AUSTRALIA-INDONESIA TREATY

WHAT’S NOT SAID IN THE LOMBOK TREATY
© Duncan Graham 2006

There’s a critical five-letter word absent from the Framework for Security Cooperation agreement signed Monday 13 November in Lombok between Indonesia and Australia.

The missing word is ‘Papua’.

Despite its invisibility this is at the heart of the seven-page document dubbed the Lombok Treaty by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his Indonesian counterpart Hassan Wirayuda.

Discussions leading to the pact have been running for two years. But the decision by Australia to give asylum to 43 Papuan refugees who sailed to Australia last January put fuel in the negotiators’ tanks.

The document is full of motherhood terms and rubbery words – diplomatic delights like ‘reaffirming’, ‘recognising’ and ‘emphasising.’ If these help establish trust then quibbling is out of place.

Inevitably the Lombok Treaty is short on what will actually be done in real terms, although Article 6 includes an ‘implementing mechanism’. This commits the two countries to ‘take necessary steps’ and ‘meet on a regular basis’.

When there’s a dispute – which is certain given the great gulf between the two countries’ values and cultures – this shall be ‘settled amicably by mutual consultation or negotiation.’ There are no sanctions.

One issue has already been determined: If there’s any strife about interpreting the bi-lingual document then the English text will prevail.

Although the emphasis is on security this isn’t a military alliance. Such a treaty is prohibited under Indonesian law. The issue here is terrorism and just seems to reinforce already existing arrangements with the police and the military.

Nor is the treaty a law. Ahead lies ratification by both governments. In the wash-up only mutual goodwill will make this agreement work.

As anticipated there’s a clause on drug trafficking. Watch out if death penalties are enforced against Australian drug runners and the talkback radio vitriolic shock jocks start slandering Indonesia again, demanding Canberra intervenes. Then the lines on ‘good neighbourliness and non-interference in the internal affairs of one another’ will get a real acid test.

There’s no doubt the Australian government and opposition fear the ‘Balkanisation’ of the Republic and want a unified and stable Indonesia.

Canberra, the region’s perceived deputy sheriff, is facing multiple crises among the alleged ‘failed states’ of the Pacific, along with problems in Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea. It certainly doesn’t want more regional hassles.

The key point on Papua is Article 2, Item 3 – a black-letter lawyer’s gem:

“The Parties, consistent with their respective domestic laws and international obligations, shall not in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other Party, including by those who seek to use its territory for encouraging or committing such activities, including separatism, in the territory of the other Party.” (‘Party’ means nation.)

Does this mean that any future boat people who dig their toes into Australian sand won’t have claims for refugee status recognised?

The answer will come when and if that happens. But any careful reading of the words above – particularly the phrase about ‘domestic laws and international obligations’ - doesn’t score out a repeat of this year’s successful bids for asylum.

At that time the Australian government said it was powerless to act under law once an administrative decision had been made. It also knew the electorate was backing the Papuans.

When the government tried to buttress immigration law this was interpreted as an attempt to appease an inflamed Indonesia. The bid failed in August when Prime Minister John Howard withdrew the Migration Amendment Bill once he foresaw defeat. Even a few members of his own coalition were barracking for the Papuans.

If that same Papuan refugee scenario is rerun in the months ahead, the Indonesian outrage that led to ambassador Hamzah Thayeb being recalled for three months could erupt again.

Indonesians who recall with pleasure the Suharto New Order administration still find it difficult to understand that in a democracy governments are not all powerful.

The shrill lobby groups in Australia seeking a free Papua (which they call West Papua) are unlikely to be muzzled by this treaty. They won’t get any taxpayers’ money. Their demands will be ridiculed and rejected by the government - and probably the Labor Party opposition that has so far given the treaty its cautious blessing.

Yet none of this is likely to quench the determination of the NGOs, church groups and minority party politicians. In fact it could help their cause. In the court of Australian public opinion where ‘getting a fair go’ rules debate, being the underdog is always the favored position.

So the more the Papua separatists are rubbished and their statements undermined, the more their allegations of human rights abuses will get an airing and an audience. These claims will infuriate the Indonesian government and people, and ensure Papua remains the new pebble in the shoe of relations between the neighbors.

Unless serious political and administrative reforms are made to the satisfaction of the locals, effectively neutering the Australian agitators.

It happened in the most western province of the Republic – so why not in the most eastern part?

(First published in The Jakarta Post 17 November 06)

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AUSTRALIA-INDONESIA TREATY

SEE THE DETAILS, FIND THE DEVIL © Duncan Graham 2006

Jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Former British prime minister Harold Macmillan.

