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I have long supported independence for Papua, so I'm glad TE occasionally mentions this nearly lost cause.
You know what might help more? The Dalai Lama! Has his holiness visited Papua? Given certain symmetries between the two lands, shouldn't he be making annual visits? I don't even think China would object, so what is stopping him? Perhaps an even more powerful nation?
And all of this Indonesian takeover is a contemporary expression of something which has been going on for thousands of years - one ethnic group moving in on another, then finding socially constructed reasons to justify what they are doing. Just as in South America (from the 16th century), Australia (from the 18th century), to southern Africa over the last millennia or so (when Bantu peoples originally from west Africa marginalised the, previously dominant, Khoi San peoples).
Indonesia's move east is the latest chapter in the Austronesian expansion - peoples originally from east Asia slowly supplanting native groups in areas including Indonesia, for millennia. Efforts to impose a less imperialistic attitude will not be helped by the rest of the world having a strong vested economic interest in the Indonesian's takeover (in the form of the exploitation of Papua's primary resources).
The good news for the Papuans is that the world IS more self-aware, and generally more enlightened, about this kind of stuff than it has ever been before. Probably the Papuans best hope is that Indonesia, as a whole, continues its rapid development develop, and that this development brings with it the more enlightened attitude that follows with the associated cultural evolution, - a more enlightened attitude which too came for native populations in, for example, what is now Latin America.
Good on The Economist for covering the story in their usual factual and unemotional style.
Kudos to the Economist for covering this story. I note however that there is no reference to genocide. Outside estimates of loss of life range between 100,000 to 400,000 since 1969.
A bigger picture may be gained by comparing the pre-Indonesia population of both west and east Papua. At the time of invasion, both populations were roughly the same, at around half a million, but today independent 'east' Papua or Papua New Guinea has a population of more than six million. This represents a gap of four million people between west and east Papua.
One other note: the spread of AIDS stems mostly from Indonesia importing HIV+ prostitutes from Jakarta.
Indigenous people of Papua are all Melanesian, like the people of PNG, a cultural grouping spreading all the way west to Fiji. They have little or nothing to do with Indonesia, reflected in their remaining the poorest and least developed part of that archipelago.
By comparison, the Grasberg mine helped foreign owners declare their biggest ever profit despite the Global Financial Crisis. The problem is not with Indonesia, so much, as foreign companies who continue to corrupt successive administrations via their own governments.
For example, the CIA coup that put Suharto in power shortly after the assassination of JFK was known as the "Big Wink" - favouring as it did closely connected mining interests.
Your little rant was highly amusing, and didn't counter anything TE said.
Incidentally, let's assume TE supports the right to self-determination, how is it "rich for a Brit" to talk about self-detemination, when the Falklands and Scotland have it?
This article touched a raw nerve then did it?
Papua is an Indonesian colony, get over it.
Just because you're married to an Indonesian doesn't make you an expert on this country. And you're the one who think that Indonesians are too stupid to have thoughts for themselves. Yes we are all products of our media and educational system, but we're also capable of thinking for ourselves.
Papua is not a golden egg. It's 2% of national GDP and most revenues go back to the provinces anyway.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you, for sharing this piece. It is beyond me why the world is completely ignoring what's happening in Papau. Did I say thank you?
I fully share the below sentiments and can't think of a better way of phrasing my thoughts.
I think this is a bigoted, racist, and colonialist article. How did you ever get your permit to go to Papua anyway, Simon? These kinds of articles won't make it easier for other journalists to go there in the future.
First, Indonesians always think of Papua as part of Indonesia, not a colony, not a territory, but part and parcel of the country. Just another fellow Indonesians in a country of more than 300 ethnic groups. Why? Go ask the Dutch. Indonesia should have inherited its borders, including Papua, starting from its independence in 1945, just like any other post-colonial country. Except the Dutch held on longer in Papua in an attempt to break up the new republic. No one questioned the (separate) status of Papua before Indonesian independence and the Brits, the Germans, and the Dutch agreed to its carving up when they decided on the border between West (Netherlands) and Northeast (German) and Southeast (British) Papua. So, why should anyone question it now? The Dutch East Indies was one continuous entity, from Aceh to Papua, so should Indonesia. No one "traded" the Papuans to Indonesia; it was Indonesian all along.
