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In
Focus: Papua: Another East Timor?
Volume 5, Number 37
October 2000
Written by Abigail Abrash, Harvard Law School Human
Rights Program
Issue Editor: John
Gershman (Asia Pacific)
Editors: Tom Barry (IRC)
and Martha Honey (IPS)
Key Points
- Papua is a leading example of a failed decolonization
process.
- Indonesian integration-cum-colonization of
Papua—implemented with U.S. complicity—has amounted
to an undeclared war against the indigenous population.
- Indonesia’s military buildup and East Timor-style
militia activities threaten to destabilize Papua and the
region.
Roughly the size of California, Papua forms the western
half of the world’s second-largest island, New Guinea.
Papua has been known by many names, most commonly today as
Irian Jaya (the official Indonesian name) and West Papua
(adopted in 1961 by elected Papuan representatives and used
by most Papuans). In the interest of simplicity, Papua will
be used here.
Indonesia took control of Papua from the Netherlands in
the 1960s through a highly controversial UN-sponsored
process brokered by the United States. Since that time, the
indigenous Melanesian population (known as Papuans) has
protested Indo-nesian sovereignty. Indonesian
integration-cum-colonization of Papua—implemented with
U.S. complicity—has amounted to an undeclared war against
the indigenous population. It has brought racial and
religious discrimination, wholesale seizure of local
communities’ lands, assaults on their livelihoods and
cultures, and other severe human rights abuses, including
extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. Powerful foreign
investors and approximately 1 million non-Papuan migrants
dominate the territory’s economy and civil and military
administration, marginalizing and dispossessing the 1.2
million native Papuans.
Brutal human rights violations in Papua were a hallmark
of the 32-year, authoritarian regime of Indonesian Army
General and President Suharto. Violations continue under the
government of President Abdurrahman Wahid, including
shootings of peaceful demonstrators, torture, and arbitrary
detention.
Intensifying Indonesian military and militia
activities—aimed at derailing Papuans’ nonviolent
self-rule efforts—threaten to destabilize Papua and the
region. The Indonesian military has moved thousands of
additional troops into Papua in recent months and is
supporting—with training, arms, and directives—the
establishment of “pro-Jakarta” militias in Papua. These
units, known as the Red and White Task Force, are similar to
those that conducted a campaign of violence in East Timor
last year and that continue to terrorize West Timor’s
refugee camps.
Indonesia’s integration of Papua, through a
decolonization process that violated international
standards, is the foundation of the current conflict. After
World War II, Indonesia—newly independent from the
Netherlands—sought to gain control of Papua by laying
claim to all Dutch colonial lands. Papuan leaders explicitly
rejected integration with Indonesia, and the Dutch launched
an initiative to prepare Papua for self-rule. Under the
Dutch plan, Papuans completed a territory-wide vote for
representatives to the newly established New Guinea Council.
In 1961, the Council ratified, with formal Dutch approval,
the adoption of the national Papuan Morning Star flag, a
national anthem, and a new name for the territory: West
Papua. When the UN refused to support Indonesia’s
territorial claims, the Sukarno government employed military
means, including a planned invasion to “liberate” Papua.
The Kennedy administration—seeking to defuse an all-out
military confrontation between Indonesia and the
Netherlands—initiated UN-sponsored negotiations between
the two parties, which culminated in the 1962 New York
Agreement. Papuans had no say in the agreement, which
brought an end to Dutch sovereignty and established a
temporary UN administration. The agreement also called for
Papuans to exercise their right to self-determination “in
accordance with international practice,” including free
and informed consent and universal suffrage. The UN turned
over control of Papua to Indonesia in 1963, after a brief
and inadequate administration period. Having triggered a
severe reversal in the territory’s political and economic
development, Indonesia formally consolidated its sovereignty
over Papua through the 1969 “Act of Free Choice” (AFC).
Only 1,025 “representatives” (out of 800,000 Papuans)
participated in the process, which Indonesia administered
and controlled. Although the UN’s observer reported
serious violations of the self-determination process—and
15 countries strenuously contested the AFC’s
validity—the UN General Assembly accepted the AFC’s
results.
Like East Timor, Papua has withstood Indonesia’s
military operations and disastrous leadership. Indonesia
justifies military operations in Papua on the basis of
maintaining internal stability and combating the Free Papua
Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka or OPM). Since the 1960s,
the OPM—a popular, multifactional national liberation
movement—has employed tactics of armed resistance and
international diplomacy in resisting Indonesia’s takeover.
