TREATY, YES? TREATY NO!

NEITHER TREATY NOR PACT, JUST TROUBLING FACTS

Deal makers - or just chatting ?  Marles and Prabowo in his ego nest

ABC  foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic’s ’exclusive’ claim that "Australia and Indonesia are on the brink of sealing an upgraded defence pact" hasn’t been refuted by Defence so is probably right.

This is a distressing idea practically and morally for a nation that claims to respect the rules of warfare and human rights. That’s us.

The first stumble is the dates: August in Indonesia rivals late December in Australia when  key people leave their phones wrapped with the beach towels.

Across the archipelago it's not just preparations for the Proklamasi national day on the 17^th that's preoccupying all from kerb-painters to strutting generals.  

The following week will also see back-to-back Karnival celebrating the  shedding  of colonial rule 79 years ago - though the Dutch hung on for another four years of fighting.

Unless he’s a fan of fireworks and flags it’s not the best time for Defence Minister Richard Marles to be in Jakarta expecting full attention to what he wants.  

Arguing that the signing is too important to miss just because it's one nation's birthday wouldn’t resonate with the incoming right-wing ministry  suspicious of its pro-Washington southern neighbour.

Jakarta is also hard set against defence deals with any country - a strategy poured  in policy concrete mid-last century.

The language needs to be handled with care.  Australian bureaucrats toss around cliches like "milestone" deal, and "streamlined cooperation".

However, the ABC report  claims that whatever gets agreed won't be "a formal military alliance or a mutual defence treaty of any kind and neither country is expected to offer security guarantees to the other."

So what's the point? The intent is to get in first and disarm disquiet.  Although Northern Australia is loaded with US weapons and bristling with  marines we're really harmless peace-lovers.  Our missiles will head over - not into - the Republic.

The other aim is to soothe incoming President Prabowo Subianto’s fears of foreign interference in the West Papua conflict. He needs to know that we don't care a damn what his soldiers are doing next door, whatever awful things a few loose peaceniks are saying on social media.

A side benefit is the polite rubbishing of Prabowo's crazy claims (based on the US sci-fi novel Ghost Fleet) that Australia (population 25 million)  plans to seize the mineral riches of the Republic (population 275 million) by 2030.

In that time we couldn’t even launch a nuclear-powered submarine.

Apart from August being a lousy month to talk business, the idea of a "defence pact" between equals is ridiculous when one side is secretly  crushing dissidents - and the other is a democracy where counter-views and peaceful activism are still tolerated.

 There have been five agreements signed between the neighbours since 1995.  One was ripped apart in 1999 by Jakarta when Australia backed the East Timor referendum with citizens voting 8-2 to escape Indonesian control.

The other deals passed quietly - except for the misnamed ‘Lombok Treaty’, negotiated on the island next to Bali.

The ABC report says the update is being touted by the Australian government "as the most strategically significant bilateral agreement" since the original was signed in 2006 by the then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Properly known as the Agreement (not treaty) Between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia on the Framework for Security Cooperation it’s worth dissecting Article 2.

This bans support, participation or encouragement in activities “including separatism”.

There's no mention of West Papua but this is what the words are all about - undermining our claim to be an independent fearless nation speaking out on human rights abuses.

The fitter guy is the civilian Ozzie

Instead, it's allowing a plaster to be slapped on our values so there’s no official damning of the atrocities allegedly going on next door.

It’s left to NGOs like the Adelaide-based Australia West Papua Association and progressive Western churches to shout alarms for our conscience failures.

Defence wants to ensure the new pro-military administration led by  General Prabowo (cashiered in 1998 but his title reinstated this year) gets a clear message:  A few Okker activists sympathetic to the guerrillas’ cause don't speak for the government.

According to four Australian academic researchers including a former AFP investigator, “hundreds of thousands” have died  since 1965 when Indonesia took over the territory

This month West Papua independence-fighters allegedly killed Kiwi chopper pilot Glen Conning; he was flying for an Indonesian company ferrying local health workers into a remote region.  The six passengers were reportedly unharmed.

Another NZ pilot Phillip Mehrtens was seized early last year by the  West Papua National Liberation Army.  He's reportedly alive and being held hostage.  The group denies murdering Conning and has hinted at military involvement.

We hardly have a gnat's idea of what's happening in the jungles as Western journalists are banned. Rarely verifiable reports from church and community leaders tell of torture and atrocities allegedly committed by ill-disciplined Indonesian forces in the four largely Christian provinces of Papua.

