STRUGGLE IN PARADISE ( NU BOTENANG DOHONG BE DOA SYAI), Follows the extraordinary journey of Herman Wainggai, a West Papuan independence leader and former political prisoner, living in exile in Australia.
In West Papua, Herman spent more than 20 years as an activist in a nonviolent student’s movement.
In 2006, Herman feared the safety of his life and led a group of 43 West Papuan asylum seekers to Australia. In Australia his activism continues, spurred on by daily text messages from inside West Papua which report an increase in Indonesian military and intimidation. When Herman receives the confronting news that a man from his island was killed by Indonesian authorities, he decides to hold a meeting with fellow West Papuan student activists at the border of West Papua and Papua New Guinea. After the risky boat journey, the student activists inform Herman of the current situation in West Papua and the risks they face as activists fighting a nonviolent struggle..
Photos from KNPB mass actions in Wamena, Sept 2
Mass Rallies were held across West Papua by the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) on Thursday September 2. They demanded an immediate return of Special Autonomy, and called for a Referendum as the only solution to Papuan’s grievances.
In Wamena, several thousand people gathered to peacefully rally. Although security forces were present in large numbers, there were no reports from Wamena of any immediate security force violence or arrests directly related to the rallies.
Photos follow – please click on thumbnail for full size
International League of People's Struggle supports West Papua
News
In Amsterdam on August 21, The International League of Peoples’ Struggle, passed resolutions to support the struggle for justice in West Papua.
Full text of resolutions below:
RESOLUTION ON WEST PAPUA
21 August 2010
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) expresses its unreserved support for the aspirations of the people of West Papua for freedom and justice for the West Papuan peoples.
The situation in West Papua continues to deteriorate with military operations against the West Papuan people backed by US and Australian interests.
Since March 2010, the Indonesian reactionary government has launched military operations, among others, in Puncak Jaya, Papua province. The operations aim to destroy the people’s struggle to defend their land and natural resources from national and multinational company plunder. The military operations have caused great danger on the lives of the people, destitution and grave violations of human rights.
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) also calls on the world people to support the following demands:
– To immediately stop and suspend all military and paramilitary operations against civilians;
– To immediately stop the so-called anti-terror troops (Detachment 88) funded by the United States and Australia, from being utilized against the people expressing their right to protest and demonstrate;
– To immediately release all political prisoners without prejudice; and
– To bring all perpetrators of human rights violations to justice.
RESOLUTION ON DISCUSSION AND DIALOGUE
21 August 2010
The International Coordinating Group (ICG) supports the initiative by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) Australian Chapter, in conjunction with the ILPS Indonesian Chapter, to organize discussion and dialogue with the West Papuan people.
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News from Papua: Filep Karma refuses offer of remission; Census time: huge increase in population of Papua
Articles from Bintang Papua, 17 August 2010
Abridged in translation
While prisoners everywhere will await anxiously for the moment when they
may receive remission of their sentence, this is not the case with a
prisoner charged with ‘makar’ (treason).
Filep Karma (who is serving a 15-year sentence) has once again rejected
the government’s offer of a remission. He made his decision known in a
two-page letter addressed to the minister for law and human rights,
Patrialis Akhar.
At a place in the prison where he was able to make contact with
journalists, he said that he rejects all offers of remission.
‘I consider that I am not guilty of anything. The mere expression of my
democratic rights is not allowed. Yet, in Jakarta, when someone sticks a
photo of the president on the backside of a buffalo, this is not
considered to be a crime.’
He said he would also refuse any offer of clemency.
In the opening paragraph of his letter copies of which are addressed to
26 other addressees including the Indonesian president and Amnesty
International, he said:
‘I, the undersigned, declare in full consciousness of what I am doing
and free from any pressure from any quarter, that I have rejected the
efforts by the government since 2005 to grant me remission by the
department of law and human rights and I shall do so into the
foreseeable future for as long as I continue to have the status of
political prisoner conferred by the Republic of Indonesia.’
He went on to say that this was being done as an act of protect against
all manner of actions by the authoritiesof the Republic of Indonesia in
violation of the Pancasila philosophy and the 1945 Constitution.
As is known, the national day 17 August is always an occasion for the
authorities to grant remission, and on this occasion, it included the
release of fourteen convicted prisoners being held in Abepura Prison
while 115 prisoners were granted remissions of between two and six months.
The remissions were granted in a ceremony led by the law and human
rights minister and the deputy governor of Papua, Alex Hasegam when the
remission letter was given to each of the prisoners in question.
