FOCUS ON... IRIAN JAYA
Thanks largely to the activities and writings of groups and
dissidents in the west, the tragedy perpetrated by the Indonesian
state in East Timor is now more widely known about. Voices
which were too long in the wilderness like Noam Chomsky and
John Pilger can now be heard and groups like Swords into
Ploughshares, ARROW and No Hawks to Indonesia continue to
draw attention to the blood on the hands of the British state.
Hopefully such campaigns will continue but it is necessary for the
full spotlight to be turned on this area where other crimes are also
being committed.
Indeed the story of East Timor, which started in 1975 when the
Portuguese moved out and the Indonesians began their illegal
occupation, is predated by the violation of Irian Jaya by some 12 years
when the Dutch handed it over to the Indonesians. Today the story
continues despite continuing resistance from the Free Papua
Movement or OPM which has been struggling against the Indonesian
military machine for over thirty years.
Here, on the western side of Papua, the Indonesians have welcomed
foreign firms who have come to mine the gold and copper as well as
to log the forests. At the same time they have been bringing in
Javanese migrants to help disperse the population of one of the most
densely populated countries in the world. The aim is threefold: firstly
to seek further living space secondly to swamp what is seen as a
backward culture or as the Indonesian Prime Minister at the time of
handover put it to, 'bring them down from the trees' and thirdly
exploitation of the areas mineral resources.
THE DESTRUCTION OF A CULTURE
In the eyes of the Indonesians the one million Papuas are inferior
beings. Clearly their style of dress (grass skirts, penis gourds) is
unacceptable and has to go but so will their physical appearance.
Whilst clothing may be discarded the latter aspect will take a little
longer. Sukarno, the nationalist leader who ruled Indonesia before
being toppled by the CIA was not to be dissuaded though: 'I can
change a human race by intermarriage between the races... in a few
generations hence there will be only a single Indonesian race from
Sabang in Samatra to Merauke in the south of West Irian'1. This racist
ideology is still in vogue today: the new superman will, in the words
of a former governor, resemble more the Javanese: 'a new generation
of people without curly hair, sowing the seeds for greater beauty'.
To achieve their aim of quelling the local population the Indonesians
have opportunistically used the Protestant missionaries.2 The
missionaries have successfully converted hundreds over the 30 years
of Indonesian rule largely through The Mission Fellowship (TMF) the
umbrella for six Protestant organisations with 1,500 stations run by
270 missionaries. They have convinced the Papuas to renounce their
'animist heresies' by means of a strategy which has served them well.=20
They head off from base to an unexplored region carrying with them
cowries - the seashells which are abundant on the coasts and serve as
currency on the higher plateaus. After some days walk and having
made contact with the local the community the missionaries select
what they consider to be the most welcoming village to clear a site
which can be used as a landing strip (and incidentally in the process
introducing enough cowries to introduce hyperinflation and destroy
the local monetary system). Once the landing strip is built the Mission
Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a branch of the TMF, can go into action.
The Papuas are impressed by the metal birds which bring clothes,
radios, plastic dolls etc. and when they learn that they come from
people with a God ready to adopt them they are eager for more. But,
once the TMF have got their foot in the door, instead of all the
presents its rules and regulations time. The culture is dismantled and
the way is opened for the Indonesian administration to set up camp. It
is now clear why a country which is 85% Muslim and so concerned
with cultural purity should tolerate the presence of Christian
missionaries: the missionaries do the armies work.
The airstrips are used to launch the process of 'transmigration' from
Java and the general encroachment of the Indonesians. Today at least a
third of the population is no longer indigenous and given that the
authorities no longer need the missionaries for the past year they have
stopped renewing their visas.
AGAINST THE ODDS: RESISTANCE TO THE MILITARY
The army has more efficient strategies of dealing with those who
resist than the missionaries one of offering western material goods.
The Free Papua Movement (OPM) appeared in 1965 two years after
the Netherlands transferred sovereignty to Indonesia. Since then a
small guerrilla army has managed to survive the onslaught of the
Indonesian army. The OPM's structure reflects the society that
spawned it and has very little hierarchy. Regional commanders are
many and due to lack of co-ordination their effectiveness is relative.
