Subject: KABAR-IRIAN: [EN] Situation in Wamena (7 Articles)

South China Morning Post, Sunday, October 8, 2000, Comment
Resurrecting the ancient ritual of war
Vaudine England

Fatal confrontation came to the streets of Wamena in the high, fertile Baliem Valley of Irian Jaya at the weekend. It is a town where tourists often start adventurous treks, where Papuan tribes come to trade and where missionary organisations run flights to serve a more remote interior.

It is also the ''big city'' to tribal settlements where traditions of agriculture and ritual warfare carry on, and where local elders are sure that Papuan independence is the answer to everything. That conviction has helped fuel a series of flag-raising ceremonies, in which solemn members of the Satgas Papua, a pro-independence militia, and ordinary people gather to raise the ''Morning Star'' independence flag.

The Jayapura-based rights organisation, ELS-HAM (Institute for the Study and Advocacy of Human Rights), foresaw the troubles which flared on September 26. Then, Brimob [Mobile Brigade] riot troops mistreated five people while pulling down a Papuan flag. When police tried to take down the last Papuan flag last Friday, the mood
hardened on both sides. Since then, scores of people are reported to have been killed, mostly non-Papuans.
 
''This incident has provoked the people in the Baliem Valley into now organising themselves to fight back,'' reported ELS-HAM. ''The main bridges connecting Kurima sub-district and Wamena town, as well as Kimbim and Wamena, have been cut off by the angry people and thousands of people from various villages are reported to have attacked Wamena town.'' A pastor in Wamena added: ''We're concerned that the frustration of the angry people to the security forces can be directed to the non-Papuans.''

Against the backdrop of a vast beautiful valley, these fears of conflict have been further heightened by news that the order to lower flags was transmitted through newly appointed police chief, General Bimantoro, and follows the arrival of thousands of extra troops, including special forces, in the province.

These events promise to crystallise the growing sentiment towards independence among Papuans, including tribal chiefs and Christian converts living in the dramatic landscape of the highlands.

Just down a pot-holed road from Wamena proper are traditional living compounds of the Yali tribe, where the talk recently is of the independence they assume will soon be theirs. As women work in the fields, the men of one group of compounds gather all naked but for their penis gourds.

The world has intruded enough to prompt the tribal chief to withhold his name from publication. It has also brought cigarettes as a form of virtual currency, and a 1950s-style broken metal clock hanging from the central pole of a hut.

''We have sweet potato, we have pigs, we have our own food and we also get money from selling firewood,'' said the chief. ''With this money we can buy wives and the Indonesian Government doesn't help us in this. We can make proposals to government every day but they do not help. We have our food and our pigs and we think of that. We
don't think of the Government. 

''We have been under the Indonesian people for a long time already, but right now you can see we stay as traditional people and have no rich clothes. Right now we want our own country. All Papua people don't want Indonesian people. We want independence.''

His father, so rheumy-eyed he must be blind, has less to say. He wants to shake the hand of the white woman, is vastly grateful for the inevitable cigarette, then fades back into the darkness of the smoke-filled hut. A fire burns in the centre and men come and go up the four-step ladder into the hut. They say they still enjoy putting on a show for tourists of the ancient ritual warfare which their survival once depended upon, when they are not cogitating life in
the hut.

This group's living compound has not changed design for centuries. Entrance over a pig-resistant stile is into a long rectangular compound. On the left side is a long hut for the pigs. On the right side is a neat succession of small, round huts for the wives, in this case four. At the far end of the compound is the men's hut, dominating all.

''I don't have problems with other people,'' said the chief. ''I don't make problems with Indonesian people. The Government doesn't come here. I just want to stay like this, I want only to be here.'' On receipt of a requested 10,000 rupiah (about HK$10), the mood picked up as the silent men round the fire cracked huge smiles. ''This is a lot of money. This is what we like,'' the chief said.

Back on the road, in an old van decorated with feathers, younger Papuans were enjoying the trip out of the town of Wamena. They broke into song, perhaps moved by the glorious sunset creeping over the valley, laughed and called to other Papuans on the road.

Every few kilometres, round thatched huts in freshly fenced compounds each with an improvised flag-pole, marks a branch of the Satgas Papua. These poskos,or command centres, are combat-ready, if bows and arrows and determination count as ammunition. Men here stop vehicles, defend territory and salute their flag freely.