The Indonesian military’s use of force against
civilians—generally indiscriminate and excessive, often
brutally sadistic—has included massive air assaults and
the use of napalm on rural villages. Although the total
number of Papuans killed is unknown, estimates by church
officials and international observers place the figure at
more than 100,000 (roughly ten percent of the population).
Problems with Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
- Washington’s complicity with the Indonesian
colonization of Papua and with the denial of Papuans’
right to self-determination dates to the central U.S.
role in the 1962 New York Agreement.
- U.S. support for the Indonesian military and for
socially and environmentally harmful economic activities
and social programs in Papua has contributed to severe
human rights violations against Papuans.
- Washington subordinates human rights concerns and
self-determination in Papua to narrow commercial and
strategic interests in Indonesia.
Washington’s complicity with Indonesia’s domination
of Papua dates to the central U.S. role in brokering the
1962 New York Agreement, which paved the way for Indonesian
sovereignty over Papua and subverted Papuans’ right to
self-determination. That complicity continues through an
effective disregard for Indonesia’s massive human rights
violations in the territory and by direct support for U.S.
corporate ventures in Papua that degrade the environment and
undermine Papuans’ livelihoods.
Both Washington policymakers and the U.S. media paid keen
attention to Papua during the 1960s. But after playing a
major part in defusing the Dutch-Indonesian conflict over
the territory, the U.S. abdicated any further meaningful
engagement. Papua and the plight of its people sank into
obscurity. The Indonesian government—free to do as it
pleased and backed politically and financially by the
U.S.—obstructed international scrutiny of events in Papua
by blocking access to UN monitors and foreign journalists,
among others.
Despite ample evidence of rights violations, reported
annually by the U.S. State Department, Washington has
provided the Indonesian military with equipment and training
for decades. Indonesian security forces have used
U.S.-supplied equipment—including helicopters, B-26
bombers, Bronco OV-10 counterinsurgency planes, F-5E Tiger
jet fighters, and M-16 machine guns—in their attacks on
Papuan civilians. More recently, the Pentagon has engaged in
joint military exercises with Indonesia and trained
Indonesian troops through its Joint Combined Exchange
Training (JCET) and International Military Education and
Training (IMET) programs.
U.S. corporations—interested in Indonesia’s natural
resources, low-wage labor, and lax regulatory
environment—have dominated U.S. policy toward Indonesia
and Papua. Chief among these corporations is New Orleans
mining multinational Freeport McMoRan, whose gold and copper
mine in Papua’s glacial mountains is the world’s
largest. Lobbying by Freeport board member and former U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, large-scale campaign
contributions to U.S. politicians, and maneuverings through
groups like the Washington-based U.S.-Indonesia Society have
combined to block effective U.S. policy responses to
repressive Indonesian practices. The U.S. embassy in Jakarta
has provided considerable diplomatic support to these
corporate interests in the face of attempts by Papuan
communities, Indonesian civil society, and, more recently,
the Wahid government to hold companies accountable for their
social and environmental impact and allegedly unfair
business deals with the Suharto regime.
Papuans widely view Freeport as a foothold of Indonesian
control over their lands and have unrelentingly protested
the human rights abuses and environmental degradation
associated with the company’s operations. These have
included: extrajudicial killings, torture, the takeover of
indigenous lands, the forced resettlement of local
communities, the overwhelming influx of non-Papuan migrants,
the destruction of local livelihoods and spiritually
significant landmarks, and severe restrictions on Papuans’
freedom of movement. Since the early 1970s, the Indonesian
military has used Freeport-built infrastructure (an airport,
roads, a port site) as a staging ground for deadly assaults
against the original Papuan landowners in the mine’s
vicinity—actions designed to protect the mine and
eliminate popular resistance to Indonesian sovereignty.
In an unprecedented move, the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation (OPIC) revoked Freeport’s $100-million
political risk insurance in 1995, concluding that the
company’s social and environmental impact was in violation
of U.S. regulations. OPIC stated that the mine had
“created and continues to pose unreasonable or major
environmental, health or safety hazards with respect to the
rivers that are being impacted by the tailings, the
surrounding terrestrial ecosystem, and the local
inhabitants.”
