JAKARTA
- Violence erupted in the capital of Indonesia's
troubled province of West Papua on Wednesday as security
forces moved to break up a flag-raising ceremony by
independence supporters who had gathered to celebrate
West Papua Day, according to a Sydney-based human rights
monitor.
Five people were shot and wounded and
at least 18 people arrested as 100 police dispersed a
gathering at the Trikora soccer field in Adepura, a
suburb of Jayapura, said John Rumbiak, an international
advocacy coordinator for the Papuan human-rights group
Elsham.
Rumbiak, who is based in Sydney, said an
Elsham human-rights worker who witnessed the
demonstration had been beaten as he tried to photograph
the clash. Two of the event organizers also were beaten
by police while being taken away on a police truck for
interrogation in the city center, Rumbiak, quoting a
report from his colleagues in Jayapura, said during a
phone interview. Another 16 people were being questioned
at the local Adepura police station, he said.
Early last month Rumbiak warned that
increasing militarization in the province, coupled
with human-rights abuses and persistent demands
for independence, had turned Papua into a "time bomb
waiting to go off". There also have been concerns that a simmering
separatist movement and unrest over Jakarta's plan to
partition Papua into three provinces could badly impact
business and the national economy. Human-rights groups
have called on newly elected President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono to improve the protection of human rights in
Papua and elsewhere by reforming the Indonesian military
(TNI), but the military has already said it will "crush"
separatism in Papua after it has completed its recently
extended offensive in Aceh province.
A day to
remember Wednesday marked West Papua Day, which
commemorates the first West Papuan national congress in
1961, organized by the then-ruling Dutch as a
preparation for independence. Last week, Indonesian
authorities warned activists not to raise their
distinctive blue, white and red Morning Star flag, or
other Papuan symbols that are against the unitary state
of Indonesia, to mark the separatist movement's 42nd
anniversary.
"The concern is that this is a
peaceful demonstration and from a human-rights
perspective it has to be allowed to take place," Rumbiak
said. "It is freedom of expression."
Rumbiak
said the demonstration had been calling on Yudhoyono to
initiate a peaceful dialogue between the government and
independence supporters.
Papua is Indonesia's
largest and least-populated province. It is also one of
its wealthiest, making it a target for manipulation,
power-grabbing and political opportunism by Jakarta.
With a population of only 2.4 million, it is three and a
half times bigger than Java, which has four provinces
plus the capital, Jakarta. Indigenous Papuans claim
their rich resources are continually tapped for the
benefit of others, and their efforts to claim their
rights have been met repeatedly with harsh responses
from the military and police.
The province is
home to American mining giant Freeport McMoRan's gold
and copper mines, whose operations are the cornerstone
of Papua's economic importance to Jakarta. Freeport's
open-cut operations at its concession on the massive
Grasberg mine site - spanning more than 2.5 kilometers
in width, and sitting 4,270 meters above sea level -
move 700,000 tons of rock every day. It operates 24
hours a day, 365 days a year. Even at this rate, the
deposits of gold and copper are so large the company's
operations are predicted to last at least another 30
years.
In addition, Anglo-American energy giant
BP Plc has just confirmed it will soon start
construction on its massive Tangguh project, which will
be one of the largest gas fields in Asia when it is
completed in 2007.
No say from the
outset Papuans claim that the New York Agreement
drawn up in 1962 under the auspices of the United
Nations to end the dispute between Indonesia and the
Dutch over Netherlands-controlled New Guinea - the
former name for Papua - was done without consulting them
and without their consent.
Later, in 1969,
Indonesia, with US support, short-circuited a
UN-supervised plebiscite on the sovereignty of the
territory and engineered the seizure of West Papua, the
western half of New Guinea, thereby ensuring that the
territory would remain under Indonesian control.
Previously classified US government documents,
released by the US National Security Archive to mark the
35th anniversary of this "Act of Free Choice", show that
the US ignored reporting from its own officials that
detailed Jakarta's efforts to rig the vote.
Henry Kissinger, as a board director and
retained consultant for many years for Freeport, was
accused of making personal gains from Indonesian control
over West Papua. The documents show that Kissinger, who
was then US national security adviser, advised former
president Richard Nixon to back the Indonesian takeover
in West Papua.
Halliburton wins
contract Democrats long have accused the current
administration of US President George W Bush of showing
favoritism to Halliburton, headed by Vice President Dick
Cheney from 1995 to 2000. Curiously, BP has awarded the
contract for design, procurement, and construction and
commissioning services at Tangguh to Halliburton's
engineering and construction arm, KBR (formerly Kellogg
Brown & Root) in a 50-50 joint venture partnership
with JGC Corporation of Japan.
