Papua Paper No 6
Indonesia and Ethno-nationalist “Separatism” since
Independence: East Timor, Aceh and Papua
Peter King
University of Sydney
November 2013
Peter King is a research associate in Government and International Relations at Sydney
University. He was foundation director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at
Sydney University and is currently convener of its West Papua Project. His lpublications
include West Papua and Indonesia since Suharto: Independence, Autonomy or Chaos?
UNSW Press, Sydney, 2004
[Note: This paper was first published in German as ‘Indonesien und ethnonationalistischer “separatismus” seit der Unabhangigkeit: Ost-Timor, Aceh und Papua’
in Andreas Hilger and Oliver von Wrochern (Hrsg.), Die geteilte Nation: Nationale
Verluste und Identitaten im 20. Jahrhundert [Divided Nations: Coming to Terms with
National Losses in the 20th Century], Oldenbourg Verlag Munchen, 2013. Minor updating
changes have been made in this English version.]
1
On 7 August 1945, one day after the Hiroshima bombing, Indonesia’s future
leaders, Sukarno and Hatta, joined a Japanese organized Preparatory Committee
for Indonesian Independence in Jakarta. They were promptly flown to Saigon
and met Japan’s Commander of the Southern Area, Field Marshall Hisaichi
Terauchi, who promised them independence as an urgent priority--but only for
Netherland East Indies territory. On 17 August, back in Jakarta, they declared the
independence of all former Dutch territory—from Sabang in northern Aceh to
Merauke in southern West New Guinea—in the name of independent Indonesia.1
This seemed to settle the issue of expanding the future Indonesian state beyond
the limits of Dutch empire into the fellow Malay regions of Malaya and British
Borneo, an option which had been pressed by Sukarno himself in discussions
with fellow nationalists during the Japanese occupation. Even more emphatic in
pushing for a pan-Malay Indonesia had been the prominent intellectual
nationalist and mentor of Sukarno in his pan-Malay proclivities, Mohammad
Yamin2, who would also have incorporated Portuguese (East)Timor in the
independence declaration.3
On the other hand Sukarno’s Sumatran Vice President, Mohammad Hatta, had
decried the danger of an Indonesian imperial role vis a vis British Malaya. He had
even hinted that the Melanesian Papuans, who were familiar to him as fellow
inhabitants of West New Guinea when he was posted there as a political prisoner
of the Dutch in the 1930s, should be allowed to go their own way rather than be
yoked to the Muslim and Javanese dominated Malay world of Indonesia. He also
sympathised with the Dutch in their Indies debacle.4 It was Hatta who led the
Indonesian delegation to the Round Table conference with the Dutch in 1949
which backed the compromise of withholding West New Guinea from the
transfer of all-Indies sovereignty to an independent Indonesia in the interests of
early independence. This denouement was to have disastrous later
consequences for the Dutch, for the Indonesians and arguably for the Papuans
themselves.5
The Dutch did indeed rescue some colonial pride, at least in their own eyes, by
retaining the territory which was to become West Papua. But Indonesian
agreement to the temporary “loss” of the territory was never anything more than
an expedient. And so the Dutch, after a long, inconclusive diplomatic struggle
with Sukarno in the nineteen fifties over West Irian (as the Indonesians had
begun to call the territory), and a short, also inconclusive, one with the
M C Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia since c1200, Palgrave, UK, 3rd ed,
2001, p259
2 J D Legge, Sukarno: A Political Biography, Allen Lane, London, 1972, p190
3 Robert Cribb and Audrey Kahin (eds), A Historical Dictionary of Indonesia,
Scarecrow Press, 2nd ed, 2004, p 460 (Yamin entry)
4 Mavis Rose, Indonesia Free: A Political Biography of Mohammad Hatta, Equinox
Publishing, Singapore, 2010, p262
5 CLM Penders, The West New Guinea debacle: Dutch decolonisation and Indonesia,
1945-1962, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2002, p84; Ricklefs, p284.
Ricklefs calls the territory at this time Irian Jaya—a name only conferred by
Sukarno after 1962.
1
2
Indonesian armed forces (still under Sukarno) in the early nineteen sixties, were
decisively defeated by an unfriendly turn in the diplomacy of the Kennedy
Administration in Washington.
