Racism and repression in West Papua

Mekong Review

Andreas Harsono

If you visit Indonesia’s National Library—home to 7.7 million physical books—and do a search with the keywords “West Papua”, “Irian Jaya” or even simply “Papua”, you’ll find a rather modest number of results in Dutch, English and Indonesian: just 1,192 titles. The thin collection reflects not only how complicated it is to unpack and analyse the West Papua conundrum but also how successful the Indonesian government has been at restricting independent research on environmental degradation, human rights abuses and the suffering of Indigenous Papuans.

Since the late 1960s, the Indonesian government has severely restricted foreign journalists and international rights monitors from visiting the highly militarised area, as Pieter Drooglever chronicles in his book, An Act of Free Choice: Decolonisation and the Right to Self-Determination in West Papua, available in the National Library. In 1999, the Dutch parliament requested that the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague produce a comprehensive review of the decolonisation of West Papua, hoping that the fall of Suharto, who’d been president for three decades, would open up dialogue between Indonesia and West Papua.

Drooglever, a historian, was appointed to lead the study. He examined archives in the Netherlands, the United States, the United Nations and Australia, but wasn’t given access to Indonesia’s National Archives in Jakarta. He also interviewed Papuans and Indonesians who’d been involved in the transitional period in the 1960s. He published his 807-page book in Dutch twenty-seven years later, in 2005. An English translation was published in 2009 and the Indonesian translation appeared in 2010. Drooglever hoped his book would help Indonesians seek a peaceful solution in West Papua, as had happened in Timor-Leste in 1999 with a United Nations–organised referendum, and in Aceh in 2004, with an agreement signed in Helsinki granting the territory special autonomy. His wish has not yet come to pass.

In An Act of Free Choice, Drooglever writes that the Dutch Kingdom had, in the 1950s, tried to establish a functional administration in “Dutch New Guinea” with schools, hospitals, security, roads and other facilities. They were learning from their failures in the Netherlands Indies, which declared independence in 1945, fought against returning Dutch forces and became the sovereign Republic of Indonesia in 1949. The Dutch Kingdom set up an administration in New Guinea with two highly educated Dutch scholars holding top executive posts. Although some of the Papuan elite initially welcomed the idea of integration with Indonesia, they changed their minds between the 1950s and 1960s as they watched the neighbouring country transform from a progressive new republic to an aggressive military-dominated state. Preparations began, with support from the Dutch, for West Papua to eventually become a self-governing administration.

Indonesia invaded West Papua in 1962; the Dutch were pressured by the United States into negotiating and signing the New York Agreement a year later. This agreement provided for a plebiscite, supervised by the United Nations, that would let Papuans decide if they wanted to join Indonesia. But, as Drooglever describes in a chapter entitled ‘Under Jakarta’s Thumb’, the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority was continually manipulated, pressured and fooled. Lambertus Nicodemus Palar, then the Indonesian representative to the United Nations, openly admitted that Subandrio, the Indonesian foreign minister, didn’t want a plebiscite. Instead, the Indonesian authorities organised a referendum known as the Act of Free Choice, in which about 1,000 government-selected delegates voted for a merger with Indonesia. Most Papuans say they were denied their right to choose and continue to demand a separate nation. Although the independence movement is largely peaceful, there are some long-standing armed groups. Today, West Papua remains Indonesia’s most underdeveloped and poverty-stricken province and human rights abuses are rife.

Another book available in the National Library is the 2019 Updating Papua Road Map, a follow-up to a 2009 book published by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia, or LIPI). The volume’s authors criticise the Indonesian government’s security approach in West Papua, urging them to hold a dialogue with West Papuan groups instead. Muridan Widjojo, the lead researcher, notes: “These dialogues do not kill anyone, and if failed, we could always try again.”

Contributors to Updating Papua Road Map describe four main problems in West Papua, starting with the marginalisation of Indigenous Papuans. Settlers from Indonesia—particularly from the densely populated Java—have made indigenous people a minority in their own lands. Development programmes have not only failed to meet Papuans’ basic needs in terms of education, health and economic welfare, but have also caused environmental destruction. Furthermore, the Indonesian authorities have turned a blind eye to state violence against Papuans, failing to punish perpetrators or restore the rights of victims. There’s now a deep mistrust, among Papuans, of the Indonesian authorities.

