Tag: Referendum

SMH: A Worm Inside the New Indonesia

FYI – Media Information

[With reflections on West Papuan situation.]

The Sydney Morning Herald
February 26, 2011

A Worm Inside the New Indonesia

by HAMISH McDONALD

WITH popular uprisings turfing out rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and perhaps elsewhere in the Arab world, a lot of analysts have focused on fears of ”contagion” in other regions, notably on China’s censorship of news reports about the protest wave in the Middle East.

Yet the Middle East event that might have the most far-reaching effect is not the awakening of the Arab ”street” against authoritarian rulers, but the vote in a United Nations supervised referendum a month earlier.

The largely African people in the south of Sudan voted overwhelming to secede from their Arab-dominated country and form a new nation – a result accepted by the Khartoum government and its main foreign backers, including China.

This has followed the declaration of independence from Serbia by Kosovo in 2008 that was accepted by most of the world and approved by the International Court of Justice, and Russia’s unilateral recognition of Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign states soon afterwards in retaliation. It has left respect for the ”territorial integrity” of states and post-colonial boundaries somewhat tattered.

Already the example is being applied to an intractable issue right on Australia’s border and forming the touchiest part of what many see as our most important foreign relationship – the question of West Papua, the western half of New Guinea now part of Indonesia.

As Akihisa Matsuno, a professor at Osaka University, pointed out this week in a conference at Sydney University’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, South Sudan and Kosovo take West Papua out of the usual context of debate about the rights and wrongs of its decolonisation from Dutch rule in 1962 and ”act of free choice” under Indonesian control in 1969.

Kosovo’s independence was a case of ”remedial secession”: no states claimed the Kosovars had a right to self-determination, there was just no prospect of its peaceful reintegration back into Serbia or the rump Yugoslavia. Protection of people in Kosovo had more weight than Serbia’s territorial integrity.

Sudan became independent in 1956 from British rule, but has been in civil war most of the time since, with a 2005 peace agreement finally conceding a referendum. This suggests lack of integration between territories ruled by the same colonial power can justify a separate state, Matsuno said. ”This means that colonial boundaries are not as absolute as usually assumed.”

Indonesia itself went down this path in 1999 by insisting, for its domestic political reasons, that East Timor’s vote in 1999 was not a delayed act of self-determination that should have been taken just after the Portuguese left in 1975, but a ”popular consultation” with the result put into effect by Indonesia’s legislature. This amounted to conceding a right of secession to its provinces, Matsuno said.

West Papua’s act of free choice was seen as a farce from the beginning. As the historians Pieter Drooglever in Holland and John Saltford in Britain have documented, monitors were kicked out of the territory by the Indonesians in the seven-year interval between the Dutch departure and the ”act” – which was a unanimous public vote by an assembly of 1022 handpicked, bribed and intimidated Papuans in favour of integration with Indonesia.

Revolt has simmered and broken out sporadically ever since. Canberra’s relations with Jakarta went into crisis in 2006 when 43 Papuan independence activists and family members crossed the Torres Strait by motor canoe and requested political asylum.

Richard Chauvel, an Indonesia scholar at Melbourne’s Victoria University, told the conference Jakarta feels Papuan independence is not seen as the threat it was a decade ago when a ”Papuan spring” of breakaway sentiment and protest followed East Timor’s departure. The territory has been broken into two provinces so far, and numerous district governments, Papuan separatists fragmented, and no state bar Vanuatu is questioning Indonesian sovereignty (though the US Congress last September held its first committee hearing on West Papua).

Yet Chauvel says West Papua has become an ”Achilles’ heel” for a democratising Indonesia over the last 10 years. ”Papua is Indonesia’s last and most intractable regional conflict,” he said. ”Papua has become a battleground between a ‘new’ and an ‘old’ Indonesia. The ‘old’ Indonesia considers that its soldiers torturing fellow Indonesians in a most barbaric manner is an ‘incident’. The ‘new’ Indonesia aspires to the ideals of its founders in working towards becoming a progressive,
outward-looking, cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic and multi-faith society.”

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called the recently reported
torture cases ”incidents” by low-level soldiers, not the result of high-up instructions. Chauvel says he is probably correct: ”A more likely explanation is that instructions were not necessary. These acts reflected a deeply ingrained institutional culture of violence in the way members of the security forces interact with Papuans.”

Matsuno argues that South Sudan makes Indonesia’s post-colonial claim to West Papua more shaky, since it too had racial, religious and other differences to the rest of the country and had been administered separately within the former Netherlands East Indies. A ”more moral question” behind self-determination is coming to the fore, he said, the factor of ”failure” in governing.