America was adjusting its Cold War lenses to see the virtue of handing Sukarno a
famous victory over their ally in Europe, the Dutch. It was hoped this would
keep communism at bay in Indonesia by undercutting the political radicalization
resulting from Sukarno’s stepped up Liberate West Irian campaign after
1961and would also check Chinese (through the PKI—Partai Kommunis
Indonesia) and Soviet (through arms deliveries) influence in Jakarta. On 15
August 1962, under the US-brokered New York Agreement (and without any
Papuan participation whatsoever), the Dutch agreed to hand over West New
Guinea to Indonesia by 1 May 1963 via an interim UN administration--at which
date Indonesia would become a “satisfied” ex-colonial state by the usual criteria.6
But in fact Sukarno did make one more play for extending Indonesian hegemony
beyond the bounds set in August 1945, but still within the Malay world. This was
his Konfrontasi campaign against Malaysia and the British in 1963-65--an
unsuccessful diplomatic and half-hearted military attempt to block the
incorporation of the Borneo territories (and Singapore—temporarily as it turned
out) into an expanded and by now (since 1957) independent Malaya.7 This
Sukarno folly was quietly ended by his “moderate” and Washington-friendly
successor after September 1965, General Suharto, but he too would experience
the imperial temptation within a decade.
IN 1974-5, as Portugal prepared rather chaotically to decolonise in East Timor,
President Suharto (who had been the general in charge of Sukarno’s campaign
for the “liberation” of West Irian) succumbed to the ultimately fatal temptation of
violently overthrowing a would-be independent East Timor under the popular
Fretilin party. Fretilin through its Falantil guerilla arm had already planned and
promptly launched a determined military and political resistance to Indonesian
rule, which endured at least politically for an entire generation. From the
occupation of December 1975 onwards the Suharto dictatorship, although
welcomed in the West as the (literal) executioner of Indonesian communism,
faced a prolonged period of criticism, particularly in the UN and in Europe where
the legitimacy of annexing East Timor without a proper act of self determination
was never accepted. Nor was it likely to be while oppression, atrocity and
exploitation defined the occupation.8
Ultimately the Indonesian will to autocracy in East Timor crumbled. The Asian
financial crisis of 1997 unseated Suharto in May 1998 and in January 1999 the
reform Presidency of Jusuf Habibie announced a referendum on independence
for East Timor under UN auspices. It was won triumphantly in August 1999
under Fretilin’s restored leadership. East Timor was able to declare (like
ibid, p328
JAC Mackie, Konfrontasi: the Indonesia-Malaysia dispute, 1963-1966,
Published for the Australian Institute of International Affairs [by] Oxford University
Press, 1974
8 James Dunn, East Timor: A People Betrayed, Jacaranda Press, Sydney, 1983
6
7
3
Indonesia before it) a second independence (following the unrecognized one of
November 1975) on 20 May 2002.
Meanwhile in 1976, a mere one year after East Timor’s occupation, an
insurgency seeking independence began in Aceh province on Sumatra island
which was also destined to reach a kind of political apogee during 1999. In
December of that year a million people demonstrated in Banda Aceh for their
own referendum to match the one that East Timor had been given in August. The
Acehnese never did get that wish even though it had been backed by Habibie’s
democratic successor as President, Abdurrahman Wahid, before he took power
in October 1999. (After he lost power to Megawati Sukarnoputri—Sukarno’s
daughter-- by a parliamentary coup of impeachment in July 2001 he also
suggested such a referendum for West Papua.9)
However within six years, and in the wake of the disastrous Boxing Day tsunami
of 2004 which killed 170,000 Acehnese, the guerillas of GAM (Gerakan Aceh
Merdeka—the Free Aceh Movement) had settled for a very special autonomy
deal negotiated with the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
who succeeded Megawati in October 2004. Third party mediation in this case
was courtesy of the former Finnish President, Martti_Ahtisaari.
With the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by GAM and the
Indonesian government in August 2005 the Acehnese lost (or rather gave up) an
insurgency and the weapons they had fought with. But they gained among other
things the right to reincarnate their insurrectionary movement as a political
party, a privilege not available even for non-violent local parties in any other
Indonesian province, and above all not in Papua. The Papuans’ long-standing
guerilla and resistance movement, the OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka) is—or
was until recently--attempting a GAM-like transition to peaceful politics and
struggle, but the attempt is currently collapsing for lack of response from
Jakarta.)