 Marles wants to assure Jakarta that whatever its feral gunmen do we'll hear nothing and look elsewhere, a position also embraced by the Opposition.

Earlier this year Marles embellished his tough-guy credentials in a Jakarta media conference:  At the joint event, Prabowo said straight after the Australian's opening comments: "I don't think there's any need for questions."

Not all journos were intimidated, giving Marles the chance to roll up his sleeves:

 “There’s no support for any independence movements … we support the territorial sovereignty of Indonesia and that includes those provinces being part of Indonesia, no ifs, no buts, and I want to be clear about that.”

So no succour from Down Under. Indonesia is too frighteningly large to upset.

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 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 13 August 2024:  https://johnmenadue.com/neither-treaty-nor-pact-just-troubling-facts/

THE SILENT WAR GETS LOUDER

 TROUBLES NEXT DOOR? NOT OUR PROBLEM   

    

                  

An Australian academic is risking an eruption of diplomatic fury by publicly criticising Indonesia’s brutal response to the Papuan independence movement, a hypersensitive topic for the governments of both countries.

 

Queensland historian Dr Greg Poulgrain (above) last week told a Jakarta seminar that the Indonesian government’s approach ‘has long been top-heavy, bureaucratic, clumsy and self-serving.

 

‘The military arrived in 1962 and 60 years later they’re still there in strength … more troops there now than ever before.  

 

‘The NGO Kontras  declared that 734 Papuans were killed in 2022. That’s two-and-a-half times the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army last year. And from (the highland province) Nduga there were 60,000 refugees.’

 

His comments were made just as the Papua independence movement failed to get Pacific Islands’ backing at a stormy meeting in Vanuatu with an Indonesian delegation walk-out.

The bid was thwarted by an alleged ‘corrupt alliance’ of member states apparently after pressure from Indonesia which is funding Vanuatu airport repairs (including the VIP lounge) worth AUD 1.47 million. More of this later.

 

A report of the Jakarta seminar, organised by the government research agency Baden Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), was published in Indonesia’s leading newspaper Kompas. It ran to 830 words but didn’t mention Poulgrain or his comments, though he was the invited international guest speaker.

 

An estimated half-million indigenous Papuans are alleged to have died in the past fifty years through Indonesian military action. But the Australian Government stays hush.

 

Before she became Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong wrote that Labor was distressed by ‘human rights violations’ in West Papua. However, there’s a ‘don’t touch’ clause in a two-nation pact signed 17 years ago ‘to address security challenges’. 

 

The Lombok Treaty  binds Australia and Indonesia to mutually respect the ‘sovereignty, territorial integrity, national unity and political independence of each other.’ 

 

New England University academics Dr Xiang Gao and Professor Guy Charlton claim ‘non-interference’ limits Australian responses ‘despite the domestic sympathy much of the Australian public has given to the West Papuan population.’

 

They quote a 2019 website post from Wong saying the treaty ‘remains the bedrock of security cooperation’ between Australia and Indonesia.

 

Poulgrain told his Jakarta audience that the military’s presence in Papua ‘has led to amazing problems. ‘In the first 40 years, the Papuan death toll was horrendous. In 1983 the London-based Anti-Slavery Society sent me to check a report that Papuan under-fives in the Asmat district (South Papua) were dying like flies – six out of ten were dying. The report was correct.

 

‘We’re dealing with a people about whom very little effort to understand has been made. It has been claimed that the indigenous inhabitants of Papua should be grateful that so much money is spent …. but the benefit they receive (as a percentage of the intended amount) is hardly any benefit at all.’

 

The Indonesian government says it has allocated more than Rp 1,036 trillion (AUD 106 million) in the past eight years for development (mainly roads) in a bid to appease self-government demands. That’s a tiny sum against the income.

 

The Grasberg mine in Central Papua has ‘proven and probable reserves of 15.1 million ounces of gold.’ If correct that makes it the world’s biggest gold deposit.

 

It’s run by PT Freeport Indonesia a joint venture between the Indonesian Government and the US company Freeport-McMoRan. 

 

Poulgrain claims gross revenue from the mine last year was about AUD 13 billion: ‘We can be sure that the immense wealth of gold was a crucial influence on the sovereignty dispute in the 1950s and still influences the politics of Papua and Indonesia today.’

 

 Despite the riches, Papua is reportedly one of the least developed regions in Indonesia, with poverty and inequality levels up to three times above the national average of 9.5 per cent, as calculated by the Asian Development Bank.

