Is Indonesia Encouraging Genocide in Papua?

The Number One question I’ve been asked since I got back from Papua – with the exception of ‘wadidyagetme?’ – goes something like this.
“Is the Indonesian government trying to wipe out the Papuans?”
It’s an important question, not nearly as ridiculous as it might sound to someone outside the community of Indonesia-watchers. I mean, what government in the modern era would sanction the killing of two million of their own citizens? Or maybe I’m the one being naïve, now.
The background to the question is Indonesia’s four decade-long occupation of Papua (formerly known as Irian Jaya), the western end of the island known as Papua-New Guinea. During that time, an estimated one million land-hungry settlers from across Indonesia have immigrated to Papua, boosting the overall population to roughly three million.
With them have come the loggers and miners and fishermen who are slowly nibbling away at the island’s massive resource base, often times at the expense of indigenous communities.
Seems like everything to do with the place is kinda foggy: too big, too diverse, too far flung (and often primitive) is the population to have a real clear view of what the specific impact of these incursions are. But, one doesn’t need a penis gourd to understand that local folks are about as happy with the arrangement now as you average displaced, quasi-alcoholic Plains Cree might have been 120 years ago with Whitey’s on-going westward expansion.
There’s plenty conclusive evidence of human rights violations on a grant scale in Papua, though I’m loath to use the HR word because it really conceals so much. Police in Jakarta whinge about their human rights being violated because they have to buy paper for their typewriters (with money they’ve extorted from motorists, drug dealers and anyone without the right ID papers).
Lets describe it as it is. The Indonesian army uses the Papuans for target practice. A Swiss friend of mine jailed in Jayapura for visa violations watched Brimob (a poorly trained, poorly equipped “elite” paramilitary police force that operates in Indonesia’s hotspots) goons beat several Papuan university students to death in front of him in the wake of a street clash there a couple of years ago. Sex crimes on a vast scale, extortion, random detention and beatings, extra-judicial killings: the behavior of Indonesia’s security forces has been as brutal as one might expect.
While the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) are used to operating with utter impunity even in the post-east Timor era, they’ve had their you-know-what’s caught in a door jam twice in the past three years.
The Nov. 2001 murder of independence leader Theys Eluay by members of Kopassus (several junior Special Forces officers received sentences of under three years for strangling the Don King look-alike in the front seat of his own car, after attending a mess dinner with senior TNI officers) and the ambush/executions of three teachers in Aug 2002 (two of whom were American) by persons unknown (read: security forces) returning from a picnic near the massive Freeport mine, forced the slumbering Yanks to appear to act.
The largest gold mine on the planet, Freeport has been paying millions annually in “protection” monies to the TNI (Indonesian Armed Forces). It’s generally felt the murders were designed to send a message to the mine’s Louisiana owners to keep the cash pipeline open.
The FBI conducted a couple of investigations into the latter incident and the fact the results have yet to been publicly released suggests either they didn’t get the kind of access they were promised, or have very strong suspicions that the army was involved but insufficient evidence to make a formal accusation. Put it another way: if they felt they could exonerate the Indonesians, they would. Partners in terror and all that, harrumph harrumph.
Papua has a wee insurgency of its own but the Free Papua Movement is fractured, poorly armed and largely ineffective, hidden away in the dense bush of the mountainous interior. Unlike the Free Aceh Movement at the other end of the archipelago, there’s no apparent coordination between different rebel units, at least some of which appear to be nothing more than gangs of kidnappers and ransom-takers, no shared vision and little in the way of experienced battlefield leadership.
None of which bothers the powers that be too much because it’s important for the army that can’t shoot straight to get out there and beat the bushes, get some jungle training for their boys so they’ll be sufficiently pumped up to effectively keep a close eye on the generals’ highly profitable illegal logging, mining and fishing operations (see ‘Migrants’, above).
But there’s something quite evil going on in Papua. While there, we heard real horror stories about what’s going on in the backcountry. Of people being buried alive by their family’s because they were believed infected by “evil spirits”, of youngsters withering away and dying despite proper drug treatments, of graveyards where the graves of infants wait half competed for mother and father arrive. There’s something sinister happening there, well away from the eyes of world.
