Military Politics, Ethnicity and Conflict in Indonesia.
This paper outlines the history of the military in Indonesia and its role in politics, as well as in perpetrating violence. Since its inception at the time of Indonesian independence, the military has had a defined role in both defence and politics, particularly during the Sukarno (1945-1965) and Suharto eras (1966-1998). While this role has been somewhat reduced in the Reform era (beginning mid-1998) through various stages of military reform, many of the underlying principles of the involvement of the military in politics still remain in reality. Given the historical dual roles of the military, it has been able to set agendas and perpetrate violence without civilian oversight. In Papua, this has led to various acts of violence perpetrated by the military and the police, often tapping into local ethno-religious relations. However, this has been less overt than the violence occurring in Aceh. In Aceh, the initial response of the military in the 1950s to Acehnese resistance was more accommodating and less violent than the military operations in the 1970s to the 1990s. While the negotiations in the 1950s were a drawn-out process, it enabled a peaceful agreement to be reached without extensive use of force. However, in later periods the orchestrated use of violence in Aceh left locals seeing the military from Java as colonisers. Furthermore, these repressive strategies did not elicit peace agreements but rather stimulated further rebellion, which some argue was part of a broader military strategy of creating tension and maintaining a role for the military in domestic security provision. In Maluku, clashes between the military and police, as well as bias on the part of different sections of the armed forces towards each of the warring communal groups, increased the levels of violence and prolonged the conflict. Today, the role of the military in politics has been significantly reduced by disbanding the political sections of the military in the regions and a number of other reforms. However, many of the original principles of the functions of the military remain, whereby they can still be involved in politics and elections by resigning from their military posts.
The Campaign of Papua Peace Network for Papua Peace Land
This article aims to narrate a series of peaceful campaigns conducted by Papua Peace Network (PPN) for Papua Peace Land. This informal network consists of several groups of civil societies, such as religious organizations, ethnic groups, NGOs, and academicians. The PPN has some objectives that are to connect conflicted groups in Papua land, and to help both Papuan people and Indonesian government preparing an inclusive dialogue. This article results from research between 2013 and 2017. The data collection used observation of peaceful campaign of PPN, interviews, and archival research. This research shows that although a series of peaceful campaigns have been conducted by PPN both at the national and local levels between 2013 and 2016, but political violence still increases in Papua land. On another side, the national government only focuses on social and economic development issues, in particular, infrastructure projects, instead of political issues. Government officials involved in peaceful campaigns conducted by PPN had no power enough to implement some peace recommendations due to the national government has no a roadmap to resolve the conflict between Jakarta and Papua peacefully. The article argues that a continuously informal communication between conflicted parties is a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient condition to create a positive peace. Therefore, the National Government is strongly suggested to implement an inclusive national dialogue with Papuan people.
West New Guinea: The Uncertain Future
On April 5, 1967, Lord Ogmore of the Liberal Party demanded in Britain's House of Lords that the English government take steps to initiate a United Nations' investigation into the reported killing by the Indonesian military of some one thousand rebellious tribesmen in the Indonesian-held territory of West New Guinea (or Irian Barat, as Indonesians call it).' Ogmore, a Southeast Asian specialist, termed it "scandalous" that for three years no representative of U.N. Secretary General U Thant had looked into the position of the Papuan inhabitants of West New Guinea, although in 1962 the U.N. had helped to arrange the transfer of the disputed West New Guinea region from the Netherlands to Indonesia and under the terms of the Dutch-Indonesian Transfer Agreement has supervisory responsibility for the exercise of an act of political "self-determination" by West New Guinea Papuans by the end of 1969.2 In the Netherlands, at about the same time, increasing pressure was being generated by a national "West-Irian . . . Not a Colony" action committee inspired by such groups as the "Faithful Through the Ages Foundation" (Stichting Door de Eeuwen Trouw), an organization of political conservatives, many of whom are oriented toward the two principal confessional Protestant political parties in the Netherlands and who heretofore have been primarily concerned with the interests of the exiled Ambonese minority from Indonesia residing in the Netherlands.3 In the background of both this foundation and the action committee are two or three score of vocal dissident Papuans in the Netherlands, led by Nicolas Jouwe and Marcus Kaisiepo, both of whom held positions of political leadership at the close of the Dutch administration of West New Guinea, and who were active in the nascent Papuan nationalist movement. On September 19, 1967, Jouwe's Holland-based Vrijheidscommite West Papoea ("West-Papua Freedom Committee") declared in a letter to U Thant that more than 3500 Papuans in the Bird's Head Peninsula area of West New Guinea had been killed by Indonesian forces the previous February, and that a hundred men and boys had been executed in the Baliem Valley in the central highlands.