In Aceh the right to form local parties was resoundingly vindicated in provincial
and gubernatorial elections after the peace settlement. In December 2006, the
former guerilla leader Irwandi Yusuf won election as provincial governor against
all the candidates of national parties, and in 2009 the GAM-successor Aceh Party
won 33 of 69 seats in the provincial parliament.
Meanwhile in West Papua by contrast the Dutch had planted a seed which grew
into an overwhelming preference for self determination and independence over
all other options available between 1949 and 1963 when unwanted
“independence” from Holland as an occupied territory of Java-dominated
Indonesia began for the Melanesian people of Sukarno’s West Irian.10 (The new
Peter King, West Papua and Indonesia since Suharto: Independence, Autonomy or
Chaos? UNSW Press, Sydney, 2004, p20
10 According to the 2010 census Java is home to 57 per cent of Indonesia’s 240
million people, of whom 45 per cent are ethnic Javanese. ‘Java’, Wikipedia, West
Papua’s total indigenous Papuan population at the time of this census has been
estimatedat 1.76 million as against a post 1963 Indonesian settler population of
1.85 million, including many Javanese. The settler population has been growing
9
4
province was renamed later, in 1973, Irian Jaya, or “Victorious Irian”—but the
victors were emphatically not the Papuans.) This sham self-determination was
confirmed in 1969 by the farcical Act of Free Choice held under the terms (but in
defiance of them) of the Dutch-Indonesian New York Agreement whereby the
Papuan citizenry of 800,000 was shrunk to a nominated (and terrified) 1025
souls who “voted” with implausible unanimity at the point of a gun for
incorporation into Indonesia.11
All of this was a tragedy for the Papuans and nearly five decades on they are
still—more than ever—seeking exit from it, on behalf of their own right to
merdeka (freedom).
*
*
*
To decide what were gains and losses for Indonesia in the three cases introduced
above looks quite straightforward. East Timor was a gain badly handled from the
beginning in 1975 leading to a loss in 1999. Aceh was a potential loss, also badly
handled from 1976 until the early 2000s, but saved by a compromise in 2005
which seems to be working well. Papua was a gain in 1963 badly handled until
the present day and still a potential loss for lack of serious consideration of
Papuan interests or sincere consultation with the Papuans. But in reality and
even in Realpolitik we shall see that the calculation of gain and loss in this simple
spirit is absurdly inadequate, even if we take account of the interests (gains and
losses) of the provincial partner-victims, East Timor, Aceh and Papua. Here the
question, “Loss/gain for whom?” is central.
To begin, who or what is “Indonesia” and what are its supposed interests?
Are we speaking of elite interests, state interests or national interests broadly
conceived, ie, people’s interests, when we discuss Indonesian interests? Are we
speaking of short, medium or long term interests? Does it make ultimate sense to
define Indonesian interests in a way that sets the value of ethnic minority or
provincial interests at nought? We only have to pose these questions to see that
the calculation of gain and loss comes out very differently when we pay them
even cursory regard.12
at 10 per cent per annum and indigenous Papuans are now a clear minority in
their own land. See Jim Elmslie, ‘Comprehending West Papua: Demographic
transition and the 2010 Indonesian census’ in.. Peter King, Jim Elmslie & Camellia
Webb-Gannon (eds), Comprehending West Papua, West Papua Project, Centre for
Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, 2011, pp359-60 (available
online)
11 Pieter Drooglever, An Act of Free Choice: Decolonisation and the Right to SelfDetermination in West Papua, One World Publications, London, 2009
12
See also Peter King ‘West Papua and Indonesia in the 21st Century: Resilient
Minnow? Implacable Minotaur?’, Paper presented to Panel 34, Enduring Conflicts
and Ethnic Resilience, Euroseas Conference, Naples, 12-14 September 2007
(Available as Papua Paper No 1, West Papua Project, Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies, University of Sydney [online])
5
Elite and state interests are inextricably intertwined of course in Indonesia, as in
most places on the planet, but their current form was laid down in the Sukarno
and Suharto periods and reformasi since 1998 has changed them little.