 

In 1962 control of the Western half of the Island of New Guinea, formerly part of the Dutch East Indies, was temporarily run by the UN. In 1969 it was ceded to Indonesia after a referendum when 1,025 ‘leaders’ hand-picked by the Indonesian military voted unanimously to join Jakarta. 

 

It was labelled an Act of Free Choice; cynics called it an Act Free of Choice. Historian Dr Emma Kluge wrote: ‘West Papuans were denied independence also because the UN system failed to heed their calls and instead placed appeasing Indonesia above its commitment to decolonisation and human rights.’

 

Secessionists have since been fighting with words at the UN and at first with spears and arrows in the highland jungles. Some now carry captured modern weapons and have been ambushing and killing Indonesian soldiers and road workers, and suffering casualties.

 

In February the West Papua National Liberation Army, the armed section of the umbrella Organisasi Papua Merdeka (freedom), kidnapped NZ pilot Philip Mehrtens and demanded independence talks for his release. After searching for six months the Indonesian military (TNI) has so far failed to free the Kiwi. 

 

The OPM started gaining traction in the 1970s. Indonesia has designated it a ’terrorist group giving the armed forces greater arrest and interrogation powers. 

 

Amnesty International claimed this showed Indonesia’s ‘lack of willingness to engage with the real roots of the ongoing conflict’, though failed to pick apart the ‘roots’ or offer practical solutions. 

 

Communications in the mountains are tough and not just because of the terrain. Cellphone signals could lead to discovery. Journalists are banned. Requests for entry by this correspondent were given verbal OKs but are now ignored.

 

The only news comes from Christian pastors smuggling out notes, and statements from different OPM factions like the United Liberation Movement for West Papua. (ULMWP)

 

This is chaired by Benny Wenda who lives in the UK. In 2003 he was granted political asylum by the British government after fleeing Indonesia while on trial for leading an independence procession. He has not backed the kidnapping of Mehrtens. The secessionists' failure to speak with one voice exposes their weakness.

 

Earlier this year he was in Fiji and more recently Vanuatu  seeking support for Papua independence through the Melanesian Spearhead Group formed in 1998. 

 

The lobbying is angering Jakarta, a major donor to the region. Papuans identify as Melanesians and are mainly Christian. The Indonesian delegation walked out when Wenda got up to speak.

 

Indonesia’s deputy FM Pahala Mansury was quoted as saying: ‘Indonesia cannot accept that someone who should be responsible for acts of armed violence in Papua, including kidnappings, is given the opportunity to speak at this honourable forum.’

 

The ABC reported that the leaders couldn’t reach a consensus, but Wenda told Radio NZ  he was confident the ULMWP will eventually get full membership: ‘The whole world is watching and this is a test for the leadership to see whether they’ll save West Papua’.

 

 PNG’s National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop reportedly said: ‘I am totally disappointed in the failure of the MSG leaders to seize the opportunity to redefine the future of West Papua and our region.

‘Fear of Indonesia and proactive lobbying by Indonesia again has been allowed to dominate Melanesia to the detriment of our people of West Papua.’

 Curiously Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG though the Republic is dominated and led by Javanese. Around two million (0.7 per cent) Papuans are Indonesian citizens.

Dr David Robie NZ-based publisher of Asia Pacific Report responded:  ‘The MSG has thrown away a golden chance for achieving a historical step towards justice and peace in West Papua by lacking the courage to accept the main Papuan self-determination advocacy movement as full members.

‘Many see this as a terrible betrayal of West Papuan aspirations and an undermining of Melanesian credibility and solidarity as well as an ongoing threat to the region's security and human rights.’

Wenda is not the only emigre: Prize-winning Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman is  wanted by the Indonesian police for allegedly speaking out on violence in Papua. Like Wenda, she says she does not support hostage-taking.

 

Koman lives in Australia, works with Amnesty International and says she gets death threats. Her parents’ house in Jakarta has reportedly been stoned.

 

Just like The Hague’s handling of Indonesian anti-colonialists in the 1945-49 Revolutionary War, Jakarta’s policy has been force. Protesters are dehumanised, tagged as ‘criminals’ or ‘terrorists’ however mild their involvement, an ancient tactic in warfare making it legally easier to shoot than arrest.

 

The separatists’ cause gets little sympathy from Indonesians in other provinces. Papuan students in Java have been attacked and suffered racial abuse. Anyone caught flying OPM’s Morning Star flag risks 25 years in jail.