Second, you should draw a comparison to Aceh, not East Timor. Special autonomy and peace after the 2004 tsunami have enabled Aceh to move on to the business of economic development. In fact special autonomy gives both Aceh and Papua the lion share of oil and gas revenue from oil and gas fields in those provinces.
Third, you are assuming that Papuans are one ethnic group. It is not. And the many ethnic, sub-ethnic groups, clans, and tribes still fight tribal wars among themselves. There are resentments against migrants from other parts of the country, but then there are also resentments among the Papuans themselves. Fourth, HIV isn't just brought on by prostitution, sexual behaviours in Papua are high-risk even among the Papuans.
Finally, these kinds of one-sided articles are real examples of how the West is losing its credibility and moral high grounds on human rights and territorial-integrity issues. Indonesian officials are happy to discuss the Papua problems with foreign journalists and dignitaries, as long as they also talk openly about the treatment of refugees and the aborigines in Australia, the Northern Ireland issues, the killings of innocent families in Afghanistan. In fact it's a bit rich for a Brit to talk about Papua when the UK is desperately clinging to remnant outposts of its former empire such as the Malvinas, while it is risking losing Scotland.
Factual errors are:
1) The U.N. carefully did NOT allege the "Act of Free Choice" was an "act of self-determination accepting Indonesian sovereignty"
2) U.N. General Assembly resolution 2504 (XXIV) carefully replaced the legal term "self-determination" with the term "Act of free choice" which is what Indonesia was calling the act.
- The U.N. also avoided any mention about 'sovereignty'.
3) The reason the U.N. wrote 2504 was because of a business contract it signed in 1962 known as the "New York Agreement" - a deal drafted by America for the Netherlands to trade the Papuans to Indonesia.
- see the U.S. Department of State history for 1961-62 which was declassified & released in 1995 e.g. http://wpik.org/Src/1961_US_record.html
4) West Papua has been fighting the Indonesian occupation since October 18, 1961 when the New Guinea Council heard news of the U.S. plan. That is the night the Council acted on the Papuan wish by drafting their national manifesto of independence, and designing the Morning Star flag which the Dutch raised next to the Dutch flag on December 1, 1961.
The embarrassing fact for the Freeport mining operation is that allegedly it was a Freeport director Robert Lovett who in 1961 asked President-elect Kennedy to appoint Lovett's friend Bundy to run the NSC. And as the DoS history states, it was the NSC and Bundy who lobbied Kennedy to write the 'New York Agreement'.
The separatists have one eternal advantage. Time. The people aren't going anywhere and as long as their groups continue to exist they can wait until Indonesia suffers major political disasters.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for sharing this piece. It is beyond me why the world is completely ignoring what's happening in Papau. Did I say thank you?
Paul N. Johnson
I repeat my first comments that the article is not only heavily biased, but it also misses the key facts. Unlike the article, here are some facts and a more balanced take.
1. First the military approach is perhaps similar to the ones used in East Timor and Aceh. But the key difference in terms of human rights is that Papua enjoys improved transparency in the domestic media. This is a key reason why the abuses are better known to the outside world and how the army is under pressure to punish the soldiers and officers involved in those cases. The administration is not perfect, but it has gone some ways in terms of human rights. For example, it has proposed an establishment of an ASEAN-wide human rights body, to the detriment of other members. But, instead of providing these balanced assessments, the article made far-fetched allegations about the president. So what if he was a general under Suharto? Unlike other generals of his generation, the president has not been implicated in past abuses, which is a rather impressive achievement considering that it was perhaps easy to do during the Suharto years. The article also says that “Papua is largely off-limits to foreign journalists”, yet the writer was able to secure a permit to go there anyway (unless he was lying about what seems like first-hand observations in the article).
