 million people.
Australia, ready to assail a temporary hiccup for democracy in Fiji, unashamedly supports the suppression of the widespread spirit of independence in West Papua for the sake of appeasing the Indonesians. Like Indonesia, Australia fears that with the loss of East Timor and strong secessionist movements in Aceh and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago, the departure of West Papua from the fold could hasten the break-up of Indonesia into a highly unstable region of bickering island states.
The dilemma West Papua presents to Papua New Guinea, Australia and Indonesia, obviously has to be recognized. What is less obvious is the Pacific Islands Forum's decision in October to accept overtures from Indonesia to become one of its "dialogue" partners could become an attempted strategy used not only by Indonesia but by Australia and Papua New Guinea to divert and dilute the Forum's long overdue cognizance of West Papua's plight. As a delaying tactic that may work for a while, even for a long while. But the spirit of West Papua's independence is plainly too strong to be suppressed permanently. The grim fact is that it is one bound to be nurtured by an increasing flow of blood.
