Papua puppetry leaves murders
unsolved By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - The United States and
Indonesia have gotten their man in the ambush
killings of two Americans in Papua three years
ago. The arrest of Antonius Wamang, an alleged
separatist military commander, is supposed to
quell speculation that the Indonesian military was
behind the shootings. But in this intercontinental
production of wayang kulit - Indonesian
shadow puppetry - Wamang may not follow the
script.
Wamang has admitted firing shots
in the August 31, 2002, attack near Timika on a
road to Freeport-McMoRan's vast Grasberg
mining complex in
otherwise remote Papua (see Indonesia's gold
standard, Asia Times Online, September
7, 2002). His lawyer says Wamang told police and
others he chose the site after receiving
information that Indonesian troops would be there,
and he intended to attack them.
Instead,
he attacked a van full of teachers and other
Grasberg employees returning from a picnic. Three
people were killed - an Indonesia teacher and two
Americans, school principal Edwin Burgon and
teacher Ricky Lynn Spier - and 11 others wounded.
Wamang was indicted for murder in the US in June
2004 but eluded security forces and a US Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) team until last
week, though Australian television managed to
interview him three months after the indictment.
Masked men Attacking Westerners
would have been unprecedented for the separatist
Free Papua Organization (OPM, for Organisasi
Papua Merdeka), which has waged a low-level
insurgency against Indonesian rule for decades in
the province that Indonesia annexed in 1969.
According to his lawyer, Wamang told police
interrogators he saw three masked men in military
uniforms firing their weapons at the scene as
well. He also repeated his past claim that he
received his ammunition for the attack from a
high-ranking soldier.
Of course that makes
no sense. Why would the military give bullets to a
militant planning to attack its soldiers? And why
would soldiers fire at employees of a company that
acknowledges paying nearly US$20 million from 1998
to 2004 to the military for protection, as well as
spending $35 million on housing and equipment for
soldiers? It makes sense if this deadly drama is
wayang kulit, where the dalang
(puppet master) below the stage controls the
action of the puppets.
In the weeks before the
shooting, Freeport McMoRan reportedly proposed
cutting its rich payments to military commanders.
Fees for security services, along with business
interests - illegal and otherwise - cover about
70% of the budget for the military, known by the
acronym TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia).
It's been a happy coincidence that for decades
low-level insurgencies simmered in Aceh and Papua,
where Western companies have extensive
resource-extraction facilities needing protection.
Despite the small numbers of armed militants, the
military was never able to quash these fighters.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
Investigative reports link the military and Papuan
opposition forces, particularly in the 1996
rioting that resulted in $3 million worth of
damage at Grasberg and the start of Freeport
McMoRan's direct payments to the military.
From one end of the archipelago to the other, for
various reasons, TNI has repeatedly encouraged,
supplied and supported, sometimes with troops,
militants such as those responsible for the
massacres in East Timor and the sectarian fighting
in Ambon and Central Sulawesi that even conspiracy
skeptics such as International Crisis Group
director Sidney Jones now recognize as key to the
growth of Islamic terrorism in Indonesia (aee Terrorism links in Indonesia point
to military, Asia Times Online, October
8, 2004).
Government security forces are
also believed to smuggle arms to militants. That's
a two-way win: the military makes money on the
sales and on the additional security needed for
protection against the fighters. That makes
Wamang's story of bullets and masked men more
credible.
But that's not the story that
the Indonesian and US governments want for this
wayang kulit tale. On Monday in Jakarta,
General Sutanto, chief of the national police,
laid out the script. Wamang and his colleagues
intended to kill soldiers, but they weren't ready
to fire when a truck full of soldiers passed, so
they unloaded on the next vehicle, mistaking the
teachers for troops. Most importantly, there is no
evidence of TNI involvement in the attack.
Either the police or Wamang and his lawyer
are not telling the truth. Each side has strong
motives for its story, strong enough to lie. A
vigorous criminal prosecution and defense in an
open trial before an impartial judge could
determine which story is true. That's not in the
script, though.
Coming to America -
not US officials have spoken about extraditing
Wamang for trial in the US, but that won't
happen. The United States and Indonesia have no
extradition treaty. If Indonesia had wanted to let
the US have Wamang, or the US had really wanted
him, he'd already be there. FBI agents grabbed
Wamang and 11 other men - ironically, luring them
out of hiding with a promise they'd be brought to
the US - then turned them over to Indonesian
authorities.
There's precedent for
Indonesia allowing the US to have a suspect it
wants, specifically al-Qaeda's Omar al Faruq,
seized by Indonesia and handed over to the US in
June 2002. That rendition stirred radical
sentiment in Indonesia, the country with the
world's largest Muslim population, where the
US-led "war on terrorism" is often portrayed as a
war on Islam. Handing over Wamang would have no
such impact because there's no Islamic link -
Papuans are generally animists or Christians - and
the murders resonate more in the US than
Indonesia. If Indonesian authorities were going to
let Wamang go, they would have simply told the FBI
to drive him to the airport instead of a police
rendezvous.
A trial in Indonesia will
avoid a lot of messiness likely in the US,
including close scrutiny of alleged TNI
involvement and of Freeport McMoRan's shameful
record not only on payoffs but environmental
damage to formerly pristine wilderness and
wetlands. A trial in Indonesia will follow the
script for the conviction of Polycarpus Budihari
Priyanto for the in-flight poisoning of Munir Said
Thalib, a leading activist for military
accountability for atrocities (see Arresting decay in
Indonesia, Asia Times Online, July 7,
2005).
An independent
investigation uncovered documents from Indonesia's
National Intelligence Agency, an arm of the
military, outlining plots to kill Munir, including
poisoning on a commercial flight. It also
substantiated Polycarpus' links to the agency, including
cell-phone calls between Polycarpus and a top
intelligence official in the days before Munir's
murder. Yet the trail so far has stopped at
Polycarpus and a pair of hapless flight
attendants.
People power
Papua-style To ensure there are no
slip-ups, the suspects have already been spirited
to Jakarta, where they will stand trial thousands
of kilometers from Papua. Papuans staged a noisy
demonstration in Jayapura, the provincial capital,
after the suspects were moved. More protests are
likely during the trial - Papuans demonstrated
peacefully outside the US Consular Agency in Bali
on Wednesday - but protests in Jakarta are
unlikely to evolve into some version of Papuan
people power there, the worst fear of Indonesia
and Freeport McMoRan.
Most important, neither side
has any
reason to seek unpleasant truths about the murders.
Indonesia prefers its story, that OPM killed
the teachers by mistake, as part of its separatist
militancy. The administration of US President George
W Bush can cite the arrest and forthcoming
conviction to justify its decision in November to
drop its arms embargo against Indonesia and resume
full military ties (see US 'national security' favors
Indonesian thugs, Asia Times Online,
December 2, 2005).
The last thing the
Bush people want is evidence that TNI, now its
partner for America's national-security interests, had
anything to do with killing Americans. If you
think the Bush administration wouldn't put
American lives above poorly conceived strategic
goals, then you haven't been paying attention to
the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The
US will laud the arrest of Wamang and Indonesia's
cooperation in its catalogue of Indonesia's
progress as a democracy. But the case really shows
how little has changed in Indonesia, particularly
when it comes to TNI, and how much has changed in
Bush's America - for the worse. Now America is
just another leather puppet on a stick in TNI's
wayang kulit.
Gary
LaMoshi has worked as a broadcast producer and
print writer and editor in the US and Asia.
Longtime editor of investor rights advocate
eRaider.com, he's also a contributor to Slate and
Salon.com.
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