Patriotism has one key component for the ruling elite: unquestioned loyalty to
the NKRI (Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia--the Unitary State of the Republic of
Indonesia), but their own ultimate loyalty is arguably directed rather to KKN
(Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme –- Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism.) In any
case these twin forces are dominant in national politics, thanks to the enduring
legacies of Sukarno in the party led by his daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri, the
Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan,
PDI-P) and of Suharto in the Golkar Party, currently led by one of Indonesia’s
richest men, Aburizal Bakrie. But the dynastic principle, which is corporate as
well as political (vide the still-flourishing Suharto family), and money politics are
also proving strong in the ostensibly reforming Democrat Party (Partai
Demokrat) founded by the current president.13
Revelations from leaked US diplomatic cables in 2010 suggest that President
Yudhoyono has been playing catchup with more notorious Suharto-era figures in
the KKN stakes.14 Dynastic politics (Nepotisme), money politics and integral
nationalism—the enduring trinity of Indonesian political life--mean that state
interests are not only defined by a monied corporate, bureaucratic, military and
political elite, but are implemented primarily to serve its various interests.
With this political economy perspective in mind, as well as geopolitics, let us reexamine our three cases.
East Timor
The obvious strategic gain in 1975 was to eliminate the only foreign territory
within the extensive archipelago which is Indonesia—and at the same time head
off the (supposed) chance that an independent Fretilin-led East Timor might
drift into the communist camp. This had seemed possible for Indonesia itself
until Suharto seized power in 1965. With East Timor apparently secure inside
the fold after the bloody campaigns and famine of 1978-9 the army found many
opportunities for both conducting and extorting local business activity and long
enjoyed a monopoly of East Timor’s principal export, coffee. It also rejoiced in
the kind of impunity that it had established for itself in “crushing” the PKI, the
See Donny Syofyan, ‘On 2012: Yudhoyono’s final chance to curb corruption’,
Jakarta Post, 30 December 2011
14
Philip Dorling, ‘Explosive WikiLeaks Cables Nail Yudhoyono’, Asia Sentinel, 11
March 2011. Yudhoyono apparently protected the husband of Megawati, Taufik
Kiemas, from serious corruption charges in 2004, while his then Vice President
businessman Yusuf Kalla outlayed millions of dollars to secure the chairmanship
of the Golkar Party and a shot at the Presidency in the same year. Current head of
Golkar and Yudhoyono’s Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare, Aburizal
Bakrie, will likewise almost certainly contest the Presidency in 2014, possibly
pitted against Yudhoyono’s wife and business baroness, Kristiani Herawati.
‘SBY's Wife for Indonesia's President? Don't Cry for Me, Indonesia’, Asia Sentinel, 5
January 2011.
13
6
Indonesian Communist Party, in 1965-6, whose victims were numbered in six
figures , as would be the army’s later victims in Timor.15 Until the Dili (Santa
Cruz cemetery) massacre of 1991 was caught on video the regime which
condoned or encouraged such a military occupation enjoyed warm support in
Washington, Canberra and elsewhere, if not so much in Europe or at the UN.
Actually Suharto had been reluctant to move against an independent East Timor
in 1975, and it was always open to his successors as president to repudiate or at
least provisionally delegitimise the annexation. Habibie seemed to do so by
announcing a referendum early in 1999. But in reality the TNI (Tentara Nasional
Indonesia—the armed forces) campaign of militia intimidation throughout the
year and its revenge seeking and destruction after the August referendum had
extensive financial and other backing within the government. Indeed Jakarta
probably would have accepted the TNI’s attempt at using mass deportations—
ethnic cleansing in effect--to reverse the referendum verdict, had it succeeded.
