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| Chairman KNPB Victor Yeimo (Report. Image: ABC TV) |
Update/Voice-Baptist- NALYSIS: “Yep.
The world is behind Indonesia now. It means they all compromise with
Indonesia to kill West Papua.” Victor Yeimo, the chair of the West
Papua National Committee, was
describing
to journalists Hayden Cooper and Lisa Main how Papuans are losing their
struggle because Indonesia has so effectively deflected international
attention from the conflict.
The two Australians had gone undercover in Papua for ABC TV’s
7.30 Report and
discovered what they called “a police state operating with impunity".
Despite the brevity of the visit and the fact that Cooper and Main were
not able to travel outside the provincial capital of Jayapura, the
documentary gave an insight into not only how the Indonesian security
forces have been able to maintain their physical control, but also why
the government has not been able to resolve the conflict.
Indeed, the means by which Indonesia sustains its control in Papua
are among the major factors that help explain why successive Indonesian
governments have failed to find a viable solution. The criminalisation
of peaceful political activity, state violence against pro-independence
activists and human rights abuses not only sustain Indonesian control
but also fuel Papuan antagonism.
Cooper and Main’s assertion that members of an Australian and
US–trained and funded Indonesian police anti-terrorism unit, Detachment
88, were involved in the murder of pro-independence leader Mako Tabuni
once again made Papua an issue in Australia’s relations with Indonesia.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the ABC that Australia had made
representations to Indonesia about Mako Tabuni’s death and requested
that an investigation be held. Carr added that since becoming foreign
minister he had not hesitated to raise the issue of human rights abuses
in Papua with the Indonesian authorities, including his counterpart,
Marty Natalegawa.
After Carr’s first meeting with Marty Natalegawa in March this year,
Greens senator Richard Di Natale, whose portfolio includes West Papua,
had questioned Carr about Papua.
Treaty recognised
Carr told the Senate that
the first thing he had done when they met was to assure his counterpart
that both sides of Australian politics recognised Indonesian
sovereignty in Papua, as had been reaffirmed in the 2006 Lombok Treaty.
In keeping with Indonesian aspirations for the treaty, Carr added,
perhaps with the questioner in mind, “It would be a reckless Australian
indeed who wanted to associate himself with a small separatist group
which threatens the territorial integrity of Indonesia and that would
produce a reaction among Indonesians towards this country. It would be
reckless indeed.”
Carr went on to repeat this argument, adding, “That is reckless and it is not in Australia’s interests.”
According to Carr, Marty Natalegawa volunteered that Indonesia had “a
clear responsibility to see that their sovereignty is upheld in respect
of human rights standards.”
Carr interpreted this as an indication that Indonesia listened to
Australian representations. But statements like these have lost their
credibility with each act of state violence and abuse of human rights
in Papua.
As Carr himself noted, previous Labour foreign ministers had made
representations to Indonesia about these acts — as, he presumed, had
his Coalition predecessors.
In August, the Indonesian vice-president’s adviser on matters relating
to Papua, Dewi Fortuna Anwar, lamented that whenever something
“negative” happens in Papua it becomes an issue in Australia. The
difficulty for both governments is that “negative” things happen
frequently in Papua and Indonesian government attempts to quarantine
Papua from international scrutiny are not always effective, as Hayden
Cooper and Lisa Main’s documentary demonstrates.
Mobile 'evidence'
Mobile technologies in particular have made the strategy increasingly
redundant, if not counter-productive. The video of Indonesian security
forces’ violent disbanding of the peaceful Papuan People’s Congress in
October 2011 was easily accessible on the internet within days of the
event and broadcast by Al Jazeera to an international audience.
Indonesian soldiers’ “trophy” videos of colleagues torturing Papuan
villagers, posted on the internet in 2010, belied their government’s
representation of Indonesia’s policy in Papua and the security forces’
behaviour.
In his statements in the media and in Parliament, Bob Carr was doing no
more than restating a position that all Australian governments have
held on Indonesia’s sovereignty in Papua for half a century.
In January 1962, then External Affairs Minister Garfield Barwick
convinced his cabinet colleagues that it was not in Australia’s
interest to support the emergence of a small and, in Barwick’s view,
unviable state in West Papua. Barwick reversed the 12-year-old Menzies
government policy in support of the Dutch in West Papua and withdrew
Australian support for Dutch promises of self-determination for Papuans
and decolonisation separately from Indonesia.
Barwick argued that supporting the emergence of an independent West
Papua was incompatible with Australia’s strategic imperative to develop
close cooperative relations with a preferably non-communist Indonesia.
Australia accepted the New York Agreement of 1962, under which Papua
passed from Dutch to Indonesian control.