This driver was from the Dani tribe and his jeans and Bob Marley T-shirt were topped by a feather head-dress. Stickers on his windscreen read: ''The Freedom of West Papua Human Rights'', ''Awas! [Look Out] Aids!'', and ''Smile, God Loves You''. Bits of road burst up through the vehicle's floor, prompting another discourse on the
failings of Indonesia.

''You see the road is very bad,'' said the driver, as his passengers all nodded agreement. ''It's bad because the Government doesn't care. So Papua people are asking, =91Why should it be like this?' All Papua people see that in the beginning, we moved every day and were always fighting. And then the people from America and Holland came
and they helped us. They gave us health and learning and came only to help us.

''But the people from Indonesia came and they only want to make
business to make money. That's why we want the people from America
and Holland to come again. We want to join with the big world.

''Why don't the Indonesians pay to fix the road?'' the driver went on. ''If we get independence then other countries will come and pay for the road. We want Hollandia Baru [a post-colonial Holland].'' Such sentiments are a long way from the more educated leaders of Irian Jaya's growing independence movement.

In the capital, Jayapura, talk is of high-level diplomacy, negotiations with Jakarta over forms of autonomy, and of how board meetings of the vast Freeport gold and copper mine in Irian's interior might be influenced by Irianese leadership.

Negotiations with Jakarta are ongoing in a bid to moderate violence and achieve a special autonomy rather than independence. Jakarta's offer is to be passed through parliament by next January, but selling it in the highlands will take longer.

That's probably why hundreds of extra Indonesian troops have been posted to Irian Jaya recently, and why ceremonies to raise the independence flag are becoming increasingly deadly.

At the fairly new Pasar Jibama, a market on the outskirts of Wamena, lies another ingredient in what could be a dangerously heady mix of independence fervour. The only stalls selling household goods are run by non-Papuans, usually migrants from Sulawesi or Java. 

Squatting in the dirt underneath tile benches intended for produce, are the cross-legged Papuan women selling goods such as vegetables, fruit and betel nut.

In Wamena town it's the same story. All money-making commerce is run by non-Papuans. This is why President Abdurrahman Wahid may even be correct when he claims ''the majority'' of people in Irian Jaya do not want independence, as statisticians suggest Papuans are now a minority in their own land.

In another gathering on the road towards the mission station at Pyramid, the talk is of a bloody history of gross human-rights abuses carried out by Indonesian forces since the fraudulent ''Act of Free Choice'', which formalised Indonesia's takeover of Irian Jaya in 1969. Worst was the brutal crackdown in 1977-78, when Indonesian troops raped and thrashed thousands of Papuan women, tortured and shot their men, and left a lasting bitterness which is
feeding calls for fresh revenge against Jakarta. 

At a flag-raising ceremony near the village of Kimbim a couple of months ago, local leaders tried to transmute the bitterness into positive moves for peaceful change. Up to 5,000 people gathered on land where some of the worst abuses of the late 1970s had taken place.

Prayers were led by a Papuan church minister. Then, 267 pigs were slaughtered in an extravagant commitment to ceremony. Ritual battles between near-naked men in warpaint were enacted.

Local leaders, who fear imminent violence over the independence issue, said that meetings held to discuss autonomy the best offer possible from Jakarta were not attended by anyone from the area.

A potentially vicious struggle is brewing. Officials in Jakarta might soon wish they had fixed those roads in Irian Jaya.
- -- Vaudine England (vaudine@scmp.com) is the Post's Jakarta
correspondent
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South China Morning Post
Monday, October 9, 2000
INDONESIA
Troops patrol remote valley after rampage
Vaudine England in Jakarta

Troops with shoot-on-sight orders were yesterday patrolling a remote valley in Irian Jaya, where 40 people are believed to have died in violence triggered by the killing of two indigenous people by police at a separatist flag-raising ceremony.

Senior police officers claimed yesterday that peace had been restored to the Baliem Valley, but thousands of non-Papuan migrants were trying to flee the town of Wamena, most doctors there had fled, and other residents were sheltering in churches and mosques.

Authorities in Jayapura, the capital of Irian Jaya, Indonesia's easternmost province, sent a Hercules transport plane to Wamena airfield, but the plane will only be able to ferry out about 80 people.