But the “Indonesia” of military conspiracy and governmental pusillanimity was
rescued from itself by a kind of global civil society uprising, and the Australianled UN (and US-backed) InterFET military intervention took the issue out of its
hands.16
In the event in any case East Timor’s independence under the veterans of Fretilin
and Falantil has been as deferential to Jakarta as any afficionado of Realpolitik
could have wished. Indeed West Papuans have been repeatedly admonished by
East Timor’s new leaders to accept their fate within the NKRI, something
unimaginable when Xanana Gusmao, future President and Prime Minister, was in
Cipinang prison and Ramos Horta, future Prime Minister and President, in
apparently endless Australian exile.17
Aceh
Aceh alone of Indonesian provinces had a quite long history of separate
independence before the coming of the Dutch, and in fact offered the most
redoubtable resistance that Dutch troops faced anywhere in the archipelago
during the nineteenth century. It took two wars to subdue the Acehnese then,
and the Dutch did not even attempt reconquest after 1945. Acehnese thus were
able to play a leading role in the revolutionary war of 1945-9 which earned
them the promise of a privileged autonomous position within an independent
Indonesia. When the promise finally evaporated under Suharto the people
sought independence through insurgency, but in 2005 they were able to claim by
mediated agreement the kind of autonomy they had been promised a half
century earlier.18
Chega! Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in
East Timor (CAVR), CAVR, Dili, 2005 [“Chega”: “never again” in Portuguese]
16 Clinton Fernandes, Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence
of East Timor, Scribe, Melbourne, 2004
17 ‘A response to Ramos Horta's advice to West Papuan activists’, TAPOL, the
Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, 1 November 2005
18
Edward Aspinall, Islam and Nation: Separatist Rebellion in Aceh, Indonesia,
Stanford University Press, 2009
15
7
For TNI, the Indonesian armed forces, there were losses in this deal—Aceh was
their second last frontier of impunity in repression and shadowy business
dealing and after the Memorandum of Understanding only one frontier
remained--West Papua. But for the Indonesian government, even a government
led by an ex-general (Yudhoyono)—and also for the Indonesian people--the
pluses in Aceh were considerable in terms of reputation and the general
blessings of peace after nearly 30 years of conflict. And Aceh remained in the
republic. The long period of repression could be viewed from one angle as a
prolonged period of potential total loss for Jakarta, a risk finally averted by
dialogue and compromise in 2005.
West Papua
As I have said above, there was a palpable Realpolitik gain for Jakarta when its
attempted coercion of the Dutch and the ensuing serendipity in American policy
saw West New Guinea in 1963 “return” to the fold of the independent East
Indies republic of 1949, where it has been a restive but productive asset ever
since. In May 1963, when Jakarta took over administration of Irian from the UN,
Indonesia’s exiguous (for a population of 240 million) land area increased by
over a fifth; Irian/Papua became host to the most profitable gold and copper
mine in the world (property of the US-owned PT Freeport Indonesia, Jakarta’s
biggest tax payer), and corporate Indonesia and its fellow player, the armed
forces, gained the chance to exploit Papua’s marine, mineral, agricultural and
timber riches in the context of one of the weakest and most corrupt legal regimes
on the planet.19
Above all, perhaps, Irian/Papua became home to well over one and half million
new Indonesian settlers from outside Papua (including their descendants)—
who now outnumber the troublesome indigenous Papuans and pose a threat of
utter marginalisation or even “slow-motion genocide” for them.20
*
*
*
To summarise the argument so far in game theory terms:
East Timor was cast as a win-lose situation by Jakarta with its policies of pillage
and repression—and one which it ultimately lost after imposing terrible costs on
its opponent, the people and the resistance movement of East Timor.
Surprisingly, however, the independent regime in Dili has turned out to be a
Peter King,‘“Corruption Ruins Everything”: Gridlock over Suharto’s Legacy in
Indonesia’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus [online], February 2008
20 West Papua’s total indigenous Papuan population at the time of this census
has been estimated at 1.76 million as against a post 1963 Indonesian settler
population of 1.85 million, including many Javanese. The settler population has
been growing at 10 per cent per annum and indigenous Papuans are now a clear
minority in their own land. See Jim Elmslie, ‘Comprehending West Papua:
Demographic transition and the 2010 Indonesian census’ in Peter King, Jim
Elmslie & Camellia Webb-Gannon (eds), Comprehending West Papua, West Papua
Project, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, 2011, pp35960 (available online)
19
8
friendly, even over-friendly, neighbour despite being led by the very
international activists and guerilla commanders whose struggle did so much to
sully Indonesia’s reputation while the conflict lasted.21
In Aceh Jakarta avoided such an outcome by transforming the zero sum game of
counterinsurgency into a win-win affair in which, once again, the former
resistance commanders are now playing politics (and business) in their own
right--if ultimately by Jakarta’s rules. However they now enjoy a very special
version of the special autonomy which they (like their Papuan equivalents) were
originally given by Jakarta in 2001 but which they rejected in the MoU of 2005 in
favour of a much more autochthonous local order, including the right (they being
Indonesia’s first and most pious Muslims) to promulgate and administer an
Acehnese version of sharia law.
