WEAPONIZING A FRAUDULENT PROCESS: INDONESIA & WEST PAPUA

Since 1969, the Indonesian Government has used “sovereignty” as an excuse to suppress West Papuans’ demands for self-determination, commit human rights violations, murder hundreds of thousands of indigenous West Papuans, dispossess them from their lands, and thwart international discussions about the issue. 

For Jakarta, the fate of the peoples and landscapes of the western half of the island of New Guinea was sealed by the Act of Free Choice of 1969. 

The Indonesian Government ignores the fraudulent process that led to the Act of Free Choice, and the international community is largely indifferent to the injustices this process produced. 

It was a process characterized by intimidation and a lack of legitimate representation. 

Of the estimated 800,000 indigenous West Papuans at the time, only 1,025 were hand-picked by the Indonesian administration led by the Tentara NasinolIndonesia (TNI) (Indonesian military) and coerced to vote for union with Indonesia. 

This fraudulent process was facilitated by the United Nation and supported by powerful countries like the U.S., Great Britain, France and Australia – countries that today flaunt narratives of moral high ground in discussions about international issues. 

The nature and dynamic of that fraudulent process was captured by The Sydney Morning Heraldin its editorial on July 14, 1969:

“Under the patronage of the United Nations, approved by the United States to the extent of a coincidental Presidential visit, warmly endorsed by the Australian Minister for External Affairs, acquiesced in without a murmur of protest by the Communist and Afro-Asian champions of colonial emancipation, the last stage in the betrayal of the people of West New Guinea is scheduled to begin today. There should be no regrettable hitches; everything has been well planned. The Indonesian Government has assembled its thousand stooges whose farcical “consultations” will decide the political future of their 800,000 disenfranchised countrymen; they have been told that only one decision – union with Indonesia – will be tolerated and that any other will be regarded as treason.”

The Indonesian Government has since used the Act of Free Choice and the indifference of the international community as a “weapon” against dissent and to solidify its control of West Papua, excuse its human rights atrocities, and suffocate international discussions. 

That is what I refer to here as the weaponization of a fraudulent process.

Jakarta dismisses indigenous West Papuans’ demands for self-determination and refers to them as a “separatist movement,” deploying language which implies that West Papua has always been a part of Indonesia and the union is natural. 

However, a discursive reading of history will reveal a different and troubling story; one wrapped in Indonesia’s obsession to colonize, the influence of Cold War geo-politics, and the indifference of the international community.   

The United Nations (UN), which was supposed to uphold the right to self-determination as provided for by the UN Charter, buckled under pressure from countries like the U.S. 

West Papua was therefore “pawned” to protect the Cold War interests of powerful western countries.

In order to understand West Papua’s present situation and have constructive conversations about whether or not the international community (including Pacific Islands countries like Solomon Islands) should get involved and how, it is vital to have some knowledge of its history, especially in the last 170 years.

West Papua’s story became entangled with that of Indonesia from the mid-1800s onward because of their shared colonial histories. 

The Netherlands colonized Indonesia in 1800 (becoming the Dutch East Indies) and the western half of the island of New Guinea in 1848 (becoming Dutch New Guinea). 

Indonesia became independent in 1949 under President Sukarno (Kusno Sosrodihardjo), who was a military and political leader and head of the Partai NasionalIndonesia (PNI) (National Party of Indonesia). 

Sukarno was committed to creating a unitary nation-state out of the 17,000 plus islands, and insisted on taking over West Papua as the spoils of the “independence war” against the Netherlands. 

However, the Dutch colonial administration had a different plan for West Papua. They wanted to prepare it for independence as a separate nation-state. 

As part of that preparation, from the 1950s indigenous West Papuans begun to build political and social affinities with Oceania, partly because of their racial kinship with Melanesians and also to construct an identity different from Indonesia.