In general, however, U.S. support—bilaterally through
the Export-Import Bank and multilaterally through the World
Bank, Asian Development Bank, and International Monetary
Fund (IMF)—for socially and environmentally harmful
economic activities and social programs in Papua has
contributed to severe human rights abuses and reinforced
Papuan self-rule demands. Such programs include the
Indonesian government’s transmigration and national birth
control programs and the establishment of agricultural
plantations, mining, and other natural resource exploitation
operations.
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations
- The U.S. should recognize Papuans’ legitimate
aspirations for self-determination and offer concrete
U.S. support for efforts to resolve the Papuan conflict
peacefully.
- Washington should call for the immediate cessation of
Indonesia's military build-up in Papua and for the
withdrawal of all Special Forces and other troops.
- Through its foreign assistance and subsidies to
corporations, the U.S. should ensure full respect for
U.S. and international standards concerning human rights
and environmental protection.
Indonesia’s current political transition offers
unprecedented possibilities for achieving a lasting solution
to the decades-old conflict in Papua. The Indonesian
government has, for the first time, publicly acknowledged
the human rights atrocities and inequitable social and
economic dynamics that have strengthened Papuan independence
aspirations. Government officials have moved to hold
Freeport accountable for its environmental impact and have
promised human rights investigations. They have also
suggested that Papuans draft their own terms for autonomy,
including special recognition of customary land rights and a
far-greater share of the financial proceeds from resource
exploitation.
These measures are important first steps, but they are
inadequate: too little and too late to address Papuans’
long-suppressed concerns regarding governance, land rights,
natural resource use and management, and human rights. Such
ad hoc measures are also destined to fail, because they lack
an overall framework of bilateral and inclusive dialogue
that does not presuppose outcomes.
The window of opportunity for peaceful conflict
resolution is rapidly closing. The Wahid government’s
energies are dissipated amongst the myriad challenges of
addressing the Suharto regime’s legacies: endemic
corruption, weak civilian law enforcement structures, a
powerful and rights-abusing military, a failed economy, and
interethnic and religious conflict. Meanwhile, Papuan
leaders have toughened their stand for independence in the
wake of renewed violence by Indonesian security forces in
Papua.
The experience of the past four decades shows that
Indonesia’s use of military force will not achieve a
lasting solution to the conflict. Simply reiterating U.S.
support for the territorial integrity of Indonesia is an
inadequate policy response. Instead, Washington should
pursue a nuanced policy of officially recognizing the
Papuans’ legitimate aspirations for self-determination and
explicitly stating U.S. readiness to support efforts to
resolve the Papuan conflict peacefully, preferably through
dialogue between Papuans and the Indonesian government or,
if necessary, via a proper and valid self-determination
exercise.
U.S. policy should use four guiding objectives: 1)
demilitarization of—and an end to human rights violations
in—Papua; 2) support for the consolidation of civilian-led
democracy in Indonesia as a means of enhancing conditions
for a nonviolent resolution of the conflict in Papua; 3)
ensuring that U.S. foreign aid and export and investment
assistance programs only strengthen Papuans’ efforts for
community-based and sustainable development; and 4)
mobilizing international support for a nonviolent resolution
of the conflict.
U.S. suspension of military engagement with
Indonesia—in the wake of the Indonesian military’s
violent role last year in East Timor—is a welcome step.
Washington should continue this abeyance until the
Indonesian government has withdrawn troops from and disarmed
and disbanded militias in Papua, prosecuted military and
militia personnel responsible for human rights violations
there, and entered into serious talks with the Papuans.
Effective support for an end to the conflict in Papua
also means removing obstacles to Indonesia’s stability by
canceling the Indonesian government’s foreign debt,
supporting full civilian oversight of the military and an
end to the military’s role in political and economic
affairs, and cooperating fully with the Indonesian
government’s prosecution of Suharto. It will require U.S.
support for efforts by nongovernmental organizations,
Indonesian agencies, and international bodies to investigate
human rights conditions in Papua.
In addition, as requested by the Indonesian government,
the U.S. should provide assistance—humanitarian aid and
peacekeeping forces—in addressing the conflict in the
Maluku Islands. The arrival in Papua of 20,000 refugees from
the neighboring Malukus threatens to destabilize Papua even
further. Military training and weapons among the new
arrivals have spawned fears that the Indonesian military may
be attempting to ignite interethnic and interreligious
communal violence in Papua similar to the violence that has
killed 4,000 people in the Malukus since 1998.
