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 FACTS SACRED,  PACTS NOT

It's a hoary oldie publicity hook: Imagine something improbable  and feed off the controversy.

Launching a balloon’s a common tactic in domestic politics to see what might distract voters, but here we're talking about Indonesia and the big chessboard .

Foreign affairs is a discipline so multi-layered that even expert writers know their imagination will rarely blow hard enough to get their toy airborne. No matter - they'll get a reputation for innovative thinking.

Sam Roggeveen is director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program. A former Office of National Assessments senior analyst, he has credibility and a go-to reputation.

In his latest Australian Foreign Affairs essay (The Jakarta Option) that  costs $25 to read, he argues that an Australia-Indonesia alliance is "necessary". Really?

The Interpreter website he founded spruiks the long write and a weird notion - that we’re lucky to have Indonesia as a neighbour and that relations could have been worse.  That’s an  assumption impossible to test.

Why now? Having a cashiered former general reinstated and promoted to four stars taking over the Republic from a civilian in October will mean seismic policy shifts.

But the coming avalanche doesn’t stir Roggeveen’s pro. Curiously absent is any reference to the  president-elect, the ultra-nationalist Prabowo Subianto who’ll be shaking up Indonesia.

The author ponders possible alliances with Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines -  rejecting Japan as too distant.

So to stop US-China rivalry in the region - a most worthy ambition - he settles on Indonesia ”to move military matters to the background of regional relations”.  Possible?

No, Sir.  But that doesn't mean we can't get to know each other better using trade, tourism, education and all other means apart from sharing the killing of strangers.

Hands are for shaking, not gripping an AK-47. Fingers are for picking noses, not squeezing triggers.

This old joke is apt. One man tells his mate: "You see that guy?  I hate him." The friend asks: "Why? You don't know him."  The response: "That's why I hate him."

 Here’s Melbourne University Law Professor  Tim Lindsey and colleague Dave McRae:

“There are no two neighbouring countries anywhere in the world that are more different than Indonesia and Australia. They differ hugely in religion, language, culture, history, geography, race, economics, worldview and population.”

 Indonesia has about 400,000 men and 30,000 women in uniform, and an equal  number of reservists. About 88 per cent of the general population are  Muslims so a similar figure among the forces is likely.

Australia's figures are 57,000 and 32,000, faiths unknown. It seems crazy that anyone might think we have invasion ambitions, but like uranium the residue of colonialism has a long life.

One survey showed a third of Indonesians see Australia as a security threat, hardly the basis for an alliance. Meanwhile, we worry about Islamophobia.

John Howard’s reported brag in 2000 that we’re “America’s deputy sheriff”  hasn’t been forgotten.

Roggeveen reckons that because our neighbour is a growing economic power that's "successfully negotiated a remarkable transition to democracy" (a claim worth challenging with more space),  we should march together to dissuade threats.

Conspiracy theorists would see a pact as a plot to make Indonesians front-line fodder in any East-West war. The author concedes that “Jakarta is often prickly. There’s been tumult and tragedy”.

Indeed. In 1965 the army organised militias to slaughter maybe half a million citizens in a purge against real or imagined Communists,  a genocide irrefutably exposed by Australian academic Dr Jess Melvin.

The most recent crimes include allegations of prisoner torture in shuttered Papua where thousands of well-armed troops are failing to quell tribal dissidents and rescue a NZ pilot taken hostage in early 2023.

This month it’s alleged that soldiers killed a Sumatran journalist and his family for exposing officers' gambling.  Roggeveen tries to sidestep these issues by arguing any pact would only involve the Navy and Air Force.

Impossible. They’re all together in the  Tentara (armed forces) Nasional Indonesia (TNI) with overall leadership often rotated through the services.

The Republic is mightily hostile to pacts, stressing its  “golden mean … mendayung antara dua karang (rowing between two reefs) principle:

“Indonesia’s foreign policy is independent and active …because Indonesia does not side with world powers.”

Roggeveen claims that a “wealthy Indonesia engaged in a close military partnership with Australia would be a major security asset for Canberra.”  

Maybe for the hawks, though not the doves as human rights activists would  alert the public to  Prabowo’s troubled past and his alleged threats to democracy.

The world’s fourth largest nation (after India, China and the US) is critically positioned at the end of the South China Sea, so of strategic interest to the PRC and the US.