The late Ron Rocombe notes, for example, that, “until Indonesia took over, West Papuans took part in the South Pacific Commission and its training courses and conferences, West Papua Churches participated in the Pacific church conferences, and West Papuans studied at the Central Medical School and the Pacific Theological College in Fiji, and at other PNG and regional institutions. When Indonesia took over West Papua in 1963, all West Papuan participation in regional activities was stopped.”

But Indonesia, under Sukarno (1945–1967) and later Suharto (1967–1998), insisted on taking over West Papua, triggering a dispute between Indonesia and the Netherlands. 

That was when the U.S., under President John F. Kennedy, stepped in and pressured the Netherlands to abandon its plans for West Papuan independence and handover the territory to Indonesia. 

 Washington DC was concerned that a disgruntled Indonesian state could turn to communism, which by then was spreading through Southeast Asia. 

West Papuans’ right to self-determination was therefore sacrificed in exchange for the geopolitical and geostrategic Cold War interests of the U.S. and it western allies.

On 15 August 1962, the New York Agreement, facilitated the U.S. and sanctioned by the UN, was signed between Indonesia and the Netherlands. 

Indigenous West Papuans were not a party to the agreement and protested against their inclusion with Indonesia.

This New Yok Agreement provided for the Netherlands to “transfer administration of the territory to a United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) established by and under the jurisdiction of the Secretary-General upon the arrival of the United Nations Administrator appointed in accordance with article IV. The UNTEA will in turn transfer the administration to Indonesia in accordance with article XII.”

The administrative transfer from the UNTEA to Indonesian occurred in May 1963. But the official transfer of the sovereignty of West Papua to Indonesia occurred following the Act of Free Choice, which occurred from July to August 1969. 

It was in resistance to the transfer of West Papua to Indonesia that the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM)(Free Papua Movement) was established in 1965, and became the most iconic pro-independence organization. 

Suharto’s rule (1967–1998) provided Indonesia with much-needed political stability and sustained economic growth. 

But it was administered with authoritarianism and repression, especially toward those – including East Timor, Ache and West Papua – who demanded independence and threatened to secede from the Indonesian union. 

Suharto’s regime deployed the TNI, which took the leading role in the political, security and economic affairs ofWest Papua, and administered with repression and brutality.

Furthermore, the Indonesian government had a policy called transmigration (transmigrasi), in which people from crowded islands such as Java were resettled in West Papua. 

This policy aimed to alleviate the pressure of population density in the other Indonesian islands, while at the same time assimilate the indigenous West Papuans with the goal of forging a single Indonesian identity. 

According to a former Indonesian Minister for Transmigration, the goal is "to integrate all the ethnic groups into one nation . . . the different ethnic groups will in the long run disappear because of integration . . . and there will be one kind of man." 

Transmigration also included the compulsory alienation of land from indigenous West Papuans to resettle the migrants. 

Although President Joko Widodo stopped transmigration in 2015, the impacts are extensive and will be long-lasting. 

Also central to the West Papua story is the extraction of natural resources to finance the Indonesian economy. 

Although West Papua’s population makes up for about 1 per cent of the population of Indonesia, it makes up over 22 per cent of the country’s total land area. 

It has fertile land for potential large-scale agricultural developments as well as resources such as timber, minerals and energy resources (gas and oil). 

The mining industry is vital. The biggest operation is the Grasberg mine, the largest gold and copper mine in the world. It is owned by Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold Inc., a U.S. company with equity shares from other companies. 

In July 2018, Rio Tinto sold its share in the Grasberg mine to PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminum, an Indonesian state-owned enterprise, for US$3.5 bn.

West Papua is therefore vital to the Indonesian state, which explains why Jakarta is nervous whenever the issues of human rights and self-determination are raised in the international arena.

The above is meant to provide a historical context – albeit an abbreviated version –for the West Papua issue. 

Underlying this is the fact that the Indonesian Government has used a fraudulent process as a weapon against self-determination and to solidify its control of West Papua, excuse its human rights atrocities, and smother international discussions. 

In my next piece (next week), I will discuss how this history is relevant to ongoing discussions about how the international community, including Pacific Island countries like Solomon Islands, should address the West Papua issue. 

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