Letters
Letters
Nov/Dec 2006
Not So ‘Free Choice’
In your May 2006 issue Ben Bohane wrote “since a United Nations vote in 1963” in relation to the trade of West Papua’s colonial administration from the Netherlands to the Republic of Indonesia in 1962, and the subsequent Indonesian claim of sovereignty based on the false 1969 “Act of Free Choice.”
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In 1935, Standard Oil purchased 60 percent of NNGPM through which Jean Doze in 1936 reports finding the world’s richest gold and copper deposits near Timika in the Dutch colonial territory of West New Guinea (West Papua).
In March 1959, the New York Times reported Dutch teams were searching for the gold deposit, having found alluvial gold flowing into the Arafura Sea. In August 1959 the Rockefeller company Freeport Sulphur seeks partnership with a Dutch mining company. During 1960 and 1961, Freeport lodges a joint claim stating the Timika area to be a copper deposit.
On 5 April 1961, the Dutch colonial government installs an elected West Papuan national Parliament. In Sept. 1961, the UN Secretary General dies in a plane accident in Africa. On 1 Dec. 1961, West New Guinea raises its new Morning Star flag and renames the nation as “West Papua.”
Around 18 Dec 1961, Indonesian paratroopers attempt to seize Papuan highlands but are arrested by local villagers who send for Papuan troops to take the prisoners. Indonesian President Sukarno tells U.S. President John Kennedy that Indonesia shall become a communist state unless the U.S. has the Netherlands transfer West Papua to Indonesian control.
Robert Kennedy is assigned to secretly negotiate the transfer of West Papua’s people and rights in a contract known as the New York Agreement in honor of the UN location of the secret negotiations. Without asking the International Court of Justice if the intent or terms of the contract were legal, the UN agreed to take part in an Indonesian act of self-determination required as a central part of the contract signed in August 1962.
Once United Nations forces replaced the Dutch administration, they had the option under the New York Agreement to transfer administration to Indonesia without West Papuan consent, an option which the UN used. According to statements recorded in U.S. Embassy telegrams, the Indonesian military’s first observed action was to strip West Papua and fly all modern goods back to Jakarta. Although Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik is also recorded as saying the five thousand TNI troops were unneccessary and a undue burden to the West Papuan economy; troop levels have never been reduced and under General Yudhoyono have risen to some 50,000.
President Sukarno had been uncooperative in many proposed business ventures, and in 1965 the murder of six generals started a six-month slaughter of Indonesians by General Suharto’s troops ending in 1966 when Sukarno transferred his presidency to General Suharto. Under Suharto’s new laws the Freeport Corporation in 1967 purchased a 30-year mining license of West Papua, and in 1968 Indonesia announced its military would conduct the “Act of Free Choice” in West Papua to show that the Melanesian people of Papua wished to be part of the Indonesia.
Instead of the procedure agreed to in the New York Agreement or the UN General Assembly Resolutions 1514 & 1541 of Nov. 1960, the “Act of Free Choice” was a staged presentation for UN observers where around 1,025 men selected by the TNI were instructed to vote for integration with Indonesia.
Thankfully, reporter Hugh Lunn ignored repeated instructions by Reuters not to travel to West Papua and was able to witness the sham process, including West Papuan protests calling for voting rights.
Andrew Johnson
Lindfield, Australia