But the government did not anticipate that the resolution of the
Indonesia–Netherlands dispute would sow the seeds of a seemingly
intractable conflict between the Indonesian government and many of its
Papuan citizens. Barwick expected that the young Dutch-educated Papuan
politicians who had demanded the right to form an independent state in
the early 1960s would be accommodated within Indonesia.
The 2006 Lombok Treaty, to which Carr referred, not only re-stated
Australian support for Indonesian sovereignty in Papua, but also went
further. The “Papua” clause committed the Australian government to “not
in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or
entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or
territorial integrity of the other Party, including by those who seek
to use its territory for encouraging or committing such activities,
including separatism, in the territory of the other Party…”
'Limiting' hope
Indonesia hoped, naively,
that this provision would oblige the Australian government to limit the
pro-independence activities of exiled Papuans and their supporters.
The treaty has not restrained the criticisms of Indonesian policy and
the campaigning of Papuans and their supporters in Australia. But the
Australian government, caught between its desire not to offend
Indonesian sensitivities and the flow of reports of on-going violence
and human rights abuses in Papua, has been rendered mute.
Conflict and human rights abuses in Papua are not part of the story
the Australian government is keen to tell a sceptical public about
Indonesia; it wants Australians to believe that this neighbour is no
longer a military dictatorship and has grown into a vibrant democracy
with a rapidly developing economy.
It wants to convince Australians that the relationship with
Indonesia is of the greatest importance, as is reflected in the fact
that the embassy in Jakarta is Australia’s largest and the aid
programme in Indonesia is Australia’s most generous.
The Lombok Treaty was negotiated after the shockwaves generated by the
arrival of 43 independence-flag-waving Papuan asylum seekers on Cape
York in January 2006. Australia’s decision to accept the Papuans as
asylum seekers and grant protection visas led to the recall of the
Indonesian ambassador. In the often turbulent history of Australia’s
relations with Indonesia, this is the only time an Indonesian
government has acted in this way.
Although the treaty codified cooperation between Indonesia and
Australia in counter-terrorism, intelligence, maritime security, law
enforcement and defence, it is Australia’s commitments in relation to
Papua that are most important for Indonesia. When president Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono spoke to the Indonesian media after his discussions
with Julia Gillard in Darwin in early July this year, the first issue
he discussed was Papua, telling the Indonesian press that Gillard fully
supported Indonesia’s sovereignty in Papua.
In turn, he assured Gillard that his government was raising the level of welfare and standards of justice for Papua.
Silent on issue
In contrast to Yudhoyono’s emphasis on Papua in his comments to
Indonesian journalists after the meeting, Gillard was silent on the
issue. Instead, she highlighted the areas of cooperation important to
the Australian government, including defence, people smuggling,
economic development and trade, as well as cooperation in the
multilateral fora like the G20 and APEC.
Indonesian leaders seem to feel that they need to remind Australia of
its commitment to Indonesia’s sovereignty in Papua at every
opportunity, which suggests that the serial repetition of that
commitment by Carr and his predecessors is not taken on its face value.
As Dewi Fortuna Anwar noted, “There is still a strong belief in
some Indonesian circles the separation of East Timor from Indonesia
resulted partly from Australian pressures… We know there are people in
Australia who support the Free Papua Movement.”
The subtext: “For 20 years you said that East Timor was
Indonesia’s, then you changed your mind when the crunch came.”
Australian opinions and activities in relation to Papua, both within
the government and civil society, are viewed in Jakarta through the
prism of the separation of East Timor.
Responding to Carr’s interview, Mahfudz Siddiq, the head of the
Indonesian parliament’s Commission for Foreign Affairs and Security,
suggested that Carr’s call for an investigation into Mako Tabuni’s
murder reflected double standards.
Mahfudz had never heard an Australian politician complaining about
the security forces killing Muslim terror suspects. He considered that
Detachment 88 was doing its job in Papua, combating terrorism.
This criticism of Bob Carr highlights some of the complexities of the
bilateral relationship and the different security priorities of the
Australian and Indonesian governments.
Combating 'terrorism,"
Detachment 88 was
established after the 2002 Bali bombing, with US and Australian
support, to combat terrorism. The military and police skills developed
within the unit can be used for pursuing Islamist terrorists, as
desired by the United States and Australia, and equally for repressing
Papuan separatists, who many Indonesians regard as terrorists too.
There have been reports that Detachment 88 was involved in the
killing of Kelly Kwalik, another pro-independence leader, in December
2010, and in the violent breakup of the peaceful Papua Congress of
October 2011, which reportedly left three dead.
Richard Di Natale reminded Carr about the differences between
Indonesian and Australian security priorities when he referred to a
bipartisan recommendation of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties
to “increase transparency in defence cooperation agreements to provide
assurance that Australian resources do not directly or indirectly
support human rights abuses in Indonesia.”