The Japanese scholar sees echoes of East Timor in the late 1980s, when even foreign policy ”realists” started recognising the failure of Indonesian rule on the ground: serious human rights abuses, foreign media shut out, migrants flooding in, local leaders turning away from government, a younger generation educated in the Indonesian system refusing to identify themselves as Indonesians.

”These young people were increasingly vocal and continued to expose the ‘unsustainability’ of the system,” Matsuno said. ”Indeed the unsustainability of the situation in West Papua seems to be a truth. Only it takes some more time for the world to realise the truth.”

No one expects any outside power to intervene. But as we are seeing in the Arab despotisms, the new media make it harder and harder to draw a veil over suppression. In the Indonesia that is opening up, the exception of West Papua will become more glaring.

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1

KNPB Congress: “West Papua must unite for Referendum”

 

KOMITE NASIONAL PAPUA BARAT [KNPB]
WEST PAPUA NATIONAL COMMITTEE
==================================================
Pers Release

We inform to all the international media, the international community
and to all the observers of the West Papua problem that KNPB (the West
Papua National Committee) has held the I Congress in the Kampung
Harapan, Jayapura on 19 untill  November 22 2010. This congress was
attended by delegation from territories and the consulate from various
elements that were combined in KNPB.

The first Kongres of  KNPB produced the resolution that became the
attitude and the commitment of all the participant, that: the Focus of
the KNPB Program was to finish up the status of West Papua through the
process of politics and the law. To push the process of the resolution
legally and politics, KNPB nationally reduced the political program and
the organisation. Firstly, the Political program of  KNPB is  to achieve
the goal of the West Papua, that is Independent in a manner Politics
went through the most democratic rout that is the Referendum. Secondly,
the Organisation program that is KNPB as the media pushed the formation
of the Nasional of West Papua Council as the body representative, at the
same time as the symbol of the association in driving the struggle
through to the formation of the temporary Government post the
referendum.

Better scrutinised and understood the discussions whole in the congress
that was held, the forum for the congress of the I Komite Nasional Papua
Barat [KNPB] produced resolutions that were unity of the attitude and
the resolve from all over delegation of the Papua people from the
committee's territories and delegations of the organisation of the
struggle, that is:
1.	Immediately to finish up the West Papua politics status through the
referendum route as the most democratic solution and
2.	Immediately carried out the internal strengthening of the struggle
for the nation of West Papua through the association and the repairing
in the defence of the military, civil and the International diplomat in
the political and organisation program of KNPB.
3.	We urge the defence of the military to immediately unite and carry
out the repairing in order to pushes the agenda towards the referendum.
4.	We urge to all the elements of the struggle to immediately pushed the
formation of the Nasional Council as the symbol of the national
association towards the solution to the referendum in the problem
resolution of West Papua.
5.	Immediately stopped the debate and mutual conflicts between the
foreign diplomat and immediately to unite in works of the campaign and
diplomacy in order to pushes the process of the resolution through the
law and politic route.

This congress also succeeded in choosing the central management for,
where Buchtar Tabuni was chosen again with the unanimous vote to
continue to become General Chairman of  KNPB, whereas Mako Tabuni became
Vice Chairman of KNPB. General Secretary was filled up by Agus Trapen
and Danny Wenda. Whereas the national Spokesperson was Jefri Tabuni and
Victor F. Yeimo was chosen to be the Internasional Spokesperson.

This this resolution was passed towards organised internal the struggle
headed the nation goal of West Papua namely nation independence of West
Papua.
“We Must End”

Sinceraly,

Victor F. Yeimo
International spokesperson
(+6281384553160)
2

UNCEN students raise referendum with new US ambassador

Abridged in translation.

Bintang Papua 6 October 2010

UNCEN students raise referendum with new US ambassador

During a visit to Jayapura, the new US ambassador to Indonesia, Scot
Marciel, visited the Padang Bulan health  clinic and a number of
government offices.

During a visit to Cenderawasih University, there was a one-hour dialogue
with the students at which the students raised their demand for a
referendum and called for merdeka a number of times during questions and
answers. They expressed their disappointment that the ambassador's visit
to the university was only one hour long and the newly appointed
ambassador  made no reference to the issue of a referendum or similar
matters.

[According to a report in JUBI posted earlier, UNCEN students had said
that they rejected the ambassador's visit if it was only to discuss
matters such as education.]

Ambassador Marciel who was accompanied by several staff members from the
US embassy said he had just be appointed to the job and did not yet know
much. 'I  still need to study a lot. I will study everything first,' he
said.

Speaking to journalists, he said that the purpose of his visit to Papua
was to visit UNCEN and the health clinic and a number of officials such
as the MRP and the governor and he would be discussing the question of
education with the Indonesian authorities.

