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INFO PAPUA : West Papua News

Papua is emerging as a serious international problem for the Indonesian administration
By The Economist
Aug 10, 2010, 03:13

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SLOWLY but surely, Papua is emerging as a serious international problem
for the otherwise well-liked Indonesian administration of Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono. The latest report on the region by the International Crisis
Group (ICG), a think-tank, shows how the government’s own missteps are
escalating tensions, which, in turn, will draw increasing foreign
attention. The specific issue the report focuses on is the fate of “SK14”
, a decision taken last November by the Papuan People’s Council, or
Majelis Rakyat Papua (MRP). This recommended that elections for some
senior local-government posts be reserved for indigenous Papuan
candidates—ie, migrants from Java, the most populous island, and other
parts of Indonesia would be excluded.

This highlighted the Papuans' two big grievances. The first was that the
“special autonomy” they were promised in 2001 has not been honoured. The
newly democratic government in Jakarta had been eager to put an end to
decades of low-level insurgency when they offered it. But the autonomy
granted seems insubstantial, especially since the central government split
the region into two, creating a new province of West Papua in 2003. The
second was that migration from elsewhere in Indonesia was swamping local
culture and making a mockery of the idea of autonomy in the first place.

The response of the central government was dismissive. The MRP, it pointed
out, was supposed to look after cultural matters, not dabble in high
politics. And in any event the law it proposed was discriminatory.

This refusal to recognise that the MRP was voicing a widespread
feeling—and the contemptuous way in which its recommendation was brushed
aside—had the predictable effect, radicalising local opinion. It led to
louder demands that special autonomy be “handed back”, to pave the way for
an internationally-mediated dialogue and a referendum on full
independence.

Indonesia, which fought long and hard to avoid that outcome on
impoverished, inhospitable and tiny East Timor, is not going to permit it
for the resource-rich and huge chunk of Papua it controls, whatever local
opinion wants, and whatever the legality of its rule there.

The sad thing is that Indonesia seems to be repeating many of the same
mistakes it made in East Timor. Its forces have been guilty of terrible
human-rights abuses (see for example, this report by Human Rights Watch).
It has attempted to close the region off from scrutiny by the foreign
media (though some reporters sneak in). Its migrants have too often been
contemptuous of indigenous inhabitants (ICG quotes a local police officer
who denies that Papuans are lazy or stupid, insisting that, rather, “It's
just that they're still in the Stone Age.”)

Above all, as the ICG points out, Indonesia has refused to recognise that
there is a political problem that cannot be solved either by immigration
or the central government's exchequer. This new report may help. An
editorial in the Jakarta Post, an English-language newspaper, seemed to
get its point. But the internationally minded liberals at the Post are a
softer touch than the nationalists whose hackles rise at any hint of
further archipelagic dismemberment.

Over East Timor, a former foreign minister famously put his foot in it by
calling the problem a mere “pebble in my shoe”. There is an echo of that
in the ICG’s accurate description of the current status of Papua, as
viewed from Jakarta: “a distant, if chronic, problem of no urgency
whatsoever”.

© Copyright by w@tchPAPUA

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