The planned signing of a proposed new treaty between Indonesia and Australia this Monday (13 Nov) by the two foreign ministers, is being boosted in the nation next door as a significant advance in relations between the neighbors.

What impact will it have on the average person on either side of the Indian Ocean? Probably not a ripple – though that doesn’t mean the exercise is worthless.

Whatever the backslapping top-level bureaucrats in Western suits (Indonesians) and batik (Australians) say, things aren’t looking good down below.

Poll results released last month (Oct) by the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy show almost two thirds of those surveyed think Indonesia is a threat to Australia.

So any initiative, however bland and unformed, has to be positive. Then maybe the hearts and minds of the populace will follow. Maybe …

The only public badmouth so far has been Senator Bob Brown, leader of the minority Greens party. He claims the treaty – properly named the Framework for Security Cooperation – will encourage the development of nuclear power in Indonesia and suppress the Papuan independence movement.

Though the agreement hasn’t been publicly released some details have been leaked.

The seven-page document will have 10 formal articles. One apparently commits the signatories to ‘not in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other party.’

This is a masked reference to the activities of the Papuan independence lobby in Australia that Senator Brown supports.

But then so do the majority of Australians according to a survey earlier this year. Canberra can give Jakarta bucketsful of assurances, but in a robust democracy a government can’t shut down non-terrorist organisations it doesn’t like.

Nor can it easily change the public’s mindset with a few ads, which are apparently also being planned. They’d have to be better than the failed American attempts to portray the US as a peace-loving nation that treats Muslims as equals. That campaign bombed.

The Papua lobby in Australia includes academics notably around the University of Sydney’s West Papua Project, Protestant and Catholic churches, NGOs linked to the Australia West Papua Association, and supporters of human rights. They’re not going to shut up anytime soon, though a campaign is underway to discredit their claims.

This has been led by academic Rodd McGibbon who spent six years in Indonesia working for the UN and US Aid. In a paper titled Pitfalls of Papua released last month (Oct) for the Lowy Institute and neatly laying a welcome mat for the treaty, he argues that activists’ ‘utopian thinking’ have misled the Australian public.

He claims the more backing Australians give Papuan separatists, the more the TNI and hard-line nationalists will suppress the province, thereby setting back reform. He also says the average Aussie doesn’t understand the politics – particularly the strength of Indonesian nationalism.

On this last issue he’s undoubtedly right. International relationships tend to float or founder on perceptions, not facts.

It was the ‘uninformed’ voters who forced the Australian government to be more active in the 1999 East Timor referendum when the official line was to take things slowly.

The new treaty replaces the document organised in secret by prime minister Paul Keating and Indonesian president Suharto in 1995. This was ripped up in 1999 by president Habibie when Australia led peacekeepers during the East Timor referendum - an action seen by Indonesia as a betrayal.

Critics of the original treaty (including the present PM John Howard) were angry there’d been no public debate leading to the pact.

Yet the same thing seems to be happening again. It’s true the Australian government has been talking about the new document for almost two years, but we only know the headings.

These are defence, counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing, sea and air security, weapons of mass destruction, emergency relief, fish poaching, people-smuggling, drug running and other crimes.

All well and good. But how are these going to be implemented? Will there be penalties for non-compliance – and if so what? When Jakarta is next outraged by some Australian exercising her or his freedom of speech, what can Canberra do but say the press is free?

What concessions has the Australian government made? The document isn’t a defence pact, so what are the ‘security threats’?

How will the Howard government react if Indonesia kicks out academics and journalists who allege human rights abuses in Papua? Is there a chapter on that possible scenario?

The Australian Federal Police have been active in Indonesia, so will Indonesian police go to Australia and help interrogate Indonesians suspected of terrorism? And how is ‘terrorism’ to be defined? Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir would come under that heading in Australia, but not Indonesia.

Will drug law enforcement lead to more Australians on death row in Indonesia? Indonesians in Australia committing the same offences confront prison bars, not rifle muzzles. This is a major issue among voters Down Under.

In the past environmentalists have condemned nuclear power in the geologically unstable archipelago, fearing an earthquake could release radiation from a fractured plant. The treaty could allow Australian sales of uranium, implicitly encouraging the building of reactors. The Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine was 20 years ago – and people still suffer.

There are many more similar questions and concerns. The devil is in the detail and the punters in both democracies remain ignorant – just as they did with the discredited Suharto-Keating deal.

It’s been reported that the new treaty will have to be ratified by parliaments in both countries before taking effect. Maybe then the voters will get to have their say.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 13 November '06)
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