2. Second, Papua is not ‘a treasure-chest’, not anymore at least. Papua’s contribution to the national GDP is around 2%. In fact, both Papua and West Papua provinces receive 80% of revenues from its forestry, fishery, and mining, and 70% of revenues from oil and gas originating from those provinces. How these revenues are distributed is up to the provincial governments. That Freeport is the biggest taxpayer in Indonesia is based on an outdated claim in the 1990s. It does not even register within the top 10 company taxpayers in 2010.
3. Third, the article implicitly suggests that Papua could (although ‘doubted’) follow the East Timor path to independence. A less biased article would instead draw comparison to Aceh, currently enjoying autonomous status, benefiting from large revenue share from its natural resources (similar arrangement to Papua’s), and being largely left alone by the national government.
4. Fourth, what’s important about Papua (at least to Indonesians) is that any question about its status also goes to the core foundation of the country (yes imperfectly based on the boundaries of the Dutch East Indies, but what were the alternatives? 300 ethnic-based states? Several hundred island-chain republics?). The question of what constitutes Indonesia was answered not once, but twice, and in the affirmative. First, the Dutch tried to break up the former Dutch East Indies by creating small independent states all over Indonesia, including in Java. (It was the Dutch who ‘divided to rule’, not Indonesia) It transferred sovereignty to a United States of Indonesia comprising those states plus the Republic of Indonesia. Within a year, those states voted (self-determination for all, if you like) to merge with the Republic. The Dutch hung on to Papua only as part of this strategy (and perhaps for economic reasons), but not because it’s anything different from the rest of Indonesia (all Indonesians are ethnically different, where do you draw the line?). The Act of Free Choice was unnecessary because Papua was always part of Indonesia even prior to the Dutch claim. But it served a purpose in confirming that status, something that other regions have voted on in 1950. In the late 1990s again questions about what constitutes Indonesia came up. This time it was answered by devolving powers to district governments (provincial governments in the case of Papua and Aceh).
5. Finally, Papua is also important for many other issues than its status, including climate change, human rights, and HIV. But, any discussion that begins by implicitly questioning its status within Indonesia would only risk turning off the Indonesians and shutting out the foreigners from Papua.
Papua should have been independent since papuans are way different culturally and ethnically to the rest of indonesia, (extremely unlikely to happen now as migrants make up big percentage of papuas population) but I find this article very one sided. Although many papuans are oppressed and mistreated it is not state directed as the article implied, also there was nothing regarding the politics that surrounds the issue but rather exaggerating and misrepresenting EVERYTHING indonesia did or does as an evil intent. Though there is still some way to go Papuans do have significantly greater freedom and autonomy and rights than they had in suharto era. Almost every minority in any developing country is to some extent oppressed, look at southern philippines and southern thailand. I wonder whether the economist would have wrote about southern philippines in the same way or would it have added the politics that surround it.
I have nothing to say about the political issue, but thank you TE for telling me SOMEthing about an area which on Google maps is just four little city dots (with no zoom capability) on the edge of a big island shrouded in cloud.
The first two comments are more bigoted than the main article which is a decent summary of the issues. I am married to an Indonesian and people arent as stupid as #1 makes out. #2 is just a defender of repression.
While its complex, Indonesians consider Papua to be Indonesian because thats what the educationa dn media system says. They 'thought' the same in Timor and were genuinely shocked by the vote for independence. Dutch East Indies was a colonial project. Borders and minorities were there to be exploited. You are implying Indonesia must be too.
Aceh and Timor fought the Indonesian military successfully (wth some other circumstances) to gain special autonomy/independence. In Papua due to the nature of the groups, not unted as you say, the wealth is not spread around. It certainly doesnt reach into the interior.
Papua is fought for because it is the golden egg. 15% of tax revenues approax. The deep state, aka the military wont give up their economic entities independence easily.
I dont see the issue here with Scotland, the Falklands etc. Just because one issue is a cause for concern and debate doesn't mean another cant be especially when people are dying in Papua.
The first commenter comes across as someone defending himself rather than the issues at hand.