Both have been wooing Indonesia to get onside. So far China is ahead; that doesn’t mean a forthcoming marriage but there’s been more bromance than hostility.

Since being first elected in 2014 Jokowi has met Xi Jinping eight times, but Donald Trump and Joe Biden half that number.

The New York Times reported  former Trade and Investment Minister Tom Lembong:   “Many Indonesian business and political elites believe China is the relevant superpower and the US is in relative decline — and, geographically, far away”.

Prabowo, who is in business and politics, went to Beijing after winning this year’s February election though not to Washington.  For many years he was banned from the US (where he got military training) and Australia for alleged human rights abuses.

If Prabowo returns  the last century dwi fungsi (two functions) system of the military commanding the police, and puts retired generals into running the public services, a military dictatorship will evolve.

Then the  idea of the ADF working with the TNI would vanish..

Writing on foreign affairs is largely dreaming aloud, so let’s try a nightmare:  Should the US help Taipei if Beijing attacked, Canberra might send a gunboat.  

In a world of few certainties here’s one:  There'd be no Indonesians among the crew.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 11 July 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/facts-sacred-pacts-not/

 

 

 

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IMPOSSIBLE DEMANDS THREATEN KIWI PILOT'S RELEASE

 A story likely to end badly - then continue  

Picture released by kidnappers

It’s the decades-long human rights tragedy next door that Australia avoids. Abuses in Myanmar, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine and other hate hotspots get stern condemnation sometimes backed by sanctions, arms and sanctuary for refugees. But Indonesia’s brutal suppression of separatists in West Papua goes untouched.

It’s easy being morally upright when the brutalities and agonies are far away.  When adjacent, and the offender is big, powerful, outnumbering us 11-to 1, and a vital trader, concerns get muted.  President Theodore Roosevelt's ‘big stick’ foreign policy advice has been tweaked by Canberra to: ‘Speak softly and carry a small twig’.

The 2006 Lombok Treaty was assembled after John Howard’s government gave 43 West Papua asylum seekers protection visas to Jakarta’s fury. They sailed to Australia carrying a sign accusing Indonesia of genocide.  

The treaty has both nations showing ‘mutual respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, national unity and political independence and non-interference in the internal affairs of one another’.  This means Indonesia won’t comment on deaths of Aborigines in custody and we won’t talk about deaths of West Papuans in military actions.

This cosy arrangement was ruptured on 7 February when NZ pilot Phil Mehrtens was kidnapped by the West Papua Liberation Army (TPN-PB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) now officially  designated a terrorist group. The man’s a Kiwi, but we’re supposed to be cousins and fellow humans so should be deeply disturbed.

The 37-year old aviator was grabbed by armed men when he landed his single-engined Pilatus Porter PC6 on a mountain airstrip as part of a routine flight delivering supplies and ferrying building contractors.  The aircraft owned by Indonesian company Susi Air was torched after the local passengers were released.unstop

Three weeks ago the TPN-PB released videos purporting to show an apparently fit Mehrtens with an aggressive gang carrying a mixed armoury - from ancient to modern - bows and arrows, spears and hefty firearms.  

Since then there’s been an almost total news blackout in the province where the Indonesian military keeps journos at bay. Ironically your correspondent got a permit to visit last century when the hard-line dictator General Soeharto was in power, but is denied one now Indonesia claims to be open and democratic.

Mehrtens’ captors originally said they’d release him if Jakarta gave the province its independence - a demand that will never be met for a hundred billion reasons.  In US dollars that’s the estimated value of gold and copper reserves in West Papua’s Grasberg mine, one of the biggest deposits in the world, partly owned by the US miner Freeport McMoRan. Grasberg is now Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer.

The Asia Times reported that the abductors are led by Egianus Kogoya, 24, a man harbouring hate. The Indonesian military (TNI) claims it knows where he’s  hiding and has his camps encircled.

The NZ Government has pleaded with Indonesian authorities to keep their assault weapons on safety fearing their citizen could be killed deliberately or in crossfire. The two countries have different agendas: Wellington wants Mehrtens free and unharmed - Jakarta wants his captors destroyed.  The other danger is that the pilot will fall seriously sick in his jailers’ jungle hideaway and need medical attention which he won’t get as long as both sides remain unbending.

