Ex-hostage Daniel Start looks back on Irian Jaya<\/p>\n
By Adrian Smith<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Since the beginning of June two Belgian
\nfilmmakers have been held hostage in Irian Jaya. One person who
\nknows what they are going through is Daniel Start, who survived
\nsuch an ordeal and wrote about the experience.<\/p>\n
Now 28, the Englishman was the leader of the ill-fated 1995
\nLorentz expedition. Eight weeks into their conservation work, all
\n12 members of the international scientific team were taken
\nhostage by Irian Jaya separatists from Free Papua Movement (OPM).<\/p>\n
The group was held for more than four months, constantly moved
\nfrom place to place and their fate held in limbo as their
\ncaptors' demands frequently changed. Two Indonesian members of
\nthe expedition were murdered by the separatists during the final
\nmilitary operation to free them.<\/p>\n
Start wrote vividly of his experiences in The Open Cage,
\npublished in 1997. In the book he gives a detailed description of
\nthe events surrounding the hostage-taking and the group's
\neventual release. And, as the title suggests, he examines the
\ncomplexity of his feelings toward his captors and the wider
\nissues and tortured history surrounding the events into which his
\nexpedition unwittingly stumbled.<\/p>\n
Start talked about his experience as a hostage and his life
\ntoday from his home in London.<\/p>\n
Question: Have your feelings about the hostage experience
\nchanged over the last five years?<\/p>\n
Start: I wrote in the epilogue of my book that very quickly it
\nfelt as if I was telling a story rather than it being a real
\nexperience. The story got told so many times and the conditions
\nwere so distant from modern living in the United Kingdom that it
\nbecame very difficult to see it as a real experience.<\/p>\n
Over a period of time, that only increases and you end up
\nlooking back at parts of the experience through \"rose-colored
\nspectacles\". Perhaps, myself more so than the other members of
\nthe expedition.<\/p>\n
Are there moments of your ordeal that are particularly vivid?<\/p>\n
Most of the hostage-taking was quite serene and boring, but
\nit was punctuated by extreme moments. There was the initial
\nkidnapping when the tribesmen rounded us up and we thought we
\nwere going to be executed. There was the Army attack at the end
\nwhen the Army (Kopassus troops) finally came in and bombed the
\nvalley and the villages. There were the executions and murders at
\nthe end. All of those events are still very vivid.<\/p>\n
The things that really stick in my mind, though, are the
\nhappier moments; playing with the children in the villages,
\nswapping stories with the women, the gifts that the older people
\nwould bring to you like food, such as tree kangaroos, which they
\nwould come and share with you.<\/p>\n
The generosity of the Papuan people was incredible, they would
\nshare everything with those around them. They were such warm-
\nspirited people, sitting around the fire singing songs, telling
\nfolktales.<\/p>\n
Also, the natural beauty; sitting by the river, watching the
\nbirds. So there are a lot of very special memories as well.<\/p>\n
Would you say such an experience has made you value your
\npersonal freedom more?<\/p>\n
I don't think it had any particular effect on my desire for
\nfreedom. I have always been a traveler and I still am. If
\nanything, a lot of people thought it might have killed some of my
\n\"wanderlust\", but it hasn't.<\/p>\n
We actually had a certain degree of personal freedom and we
\nwere treated very reasonably by the people who were holding us.