The movement has however shown itself capable of uniting an
ethnically diverse community behind a single common objective and
enjoys popular support. Also, what would be called in the west a 'cell
like' structure ensures that 'leaders' cannot be taken out. These factors
help to explain why the resistance has successfully continued for so
long.
But with their spears and bows and arrows they are little match for
the Indonesians, one of the biggest and best equipped armies in the
world. Figure one gives some perspective of the size of the army
compared to other states in the region.
(Fig. 1)
Indeed the Indonesian army is a very profitable 'investment
opportunity' for its supporters in the west and Britain in particular.
Indonesia is one of British Aerospace's biggest customers and its
second biggest overseas military export market after Saudi Arabia.
The British State doesn't care. In the context of the situation in East
Timor, Alan Clarke, the minister for 'defence procurement' under the
Thatcher regime, approved the sale of ground attack aircraft to
Indonesia, valued at more than =A3500mn. When questioned about what
they were to be used for he said, 'I don't really fill my mind much with
what one set of foreigners is doing to another'.3 He makes Pontius
Pilate look angelic.
Perhaps to an extent one can sympathise with Mr Clark. Who wants
to fill their minds with the slaughter of the tens of thousands of
Papuans that have suffered at the hands of the Indonesian army? Who
wants to think about the systematic rapings, torture and the
imprisonments without trial? Who wants to think about the resisters
who, as in East Timor, have been dumped from helicopters at sea in
sacks and, more obscenely the village leaders who have been
decapitated with villagers being forced to drink their blood ? Who
wants to think about the pregnant women who have been killed by
having a stick rammed up their anus?4 None of us want particularly
to think about such things but neither do we want to be a party to it in
the way the British state so clearly does. The Indonesians couldn't do
it on their own. There are war criminals in this country too.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.
There has been some discussion in Freedom recently about
nationalism and nation-states. It's hard sometimes to see where the
nation state becomes an Empire. If the answer lies in the indivisibility
of nationality one would be pushed to come up with a good example
of a nation state. The nation states of the EU for example are almost
invariably comprised of more than one nationality but we don't call
them Empires unless we are 'extreme' Basque nationalists for
example. Perhaps we're just being polite. Or perhaps the imperial
definition must be related to size.
If this is the criteria Indonesia must come up to scratch. It is in extent
about the size of Western Europe from the Russian border to the
Atlantic. Granted 80% of this is water but this has never proved a
deterrent to imperialists. About 10% of its 3000 islands are inhabited
attesting to a wide range of cultural diversity. Speaking of the Banda
islands located between Ceram and Timor, prior to the arrival of the
Europeans, Keay has said:
A peculiarity of the Banda islands at the beginning of the seventeenth
century was that thanks to their isolation they owed allegiance to no
one. Moreover, the Bandanese recognised no supreme sultan of their
own. Instead authority rested with village councils presided over by
orang kaya or headman. In the best tradition of south-east Asian adat
(consensus) each village or island was in fact a self-governing and
fairly democratic republic.5=20
Such social structures have still not fully been killed off and
remnants can be found in Irian Jaya. Such democratic tendencies are
however not to be tolerated particularly when the area is of interest to
the global market.
Because apart from the imperialistic angle the Indonesians are
unwilling to cede a territory which is so economically productive. In
1973 the American group Freeport opened one of the world's most
productive gold and copper mines in Irian Jaya. It provides jobs for
hundreds of ex patriot Americans, Australians and Koreans and is the
biggest economic asset the Indonesians have, contributing
substantially to state revenue whilst lining the pockets of the Javanese
families who support the presidency. Only some 30 million dollars
are reinvested in the region annually against the 35 billion that were
earned in 1992. The company employs less than 10% of local people.
Administrative business and agribusiness posts are occupied by
Indonesians from Java which, with 110,000,000 inhabitants in an area
about the size of England, is continuing to export its population at the
expense of the Papuas. The Javanese are settled in rainforest areas
where rice fields are planted for them and the indigenous people are
pushed off their land. Their resistance is inspiring and deserves more
attention in the west.
FREEDOM PRESS
http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/Freedom