The authors of Updating Papua Road Map managed to persuade the Indonesian government to agree to a non-governmental Papua Peace Dialogue involving LIPI researchers and some Papuan civil society leaders. The process started in 2010 and was led by Widjojo and Neles Tebay, a Papuan intellectual and Catholic priest; they travelled from one regency to another throughout West Papua. This effort culminated in a public conference in July 2011, where a senior Indonesian security minister delivered a keynote speech welcoming the idea of dialogue. Hundreds of Papuan leaders from different tribes—men and women, young and old—participated in the week-long event. The conference ended with the election of five Papuan leaders, all living in exile, to lead the dialogue with Indonesia. The five openly advocated independence from Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, this upset Indonesian officials, especially after the prominence that these five individuals gained from the conference contributed to the setting up of the Vanuatu-based United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua in 2014.

You won’t find the late Filep Karma’s book, Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua (As If We’re Half Animal: Indonesian Racism in the Land of Papua) in the National Library. Karma was perhaps West Papua’s most well-known political prisoner. He was first arrested in July 1998 and jailed for nearly two years for leading a protest on Biak Island at which Indonesian security forces gunned down more than 150 Papuans. He was later released after receiving presidential amnesty. In 2004, he led another peaceful protest in Jayapura and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for treason. He was released in November 2015 and drowned while on a diving trip in November 2022.

In his book, Karma recalls how Papuan businesses thrived in Jayapura prior to integration with Indonesia. Jayapura—then already the largest city in West Papua—had more than twenty movie theatres. “Jayapura was like Hong Kong,” Siegfried Zöllner, a German missionary, wrote in his memoir about his first impression of the city in 1961.

Jayapura was looted by invading Indonesian soldiers upon their arrival in 1962; Karma describes finding steel cupboards, still bearing Jayapura hospital stamps, in a Surabaya hospital in East Java years later. And hardware wasn’t the only thing West Papua lost. Karma points out that, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Indonesian military and police imprisoned members of the Papuan elite, accusing them of committing treason by being “separatists” and taking over their businesses and lands. He argues that entrenched racism is the underlying problem: Papuans, with their darker skin and curly hair, look different. Indonesians often mock Papuans, calling them “monkeys” to imply that they’re lagging behind in evolution or describing Papuans as lazy, primitive or foul-smelling.

Even West Papua’s flora and fauna have been marginalised and displaced. Sophie Chao’s book, In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, focuses primarily on oil palms, only recently introduced into West Papua. Many ethnic Marind, the indigenous tribe in Merauke in West Papua’s south, consider the crop “alien and invasive”. Apart from land grabs and human rights abuses around oil palm plantations, Chao finds that the “foreign plant” is destroying native animals and their local habitats.

In Merauke, where Chao did her anthropological research, Papuans make up less than 40 per cent of the population. She writes that “mortality rates are high, life expectancies are 35 years for men and 38 for women, and HIV infection rates are the second highest in Indonesia”. She also argues that the introduction of oil palms has significantly increased armed conflict in West Papua. Apart from importing this non-native plant, the Indonesian government has also encouraged large-scale transmigration since the 1970s, subsidising settlers and triggering conflict between communities. Many Papuans have armed themselves with bows and arrows to defend their land. Militant groups have also acquired firearms, mostly from the black market, with supplies coming from Indonesian security officers. While some might be profiting handsomely from oil palm plantations, the introduction of this industry has perpetuated West Papua’s long-standing problems.

The West Papua conundrum is not just a local question; it’s also one of international law. In Morning Star Rising: The Politics of Decolonization in West Papua, Camellia Webb-Gannon forcefully questions the international rationale to integrate West Papua with Indonesia in 1969. Uti possidetis juris  is a principle in international law which says that newly formed sovereign states should retain the internal borders they had as a colony prior to independence. In this case, the principle was taken to mean that the Netherlands Indies, including West Papua, would become Indonesia. Yet this question is nowhere near settled.