Last month TPN-PB spokesman Sebby Sambom, issued an explanation for the kidnap: ’The military and police have killed too many Papuans. From our end, we also killed. So it is better that we sit at the negotiation table …Our new targets are all foreigners: the US, EU, Australians and New Zealanders because they supported Indonesia to kill Papuans for 60 years. Colonialism in Papua must be abolished.’

Indonesian Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono, who knows Sambom, told Radio NZ: ‘I do not know how to measure the seriousness of such a threat but this is a hostage situation, things could be out of control. So the best way is to negotiate and ask them to release the pilot.’

Based on history, hopes for a resolution using words don’t look promising.  In 1996  four Britons, five Indonesians and two Netherlanders - one pregnant and all part of a World Wildlife Fund research party - were held for more than  four months.  Then, as now,the OPM demanded independence.  Faith leaders and the Red Cross were involved in negotiations but an agreed settlement went badly wrong at the last minute.

The crack special forces unit Kopassus led by Prabowo Subianto then slipped their AK 47’s into automatic. Two Indonesian captives and eight OPM fighters were killed during the forced release including Kogoya’s dad Daniel Yudas.  Five Indonesian soldiers died in a helicopter crash.

An ABC Four Corners programme Blood on the Cross covered the rescue and aired allegations troops had used a Red Cross chopper, or lookalike, to deceive the hostage-takers. (Prabowo will be a candidate in next year’s Presidential election.)  

The TPN-PB isn’t into benign chats. Four years ago its members shot down 24 Indonesians working on a major highway.  A retaliatory military op allegedly displaced 60,000 villagers.  Despite deploying more than 21,000 troops following the 2021 ambush and killing of Brigadier General Gusti Putu Danny Karya Nugraha, head of Indonesian intelligence in the region, their enemy remains elusive.

President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, who has been to the province several times, ordered an even heavier response after Mehrtens was seized.  ‘I want to emphasise again that there is no place for armed groups in Papua.’ Parliament’s Speaker Bambang Soesatyo was tougher and foreboding: ‘Destroy them first. We will discuss human rights matters later.’

There’s little sympathy for the Papuan separatists across Indonesia.  This is despite four years of guerrilla warfare against the Dutch colonialists at an estimated cost of 100,000 lives. Although successive governments have tried to integrate the Melanesians under the nation’s motto of Bhinekka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) racism remains.

In 2019 there were riots in the East Java capital Surabaya when a student dormitory was stoned by locals  reportedly chanting ‘slaughter the Papuans’ after stories dashed around of an Indonesian flag being trashed. The Papuans alleged they were called ‘monkeys’- 43 were arrested.

The tree of pain took root when the western half of Papua (then Irian Jaya) wasn’t included in the transfer of the Dutch East Indies to an independent Indonesia. In the late 1960s the UN organised a referendum to determine control of the mineral-rich half-island.

The Indonesian military selected 1025  men from an estimated 800,000 residents to vote in the so-called Act of Free Choice, dubbed by some observers as ‘an act free of choice’. Unsurprisingly the handpicked ‘representatives’ put their hands up to join Indonesia which set about consolidating control

This included a transmigration programme shifting landless Muslim Javanese to the largely Christian provinces of Papua and West Papua. Highways are being cut through forests and mountains to encourage ‘equitable development and peace’, angering the locals who fear the invasion is unstoppable and extinction inevitable unless they fight..

Murders have also fueled fury.  Last month a military court jailed four soldiers for terms from 15 years to life for pre-meditated slaughter and mutilations of four civilian Papuans.

 

Not all killings have directly involved Indonesian security forces, but do show they’ve yet to establish order.  Last month nine people were  killed and 14 wounded during a riot triggered by rumours about a child being kidnapped, according to Reuters .

The US NGO Genocide Watch claims the Indonesian military has killed up to half a million West Papuans ‘since their war for independence began,’ a figure impossible to verify. 

Indonesian media stories that the pilot will be freed in return for cash and arms have been denied by his captors as military propaganda, and their aim for independence remains. However a ransom payment may eventually be the only way to get Mehrtens home without bloodshed.

That will need brave and trusted intermediaries to negotiate a deal.  After the failed 1996 Red Cross attempt there won’t be too many takers.

First published in Michael West Media, 28 March 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/west-papua-a-human-rights-tragedy-right-on-our-doorstep/

 

 

 

WEST PAPUA - INDONESIA'S TROUBLED TERRITORY

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)