Responding to questions about a referendum, he said that the US
government supports special autonomy status for Papua within the NKRI.
He said that his government had never supported separatism for Papua.

During his visit to the health clinic, he met midwives. 'I am visiting
Papua to take a look at development here and to meet health personnel
and other Papuan leaders.' During his meeting with midwives,  he
discussed issues related to pre-natal care and malaria which have been
funded by the US since 2006.

During his meeting with members of the MRP, the implementation of
special autonomy was discussed. MRP members told him that special
autonomy had been a failure. 'The Papuan people have said that special
autonomy has failed and we facilitated this,' they said. They said that
the failure of special autonomy was evident from the fact that there had
been very little improvement in the living conditions of the Papuan
people and moreover, the government had pressed ahead with a decision to
split up the province which was not in accord with the terms of special
autonomy.

According to Agus Alua, chairman of the MRP , the ambassador said only
that he first needed to study all this information.

KNPB Occupy Theys Eluay's grave to call for Referendum

Information received from KNPB:  Several hundred KNPB activists are currently occupying the gravesite of murdered independence hero Theys Eluay at Waena, near Jayapura in West Papua.

SMS messages say that the activists  are paying homage to Eluay as they continue to publicly call for REFERENDUM to genuinely determine the status of West Papua according to the universally recognised basic human right of self-determination.

They are also seeking an immediate audience with the visiting US Ambassador to Indonesia, Cameron Hume.

As the grave is on the land belonging to family of the late Chief Eluay, the police do not have a right to remove the activists.  However, it is not known if the Police are likely to follow the law or disperse the peaceful occupiers.

Please stay tuned for updates.

westpapuamedia.info

KNPB to continue to press for a referendum – plus comment

KNPB will continue to press for Referendum

Bintang Papua, 30 September 2010

Jayapura: The spokesman  of the Komite Nasional Papua Barat – National Committee of West Papua, Mako Tabuni, speaking at a press conference, said that political dynamics were moving fast at present at a time when calls for a referendum are spreading throughout  Papua. In a democracy, this is an issue that must be accepted by the Indonesian state and the Indonesian people, together with the Papuan people.

The KNPB, as a national medium of the views of the Papuan people will continue to press for a referendum as the final solution to resolve the political status of West Papua, because this can resolve all the problems in Papua and it represents the best possible solution for the Papuan people. Without a referendum, the Papuan people’s problems will never be resolved.

He said that since Indonesia calls itself a democratic state based on the Pancasila, it can surely understand why the Papuan people are calling for a referendum. Many human rights abuses have been committed in the past and have persisted for 48 years, during which time the military forces have directly or indirectly caused great suffering for the Papuan people.

With the issue of a referendum having become so heated, the KNPB will continue to struggle for this demand.

With regard to the hearing held recently (in Washington)  which was attended by a number of Papuan leaders, including the chairman of DAP, Forkorus Yoboisembu, Herman Awom and others,  nothing has been forthcoming from the US suggesting that it does not support a referendum.

Mako Tabuni said that he is still awaiting reports about the activities of Papuans such as Nicolas Messet and Albert Yoku who were also present at the congressional hearing, nor has there been any official report regarding the results of the hearings. [Note: Verbatim reports of all the discussion have been widely circulated.]

Regarding telephone communications that have been reported by irresponsible elements that have been reported by the media in Jayapura to the effect that the issue of referendum has been rejected, these are quite untrue and provocative, because there has been no official announcement from the US Congress to the effect that a referendum is unacceptable.

Even if that were the case, the KNPB and the  Papuan people will continue to struggle for their political demand because this is their right, and it is a matter that cannot be determined by the Indonesian elite.

[Comment:  If the KNBP says that it is waiting for the decision of the US Congress in response to the call for a referendum, this reflects a misunderstanding of how the US congressional hearing mechanism works. The hearing was itself an unprecedented event, the first time that a US congressional body held a public discussion on the question of West Papua. The verbatim reports of the hearing, including all the testimonies and the discussions between the chairman of the Asia-Pacific sub-committee and members of the audience have been widely circulated, as well as the views of the US government. Everything is in the public domain. The US Congress itself cannot be expected to make a statement on an issue that was discussed by one of its sub-committees.

It now depends on organisations like the KNPB which support the call for a referendum in West Papua to translate these documents into Indonesian so that they become widely known in West Papua and Indonesia. By doing this, they can strengthen support for a referendum in Indonesia and internationally while at the same time revealing the strength of feeling about the issue to the Indonesian government. Arguably, the sudden decision of the SBY government to dispatch a large team of ministers to West Papua for the purposes of making an  ‘evaluation’ is a sign that the government is beginning to understand the strength of feeling and support for the West Papuan people’s demand.  TAPOL]

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