Like many Indonesian politicians, Mahfudz Siddiq is sensitive about any
foreign interest in Papua. But he and the deputy head of the
commission, T.B. Hasanuddin, have been calling for change in the
Indonesian government’s Papua policies.
Their concerns about Papua became more acute with the spate of
shootings in May and June around Jayapura, which included the murder of
Mako Tabuni.
The commission visited Papua during the violence and became aware
of atmosphere of fear that the shootings had created. Mahfudz and
Hasanuddin realised that foreign interest in the conflict was partly a
result of the failure of government policies to resolve it.
Since the June visit, they have advocated for government to take a
comprehensive and peaceful approach using dialogue. They recognised
that Papuans had little trust in the authorities and that the history
of Papua’s integration into Indonesia during the 1960s had become a
political issue.
Tangled web
Three months of advocacy brought no progress with the government. As a
result, the commission had established a working committee on Papua.
“If all these problems are allowed to go round and round and become
a tangled web…” Mahfudz argued, “it will become a time bomb for this
Republic.”
Mahfudz’s frustration is understandable. Towards the end of 2011 and at
the beginning of this year there were signs that the Yudhoyono
government was rethinking its approach to Papua.
In November, the president announced that he was prepared to
conduct a dialogue with Papuan leaders to resolve the conflict
peacefully. He appointed retired general Bambang Darmono and Farid
Hussain (who was involved in the peace negotiations in Aceh) as special
representatives with briefs to promote dialogue.
In December and February, the president and key ministers met with
two groups of Papuan church leaders. To an extent this initiative
reflected two years of advocacy and lobbying for dialogue by the Papua
Peace Network, led by Papuan Catholic Theologian Neles Tebay, and
Indonesian Institute of Sciences researchers under Muridan Widjoyo.
Together, they had developed a systematic process to mobilise
support for dialogue as the best means to resolve the conflicts in
Papua.
There seems to have been little progress since the February meeting,
however. Indeed, at the end of June, after a month of violence in
Papua, President Yudhoyono told officer cadets in Bandung that he was
not prepared to enter into a dialogue about issues related to national
unity or a referendum on independence.
History re-examined
He disparaged Papuan
interest in re-examining the history of Papua’s integration into
Indonesia. He emphasised that the United Nations and the international
community recognised Papua as part of Indonesia, and said that it was
the government’s responsibility to secure Papua and act firmly against
any separatist movement. He requested the security forces not to be
excessive or abuse human rights.
While President Yudhoyono did not dismiss the possibility of a dialogue
entirely, he rejected any discussion about those issues that most
concern Papuans. It is difficult to imagine a lasting resolution of the
conflict that does not involve a frank dialogue about human rights
abuses and the history of integration, among other sensitive issues.
If the Papua conflict had been easy to resolve it would have
happened decades ago. The president’s comments to the officer cadets
identified core nationalist reasons why any Indonesian government will
be reluctant to have a dialogue with Papuans.
Many Papuans assume that dialogue means a discussion of a
referendum, while the government in Jakarta can only countenance a
discussion about the resolution of Papua’s problems within the Unity
Republic of Indonesia.
Although the pattern of violence and human rights abuses in Papua has
created an awareness in the media and among academics and some
politicians in Jakarta that government policies are not working, there
is no significant Indonesian political constituency for an
accommodation of Papuan interests and values.
The national consensus that Papua is an integral part of Indonesia,
constructed by President Sukarno during the struggle against the Dutch
in the 1950s and early 1960s, remains strong today. Indonesians, who
have a strong sense that Papua is Indonesian, find it difficult to
appreciate and accept that many Papuans do not share this national
identity.
Sukarno made Papua the object of a unifying nation building campaign within which Papuans saw no place for themselves.
Policy impasse
The policy impasse in Jakarta and the conflict in Papua places the
Australian government in a difficult position. Like all its
predecessors since 1962, the Gillard government doesn’t question
Indonesian sovereignty in Papua.
It shares the assessment that close and cooperative relations with
Indonesia are a strategic imperative. Nevertheless, it has a strong
interest in a resolution of the decades-old conflict that accommodates
Papuan interests and values, not least because it is aware of the long
shadow that the separation of East Timor cast over the bilateral
relationship.
The crisis over the asylum seekers in 2006 remains a reminder of
the Papua conflict’s capacity to destabilise Australia’s relations with
Indonesia.
Bob Carr supports President Yudhoyono’s “commitment to raise the living
standards of the people of Papua and reinvigorating special autonomy.”
He says “Australia believes that this is the best path – the best means
– to achieving a safe and prosperous future for the Papuan people.”
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that such anodyne support will
encourage the president to make the difficult policy changes that might
make resolution possible. •
Dr Richard Chauvel teaches in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Victoria University. This article was first published by Inside Story.