In Papua by stark contrast zero-sum conflict persists. “Ordinary” special
auonomy was granted, or rather conferred without proper consultation, in 2001
and rejected decisively (“returned”—several times--to Jakarta) by several
different but highly representative Papuan mass organisations. The most notable
“act of return” was a huge march and demonstration in Jayapura during June
2010 sponsored by the all-Papuan upper house of the local parliament, the MPR
(Majelis Rakyat Papua), and the Papuan Customary Council (Dewan Adat Papua).
Papuans reject not only the lack of consultation on the special autonomy law, but
the failure to implement its provisions on the powers of the upper house and to
pass regulations for ensuring government spending in the priority areas of
health and education. Papua was actually split into two provinces—Papua and
West Papua-- by Presidential decree in 2003, which flew in the face of the MPR’s
supposed veto under the special autonomy law over such a divide and rule
measure, but the MPR had not actually been established by that date!
The lack of responsible investment in solving the economic and social problems
of the Papuans is intimately connected to the proliferation of new provinces
(several more have been foreshadowed) and new regencies (the number has
doubled in a decade) in Papua. Elected indigenous (by law) Papuan governors
and bupatis (district chiefs) operating in conditions of legal void and Indonesian
money politics have utterly failed the development challenge but constituted
themselves as an uncritical elite dependent on Jakarta’s goodwill—as was
probably intended. The special autonomy largesse of the central government-the trillions of rupiah (hundreds of millions of dollars) which have been
allocated to the two provinces of Papua--has been squandered on dysfunctional
new bureaucracies as well as money politics and on personal corruption,
The government of Ramos Horta and Xanana Gusmao now sees fit to defy
popular opinion by refusing to charge or even confront in any way the architects
and executioners of 32 years of human rights abuse in East Timor and the
destruction of the country’s infrastructure on the eve of liberation in 1999. They
also now condescend to tell the leaders of Papua’s struggle for justice to accept
their fate under Merah Putih, the red and white Indonesian flag. Here is one
“price of liberty” after independence, paid by the formerly outspoken East
Timorese leadership. See Damien Kingsbury, East Timor: The Price of Liberty,
Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2009
21
9
including kickbacks to Jakarta—and even on military operations (on request
from underfunded and over-zealous TNI units).22
The political situation which has emerged may be thought of as a triangular
conflict in Papua itself between the vast majority of indigenous Papuans -impoverished, angry and politically mobilised; a small Papuan political and
bureaucratic elite cultivated expensively under special autonomy by Jakarta, and
the repression, extortion and business empire of the TNI, especially the army
special forces (Kopassus), which holds the whip hand over the Papuan elite and
effectively speaks and acts for the Indonesian settlers as well as (often) the
central government. This government has often seemed to act as though it had
no policy for Papua or at least no conviction in pursuing its central policy there,
special autonomy, which has been critically undermined by a cabal of retired
military officers and other ultra-nationalists in the Internal Affairs Ministry.23
So far the government has made no really convincing move to break the
crippling deadlock which has emerged from this constellation of forces on the
ground in Papua such as happened with the referendum initiative of 1999 in East
Timor and the second attempt at internationally mediated negotiation with the
GAM in Aceh which succeeded in 2005.
Papua/Jakarta
With both the East Timor and Aceh conflicts settled as well as may be, it is highly
appropriate as a next step to analyse in depth the situation between Papua and
Jakarta, using the approach outlined above which closely “interrogates” putative
losses and gains for parties involved in an internecine conflict. This approach
insists also (and logically) on interrogating state interest claims in the light of
more fundamental (and thus long term) conceptions of national (ie, popular)
interest disentangled from narrow Realpolitik considerations and the group
interests of those military and monied interests which, in the Indonesian case,
have continued their dominion over the state and the people beyond the rule of
the kleptocratic military dictator, Suharto, into the current era of semidemocracy—and above all in Papua.