Webb-Gannon cites the arguments of Akihisa Matsuno, an international relations scholar who challenged the legitimacy of uti possidetis juris by pointing to the January 2011 referendum that foregrounded South Sudan becoming an independent state. There were significant ethnic, linguistic, religious and social differences between North and South Sudan, and the British ruled them as separate colonial entities. Therefore, Sudan’s history suggests that a lack of integration, whether natural or historical, between areas ruled by the same colonial power can be used to justify the establishment of separate states. Colonial boundaries, like all other man-made constructs, aren’t as absolute as they are sometimes made out to be.

The Sudan experience could be particularly instructive in the case of West Papua. As Drooglever underlines in his writing, West Papua had a different history of occupation from the rest of Indonesia. The Dutch occupation of West Papua was shorter and the entire island was liberated by the US military in 1944. There are religious differences too: unlike much of the rest of Indonesia, where Islam is the dominant religion, Christianity has more influence in West Papua.

Most of the Papuans in Webb-Gannon’s book are part of the diaspora. Andy Ajamiseba, based in Vanuatu and a member of the Black Brothers, a Papuan rock band, talks about how Papuans see themselves: “The issue here is that identification of ourselves, our identity is—we are not Indonesian. Maybe when we become independent, the situation may be [that] our economy is not as good as [it was] under Indonesia, we have to crawl out, but we want to be ourselves. I am a Papuan. In all due respect to the Indonesians… we are two different people: we are not Indonesians; they are not Papuans.”

Benny Wenda, a leader of the United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua who is currently living in Oxford, England, denies that the freedom Papuans seek is primarily metaphysical or spiritual. Referring to the Indonesian struggle for merdeka (independence) against Dutch colonisers, he says: “If [Indonesians just] wanted freedom spiritually, why did they fight against the Dutch?”

Morning Star Rising doesn’t pretend that all Papuans are united in goals and tactics. A major split is frequently traced to a 1976 feud within the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, or OPM) in the jungles of Keerom, near the border with Papua New Guinea. Conflict—involving a misunderstanding about foreign relations and also ethnicity—erupted between Jacob Prai, the scholar of the group and a native Keerom, and Seth Rumkorem, the movement’s military man and an ethnic Biak. Both men later sought refuge in Europe. The movement suffered a mild setback with Rumkorem living in the Netherlands and Prai in Sweden.

Webb-Gannon also describes the practice of pemekaran, the rapid creation of new administrative and budgetary units in West Papua by the Indonesian government, which has caused disunity in the Papuan community. In June 2022, for instance, the Indonesian parliament divided West Papua, previously governed as two provinces, into six administrative areas. These moves are widely viewed by many Papuans as a ‘divide and rule’ tactic in which a small minority of Papuans are given limited control over divided regions.

Despite this, West Papuan politics revolves around, and can achieve, periodic strategic consensus, including with the United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua, an umbrella organisation for some of the pro-independence factions. Webb-Gannon writes: “Working toward consensus through debate and disagreement as West Papuans do is democratic; it is also a key characteristic of Melanesian political style, which reflects Melanesia’s traditionally acephalous [leaderless] social structures.”

In his book’s final paragraph, Drooglever writes: “The possibilities for a better future for the inhabitants of western New Guinea can also be found in Indonesia’s interest in the area, for Indonesia not only has a tradition of military and authoritarian rule, but also of cultured interaction and efforts to provide good government. We can only hope that the latter two aspects gain the upper hand.”

The National Library may not contain a lot on West Papua, but books like the five reviewed here describe its tormented history. They reveal the trickery and obfuscation by Indonesian leaders to stave off international criticism for its abuses while capturing this naturally rich territory. Papuans have also learned from the failures of the older generations; they continue to defend their rights and resist oppressive Indonesian rule.

Andreas Harsono works for Human Rights Watch. He has covered West Papua since the 1996 kidnapping of international biologists in the Central Highlands.