Claim on W. Irian in 1950s

Claim on W. Irian in 1950s

This is a response to Mr. B. Ubany's letter published in The
Jakarta Post on Sept. 4, 1995. I still stand firm by what I said
in my previous letter (Aug. 31, 1995) that during the many years
Indonesia was conducting a campaign to regain West Irian from
Dutch control, I never saw any article or letter in the
Australian press or talk on television by the Indonesian Embassy
to counter the Australian opposition to our claim. Indeed, what I
reiterated above was neither denied nor contradicted by Mr. Ubany
in his letter. As for the talks he gave in Perth, Adelaide and
Hobart or his talk televised on ABC, I am afraid I was not aware
of them but, as intimated by Mr. Ubany himself, those talks were
not about West Irian.

Mr. Ubany did indicate, however, that in view of the strong
support given by the press and mass media to the Australian
government's opposition to the Indonesian claim, the embassy
found it difficult to present its views through the media. But if
this was really the case, why was it that the leading newspaper
in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald, agreed to publish my
long letter on West Irian in 1959, in which I pointed out that
West Irian, being an integral part of the former Dutch East
Indies, should now revert to Indonesia as the legal successor
state of the Dutch colony? I also tried in the article to counter
some of the Australian government's arguments about the ethnic
and cultural differences between the indigenous peoples of West
Irian and those of the rest of Indonesia by stressing that
Indonesia was not a homogeneous state ethnically or culturally
and never was intended to be so.

Coming back to Mr. Ubany's letter, I did hear about the
shocking incident at the campus of the New South Wales University
of Technology in July 1956. I must congratulate Mr. Ubany for his
brave attempt to talk about the Indonesian claim on West Irian in
the face of those wild hecklers specially brought in from
outside. Nevertheless, I still believe that a campaign through
the mass media would have been more effective than a direct talk
to a relatively small audience.

MASLI ARMAN

Jakarta