“If it’s not racism, what is it?” Why doesn’t the Australian government condemn a brutal guerrilla war next door? Our Indonesian correspondent, Duncan Graham, on the atrocities in West Papua.
Fresh from its latest failure to protect Palestine in the UN, the Australian government also handles brittle Indonesia tenderly lest it snaps off trade and security deals with its spacious but under-occupied neighbour. Raw facts drive policy harder than moral values. The population ratio is 11 Indonesians to every Aussie. Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation and has more Muslims than any other country.
Tribesman archers versus chopper gunships would make good media; but they don’t make the news bulletins because Western journalists are banned from the resource-rich Indonesian provinces collectively known as West Papua. Reporters can rarely verify stories of killings, starvation, torture and discrimination in the largely Christian province.
Allegations hardening
A sober but scathing report by the US-based independent NGO Human Rights Watch launched in Jakarta on Thursday carries authority because the checking appears thorough and the sources referenced. It is directed at the Indonesian Government and the UN.
The 76-page document printed in the US is titled If it’s not racism, what is it? Lead author Andreas Harsono said HRW staff spent almost five years “conducting 49 in-depth interviews with Papuan activists” who’d been arrested and prosecuted. “In addition, we interviewed lawyers, academics, officials and church leaders. Informants weren’t paid.”
Jakarta took over the western half of the tropical mountainous island of New Guinea from the colonial Dutch after a flawed referendum in 1969. According to four Australian academic researchers, including a former AFP investigator,
hundreds of thousands” have died through fighting and starvation since 1,025 hand-picked locals voted to join the Republic.
Papuan preacher Rev Ronald Tapilatu told MWM he was certain that most of the two million ethnic Melanesians wanted independence but didn’t sanction violence:
“The Indonesian government wants the issue to be domestic, but until it gets widespread international coverage, little will change.”
Global interest essential for change
Before she became Foreign Minister, Senator Penny Wong revealed that Labor was distressed by “human rights violations” in West Papua.
As reported earlier on this website, Deputy PM Richard Marles stressed no Australian support for independence.
When is a treaty not a treaty? The Marles and Prabowo Canberra love-in.
Swedish and German Embassy staff were at the HRW report launch but no one from the Australian Embassy registered. The UN resident coordinator, Valerie Julliand, was also absent. She was kicked out of Indonesia last December, reportedly for criticising HR issues in Papua.
Ironically, Indonesia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council until 2026. It says its aim is to “intensify human rights dialogue at global and regional levels and bolster the implementation of universal human rights values.”
The villainy is not single-sided
Six years ago, 19 civilian road builders were ambushed and killed. This August, independence fighters allegedly murdered Kiwi chopper pilot Glen Conning; he was flying for an Indonesian company ferrying local health workers who were unharmed.
Another NZ pilot, Phillip Mehrtens, was seized early last year by the West Papua National Liberation Army. He’s said to be alive and held hostage. The group denies shooting Conning and has hinted at military involvement. Update, 22 September 2024: Confirmed reports that Phillip Mehrtens has now been released and is safe.
60,000 and 100,000 people have been internally displaced in the past six years
HRW researchers using multiple languages gathered info in many locations, including Surabaya, the capital of East Java and the nation’s second-largest city. Riots here in 2019 followed an attack on a Papuan student dorm by “militant nationalists and security forces”. They were reportedly angered by the display of the Morning Star independence flag. Under Indonesian law, offenders face up to 20 years jail time.
Forty-three Surabaya students were arrested for supporting the Papuan Lives Matter movement, that’s based on the US social crusade Black Lives Matter. After the police action, which included much racial abuse, violence erupted in 33 Indonesian cities. Houses and cars were firebombed.
Like Marles, the HRW report stresses it “takes no position on claims for independence… We support the right of everyone to peacefully express their political views … without fear of arrest or other forms of reprisal.
The Indonesian government has legitimate security concerns in West Papua stemming from Papuan militant attacks.
Human rights violations
Andreas Harsono – Human Rights Watch. Image: Erlinawati Graham.
Unlike Marles, HRW adds a rider: “But these do not justify the government’s failure to uphold international human rights and humanitarian law prohibitions against arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment of persons in custody, and unlawful killings.”
When former Jakarta Governor and one-time furniture exporter Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo was elected president in 2014, many assumed he’d be Mr Fixit. Because he had no military background it was expected he’d tackle the West Papua issue with diplomacy.
Instead, he left the task to the army’s way of violence, more troops and air power. Along with the bombs and bullets, disinformation and misinformation campaigns have been run against poorly organised small gangs at first using pre-gunpowder weapons. Now they’re getting a few modern arms, some ostensibly sold by corrupt soldiers.
The HRW document’s 18 recommendations call for open access to the province by foreign observers, an end to discrimination, accepting the right to peaceful protest and Indonesian security forces to follow international rules and protocols when dealing with dissent.
The chances of brittle Jakarta politicians taking notice of what it will see as Western outrage are slim. HRW sent a copy of its findings to Vice President Ma’ruf Amin in June and talked to his staff but said there was no response.
Follow the money…
Overseas academic reports estimate that between 60,000 and 100,000 people have been internally displaced in the past six years. Malnutrition is rife, and child and mother mortality rates are the highest across Indonesia; life expectancy is the lowest.
Yet these wretchedly poor people, the crushed indigenous owners, are literally living on a mountain of gold. If there’s ever a case for equal distribution of wealth, West Papua could be the global example of moral economics, and Indonesia would deserve to win its first Nobel Prize.
That won’t happen because the Indonesian do-nothing position is bolstered by interests so big and powerful they could crush countries. The Grasberg mine in Central Papua has ‘proven and probable reserves of 15.1 million ounces of gold.’ That makes it the world’s biggest deposit of the precious mineral, now fetching peak prices – currently $2,570 an ounce.
The mines are run by the Indonesian Government and the US company Freeport-McMoRan. The gross profit for the year to 30 June was US $7.816 billion, a 23.97 per cent jump year-over-year.
What’s next?
There’s little sympathy across Java for the independence activists widely damned as terrorists and traitors by a largely biased media. Attempts to crush the rebels could get tougher when disgraced former general Prabowo Subianto becomes president next month.
Indonesia has about 400,000 men and 30,000 women in uniform and an equal number of reservists. Rev Tapilatu estimated that 10,000 troops are in West Papua on rotation.
In 1996, Prabowo led a special forces operation to free a group of Indonesian and foreign biologists taken hostage in West Papua. The military used a disguised Red Cross chopper that had been used in peace negotiations to ferry troops, violating the rules of the international agency’s independence.
His record of alleged human rights abuses when he served in East Timor last century suggests a bloodless settlement in West Papua is unlikely.
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Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He now lives in Indonesia.