On the streets of the main towns it is easy to see the effects of prolonged exposure to foreign influences: alcoholism, disease, despair. Churches. It’s like being back on the Rez in British Columbia except instead of North American aboriginals killing themselves, you’ve got black-skinned, kinky-haired Melanesians.
Perhaps the most obvious of the great many problems facing indigenous Papuans – and of course the migrant population as well – will be the spread of HIV/AIDS. It’s generally accepted – though who really knows for sure – that the virus arrived with Thai tuna fishing fleets in the deep harbor at Merauke in the early 90s, where it incubated among prostitutes who will cycle through various towns, ports and logging camps over the course of a year or two – thanks again to the TNI. Infection levels in certain parts of Papuan society are comparable to sub-Saharan Africa, and like the bad old days of long-distant truckers running from the jungles of Uganda into brothels of Kampala and onwards, the mode of transmission is almost exclusively by heterosexual sex. Elsewhere in Indonesia IV drug use and dirty needles are the primary routes. Though most figures should be taken with a high amount of skepticism (read: under-reporting is the order if one considered official Indonesian figures) sex workers in Merauke and Sorong report infection levels of 27 and 17 per cent respectively.
No one has the science to support it and the government has no interest in letting foreign researchers in to do the field work (the army chief of staff early this year said foreign and domestic non-governmental organizations were waging a covert war against Indonesia under the orders of undisclosed foreign governments) but all the anecdotal evidence suggests that the virus has made the leap from these fairly small sub-groups into the general population where it will spread like wildfire. The fingers hovering above the panic buttons belong the African mafia, those aidies and journalists now based in Indonesia who cut their teeth on Africa’s AIDS crisis.
While there’s no single ‘template’ to accurately describe “Papuan” sexual practices, it can be said that folks generally start having sex at the early onset of puberty, that they have numerous sexual partners, and that while men and women do bond for life, that does not mean they are sexually exclusive to their mates. Sorta like in Canada. Except that in those areas where this is the tradition, Papuans acknowledge it. While we go to marriage counselors. And use condoms, something they do not.
A lady I know who did the most recent and in-depth study of Papuan sexuality is deeply worried that the virus will tear through communities, rapidly killing a population that already loses many people to the kinds of opportunistic illnesses that ensure HIV sufferers may never actually be diagnosed as such. These diseases include TB, malaria, typhoid, dengue and other lesser tropicals that won’t kill a healthy, well fed adult male, but account for large numbers of untimely Papuan dead. In particular, upper respiratory tract infections that every clinician I met said was the number one killer.
Meanwhile, the government does nothing. Or almost nothing.
Which brings us back to the question of the day. Is Jakarta waging a genocidal campaign against ethnic Papuans?
People whispered this in my ear on many occasions. It is market currency in Wamena and Jayapura and Sorong and elsewhere. Something folks discuss behind closed doors.
Is there a DELIBERATE offensive?
Well, Indonesia has proven itself capable of some quite extraordinary atrocities: witness 800,000 “communists” murdered in a two year period 40 years ago; the invasion of East Timor in 1975 and the subsequent campaign that cost the lives of perhaps one in four of the former colony’s citizens. These are well documented but there have been plenty of other lesser known cleansings over the years.
I’m not sure that there’s some cabal linking Istana Merdeka, the presidential palace, TNI headquarters, and the lofty executive suites of petroleum towers on Jl. Sudirman that’s saying: “Let’s have AIDS thin out the population on the ground there in Papua and then in 15 years we put a loyal migrant population to work logging and mining our last resource base, without having to deal with uppity locals armed with M-16s, those traitorous NGOs and aid groups, or a press with fangs.”
It all seems too diabolical.
But then, if you went to Papua with the idea in your mind that there might in fact be such a conspiracy, and you traveled around a bit and talked to heaps of people in the health care field or social service providers and teachers, or church and mosque leaders, and you picked the brains of those Indonesians who are truly committed to helping the Papuans save themselves. If you did those things and you came in with your eyes looking in a certain direction, I’m pretty sure you’d find all the evidence you need to support the theory, without ever finding the document, the smoking gun.
Of that, I’m absolutely certain.