Govt needs to change to end Papua violence

Muridan S. Widjojo, Researcher, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta

The public has again apparently been taken by surprise by the popular uprising in Papua, this time in Timika. The clashes were triggered by the declaration of the Central Irian Jaya province by Jakarta elites. For five days from Aug. 23 to Aug. 27 the group which agrees with the establishment of the new province led by the head of the Mimika legislative council, Andreas Anggaibak, supported by the "Group of Seven Tribes", battled the opposing group. The latter was led by the youth of the Amungme tribe, Thomas Uamang, Yopie Kilangin and Yohanes Deikme, with the support of the Amungme and other tribes in Timika.

At least five people have been killed and dozens of others have been injured in what a leading Papua figure, Tom Beanal, has termed a perang adat, a war between traditional tribes. We may yet see even more clashes.

On a national and local level this conflict reveals years of tension between the groups which are "pro democracy" and those which are "pro status quo" in Papua. The first indication of this revelation would be to see who is really engaged in the battle at the local level. The group which agrees to the set-up of the division of the province is led by Andreas, a retired police sergeant, who became head of the Mimika legislative council. The rival group is led by Yopie and company who are activists of the Amungme people's organization, Lemasa.

Yopie's role in the opposition of the division of Papua into three provinces cannot be separated from the figure of Tom Beanal, known in pro-democracy circles since the early 1990s. He leads the Lemasa and is the Amungme tribal chief, who became Deputy Chairman of the Papua Presidium Council (PDP) as well as being a commissioner of the American-Indonesian mining firm, PT Freeport Indonesia.

Tom and Andreas struggled together in Lemasa against Freeport around 1995, but parted ways after Freeport decided to allocate 1 percent of its income for local development, and after the Integrated Timika Area Development (PWT2) project was launched in 1996.

Andreas and his supporters of the "Group of the Seven Tribes" accepted the development funds and gained the support of the military, the bureaucracy and Freeport. Tom, on behalf of Lemasa, supported by various tribal chiefs in Timika, rejected the cash, because it was considered to have skewed the basic issues between the Amungme and Kamoro tribes on one side, and Freeport on the other. Beanal sued Freeport in a U.S. court on charges of its involvement in supporting the military in human rights violations in Papua.

The conflict widened. Tom and Lemasa gained support from domestic non-governmental organizations (NGO) as well as some state institutions, and the issue has engaged various parties in Jakarta. Some of those involved have record of supporting democracy and human rights, such as the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), the National Development Planning Board, the Office of the State Minister of the Environment as well as the National Commission on Human Rights. Meanwhile in Timika, the 1 percent development fund and the implementation of the PWT2 was expedited with the full support of the local government, the military and Freeport.

Tensions between those who were happy with the development money and those that considered it a compromise payoff increased. In January 1997, a similar clash occurred in Kwamki Lama, also in Timika. Similar to the battle last year there were many fierce clashes with traditional weaponry. Two died, one from each side.

The 1 percent fund, now managed by Andreas, is said to have been misused by corrupt people and many have pointed at this corruption as being the cause of several recent local conflicts. Freeport hired consultants, who then sided with Tom Beanal, and since 1998, the management of the money fell to Tom's group. The conflict between the groups led by Tom and Andreas continued until the 1999 election and the election of the Mimika regent.

In the local context, this political enmity could become permanent. Victims, and mainly the dead -- two in 1997 and five so far this year, and those from various other clashes -- have become the basis of the rupture between the two groups in Timika. The conflict is beginning to be internalized into the social system of the tribes in the Timika mountains where "tribal wars" are becoming a customary method of settling problems.

On the national level the clash between the pro-democracy and the pro-status quo groups started in the early 1990s. At that time, Tom and a number of Jayapura-based NGOs which were active in advocating for the people's rights started to work with Jakarta NGOs such as Walhi and the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam) to oppose the status quo New Order regime, military domination and Freeport. This also led to the public revelation of possible human rights abuses in Timika between 1994 and 1995.

This achievement led to a number of other investigations on right violations, public debate on customary rights, women's rights and the emergence of various people's organizations and demands to withdraw military troops. Initially, passive religious institutions, universities and students began to liven up political dynamics in the province.

When the special autonomy law was introduced in 2001, Tom, the leader of the Presidium Council, rejected it. But the intellectuals and academics, political figures and church leaders were realistic and tried to treat the special autonomy law as a source of hope to settle the Papua problem. Yet, when it became apparent that current regime in Jakarta was going to betray its own promise of special autonomy by expediting the division of the province this year, all these strategic representatives of Papua suddenly became united to resist the regime. They all raised opposition when President Megawati Soekarnoputri signed the Presidential Instruction No. 1/2003 to divide the province in January.

Therefore the map of the struggle on the national level has not changed much. While in the early 1990s the pro-democracy group resisted the authoritarian regime of the New Order, now they are resisting the pseudo-democratic regime of Megawati. Her closest advisers in her regime have been collaborating with, among others, the local bureaucracy, which eventually lost the governor's seat in 2001.

Finally political struggle, frequently characterized by violence, will continue to recur in Papua. There will be more victims, from important figures such as the Papua Council's Theys Eluay in 2001, to ordinary young people such as Jimmy Beanal of Lemasa, as long as Jakarta does not change its political orientation and vision, to enable a more healthy political contest between the prodemocracy group and the pro-status quo group.

Jakarta has for too long imposed its will on Papua, and consequently Papuans will always react negatively to anything coming from Jakarta. Quo vadis?

The writer is a PhD Candidate at the Center for Non Western Studies, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.