Tangled in Papua’s political thickets
Fifty years
ago this month (May) Indonesia took over administration of what is now known as
West Papua. Two years later the
Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM – Free Papua Movement) started.
Following
the fall of President Soeharto in 1998 some thought the time ripe to seek
independence. But how to do it? In the remote province few knew more than
the meaning of merdeka (ironically gained from studying Indonesian history), the urge to
demonstrate and a symbol.
On Biak
Island off the north coast there was political will - but no flag. Activist Filep Karma had seen the Morning
Star but couldn’t remember details.
Employing a
seamstress would have attracted the police so Karma sprayed blue and red spray
paint on a piece of white cloth. This
was raised over a water tank at the harbor.
A prayer meeting was held. It
was a makeshift, amateurish, largely spontaneous and certainly naïve protest.
The unarmed
demonstrators brandished Bibles and sang hymns. That didn’t stop the military opening fire, apparently after some
soldiers had been assaulted.
Karma was
shot but survived. He alleged 29 were
killed. Witnesses claim bodies were
dumped at sea. The Army said just one
person died, and the washed up corpses victims of a giant wave far away.
Also in
Biak was American doctoral student Eben Kirksey who heard (but didn’t see) the
shootings. Had he been able to film the
event – as journalists did in 1991 at Dili’s Santa Cruz massacre – the world
might have paid more attention.
East Timor
is now an independent nation, in part because of the outrage following the Dili
killings. But West Papua remains firmly Indonesian with the support of Western
governments. With revolutions in Africa
and the Middle East, the problems of the region get little international
attention.
In Dr
Kirksey’s Freedom in Entangled Worlds we get a book with enough insights
to fill in the gaps – but not an objective account.
The
Indonesian government’s refusal to let in foreign journalists means that most
reports come from partisan sources – including the military. As in Syria this leaves us wondering who to
believe.
The author
first encountered Papua in the 1990s when travelling from the US to Jakarta as
an exchange student.
During the
night refuel the teenager got a whiff of the exotic and mysterious, penis
gourds and grass skirts, oppressive heat and the scent of kretek (clove)
cigarettes,
Later he
returned as an adult planning a thesis on the independence movement and
globalisation. Instead he was “drawn
into a struggle for freedom … (becoming) an advocate who accompanied West
Papuan activists in political meetings.” In 2005 he worked in Washington as a
human rights advocate. Hardly the
language and position of an even-handed academic.
Nonetheless
Dr Kirksey’s extensive research has been accepted and he’s now a lecturer at a
Sydney University where he teaches ‘environmental humanities’. He’s also become
a media commentator on West Papua.
This book
proves not all dissertations translate well into mainstream non-fiction. There are plenty of fascinating anecdotes
illustrating the cultural complexities and the author’s undercover work, but
these have been forced into theoretical moulds and decorated with jargon.
So we get
mixtures of Melanesian myths and magic laced with half understood (or
misunderstood) stories from the West, guaranteed to engross all – then given
equally weird explanations.
To try and
make sense of it all he uses extended metaphors drawn from the natural surroundings
– jungle roots.
West Papua
is quivering with spies. It’s almost
impossible to do anything or meet anyone without being observed and reported to
Intelligence, so activists and Dr Kirksey have taken great risks to garner
information.
The man is
no dilettante. He spent three months
with one tribe, speaks Indonesian and a Creole called Logat Papua and
interviewed 400 people. Impressive. So
is his lack of arrogance. His
achievement is ‘not a monograph with pretensions to completeness (but) a story
of compromises situated within multiple entangled worlds’.
Tangled
indeed. The layers over traditional beliefs have included Dutch colonialism,
the Second World War, fundamentalist Christianity, academic analysis,
capitalism, massive mineral exploitation and military oppression.
The
missionaries introduced hopes of the Messiah’s return. The Allied armies’ cargo brought proof of
the riches beyond the mountains that could appear out of the sky given the
right mantra.
Instead,
ironically on Christmas Day 1971 Freeport arrived to dig a giant hole and take
away the province’s riches. What were
the poorly educated and uninformed (or misinformed) Papuans to make of it all?
That so
many have mastered the complexities of international business and politics, and
aroused global concerns about exploitation and alleged human rights abuses is a
tribute to their abilities, tenacity and courage.
There are
signs of hope. President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono is reported to be pushing for a ‘development through compassion’
solution before he leaves office next year.
One way
would be to listen the Papuans’ grievances, ranging from dispossession, through
torture and murder, enough of their dreadful plight articulated in this book to
warrant action that doesn’t involve violence.
The danger
is that Dr Kirksey’s book will be considered antagonistic by the military,
restricting a peaceful and just settlement of this suppurating wound infecting
Indonesia’s relationship with the rest of the world – and particularly Australia.
Freedom in
Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the architecture of global power.
Eben
Kirksey
Duke
University Press 2012
322 pages
(First published in The Sunday Post, 2 June 2013)
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