Indeed, following the internationally enforced ejection of the TNI from East
Timor and its reluctant acceptance of the MoU in Aceh and substantial
demobilisation there,24 Papua stands out as not only a last frontier of
unchallenged bad business and carefree repression, including public torture by
the TNI and police25, but also as a promising frontier for Papuan and elements of
Socratez Sofyan Yoman, Genocide, Military Operations & Islamization under
Special Autonomy in West Papua, March 10, 2007 [copyright w@tchPAPUA;
online at www.infopapua.org]
23 King, West Papua and Indonesia since Suharto, Chapter 3
24 Aspinall , Islam and Nation, Chapter 8
25 ‘Indonesia: Stop Stalling on Investigating Torture Video Episode: Papuan
Farmer Describes Days of Abuse by Soldiers’, News Release, Human Rights Watch,
New York, 21 November 2010; ‘[President] SBY describes Papua torture as
“minor”’, The Jakarta Post, 22 January 2011. “Routine” would be nearer the
mark—the soldiers in question were charged only with indiscipline, while Filep
22
10
Indonesian and (and international) civil society to campaign for yet another, and
possibly definitive, TNI retreat and retrenchment as was seen in East Timor.
This would not necessarily entail Papuan independence, although that will
probably never be ruled out by the majority of Papuans. But it would mean
Indonesia addressing seriously for the first time accumulated Papuan
discontents, and contemplating at the least an Aceh-type outcome for Papua.
What gains and losses and for whom—and what exactly constitutes “Indonesia”
and “Papua” here?
Let us first consider the independence option which could take the form
envisaged by the Australian government in its diplomatic initiative of December
1998 on East Timor. Prime Minister John Howard recommended to President
Habibie a lengthy period of genuine autonomy followed by a referendum on
independence for the Timorese —the very path actually being followed by
rebellious provinces and peoples in France’s South Pacific territory New
Caledonia (Kanaky) and Bougainville province of Papua New Guinea under
negotiated peace deals following protracted conflict.26 Such settlements have the
signal advantage of a cooling off period in which master and subject can
contemplate potential gains and losses with some equanimity and even revise
fundamental conceptions about them.
Arguably in East Timor Indonesia did well to move straight to a referendum after
the fall of Suharto. The “gain” of East Timor had entailed considerable loss of
treasure (a large military garrison over nearly 35 years) as well as international
reputation, with a prospect of many more years of the same. Only the military’s
interests were ever really served and of course Habibie was a civilian President
who also had reservations about the overwhelming Christianity of the Timorese
in Muslim Indonesia.27 Aceh ultimately came to enjoy a very special form of
special autonomy, albeit without a clause in their MoU permitting ultimate exit
from the unitary republic by referendum. Some diehard Acehnese nationalists
continue to withhold support of the new order in their homeland for this reason.
The Papuans have been offered neither a referendum nor a very special
autonomy negotiated with international mediation. Why is this?
Jakarta’s conceptions of potential gains and losses under different potential
outcomes to the Papua conflict which could fundamentally change the status of
Papua seem to be as follows:
1) Under a very special autonomy acceptable to the Papuans there would be
real authority for elected Papuan leaders, a truth and reconciliation commission ,
an independent human rights commission (a promise given but not fulfilled
under special autonomy) and, most importantly, a “straightening of history.” By
this the Papuans mean a process which would revisit, recall, record—and
correct-- the sins of the Indonesian stepfathers since 1963. However in the eyes
Karma is serving a 15 year jail term for raising Papua’s Morning Star flag.
26 Anthony Regan, Light Intervention: Lessons from Bougainville, United States
Institute of Peace Press, Washington DC, 2010
27 On Habibie and East Timor see Kingsbury, East Timor: The Price of Liberty,
Chapter 3. The Papuans are also overwhelmingly Christian.
11
of Jakarta so far this would only further encourage “ separatism”—Indonesian
code for all anti Jakarta agitation, from Papuan flag raising and peaceful rejection
of special autonomy to armed rebellion and assertions of independence.