Cheney is a key
player in the Bush administration's push to persuade
Congress to fund an International Military Education and
Training (IMET) program for Indonesia. Congress had held
up the funds until such time as Bush could certify that
the Indonesian government and its military were taking
effective measures to investigate an ambush on August
31, 2002, that killed three Freeport employees, two
Americans and an Indonesian, and wounded 12 others, on
the road leading from Tembagapura to the Grasberg mine.
Congress first restricted Indonesia's IMET funds
following the 1991 massacre of 270 civilians in Santa
Cruz, East Timor. All military ties were then suspended
in 1999, when a TNI-organized militia ravaged East Timor
following the UN-sponsored independence vote.
Not long after the integrated offensive aimed at
"crushing" Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels in Aceh was
launched last year, the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee voted to suspend the IMET funds yet again -
not in censure of Jakarta's mission to crush its own
people, but over the Freeport ambush.
The
separatist movement at the other end of the archipelago
from Aceh is spearheaded by a group of poorly armed
independence fighters known as the Free Papua
Organization (Organisasi Papua Merdeka or OPM). The TNI
have always blamed the OPM for the attack near the
Grasberg mine. The day after the ambush, government
forces shot dead an unidentified Papuan male, whom they
claimed was both a member of the OPM and responsible for
the attack.
A police report two months after the
ambush found that the OPM was an unlikely suspect
because the group "never attacks white people". It
concluded that TNI involvement "was a strong
possibility".
Earlier killing spawns
protection This was not the first time a Freeport
employee had been shot and killed on the same road. On
November 8, 1994, Gordan Rumaropena, a Papuan working
for Freeport, was shot dead while driving along the
access road. The shooting, which both the military and
Freeport blamed on the OPM, was the catalyst for the
company's request for a stronger military presence in
the area.
The result of this was an expanded
military operation, which led to well-documented
human-rights violations against the indigenous peoples
living within and around the concession area.
TNI gets only 30% of its funding from the
central government and makes up the shortfall by its
widespread involvement in businesses, both legal and
illegal. Payments for security services received from
multinationals in the lucrative extractive industries,
such as Freeport's and ExxonMobil's natural-gas
facilities in Aceh, have provided TNI with a significant
source of income.
Freeport paid US$10.7 million
in protection money to TNI from 2000-02, but abruptly
stopped the payments shortly before the ambush. To
appease investor anger and disgust after the meltdown of
Enron and WorldCom, the Bush administration pushed a
bill through Congress that demanded greater corporate
accountability. The ensuing Corporate Fraud Act,
implemented on July 26, 2002, required the disclosure of
such payments.
TNI commander-in-chief General
Endriartono Sutarto, eventually admitting that his
troops were receiving Freeport funds, which he described
as "pocket money", proposed a new system where troops
would only protect installations deemed to be of "vital
importance" to Indonesia.
In late June this
year, then-attorney general John Ashcroft convinced a
federal grand jury to indict Anthonuis Wamang for the
ambush. The indictment identifies Wamang as an OPM
commander. Ashcroft's statement on the killings also
cleared TNI of any role in the attack. His announcement
came just one day after a US congressional subcommittee
renewed a ban on the provision of funds for the IMET
program for Indonesia, prompting claims that Washington
was sacrificing justice for the victims for the sake of
resuming bilateral military ties.
The TNI,
theoretically, had a number of motives for staging an
attack. The killing of American citizens certainly
provided a convenient argument to strengthen its case
for the resumption of close ties as part of the Bush
administration's "war on terrorism", or it could have
been an attempt by local commanders to extort more
protection money from Freeport. More tellingly, the TNI
also could have used the ambush to strengthen its hand
in further crackdowns on separatist organizations in
Papua, Aceh and elsewhere.
A tale of three
presidents Five years ago interim Indonesian
president B J Habibie had been under pressure from
community, tribal and religious leaders in what was then
Irian Jaya (now West Papua) to grant the province the
same option - separation from the republic - that he had
offered to East Timor. In early 1999 they called openly
for a referendum on independence, but the House of
Representatives would have none of it, agreeing instead
to Habibie's alternative proposal, to split the province
into three. Later that year the House passed Law No
49/1999 to authorize the partition.
