WHO WANTS TO BE A MELANESIAN?

Papua – deal or no deal?     

                                     

Foreign “actors” are supporting Papua’s armed secessionists according to Tantowi Yahya, but he won’t name names:  “I believe this because the movement has become more orchestrated.”

Doing what – gunrunning, gold smuggling? Are they working from Australia or New Zealand, where the former TV entertainer is now the Indonesian ambassador?  Yahya jokes away attempts to put flesh on the straw man.

“It’s like someone in the room makes a smell,” he said.  “Everyone knows it’s happened but no-one will say they’re responsible.”

But the multi-talented quizmaster from Who wants to be a Millionaire? and Deal or No Deal (both on RCTI TV last decade) wouldn’t have his present job if Jakarta’s foreign-policy gurus didn’t see NZ as the locus of suspects.

The ambassador’s responsibilities also include Samoa and Tonga.  Some Pacific Islands, particularly Vanuatu, have been backing Papuan independence.

Yahya is an ideal pick to soften perceptions of a harsh administration; who wouldn’t join the famous Country and Western singer, composer and guitarist’s fan club?

This present gig is probably his toughest; pulling an applauding Kiwi crowd for a Papuan Country Road, however well crooned, is all uphill. 

Despite his business and music successes (he once sold ten million records), Yahya knows fame is fickle when good intentions get twisted. In 2013 he visited Palestine and Israel, reckoning Indonesia could help with the ‘two-state solution’ to the conflict so people can live “free of fear”. 

His good intentions damaged his career as extremists campaigned against him. “I don’t regret going but I do regret the hurt felt by some Muslims,” he said.

The knocks to Yahya’s messages on Papua keep coming. In December hundreds in Java were briefly arrested for celebrating Papua’s ‘independence day’.  He said many reports of the action were “hoaxes”.

In January a petition allegedly signed by 1.8 million Papuans seeking an internationally supervised referendum on independence was handed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
This month pictures of the police torturing a man with a two-meter snake went international. (The police later apologized and said they disciplined the officers.) 

On the day Yahya spoke to The Jakarta Post two Papua NGOs announced they’d boycott the 17 April elections alleging continuing human rights abuses.

The most serious event came late last year when 19 or more (reports are mixed) road workers were killed, allegedly by armed separatists now being pursued by the army. Yahya condemned the violence and stressed that humanitarian concerns had to top economic issues.

President Joko Widodo has regularly insisted that development of the two provinces (Papua and West Papua) is a high priority.

Yahya, who has visited Papua six times, defended the transmigration program which has seen about a million settlers move to the region of 4.4 million because they established new lives and brought fresh skills.

He dismissed suggestions that the Melanesian culture would be diluted by the newcomers and stressed indigenous values and faiths would be respected. “The aspirations of the people are most important,” he said. “We must listen.”

It’s unlikely Yahya’s ‘actor’ comments would have been made by a career diplomat shackled by protocols. However the ambassador was appointed from outside the Department of Foreign Affairs so has more freedom. 

For ten years he was a Golkar politician, first representing his home province of South Sumatra and later Jakarta.  His qualities include media skills and forcefully articulating the Indonesian government’s claims that even if all is not yet well in Papua, things are getting better.

Yahya handles all charges with equanimity: “It’s a work in progress. There are misperceptions of the situation – people are being misled. Papua was part of the Dutch East Indies. The 1969 Act of Free Choice confirmed Papua as Indonesian.” (A UN referendum of 1,025 leaders selected by the Indonesian military chose to join the Republic.)

He won’t countenance comparisons of Papua separatists’ struggle with the four-year guerrilla campaign against the returning Dutch colonialists after Soekarno declared independence in 1945.

Officially Australia and NZ recognize the provinces as Indonesian.  NGOs are independent. There’s a small though energetic group in NZ, including Protestant and Catholic Churches, campaigning on alleged human rights abuses. Maori and Pacific Island communities in NZ are also supportive.

Some cheer on separatists, though there’s no proof yet they’re doing more than firing off media statements and holding demos.  But they do draw the media.

Spokesperson for the Free West Papua Campaign is veteran activist Maire Leadbeater, 73. 

Her latest book See No Evil, subtitled ‘NZ’s betrayal of the people of West Papua’, is a scholarly work, prominently displayed in central Wellington’s premier bookshop.

Yahya says he’s read the book published by Otago University Press:  “The first three chapters are factual but the rest is propaganda.”  He hasn’t met the author, who formerly lobbied for a free East Timor, but says he would talk.  (Leadbeater said she was “open to consideration” of an invitation.)

Despite the obstacles Yahya perseveres.  He’s given the embassy’s reception area a Papua theme and has met local members of the London-based All-Party Parliamentary Group on West Papua.

As a politician in Jakarta Yahya showed he was more than a tenor in a ten-gallon hat by savaging Australia over halting asylum seekers transiting Indonesia, hoping to reach the Great South Land.

The ‘Pacific Solution’ aims to halt the traffic by turning back the boats and sometimes paying skippers to obey. Yahya called the policy ‘illegal, offensive and an affront to democracy.’

“I still hold that position,” he said. “All parties should sit down and discuss the issues. We have about 14,000 people in Indonesia who don’t want to be there. But I can’t see any solution right now.”

Which is how the Papua problem appears, though Yahya is not about to change his tune: “There’s no question about it. Papua is part of the Unitary State.”

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First published in The Jakarta Post 5 March 2019

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