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11 February 1999 Edition

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``We are a people, a nation''

Soledad Galiana speaks to one of the leaders of the Free West Papua Movement

West Papuans are living under Indonesian military control and are experiencing ongoing political oppression. While the international community turned a blind eye to the systematic genocide suffered by the Papuan people, their fight for independence has been going on for the last 25 years.

West Papua, the western half of New Guinea island, is known as Irian Jaya province since Indonesian rule was imposed on the area. It has some 240 different tribal peoples, each with its own language and culture. Its environmental richness is the last great surviving virgin rainforest after the Amazon. But for the last 25 years the people of West Papua have seen their culture and traditions banned and their environment threatened by Indonesian immigration.

Thousand of West Papuans have been deprived of their land, hundreds are detained and currently imprisoned without trial, and many have been killed by the Indonesian army. It is estimated that 30,000 West Papuans have died fighting for their independence. The United Nations refuses to recognise them as a colonised indigenous people.

However, the Papuans have not given up on achieving their independence. The Free West Papua Movement (OPM) was formed in 1965 and has been fighting the Indonesian `colonisation'. John Ondawame is the international spokesperson for the Free Papua Movement and he visited Ireland recently in an effort to raise awareness of the plight of his people.

Ondawame is a former guerrilla in the OPM army. He was deported to Sweden where he was granted political asylum. Later he moved to Australia.

``The island of Papua was divided between three colonial powers: Holland, Germany and the British Empire. Papua New Guinea was colonised by British and Germans, West Papua by the Dutch. In 1961 the decolonising process was taking place and the Dutch government encouraged the Papuans to form an independent state in the early 1970s. So, at the beginning of the process we created a provisional parliament, a government, and we wrote a provisional constitution, a national anthem and designed a flag. But Indonesia claimed the island and it began a recolonisation process in 1962. So there was a war between the Dutch and the Indonesians,'' John Ondawame explains.

With the war, the status of West Papua became an international issue. ``It was then that the US government and the US president, John F Kennedy, intervened and became not a mediator, but gave away West Papua unconditionally to Indonesia''.

Ondawame explains this decision as a way to stop the Soviet Union's influence in the Pacific. The Soviet Union had brokered a billion dollar arms deal with Indonesia and the US thought that the offering of West Papua would be a comparable deal. So, West Papuans were victims of the Cold War.

The New York Agreement was then signed in August 1962 and was ratified by the UN. The Agreement pointed out that the Netherlands was to leave West Papua under the supervision of the United Nation temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) on 1 October and West Papua would be handed officially to Indonesia on 1 May 1963. ``The West Papuans did not participate in the agreement; that was negotiated and signed by the Dutch, Americans and Indonesians. So the people of West Papua were never allowed to participate, to decide or discuss their own future,'' explains John Ondawame.

Part of this Agreement was the so called `Act of Free Choice' which recognised the right to self-determination of the Papuan people and specified that after six years under Indonesian administration a referendum would be held to allow Papuans to choose freely.

``But as soon as the agreement was signed, the Indonesians moved in and our provisional government, our flag, our anthem, our police and army forces were replaced by Indonesia's. So Papua was systematically integrated into their administration before the Act of Free Choice happened.''

John Ondawame points out that normally the United Nations would be responsible for the organisation of this kind of referenda. But in West Papua, the Indonesian administration organised the whole process. ``I was there that day, 2 August 1969... There was not a secret ballot. They had selected 1026 old chiefs to vote. The Indonesians put the gun on us. I witnessed it

myself. We were called to a big hall in an area already surrounded by the Indonesian army and were asked to raise our hands to vote.''

Abandoned by the international community, the West Papuans then created the Free Papua Movement (OPM).

``There was an uprising in 1964-65 in Manokwari, the Western part of West-Papua... It was a way to maintain the West Papuan status-quo as an independent state... This was for us a way to reject the Indonesian presence and to denounce the New York Agreement as unfair... So all the Papuans rose, signalling to the world community that West Papuans rejected what was called ``integration'' and from there the movement intensified and organised massive demonstration, protests, military campaigns in many parts of West-Papua''.

But the OPM fighters are poorly armed, often having to confront the Indonesia military with spears and bows and arrows. ``It is difficult to know the exact number of people involved in the struggle, because in different areas there are different structures. We have nine regional commands, but only five will be active in military terms. But in political terms, 95% of West Papuan support the idea of independence''.

Eliezer Bonay, who spent two years in detention after his dismissal as Indonesia's first governor of West Papua, estimated in 1981 that 30,000 Papuans were killed in the six years up to the Act of Free Choice. An estimated 300,000 people have vanished, 30% of the total population.

Indonesia's human rights violations record is well known in the case of East Timor. It seems that the same policy applied to the rest of the Indonesian occupied territories.

Ondawame highlights ``transmigration'' as another cause of serious protest. Transmigration is the policy of settling Indonesians from highly populated areas - Java, Bali, Madura and Lombok - to the less populated islands of Sumatra, Kalimantan, East Timor and West Papua. This Indonesian government programme is based on a false premise, as transmigrants make no difference to Java's population problem. Yet the thousands of transmigrants place unsustainable pressures on indigenous communities and cultures.

Under Indonesian law, all forest land that is not being used for agriculture, housing or industry is state property. Papuans, who use the land to gather natural products, hunt wildlife or for cultivation, reject this law. Early transmigration schemes located people on empty land, considered state land, and thus deprived the indigenous Papuans of areas reserved for wildlife and game.

Furthermore, says John Ondawame, ``we are not allowed to use our language or practice our culture or tradition. We are not allowed to move freely from one place to another; you need a passport to go from one place to other. Our children cannot go to school as places are covered by the Indonesian themselves. And the cities' inhabitants are Indonesian, not Papuans. We have become strangers on our own land''.

West Papua's tribal people are also fighting the expansion of a mining operation owned by Freeport McMoRan, a US company that moved to West Papua in 1967. The British company RTZ now has an 11.8% share in Freeport. Because of the mine, indigenous communities have been displaced from their traditional territories and the mining is taking place on their sacred land. ``They are taking millions and millions worth of gold away while my people are suffering. They are destroying the environment, the people cannot drink the water and the forestry is destroyed because of the sedimentation of the toxins on the soil.''

The latest developments in Indonesia - the students protests and the government changes from Suharto to Abibi - have opened a door to hope for John Ondawame. The possibility of Indonesia recognising East-Timor's right to self-determination has been well received by the Free West Papua Movement.

``We welcome the latest initiative of the Indonesian government in relation to East Timor and we welcome President Abibi's initiative on the Papuans, to start a new national discussion around three possible options in the future: autonomy, federation or independence. So the change in Indonesia

policy favours East Timor, West Papua, Sumatra... Indonesia was not created on the desire of the people. Indonesia is an artificial state and balkanization will happen soon in Indonesia. So right now... different groups are coming together to create a new Forum for reconciliation in West Papua that is a country wide

organisation including different political options and we have elected our provisional leaders who will lead the negotiation with the Indonesian government. For that reason I am here, to meet different groups and organisations and I am finding a lot of sympathy in Ireland.''

``We are not only indigenous people by definition, we are a people, a nation, who have their own rights to decided. As indigenous people you can have your rights recognised and achieve a special status, but we want an independent state.''

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