\nIf anything, the general feeling was of frustration; that the
\nsituation was not going to resolve itself easily and we could
\ntell that. But I didn't particularly feel like I was a prisoner,
\nthat I was being locked up every day.<\/p>\n
Throughout the book you mention how the demands of the
\nhostage-takers changed from day to day, that they would move you
\nto a new location and not tell you why. That, for me, would be
\nthe worst part of it -- never knowing what would come next.<\/p>\n
That was definitely the most unnerving feeling. It was more
\na feeling that we were in a situation that was totally
\nunpredictable. It had no logical sequence, no logical end. In a
\nway, what it did do is give one a much greater capacity to accept
\nand adapt to whatever life brings your way, to stop planning
\nquite so much.<\/p>\n
What kind of state of mind do you think the Belgian filmmakers
\nare in at this stage of their ordeal, given the fact that they
\nhave been held hostage now for two months?<\/p>\n
There would be a lot of frustration, a lot of hunger. You
\nthink it is going to be over in a day and then after a lot of
\nfalse starts you realize that you cannot possibly predict when it
\nis going to end; it could be a month, it could be a year. And
\nthat is pretty frightening when you realize that you might be
\nthere for a very long time.<\/p>\n
There are just the two Belgian filmmakers, while your group
\nwas larger. Was there some security in numbers?<\/p>\n
These (the Belgian filmmakers) are two fairly fit males and
\nthey may find that they are treated a bit more roughly, in terms
\nof the amount of walking they have to do and the amount of food
\nthat they get. I imagine they are good friends, they'll take a
\nlot of support from each other, they will get lonely though and
\nmiss their families.<\/p>\n
We were in a bigger group. We also had a lot of weaker people,
\nincluding a pregnant woman. In a way, we became family to each
\nother. I don't think we were ever concerned that they were going
\nto start killing us off one by one. Certainly, as foreigners, we
\nnever feared that they had anything against us. They always
\ntreated us with the utmost respect.<\/p>\n
Are you still in touch with other members of the group?<\/p>\n
We are still, more or less, in contact. We actually went out
\nto a restaurant a couple of months ago to mark the fifth
\nanniversary of our release and the deaths of Navy and Tessy (two
\nIndonesian scientists on the expedition).<\/p>\n
And that was quite strange (because) we had obviously gone
\nthrough a strong bonding experience. We dealt with it in
\ndifferent ways, though, and we now have quite different lives.<\/p>\n
You strike me as a remarkably level-headed person. Did other
\npeople take it worse?<\/p>\n
I may have dealt with it more proactively than other members;
\nwriting a book, revisiting Irian Jaya. But a lot of people
\ngenerally assume that it was all a terrible experience. They ask
\nyou how you managed to put it behind you and eradicate it from
\nyour life.<\/p>\n
My answer there is that one doesn't put that sort of thing
\nbehind you, you sort of incorporate it into your life and you
\nmove forward with the lessons that it has taught you ... it
\nwasn't all bad as an experience.<\/p>\n
How do you view your captors?<\/p>\n
They didn't take us hostage to punish us. They took us hostage
\nbecause they felt we could help them in the most important issue
\nin their lives, which is to try and gain their freedom.<\/p>\n
Don't get me wrong, we didn't want to get ourselves kidnapped
\nor want to be taken hostage, which is often an accusation against
\nforeigners kidnapped by the OPM. But certainly we had respect for
\nthe people and the place, and to spend time with them was a
\nfascinating experience.<\/p>\n
I learned a huge amount about myself. I learned a huge amount
\nabout the Papuan people, about why people struggle for their
\nfreedom and really what struggling for freedom is all about. I
\nhad kind of thought (before) that they were a bunch of terrorists
\nwho didn't have anything better to do, but when you see how much
\nthese people yearn to have their rights back and how humiliated
\nand traumatized they are by what's happened to them you just
\nwonder how on earth people can just sit in Jakarta and just send
\nin more troops.<\/p>\n
Whenever I've talked to people in Jakarta about them (the
\nPapuans) they have always seen them as very primitive people who
\nneed to be civilized ... that until the Javanese have come and
\ntaught them how to behave ... they are not going to find
\nthemselves.<\/p>\n
Every time there is violence and repression it breeds more
\nresentment, hatred and ethnic conflict and makes peace and
\nreconciliation an even more distant prospect. And that resentment
\nand hatred is something that carries through generations, so the
\ntroubles being created in Irian Jaya will be problems inherited
\nby future generations of Indonesians. It is a legacy for
\nIndonesia's children.<\/p>",
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