On the same occasion, one prisoner, Filep Karma, who was neatly
dressed, managed to come forward holding a morning star flag in his
hand. But this had nothing to do with being granted remission; it was to
move a sack of garbage to a truck.
—————————–
Huge increase in population of Papua
The population of the province of Papua has now reached 2,851,999, which
represents a far greater percentage increase than the national increase
of 1.49 percent.
[The report in BPapua refers throughout to the ‘province of Papua’,
presumably meaning this this does not include what is now the province
of West Papua.]
This was announced by the head of the Statistics Bureau of the province
of Papua who said that this was still a provisional announcement
because there would be further announcements about the composition of
the population including ethnicity, migration as well as the number of
births and deaths.
Another official of the bureau said that the huge increase was partly
due to having started from a low base, so the percentage increase
appears to be very high. In addition, he said, the census in 2000 was
far from being complete because the political situation at the time was
very tense, with on-going demands for a referendum and independence for
Papua, with the result that some districts were unable to carry out the
census.
He said that the number of males was in excess of the number of females,
with a recorded difference of 13 percent.
The place with the greatest densisty is Jayapura with 278 persons per
square kilometre followed by Biak with 58 persons per square kilometre..
Mamberamo has the lowest density of all, with only one person per square
kilometre.
[Comment: We can only await the promise of more detailed information
about the ethnic composition of the population, bearing in mind the
reported regular arrival of in-migrants from other parts of Indonesia.
It could very well be that the point has been reached at which Papuans
now account for a minority of the inhabitants, a trend that can only
increase with the recent launch of the MIFEE project in Merauke. TAPOL]
West Papua is Indonesia’s Palestine.
West Papua is Indonesia’s Palestine.
Opinion
August 16, 2010
John Ondawame is right. West Papua is on the verge of a “total intifada” (Ben Bohane, ‘West Papua warns of intifada against Jakarta’, Sydney Morning Herald, August 7 2010). Intifada means to “shake off” in Arabic. It has become a word used to describe the desire by Palestinians to free themselves from foreign occupation. The question is what kind of intifada is and will take place in West Papua? Will it be like the recent Palestinian intifada, led by a resurgent Hamas? An uprising of fury waged through political terror. Or will it be like the 1987 Palestinian intifada, a largely unarmed insurrection?
West Papua is the Indonesia’s Palestine. Papuans consider that their land has been occupied without their consent. Freedom of expression is prohibited, foreign journalists banned, migrants continue to pour into the country, and the police and military keep a repressive lid on boiling Papuan anger. It is also a modern day Avatar. Papuans are defending their land form the exploitative practices of resource extractive industries. For the Papuans theirs is a struggle for survival.
However, unlike Palestine and the film Avatar, resistance to the Indonesian government’s rule has overwhelmingly been through civilian based movements. Only last month, for instance, 20,000 plus people – students, women, young people, religious leaders, NGO activists, traditional chiefs, farmers and even members of the Majelis Rakyat Papua, West Papua’s indigenous senate – all converged on the capital and occupied the provincial parliament for two days to pressure the Papuan political elite to hand back Special Autonomy, a package or policy, finance, and legislation designed to give Papuans a measure of self-rule. After ten years of broken promises and still born hopes, Papuans concluded Special Autonomy had failed. It is a news story that should have been covered by every major media outlet. But here in Australia we heard next to nothing.
Now, as Bohane writes, Papuans are feeling abandoned by their Melanesian kin. At the recent Pacific Island Forum, Vanuatu tried to raise the West Papua issue but Papua New Guinea’s political leaders blocked the discussion. Again. The Australia and New Zealand governments also failed to raise their voice for on behalf of Papuan rights. Again.
Some Papuan leaders are now talking about making the territory ungovernable through mass civilian based non-cooperation with Jakarta. How long civil resistance continues depends not only on the tactical and strategic choices made by Papuan leaders. In part it also depends on whether solidarity movements in the region, including inside Indonesia, can raise the political and economic costs so that political leaders and foreign companies feel compelled to agree to what Papuans have been demanding for years: political dialogue with Jakarta and the international community about their grievances.
Will the international community support the Papuan’s right to rise up for freedom? Or will they send the same message they sent to the Kosovo Albanians? That international intervention and the goal of independence will only come about when there is armed struggle and mass violence. Surely we can all do better than that.
Jason MacLeod
(The writer lectures in political science at the University of Queensland.)
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