Under
president Abdurrahman Wahid (1991-2001) a different
approach was used to reduce separatist sentiments in the
territory. The province was renamed Papua, and Wahid
opted not to implement the legislation. He allowed
Papuans to fly the Morning Star flag - the symbol of
their independence movement - and passed legislation
granting Papua greater autonomy.
Wahid's Law No
21/2001 on special autonomy for the province would have
allowed Papuans to manage their own affairs and receive
70% of oil and gas revenues and 80% of revenues from
natural resources such as forestry, fisheries and mining
(excluding Freeport's taxes). It was never implemented.
Fearing that special autonomy would be used as a
political vehicle to promote independence, Wahid's
successor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, delayed the
establishment of the Papuan Consultative Assembly (MRP)
and the issuance of necessary government regulations to
enforce the law.
Divide and rule Worse
still, in January 2003 Megawati issued a controversial
Presidential Instruction, No 1/2003, to enforce Law No
45/1999 on the division of Papua into three provinces -
Papua, West Irian Jaya and Central Irian Jaya.
Critics said partitioning the province was a
ploy to serve the interests of certain business,
military and political groups in Jakarta, instead of the
Papuan people, and was a ploy by Jakarta to divide and
conquer Papua. Efforts to push through the formation of
West Irian Jaya and Central Irian Jaya provinces sparked
fierce criticism and several deadly clashes.
Extra-judicial executions, disappearances, torture and
arbitrary detention of civilians were reported
throughout 2003.
In early November, the
Constitutional Court overturned the 1999 law, claiming
it was unconstitutional, but the head of the court,
Jimly Asshidiqie, said that as West Irian Jaya had
already been established in line with constitutional
requirements, including the election of local
representatives, it should remain a separate province.
Problem lands in Yudhoyono's lap In
other words, the new province, created as a fait
accompli by a mere presidential instruction, has been
legitimized and Megawati's successor, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono has inherited yet another pressing problem not
of his own making, one that could badly impact business
and the national economy.
Indonesia, which has
abundant reserves of gas, was once one of the world's
top liquefied natural gas (LNG) producers but has been
struggling lately in an increasingly competitive market.
The Tangguh plant is expected to produce between 7
million and 8 million tons of LNG per annum in the first
phase of production and BP has so far secured deals to
supply a combined 7.6 million tons of LNG worldwide; to
San Diego-based Sempra Energy, South Korea's K-Power Co
and steelmaker Posco, as well as a plant in China's
Fujian province.
The general security situation
in West Papua and Indonesia as a whole is a key factor
in winning long-term gas supply contracts. The simmering
separatist movement, unrest over Jakarta's plan to
partition Papua into three provinces and the oversupply
in the world gas market make the Tangguh project a
higher-risk than most.
New York-based Human
Rights Watch has called on Yudhoyono to improve the
protection of human rights in Papua and elsewhere by
reforming the TNI, but the military has already said it
will "crush" separatism in Papua after it has completed
its recently extended offensive in Aceh.
Yudhoyono won majority votes in Papua during
both rounds of the presidential election and the
National Forum for Human Rights Concerns in Papua
(FNKHP), which he chaired before he became president,
has urged him to support the Papuan people by
implementing Law No 21/2001 on special autonomy for
Papua and reconsider the division of Papua into several
provinces.
Killing Americans is
terrorism After six months of investigation, a
National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM)
fact-finding team found that both soldiers and police
were involved in serious rights violations in Papua's
Wasior regency in 2001 and Wamena regency in 2003.
The "war against terror" is the ideal cop out
for Washington and its allies to ignore such
human-rights violations, and it appears that the fact
that American citizens were killed in Papua was the
deciding factor in prompting the senators to impose
further restrictions.
Ashcroft and Federal
Bureau of Investigation director Robert Mueller not only
blamed the Papua separatists for the Freeport attack
but, astonishingly, claimed Wamang's indictment was a
victory in the "war on terrorism". Mueller claimed that
the investigation illustrated "the importance of
international cooperation to combat terrorism".
Restoration of military cooperation between the
US and Indonesia seems likely sooner rather than later,
but unless the idea of partitioning Papua is abandoned
by the new government, the gloomy scenario predicted by
Rumbiak could well materialize during Yudhoyono's watch.
Bill Guerin, a weekly Jakarta
correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has
worked in Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and
editorial positions. He has been published by the BBC on
East Timor and specializes in business/economic and
political analysis in Indonesia.
(With added
excerpts from Asia Pulse)
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