I think the Indonesian Military is a gross abuser of human rights. I also think that the Papuans deserve a vote of self determination. However, I find the hypocrisy of Western commentators shocking. In the last 3-4 years years, the number of deaths in Southern Thailand far exceed those in Papua. Here is some choice words by so called educated posters.
"I can't help but notice that Muslims seem to cause problems in nearly every country they live in that isn't 100% Muslim (China, Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria, etc). Why is it that they cannot seem to get along with anyone else? This phenomenon doesn't seem to follow any other religious group around, just Muslims."
"The truth of the matter is, Islam differs from other religions in one critical aspect; the behaviour of its founder, Prophet Mohammed. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was a peacenik. So was Jesus Christ. But not so for Prophet Mohammed. He was a conqueror, and conquerors are not often shining examples of peaceable behaviour."
"violently bigoted muslims murdering non-muslims near them in order to gain political power. wait, have I heard this one before?
Islam is on a global rampage."
But what have the Thais done to deserve this. Arming Thai Buddhist settlers, setting up armed civilian paramilitary, something the Indonesian military has not done in Papua yet. Have the Thai government offered meaningful autonomy? Not that I know of. The Southern provinces in Thailand enjoy far less autonomy than your typical Indonesian province, let alone Papua or Aceh.
However, I also find it funny that Indonesians care more about Palestinians than their own Malay Muslims brothers in Southern Thailand. why?
The Muslims in Southern Thailand, have attacked Thai Buddhist settlers, but OPM have attacked Indonesian settlers in Papua. However, both groups have restricted their violence to the areas in dispute. But many Westerners see one group as terrorist, while the others are freedom fighters.
Word of advice, if you want to get in the good grace of the West, expertise in oral sex does help a lot !!
The non-indigenous migrant population of Papua will reach 75% by 2025. These violence are just desperate efforts by the Papuan separatists to frighten the migrant population (already 55% of the population) into leaving. A typical ethnic-chauvinistic violence which is deemed to fail since Indonesia has strong law and order presence in the area.
Both time and demographics are against the Papuan separatists. Along the way, they will try to commit as much murder and mayhem as they can, but Indonesian police are always ready to hit back at any of these attempts of lawlessness.
LOL, don't make joke mate. Since Indonesia is contributing USD 1 billion for the IMF to bail-out the self-bankrupting Western countries, you better hope that our palm oil plantations and hydrocarbon entities keep churning-out enough cash to fill the Western countries' begging bowl.
LOL, Papua is an integral part of Indonesia which will never be separated from the mother country by some attempts of murder and mayhem. Get over it.
On your first point, those places are not even geographically congruent to Indonesia, much less lie within the country. Papua, on the other hand, is not ‘overseas’ to us, it’s not even adjacent to Indonesia, it is and has always been in Indonesia. Also, the Dutch had actually lost all those territories a long time before the Indonesian independence, so quite irrelevant really. And lastly, perhaps I used the wrong name, but Dutch/Netherlands (East) Indies was not the same as the Dutch East India company, which went out of business in 1800, almost 150 years before the Indonesian independence. As the name itself indicates (Indies), the Netherlands Indies comprise only of what is now Indonesia.
On your second point, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps the Dutch really wanted to be, all too suddenly, a benevolent ruler and wanted to prepare Papua for self-rule. But, within the context of the transition, this reason wasn’t really credible. If it wanted to prepare a colony for a peaceful independence, why did it try so hard to cling to Indonesia? Not to mention the harsh economic terms it exacted for the price of Indonesian independence (Indonesia had to assume a public debt, used for the Dutch war in Indonesia, of about GBP 4 billion in 1949, this is bigger than the total amount the Netherlands received from the US Marshall Plan of about USD 1 billion). In addition, the Dutch investment in Papua never amounted to much. The US war effort built more infrastructure (airport and roads) in Papua in a period of a couple of years than the Dutch ever did in more than 100 years.
And if Papua was the only case where the Dutch held a territory away from the Republic, then perhaps I am wrong. But it wasn’t so. The Dutch also created 15 different states across Indonesia to counter the Republic. Fortunately for us, it didn’t work.
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