Spotlight on Papua
The recent declassification of documents by the U.S. National Security Archive pertaining to the 1969 referendum on Papua has put this vast and resource-rich westernmost province of Indonesia in the spotlight.
The 35-year-old documents say, in effect, that the UN-endorsed referendum was a sham as it excluded most Papuans during the so- called "Act of Free Choice". In sum, the referendum was flawed.
One of the documents was a 1969 report from the American Embassy in Jakarta to the U.S. Department of State, saying that the impending referendum unfolded like a Greek tragedy in which the conclusion was already preordained. Indonesia, it says "cannot and will not permit any resolution other than the continued inclusion of West Irian in Indonesia."
The documents referred to Papua, the western half of Papua New Guinea, as West Papua. Indonesia renamed the province Irian Jaya after the 1969 self-determination vote. Former president Abdurrahman Wahid changed Irian Jaya back to Papua on Dec. 31, 1999.
The Papuans voted unanimously to stay with Indonesia in the August 1969 referendum. The UN endorsed the referendum on Nov. 19 of the same year through its resolution No.2504 in which 80 countries expressed their support and 30 countries abstained.
It should be remembered that when Indonesia gained its independence in 1945, the country comprised more than 400 ethnic groups, encompassing stone-age to modern civilizations. Indonesian leaders believed that the most efficient way to hold the referendum was through the tribal chiefs.
Even today the vast and rugged province, which is 10 times the size of the Netherlands, is still acutely underdeveloped. When the referendum was held some Papuan tribes still lived in stone- age societies. Language was a big barrier as Indonesian was new in the province and the tribes' dialects were alien to Indonesian officials.
Through the 1960s, the Cold War was in full swing. The U.S. considered it prudent to take sides with Soeharto, an emerging pro-Western army general in Indonesia, to stem the influence of communism in the largest Southeast Asian country. In July 1969, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, according to the document, told president Richard Nixon prior to his departure to Indonesia not to raise the issue of Papua with Soeharto. "You should tell Soeharto that we understand the problems they face in West Irian," Kissinger was quoted as saying in one of the documents.
Business interests danced to this tune. In fact the first foreign company to invest in Indonesia after the 1965 political earthquake that saw Sukarno tumbling from power was the U.S.- based Freeport McMoRan. Thirty years later, the company was sitting atop the biggest gold mine in the world, according to Australian scholar Denise Leith.
We can say many things about the past, but nothing will change the fact that Papua was a legitimate part of Indonesia during those years. There is no way we can turn the clock of history back. The fact remains that the United Nations endorsed the referendum.
Having said this, however, we believe that the government should address the issue of the flaws in the referendum by facing it head-on. It should talk to the Papuans about the issue.
Secondly, the government should abandon its heavy-handed tactics in managing the province. Like people in other troubled regions of the country, the Papuans need no less than total sincerity from the government. A violent approach will never work. If the government promises something, it has to fulfill it. Nothing will shatter the common bond of trust faster than when the government says one thing at one time and another thing at another. When the government offers the province autonomy, it must make sure it honors this promise.
On the international front, the government should anticipate a possible credo emerging from diverse sides on the need for Papuan independence. The government should prepare adequate diplomatic ammunition to defuse these factions before they become a movement too strong to resist.
The way we look at it, something is brewing on the international front. In March this year, Irish parliamentarians urged UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to review the world body's role in the 1969 referendum, joining South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and scores of NGOs and European Parliamentarians. On June 28, 2004, nineteen U.S. Senators sent a letter to Annan urging the appointment of a Special Representative to Indonesia to monitor the human rights situation in Papua and Aceh. This is not to mention some groups in Australia that would like to see an independent Papua.
The government has to work fast. It is simply too costly to sleep on the issue and to pretend that losing another province -- after East Timor in 1999 -- will not hurt the nation.