Washington must ensure that its foreign aid and export
and investment assistance programs uphold and promote full
respect for U.S. and international standards concerning
human rights, environmental protection, and the rights of
indigenous communities to ownership and management of
customary lands. U.S. companies operating overseas should be
required to adopt independently monitored codes of conduct
to ensure respect for human and worker rights, and
environmental protection. And the U.S. should continue to
provide financial assistance and political support to civil
society groups that enjoy the trust of constituent
communities and that are working at the grassroots level in
the areas of legal rights education, legal aid, human rights
monitoring, community-led development, and environmental
protection.
In an effort to rectify past injustices, Papuan leaders
have called on Indonesia, the U.S., and other parties to
review the circumstances leading to Papua’s integration
into Indonesia. The Dutch Foreign Ministry announced in
December 1999 that it will do so by mounting a historical
reexamination of the transfer of sovereignty. At the same
time, the South Pacific island nations of Vanuatu and Nauru
have declared support for Papuans’ self-determination
efforts, thereby shattering the international consensus that
Papua must remain under Indonesian control. As U.S. Congress
members have urged, the U.S. should act similarly by calling
upon the UN Secretary-General to undertake a thorough review
of the 1969 Act of Free Choice.
Abigail Abrash <aea@igc.org>
is a Visiting Fellow with Harvard Law School’s Human
Rights Program. She has monitored human rights issues in
Indonesia, with a special focus on Papua, since 1993.
Sources for More Information
Organizations
Australia West Papua Association
Box 65
Millers Point
Australia 2000
Voice/Fax: +61-2-9960-1698
Email: iris@matra.com.au
ELSHAM (Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Hak Asasi
Manusia)
Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy
Jl. Kampus STTJ
Padang Bulan, Jayapura
West Papua
Voice/Fax: (6296) 758-1600
Email: elsham_irja@jayapura.wasantara.net.id
Human Rights Watch/Asia
1630 Connecticut Av. NW, Ste. 500
Washington, DC 20009
Voice: (202) 612-4321
Fax: (202) 612-4333
Email: hrwdc@hrw.org
Website: http://www.hrw.org/
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human
Rights
1367 Connecticut Avenue NW, Ste. 200
Washington, DC 20036
Voice: (202) 463-7575
Fax: (202) 463-6606
Email: hrcenter@rfkmemorial.org
Website: http://www.rfkmemorial.org/
Survival International
11-15 Emerald Street
London WC1N 3QL U.K.
Voice: +44-181-242-1441
Fax: +44-181-242-1771
Email: info@survival-international.org
Website: http://www.survival-international.org/
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road
Thornton Heath
Surrey CR7 8HW U.K.
Voice: +44-181-771-2904
Fax: +44-181-653-0322
Email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Website: http://www.gn.apc.org/tapol/
Publications
Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong, West Papua: The
Obliteration of a People, 3rd ed. (Surrey, UK: TAPOL,
1988).
William Henderson, West New Guinea: The Dispute and
Its Settlement (South Orange, NJ: Seton Hall University
Press, 1973).
Robin Osborne, Indonesia’s Secret War (Sydney:
Allen & Unwin, 1985).
Eyal Press, “The Suharto Lobby,” and related
articles, The Progressive, May 1997.
John Saltford, “United Nations Involvement with the Act
of Self-Determination in West Irian (Indonesian West New
Guinea) 1968 to 1969,” Indonesia, No. 69, April
2000. Also available online at: http://www.fpcn-global.org/united-nations/wp-68-69.html
Human Rights and Pro-Independence Actions in Papua,
1999-2000 (New York: Human Rights Watch, May 2000).
Human Rights Violations and Disaster in Bela, Alama,
Jila and Mapnduma, Irian Jaya (Jayapura: Indonesian
Evangelical Church [Mimika], Three Kings Catholic Parish [Timika],
and Christian Evangelical Church [Mimika], May 1998).
Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous
Women in Irian Jaya (West Papua), Indonesia
(Washington/Jayapura: Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for
Human Rights/Institute for Human Rights Studies and
Advocacy, May 1999).
Mission to Indonesia and East Timor on the Issue of
Violence Against Women: Report of the Special Rapporteur on
Violence Against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, UN
Economic and Social Council, E/CN.4/1999/68/Add.3, January
21, 1999.
Report of the Secretary-General Regarding the Act of
Self-Determination in West Irian, UN Doc. A/7723,
November 6, 1969.
Violations of Human Rights in the Timika Area of
Irian Jaya, Indonesia (Jayapura: Catholic Church of
Irian Jaya, August 1995).
Websites
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