ONE of the joys of my job is that if I sidled up to my employers to suggest that a jaunt to the Papuan highlands was in order, “off you go” is what they would say. Sadly, it’s not as simple as that. Indonesia, though still a young democracy, is admirably open about most of its affairs. The exception is Papua. The security apparatus ensures that the country's easternmost province remains a closed book. In Jakarta, foreigners—and journalists above all—are turned away before they can board the six-hour flight.
Papua (first known as Dutch New Guinea, then West New Guinea and later Irian Jaya) is the glaring exception to Indonesia’s progress in tackling the explosion of ethnic, sectarian and separatist violence that only a decade ago threatened to tear the country apart. Today peace prevails in once strife-torn places such as Aceh, Ambon and Poso, along with a measure of reconciliation. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono can take a good chunk of the credit. But all this progress now serves mainly to highlight the failure of Indonesia’s approach to Papua, heavily militarised already and now seeing a fresh troop surge.
Papuans’ resentment towards their overlords—first Dutch, later Indonesian—has been nourished for half a century, with much to justify it. Over the past year, it has been expressed in intensified violence. In particular, a number of fatal shootings have taken place around the giant Grasberg gold-and-copper mine, run by America’s Freeport-McMoRan. The hideous mine has long been a focus of discontent.
Much is murky about the upsurge in violence. Among other incidents, a cult group seized a government airstrip. Its leader claimed the strip to be the site on which the “Great General” Jesus had ordered her to create the Kingdom of Heaven. For a fuller understanding of the murk, I recommend a recent report by the International Crisis Group which can be found here.
A chief factor behind the violence, it is clear, is the recent radicalisation of a group of Papuan university students, past and present, from the central highlands. This group, along with many Papuans, questions the legitimacy of the Act of Free Choice, supervised by the United Nations in 1969, that brought Papua into the Indonesian republic. Student frustration has grown over the fact that peaceful methods have brought no progress towards a review of the act, while state repression and abuses of human rights continue. Meanwhile, the students have strengthened contacts with the Free Papua Movement, whose guerrilla commanders have for decades conducted a low-level insurgence from the remoter reaches of the highlands.
Many Papuans believe that independence or at least self-determination can only happen if their cause is given international prominence. And indeed some Western politicians set up a support group, International Parliamentarians for West Papua, in 2008. Violence around the time of Indonesian elections last year was probably the doing of the students, with the intention of highlighting the Papuan crisis. Some part of the Free Papua Movement is thought to be behind the killings last year and this on the road to the mine, in which foreign mineworkers have died as well as Indonesians. But to add to the murk, parts of the paramilitary forces that guard the mine are also suspected. This is far from proven. But their motive might be that heightened insecurity could easily lead to lucrative new contracts from the mine-owners.
Back in Jakarta, officials say the government is getting a bad rap over Papua. They say it has poured investment in, bringing measurable improvements in infrastructure, health and education. On the political front, it has guaranteed that nearly all positions of government, from the governor down, go to locals rather than to Indonesians from further west, a process known as “Papuanisation”. Democracy and decentralisation, officials say, applies as much to Papua as to anywhere in Indonesia.
Juwono Sudarsono, defence minister until last year, gives a rather subtle justification of the army’s role. It is not just that the army helps keep the country together while democracy puts down roots. In Papua, he says, the contribution is material, in the form of road- and bridge-building and other assistance to rural folk. Most important, the army (particularly its younger officers) plays a crucial conciliatory role in what Mr Sudarsono claims is Papua’s chief conflict: a fight over resources and political power between Papuan highlanders and lowlanders. Military officers as anthropologists, mediating among myriad tribal groups; Mr Sudarsono paints a not entirely unconvincing picture.
Elsewhere the signs are that the authorities’ handling of separatist violence is better, ie, less dogmatic and iron-fisted, than once it was. Arrests are still made on the flimsiest of evidence, much of it still coerced from illiterate innocents. But at least there are more acquittals and lighter sentences. So if the government has a generally good story to tell, why doesn’t it let journalists like me in? Mr Sudarsono says that our presence “would become a magnet for local groups vying for attention over human-rights problems.” What moderation there is would go out of the window.
That does not sound plausible to me. More likely, as John Braithwaite of the Australian National University (ANU) argues, the army, part of the solution in Aceh and elsewhere, remains part of the problem in Papua. Mr Yudhoyono has been bullied by the army to take a timid approach to Papua.
International efforts towards a constructive settlement seem to offer Papua’s—and Indonesia’s—best hope for peace. President Barack Obama’s eagerly awaited pulang kampung, or homecoming (he spent four boyhood years in Jakarta) has been set for June, having been postponed once already. With a bit of flair, his visit could set in train a fresh process in Papua. As Andrew MacIntyre, also of the ANU, points out, Indonesia and the United States want to find ways to revive army-to-army relations. These have been suspended for more than a decade by the Leahy Act, which forbids America to offer training to military units with a record of human-rights abuses—and, Kopassus, the army’s special forces, had plenty, in Papua included. The offer to engage with younger Kopassus officers, their hands less bloodied, could give Mr Obama what he needs to prod the Indonesian government into a dialogue with Papuans over a more peaceful future.