Spreading the Word:

FOR ALMOST 40 years the world has looked the other way while Papua (West Papua or Irian Jaya) was ravaged in a program of repression by the Indonesian military. But this is starting to change.

The past three years have seen statements from the US Congress and Senate condemning Human Right abuses in Papua, and parliamentary committees in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand have spoken up in national and international forums against the history of regular abuses. Momentum is growing, the word is spreading; and due to the hard work and commitment of a handful of human rights defenders, the world is waking up to the tragedy of Indonesian military impunity against the indigenous peoples of Papua. A series of events starting with the fall of the dictatorial Suharto regime in 1998, the liberation of East Timor, the Bali bombings (2003 and 2005), and last year’s devastating Tsunami in Aceh have put Indonesia under an increasingly bright spotlight. What the world is seeing, according to Edmund McWilliams of the Indonesia Human Rights Network in his report to a US Senate Committee, is a “fragile, fledgling democracy whose government is not yet capable of protecting the fundamental human rights of its people.” He went on to point out that the US State Department’s own reports indicate that “the principal threat to (human) rights… is (the military), a rogue institution with vast wealth and power that has committed crimes against humanity and perhaps genocide, and which remains unaccountable.”

Papua is one of the Indonesian military’s primary areas of operation, and the state uses the spectre of the largely peaceful independence movement to justify its actions. Papua was occupied by Indonesia in 1963, and incorporated into the Indonesian state through a controversial United Nations referendum in 1969.

Since then, various political groups have asked for a review of the process, and lightly armed guerrilla forces have struggled to establish an independent Papuan state. In response, the military has engaged in a campaign of terror, carrying out offensives against Papua’s indigenous people. In this campaign, the military follows three main directives focusing on internal security, which translates into operations against the local population.

The military’s first directive aims to protect major resource industries such as Freeport McMoran’s gold and copper mine (the largest in the world) and BP’s natural gas development projects in Papua. In these cases, the military seeks out lucrative “security” contracts from the companies. Reluctance on behalf of the company to hire the military’s services can in turn lead to their employees’ being targeted by the military, as was seen in 2002 when 3 employees of Freeport McMoran were killed by gunmen carrying Indonesian Military-issue weapons. It was this incident that sparked the first criticism of military activities in Papua within the US government.

Second, the military works to protect the unitary state of Indonesia by crushing any local expressions of resistance to state authority. Five separate operations over the past three years in Papua’s remote regions have seen the military react by killing hundred and destroying villages in response to local resistance to the appropriation of land and resources without compensation. An action that began in August 2004 in the high mountain town of Puncak Jaya continues today where, according to Ecologist magazine, “Indonesian soldiers have been burning villages, attacking civilians, raping women and killing men in a widespread, planned military operation.”

Finally the military itself engages in economic activities that threaten the local population. The military generates 70% of its operating budget through non-government financing. Besides lucrative security contracts for resource companies, this mostly includes black market activities such as running prostitution rings that spread HIV-AIDS, illegal logging and smuggling. As a result Papua now faces the highest HIV rates in Southeast Asia, and boasts the world’s most rampant illegal logging industry.

But while the world is starting to pay attention, the challenge for human rights supporters in Papua continues to grow. According to Tapol, the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign, an additional 12,000 to 15,000 troops will arrive in West Papua in the period from 2005 to 2009, bringing the troop presence up to nearly 50,000. All this in a province with a population of only 1.5 million.

Civil society in Papua (a loose coalition of 250 or more distinct tribes) has repeatedly called for a making Papua a Land of Peace, requesting that the Indonesian army and local militia groups lay down arms and respect human rights so that conflicts can be resolved through dialogue. However, anyone promoting even peaceful alternatives to full and unquestioned integration with Indonesia is an immediate target for arrest, torture or assassination by Indonesian security forces.

Foreign solidarity for Papua is growing. There is also a strengthening movement to pressure Indonesia to accept Special Rapporteurs for Human Rights and Judicial Independence. The past five years there have seen annual reports to the UN Commission on Human Rights on the situation in Papua. While some attention is being paid, a massive international solidarity movement is needed, similar to the movement in support of the rights of the people in East Timor, or the movement that came to the aid of the victims of the 2004 Tsunami in Aceh. The statements of foreign governments need to be followed up with concrete action to protect the Papuan peoples and bring to trial the Indonesia military officers behind human rights abuses.