Mobs of indigenous Papuans are reported to have raped, lynched and beheaded migrants, but human rights groups say many victims were shot by police and buried in mass graves.

"It's safe and quiet now. There are many troops on the streets," said provincial police chief Brigadier-General Silvanus Wenas. National police spokesman Saleh Saaf said: "The situation in Wamena is slowly getting back to normal. We have pushed the attackers to the mountains. They burned some of the victims alive and raped women."

Contact with Wamena, the capital of the highland Baliem Valley, is difficult, but rights and church groups dispute the official claims, saying the fighting was provoked by police.

Conflict flared when police tried to pull down the last pro-independence flag in Wamena on Friday, despite official policy that one flag is allowed to fly in each district at least until October 16, sources said.

"The whole attack by Brimob [Mobile Brigade riot troops] was unprovoked, so of course the people in Wamena were angry," a source in Jayapura said. "The fighting went on into Saturday night."

Most victims were of non-Papuan background, mainly traders from Sulawesi or Java who have migrated to Irian Jaya in recent years.

"I wept in front of the police, telling them not to pass on the order from Jakarta [to remove the flag], but they wouldn't listen," said Herman Awom, a spokesman for pro-independence umbrella group the Papua Presidium. He said migrants became a target of Papuan rage as police tried to hide among them. "We don't hate the migrants. The
Papuans in Wamena don't hate them. But the police ran for cover to the houses of migrants," he said.

Separatist leader Theys Eluay said he would meet President Abdurrahman Wahid today.

A foreigner who lived in the Baliem for a dozen years said: "Baliem
people's weapons are spears or lances and bows and arrows. It's
certainly not normal to behead or rape their victims - which doesn't
mean it can't be happening now." This source and others concur in
seeing the outbreak of mob killing as predictable and provoked.

Economic competition alongside growing independence fervour have been fomented in a province where the indigenous Papuans have been excluded from development and marginalised by increasing numbers of non-Papuans. At the same time, troop levels have increased.

One local source said: "There has been a lot of build-up to this outbreak in Wamena, and it suits some groups like the military to create a conflict which they then blame on so-called separatists. This is provoked, it is surely provoked."
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Financial Times (London)
Police ordered 'shoot to kill' in Indonesian separatist riots
By Tom McCawley in Jakarta
Published: October 8 2000 16:57GMT | Last Updated: October 8 2000
18:11GMT

Indonesian police in the province of West Papua were on Sunday given shoot-to-kill orders to curb pro-independence riots that left up to 30 dead at the weekend.

Saleh Saaf, the national police spokesman, said thousands of pro-independence tribesmen had killed settlers in the area of Wamena, some 2,200 miles north-east of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. Brigadier General Saaf said the pro-independence gangs had
fled to the hills and the area was now quiet.

Riots erupted on Friday after police, under orders from Jakarta,
removed a independence flag raised by separatists. Abdurrahman
Wahid, the Indonesian president, has allowed the independence flag
to be raised as long as it is lower than the national flag.

Local gangs, many of them comprising tribesmen from surrounding hill areas, then turned on migrants from other parts of Indonesia who live in Wamena.

Musiran Darmosuwito, acting governor of the province, confirmed that as many as 30 people, mostly migrants, were feared dead. Up to 40 people were injured.

A spokesman for the Papua Presidium, a pro-independence umbrella group, said the removal of the flag had upset people locally. "The people are angry and frightened," said Willy Mandowen.

Tensions have been building in West Papua, also known as Irian Jaya, for months since a convention of activists in May said they would press for independence. A low-level insurgency, fought in West  Papua's thick forests and jungles, has simmered for decades, but President Wahid recently ruled out independence.

West Papua was annexed into Indonesia in 1963 after diplomatic pressure was put on the Netherlands, the former colonial ruler. A United Nations-supervised ballot in 1969 resulted in it becoming part of Indonesia. Activists have described the result of the ballot as unfair.

Tensions have been aggravated by a "transmigration" policy implemented by the government of former president Suharto, which saw farmers from the islands of Java and Bali being moved to less-populated areas.

Immigrants' domination of commercial activities in the province generates resentment among its population.

The province is also home to a giant copper and gold mine operated by Freeport McMoran Indonesia. Local activists accuse the government in Jakarta of siphoning off the province's mineral wealth while providing little in return.
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