How many people have to die in West Papua before Australians take notice and act? After all, West Papua is our closest neighbour, lying less than 200 kilometres from Australian territory. Nevertheless, pick up any newspaper here and you're extremely unlikely to read about the bodies that are now turning up in rivers and fields there.
Is it because it's old news? After all, deaths started taking place in West Papua when the Indonesians replaced the Dutch back in 1963. Since then, the native Melanesian population has resisted their new Asian colonisers, more in spirit than with arms. To date, 100,000 West Papuans have been killed by Indonesian armed forces that do not want to let go of the territory.
This may be an old story for the press, but I don't remember reading about it when it was new news.
It could be that there have to be a lot of bodies reportable in a single incident before the issue starts stirring souls. How many? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? Then again, when an Indonesian and two US citizens were shot dead near US mining giant Freeport's operations in August 2002, pages of print were devoted to the issue for a full week afterwards.
So maybe it's because the Papuans have black Melanesian skin and are somehow not as worthy of protection as Western whites. Take the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2002: images that news watchers witness weekly. Contrast this with Papua New Guinea's nine-year blockade of Bougainville island during the 1980s and 90s -- a blockade that kept away food, medical supplies, fuel and humanitarian assistance from the Bougainvilleans, which resulted in (in both senses) untold death.
With a few notable exceptions, reports in the Australian press were sparse; even though Bougainville was on Australia's doorstep; even though there was real drama -- bloodshed ... guns ... loss of life; and even though there was evidence of Australian taxpayers' money being used to support the blockade. Activists still bemoan it. 'How could this not be newsworthy in Australia?' they ask.
Perhaps it's because reporters (journalists, photographers and investigators) now sitting in Australia don't have sufficient incentive and inclination to phone into West Papua and cultivate the contacts that they need for their reports. The telecommunications lines are often down, and phones are often answered by people speaking Indonesian, making communication difficult for those who speak only English. Long-term trusting relationships with political West Papuans -- the type of relationships that need to be built for reliable reporting -- take time to cultivate: time taken out of already stretched work schedules that will not reward reporters with immediate stories.
For editors, articles about the struggle by West Papuans for independence will be likely to irritate the Indonesian government: an unacceptable risk if it restricts their media outlet from reporting other stories inside Indonesia in the future. Unless the issues concerning West Papua -- and the need to report them -- are discussed and given priority in newspapers and on radio and TV, quick turn-around stories that are easily accessed will continue to be preferred.
All the President's men
Proximity also plays an important role in explaining this black hole in reporting. West Papua, like Bougainville, is a place that reporters find difficult to access. There were people with digi-cams filming as the World Trade Center collapsed. That wasn't the case in Bougainville. It isn't the case now in West Papua. And, as a consequence of recent events, the little outside scrutiny that's presently given to the country is likely to diminish even further.
On 8 June 2000, top-ranking Indonesian officials from key military and police intelligence agencies and government departments agreed on a strategy to undermine and destroy all pro-independence activities in West Papua. It included diplomatic activity aimed at winning the support of the international community in favour of Indonesia's continued sovereignty over Papua. Minimising the opportunity for the international community to see what is happening in West Papua is central to this policy.
That is why it is likely to become much more difficult to report within that territory. Getting official permission to report in Indonesia has for some time been a lengthy, frustrating and (sometimes) unsuccessful process. Countless news-seekers have gone into places like West Papua on a tourist visa, expecting to be deported if the breach of visa is discovered while they work. The arrest and trial of Lesley McCulloch (whose illuminating writings about the connection between the Indonesian military and transnational corporations has often been used by journalists) is a signal to all reporters of a more strident attitude: 'If you come to Indonesia on a tourist visa and work, expect to spend a long time in jail'.
Lesley was arrested in Aceh because she was on a tourist visa, after interviewing local people there as part of her ongoing academic research. At the time of writing, Lesley has been locked up for over four months, and -- following her recent conviction and five month sentence -- is now set to spend until February 2003 in the luxury of a downtown Indonesian jail. Sobering stuff.
The narrowing of reporting opportunity within West Papua comes at the same time that deaths and human-rights abuses are escalating. Official endorsements given to the military to wipe out separatist sentiment have slowly but surely gathered in strength over the last twelve months.
In December 2001 President Megawati Sukarnoputri invited her country's military to 'execute your assignments and responsibilities to the best of your ability without experiencing anxiety about violating human rights'. The sub-text is clear: keep the republic together, kill if you must.
In July 2002 came the formal announcement of what has informally been happening in West Papua for some time: a crack-down on those supporting self-determination -- a crackdown aimed at people using words, not guns, to advocate succession from Indonesia.
A leak from TNI military personnel to the Papua Intelligence Service in Jayapura on 21 September 2002 (received and translated by an ex-patriot West Papuan in Melbourne) contained a practical plan about how this crackdown was to be achieved. The leak said that President Megawati had had a secret meeting with top-ranking ministers and military commanders in which approval was given to finance the kidnapping and assassination of 1,200 pro-independence leaders, activists and ex-political prisoners. On 1 October 2002, four were killed in Nabire, two in Biak, two in Jayapura, and four in Wamena.
