The Guardian [UK] May 29, 2002

Spirited Fight 

Forces of nature are inspiring Papuan resistance to the Indonesian army

Eben Kirksey

West Papuan indigenous peoples are fusing modern environmentalism with mysticism to produce a revolutionary ideology that is being used to resist, and strike fear into, the Indonesian army - and to drive logging companies out of the rainforest. 

A powerful self-determination movement called the OPM (Organisation of Papuan Freedom) is using sorcery and a co-opted army of forest ghouls as weapons in its fight for independence from Indonesia. 

The OPM enlists humans for its cause, but every animal, plant and stone is also a member, says Viktor Kaisiepo, a prominent Papuan leader exiled in the Netherlands. Indonesian troops, he says, are just as likely to be assaulted by the rainforest and its creatures as by the OPM's human freedom fighters. Mosquitoes, he says, deliberately infect the soldiers with malaria, venomous snakes inject them with deadly poison, forest leeches bite their legs, wasps sting them, razor-sharp rattan vines tear at their skin, and the trees fall to crush them. 

According to Benny Giay, an anthropologist who has lived with the highland Mee tribes of West Papua, the nature movement gained momentum in the 1980s. Local myths were fused with global ideas about the environment to produce a hybrid cosmology. 

The Papuans adopted the Indonesian name for nature (Alam) to describe their movement. In the urban areas of West Papua Alam is now being institutionalised. International environmental groups have set up shop alongside local Papuan NGOs and are contending with the likes of mining giant 
Freeport- McMoRan and, more recently, BP. The language of western biological science defines the mission of these groups, but Alam inspires many of their Papuan employees. 

Alam is regarded as all-powerful. Forest ghouls collaborate with wild creatures as the foot soldiers of the OPM. Also on their side are alluring she-demons called "tameyai", who, according to Mee highlanders, seduce Indonesian soldiers and then kill them. Tameyai are said to have inhabited West Papua's rainforests during Dutch colonial rule, and later when Indonesian soldiers first invaded in 1962. 

The Papuans have also co-opted the big guns of the spirit world. Two renowned Mee shamans were, it is said, able to reach a peace deal with Simiso, the grand master of all the ghouls that inhabit Mee lands. 

This fusing of religion and the environment is not unique to West Papua. Indian anthropologist Vibha Arora has found that many indigenous groups say the two do not exist as separate phenomena. "Several Indian religious traditions are now being termed as 'indigenous environmentalism' by some and as 'subversive terrorist movements' by others", he says. 

Papuans believe the power of Alam can even reach to the skies. Last year, a plane crashed into a mountain, killing 10 members of the Indonesian military, including the highest-ranking commander and the West Papuan police chief. According to the Lani, a group who live in the Baliem Valley near the crash site, Alam intervened on the behalf of the OPM to cause the crash. 

Alam, Papuans believe, defends the tribes against international logging companies that are clearing the rainforest. Kansus Uweia, the former tribal head of the Oge Bage Mee people, is adamant that the natural landscape assaults logging workers; and when boulders, trees and earth fall on their logging roads, it is a signal from Alam to the men with chainsaws that they 
are not welcome. 

Thadius Yogi, an OPM leader among the Mee, claims to command Alam by controlling the rain to disguise his movements. Another OPM member among the Mee is said to have the power to become a mosquito and infect soldiers. 

The idea of Alam has made the work of the Indonesian troops even more difficult. Apart from inspiring Papuan resistance, it has instilled fear into troops that the untamed interior of West Papua is a dangerous place inhabited by guerrillas with supernatural powers.