Blind eye to West Papua ‘genocide’

Raising of the West Papuan Morning Glory flag is illegal.

By Jeremy Sollars

When most Australians think of New Guinea they probably have in mind the eastern half of the island neighbour to the north, the sovereign nation of Papua New Guinea.
But thanks largely to a lack of coverage in the mainstream ‘big’ media in Australia and overseas, most are probably unaware of what’s happening in the western half of the island, known as West Papua – a province of Indonesia.
Since 1963 – when West Papua was forcibly annexed by Indonesia – its inhabitants have been fighting for their independence from what by many accounts is a brutal and authoritarian regime controlled by Jakarta, and it’s a fight to which the rest of the world is turning a blind eye.
And it’s also a fight in which Australians and other foreigners working in West Papua and expats routinely get caught up in, often with the very real risk of losing their own lives.
The Free Times this week spoke with a Warwick resident who has worked in West Papua routinely over the past four years, who says they are angered by the lack of Australian and international media attention given to the West Papuans’ desire for freedom and independence.
Speaking on condition of anonymity – saying the risk to their safety in West Papua is real – the local resident spoke of the “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” of the West Papuan people being carried out by the Indonesian military.
And they believe the situation could turn even more bloody at any time, with grave risks for the many Australians, New Zealanders, Americans and Canadians who work in West Papua, predominantly in the mining industry.

First, some history …
Up until the early 1900s, New Guinea was under the control of three colonial powers – Britain, which administered the south-eastern area of the island, Germany, which controlled the north-eastern portion, and the Netherlands, which controlled the western half, along with the rest of the Indonesian archipelago, known then as the Dutch East Indies.
In 1906 Britain transferred responsibility for its area to Australia and our forces seized the German territory of New Guinea during the World War I.
Both Dutch western New Guinea and the Australian territories were invaded by Japan during World War II, at the end of which the territory of Papua New Guinea was returned to Australian administration, while western New Guinea remained under Dutch control.
After the war Indonesia declared its own independence from the Netherlands, which the Dutch initially refused to accept, finally granting it in 1949 but retaining western New Guinea.
In the following decade the Dutch began to prepare western New Guinea for independence, allowing elections in 1959 which created a ‘New Guinea Council’ – which decided on the name of ‘West Papua’ and created its own flag – and in 1962 the Dutch handed the territory over to the United Nations, which did nothing to stand in the way of the Indonesian takeover the following year.
More cynical observers and historians have suggested that Western powers such as the United States did nothing to stop the Indonesian annexation due to their own economic interests, such as the territory’s vast mineral deposits in the form of copper, gold and silver – and it’s perhaps no coincidence that the biggest mining operation in West Papua is owned and operated by US-based Freeport McMoRan Inc.

Ignored by the rest of the world, including Australia
Since 1963, the West Papuan independence movement has been resisting the Indonesian occupation of their homelands through active civil disobedience, including the illegal raising of their flag, the Morning Star.
Amnesty International estimates that more than 100,000 Papuans have died at the hands of the Indonesian military, or TNI, and the Indonesian police, both of which stand accused of brutally suppressing the local population.
And things could be about to get worse in West Papua since the collation of an ‘illegal’ petition circulated earlier this year throughout the territory – from village to village and town to town – and smuggled out of the country and handed to the Australian Government, asking for our aid in their struggle for freedom.
But, save for making broad and vague references to the West Papuans’ plight at Pacific leaders meetings, Malcolm Turnbull and his government have shown no sign of wanting to upset Jakarta over the matter, somewhat in contrast to Australian efforts to help guide East Timor, a former Indonesian possession, to independence in the late 1990s.
The local who spoke with the Free Times said they fear the petition will produce “payback” from the Indonesian authorities against the West Papuan population – and that they are glad to be on home soil, with an already dire situation potentially about to escalate.
They said companies like Freeport are on high alert and are working frantically behind the scenes to ensure the safety of overseas employees.
“I worked in West Papua for four years and witnessed the treatment of the indigenous Papuans by the invading Indonesians,” they told the Free Times.
“The West Papuans got the petition together and silently took it all over West Papua without the Indonesians finding out, and collected tens of thousands of signatures.
“They then snuck it out of the country and approached the Australian Government as a member of the United Nations to assist them with their claim for independence.
“The Indonesians were obviously furious and payback is on the cards for the poor Papuans – they (the Indonesians) are going to come back more savage than ever.
“There is now a lockdown on travelling in standard vehicles and people are travelling on armoured buses, there are shootings everywhere.
“Our media in Australia, unfortunately, has not kept onto it – they’ve been focussed on things like Manus Island, which is really nothing in comparison to what’s happening in West Papua.
“People here are bleating and whinging about Manus Island while you’ve got the West Papuans being slaughtered.
“It makes me angry – you have genocide taking place virtually on our back doorstep and our mainstream media is taking no interest whatsoever.
“Every now and then there’ll be a report of ‘rebels’ causing trouble in West Papua and getting shot – this just plays into the hands of Indonesia, it gives them the leverage to say they are just dealing with a few troublemakers.
“The Indonesian military hunt down (independence advocates) like animals – they pose for trophy shots with dead Papuans.
“The Indonesians are very pig-headed and arrogant, they just behave like it’s their country, like they have every right to be there and who are these black people to tell them anything different.
“They just treat them like shit.
“The situation could now very easily become a lot worse – I think any Australians and other overseas workers in West Papua right now would be very concerned for their safety.
“If I was over there at the moment and it all turned to crap I’d be seriously considering offering some of the locals a thousand bucks to get me to the Ok Tedi mine on the border with PNG and pass through safely.
“The overseas community and the expats had an international school there – a lot of them had partners and kids over there, but now there’s about eight kids left at the school, everyone else has got out.”
The local described the West Papuans as a “happy and hospitable people”.
“Over the years they have gradually become more educated and modernised but they do still retain some of their old cultural practices and tribal beliefs, like black magic, and ‘payback’ killings between villages, that type of thing, which is all about honour and pride.
“It’s a culture that we just find very hard to understand – it’s older than ours – but when you spend time with them and you work amongst them you gain a whole new respect for their beliefs and their principles – they are a very highly-principled people and this is reflected in their stand for independence.
“It’s a very valid claim – they are losing their culture and their way of life.”

A leader in exile
The West Papuans’ ‘leader in exile’ is Benny Wenda who was forced to flee the country after escaping from custody while on trial by the Indonesians in 2003, and was granted asylum by the British Government.
Writing on the website freewestpapua.org Wenda describes life in his homeland as “very hard”.
“We do not enjoy the freedoms that people in many democratic countries get to experience,” he writes.
“We cannot raise our national flag without risking imprisonment. We cannot express our political opinions without risking being found guilty of treason.
“We cannot hold peaceful protests without risking being arrested and tortured.
“This has been documented again and again. So many of us have died in our struggle for self-determination, but we have never lost our hope of a better future.
“We know we have a right of self-determination under international law because the decolonisation process following the end of Dutch rule was never completed.
“The truth is that journalists are freer to visit countries like Syria, Iraq, and North Korea than they are to visit West Papua.
“The Government of Indonesia continues to maintain West Papua as a closed territory so that their military can continue their campaign of killings away from the scrutiny of the international media.
“A handful of journalists have indeed managed to get into West Papua undercover, sharing footage showing untold suffering and bloodshed.
“The handful of foreign journalists that have been granted official access recount stories of being followed by Indonesian intelligence officials, heavily restricted in where they were able to visit, and unable to speak to West Papuans out of fear of reprisals.”