According to the Papua Intelligence Service the victims were lassoed from dark, shaded cars, with special iron traps that Papuans use to catch pigs and deer in the jungle. The victims' heads were cut off in the process, their eyes gouged out, and their genitals cut off. Time will tell whether this report was of an isolated incident designed to create fear amongst West Papuans (which it has undoubtedly done) or the start of a systematic slaughter of pro-independence supporters which was foreshadowed by Papuan intelligence.
For the Indonesian military in West Papua the message is now loud and clear: kill whom you want, when you want. Nowhere has this message been more clearly articulated than in the assassination of independence leader Theys Eluay in November 2001. The military have hijacked the investigation into Eluay's death, so there has been no attention paid to who masterminded it. Consequently, Papuan people are understandably cynical about whether the seven officers from the Indonesian army's elite unit, Kopassus, who have been charged with his death and are about to be tried, will -- despite clear police evidence of Kopassus involvement -- ever be convicted by the military tribunal before which they are now appearing. After all, Indonesia has a poor record of bringing its military to account for the massacre of separatists. The August 2002 acquittals of six military officers and police officers charged with backing the militias that killed an estimated 1,000 East Timorese during the 1999 independence vote shows that, on this score, Indonesia remains defiant.
Supporting the terror networks
The 'war on terror' is full of inconsistencies, and West Papua provides a showcase for them. At its heart, the 'war on terror' is supposed to be about protecting people from terrorists. Yet the Indonesian military terrorise the people of West Papua with impunity. And the 'war on terror' is supposed to combat fanatical fundamentalist Islamic groups. Yet one such group -- the Laskar Jihad -- has been strutting around the West Papuan countryside unimpeded for months now, from Jayapura in the east to Sorong in the west.
Last September I received two emails from Biak, a northern island off West Papua, from a travel tour operator. One said:
Out riding our bikes this morning we stopped to chat with a local who, before we had even told him our names, was begging us to help the Papuans. He was describing how sometimes he cannot go to his fields because of the fear of the Jihad that are in the area training.
Another said that people have been disappearing, their bodies disposed of at night. Laskar Jihad has already wrought havoc in other parts of Indonesia. Intelligence puts presence in the territory at between 3,000 and 8,000 members.
Certainly, the Indonesian police and military in West Papua seem to be turning a blind eye to all of this. The fear is that the military may be providing more active support. An Australian activist recently spent a week with a person who had both infiltrated Laskar Jihad in West Papua and trained with them under the protection of the Indonesian military. In an interview in February 2002, a local Makassar Commander of Laskar Jihad admitted that they are present in West Papua to fight the separatist movement. According to one of West Papua's most prominent human rights advocates, John Rumbiak:
As the [overwhelming] majority of Papuans are Christians, the independence sentiments are viewed as a Christian separatist movement worth crushing.
Indeed, the emergence of the Laskar Jihad in West Papua is the 'war on terror' at its most hypocritical. The Bush administration -- anxious to court the country with the world's largest Muslim population -- has been keen to resume its ties with the Indonesian military (which were suspended by Congress after the 1999 military-backed militia massacres in East Timor).
A fact sheet put out by the US State Department in September 2002 details its planned expenditure in Indonesia: over $50 million will be given over a three-year period, the bulk for military and police training. This comes at the very time when the Indonesian military is suspected by commentators inside West Papua of assisting the Laskar Jihad. As a consequence, if this plan proceeds, US funding is likely to help rather than hinder the very terrorist organisations it is supposed to wipe out: the 'war on terror' will place more, rather than fewer, innocent lives at risk.
In response, the Papua Presidium Council, an over-arching body that has tried to draw together all voices for independence within the territory, has called for West Papua to become a zone of peace. Above all, the Council wants to sit down and negotiate with the Indonesians through mediated discussion rather than at the point of guns. Ironically, these peace advocates -- who have done a remarkable job to date in stopping West Papuans from picking up arms despite tremendous provocation -- are themselves on the lists of separatists to be suppressed.
The shadows of Bali
Since the Bali bombings we want to believe that we are investing in the good guys. We want to support the Indonesian military in bravely going forth and finding 'the bastards' who blew away so many young Australian lives. According to Defence Department reports and Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Australia has provided training to seventy-two members of the Indonesian military and sent eleven shipments of defence-related goods to Indonesia during 2000-01. There is now a push to increase this support. If we are to provide military support and training to Indonesia, we also need to send a clear message to the Indonesian military that its own terrorism will neither be tolerated nor supported.
In this context, journalists, photographers and researchers have a vital role to play. If they continue to acquiesce in the failure to include stories about West Papua in their work schedules, planning meetings and run-downs, then they will effectively lend support to Indonesia's efforts to close the territory off from outside scrutiny. But if they break the current cone of silence that tends to envelop the territory, their pictures, stories and articles will help encourage the Australian government to exert diplomatic pressure on Indonesia to demilitarise the zone. It is only then that serious consideration can be given around the world to supporting West Papua, in both its cry for self-determination and its claim to a place of peace.
Chris Richards is Australasian editor of New Internationalist (NI) magazine. Her special reports from West Papua can be read on the NI web-site -- http://www.newint.org -- under 'Back Issues'.
This article (written at the start of January 2003) is reprinted courtesy of the Australian Photojournalist Magazine, who commissioned it for their forthcoming 'Untold' edition.