2) The status quo is thus very acceptable to the powers that be in Indonesia-super profits and large tax revenues coming in from the Freeport mine and
(increasingly) BP’s natural gas holdings in Bintuni Bay as well as giant palm oil
plantations and food estates being pushed forward around Merauke and
elsewhere. All of this can only accelerate the process of indigenous Papuans
being demographically swamped by a rising tide of voluntary new Indonesian
settlers and the progeny of the already settled. Eventually, in Jakarta’s presumed
but largely unspoken view, the indigenous Papuans will be outnumbered and
outvoted as well as being outgunned.28
Conclusion
However the logic of dirty business as usual in Papua has the same limitations as
already witnessed in East Timor and Aceh. In the words of a Japanese scholar
with long experience of East Timor:
The current situation of the Indonesian government over the problem of West
Papua resembles that of the problem of East Timor in the late 1980’s. There
were serious human rights abuses, the area was closed to foreign media, influx
of migrants was marginalising locals and causing simmering resentment, local
leaders began to think that the government policies had failed, and there was
an emerging young generation of locals who were educated under the
Indonesian system as Indonesian children nonetheless refused to identify
themselves as Indonesians. These young people were increasingly vocal and
continued to expose ‘unsustainability’ of the situation. Indeed the
unsustainability of the situation in West Papua seems to be a truth. Only it
takes some more time for the world to realise the truth. 29
Unsustainability can yet prevail for the Papuans once enough Indonesians begin
to reckon their interests in Papua distinctly from those of the “insecurity forces”
The thousands of freedom fighters of the OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka)
have only ever managed to deploy derisory numbers of modern rifles and their
resistance to occupation has been largely symbolic, although powerfully so.
29 Akihisa Matsuno, ‘West Papua and the changing nature of self-determination’,
paper presented at a conference on Comprehending West Papua held at the
University of Sydney, 23-24 February 2011, and published in King et al,
Comprehending West Papua
28
12
in the present terror-laden military/police occupation.30 Indonesians also need
to seek distance from the “looting forces” in Papua, the multinational and
Indonesian corporations which have conspired with the police and military to
plunder her resources. Indonesians should also call to account a Jakarta
government which has recklessly squandered most of the massive resource
revenues available from Papua for promoting Papuan (and Indonesian)
welfare.31 In “losing” Papua—whether to a genuine autonomy or to
independence--Indonesians can strike a big blow against the impunity, brutality
and bad business of the army and police and the reign of would-be forest
destroyers and irresponsible and unaccountable miners in the corporate world.
There are large gains all round to be made in Papua by interrogating and
discounting the supposed losses for Indonesia as a whole in “losing” Papua, and
they may be already in prospect.
In November 2011 I wrote as follows:
On October 19, 2011, in response to the utter unresponsiveness of the
Indonesian government to Papuan demands, the Third Papua People’s
Congress in Jayapura declared the independence of Papua and announced a
government for an independent Papuan republic, recalling previous
people’s declarations in October 1961 and June 2000. A bloody police and
military crackdown ensued, with seven killings, hundreds of arrests and
beatings and the jailing on treason charges carrying huge prison terms of
yet another generational cadre of Papuan political leaders…
[Soon] there was a flurry of purported activity in face of the
embarrassment that the “treason” and the bloodshed were causing. Within
ten days after the crackdown on the Congress [President] Yudhoyono had
set up a Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua
provinces (UP4B) under ex general Bambang Darmono (former
commander for military operations in Aceh) [in order] “to formulate ...
change in Papua and to build constructive communications between central
and regional administrations.”32
So as a result of escalating popular protest and disaffection in late 2011 dialogue
was finally rising on the government’s agenda, and the failure of special
autonomy was being further conceded. But acknowledgement of systematic
human rights abuses in Papua was still lacking in Jakarta.33
See Jim Elmslie, Camellia Webb-Gannon and Peter King, Anatomy of an
Occupation: The Indonesian Military in West Papua, A report prepared for the
West Papua Project at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University
of Sydney, August 2011
31 A large proportion of the trillions of rupiah—hundreds of millions of dollars –
allocated to Papua under special autonomy has been stolen and embezzled. See
Peter King , ‘Self-determination and Papua: The Indonesian dimension’ in King et al,
Comprehending West Papua, p 157
30
32
33
King, ‘Self-determination and Papua: The Indonesian dimension’, pp150-1
Eight days before this bloody crackdown, which still enjoys his unqualified
13
Only more pressure from all quarters: Papuan, domestic Indonesian and
international, seemed likely to give peace a chance in West Papua, and the
Papuans, including the many and brilliant exiled ones, were the ones most likely
to supply it.
approval, the President was forced to fend off criticism of human rights
violations in Papua by none other than US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton:
“As far as the politics of Papua go, we've already made it clear that there are no
systemic human rights violations in Papua. There are only isolated incidents,
they are not the norm," a presidential spokesman told AFP. See ‘Indonesia rejects
Clinton allegations on Papua’, Agence France-Presse, November 11, 2011
14