 

Vice-president Ma’ruf Amin has urged the military to ‘get tough’. At a Jakarta ceremony in June, former President Megawati Soekarnoputri was quoted as saying: ‘If I were still a commander, I would deploy the number of battalions there. That's cool, right?’

 

No, said Poulgrain: ‘The history of the Papuan people that has become the norm is not correct. This is still a problem today. It’s our perception that’s the problem. Adding battalions will not solve the problem today.’

 

Poulgrain is a specialist in Indonesian history and an adjunct fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast and Malang State University in East Java. His interest in Papua goes back to his student years as a backpacker exploring the archipelago.

 

Poulgrain said his involvement in the debate was as an independent historian seeking a peaceful settlement. After speaking in Jakarta he flew to Jayapura to address a seminar at the Papua International University.

 

In 1999 when Megawati was vice-president (she’s now the chair of BRIN), he was invited to a meeting on Papua with ten of her advisors:

 

‘They said to me, quite frankly, Papua was a problem they did not know how to solve. I suggested vocational training schools. We started - but the whole educational project stopped when the East Timor referendum established independence. Times haven’t changed.’

 

In 2018 activists delivered a petition to the UN with 1.8 million signatures demanding an independence referendum. That’s gone nowhere. Instead, Jakarta has split West Papua into six provinces supposedly to give locals more say, but to no real effect.

 

An analysis by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies concludes:

 

‘As the US and Australia continue to support Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in Papua, both administrations are unlikely to take bolder stances. 

 

‘International action in the situation is likely to remain limited to the Pacific Islands… Separatist violence, having shown its resiliency to Indonesia’s attempts to control the region, is thus likely to continue.’

 

First published in Michael West Media 1 September 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/the-silent-war-australia-and-indonesia-stay-mum-on-papuan-human-right-abuses/

HR v PR

 

          Stoking the fires in West Papua

 

We know this order will lead to more killing, more torture, more suffering of my people. The Speaker of the Indonesian House [of Representatives], Bambang Soesatyo, has urged the Government to ‘destroy them first. We will discuss human rights matters later’.

 

 

Indonesian government censors are slipping up. Maybe they’re too hungry and tired during the fasting month of Ramadan to choke every tweet which criticises Jakarta’s West Papua crush-dissidents policies or promotes independence for the far eastern province. (Confusingly there are two provinces – Papua and West Papua, but the latter term is widely used for both.]

 

Indonesians seeking information that hasn’t been well washed by the Army normally have to use VPNs to bypass the blue pencils. But the statement above by Benny Wenda, Interim President of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua, got through.

 

It follows the ambush of a motorcycle squad led by Special Forces Brigadier General Gusti Putu Danny Nugraha Karya, 50. He was reportedly shot on 25 April while heading to see school buildings allegedly torched by separatists. If correct it suggests the guerrillas have better intelligence than their opponents.

 

Two years ago nationalists killed 19 workers on the serpentine Trans-Papua Highway. The 4,600-kilometre road will open up land to outside settlers against the wishes of local tribes. 

 

Outsiders are barred so regular allegations of abuses by the military are rarely independently tested. Half the population of more than 1.2 million are Melanesians. The rest are mainly migrants from other parts of the archipelago leading to fears the nominally Christian indigenes will soon become a minority.

 

Last month’s killing of such a senior officer aroused the wrath of the government and army which launched Operasi Nemangkawi to find the attackers. They are believed to be from the poorly armed West Papua National Liberation Army, the military wing of the Free Papua Organization.

 

President Joko Widodo declared the WPNLA a terrorist organisation and ordered the police and military “to chase and arrest" all rebels involved: "I want to emphasise again that there is no place for armed groups in Papua." 

 

Widodo’s words were followed by Soesatyo who brought a tanker-load of fuel to the conflict with his comments about ignoring human rights, drawing this response from Wenda: 

 

“Amnesty Indonesia has already condemned the Speaker. In the last 24 hours, we have reports that people are fleeing the villages in anticipation of the crackdown. Helicopters are being deployed over the villages, reminding me of what happened in 1977 when I was a child.”

 

 As in so many fights for independence, irony is ever-present along with the bombs and bullets. Widodo’s and Soesatyo’s statements could have been delivered by Dutch generals between 1945 and 49. The Netherlands was fighting Indonesian nationalists who said they were in a War of Revolution. The Hollanders’ term was ‘Police Actions’.

 

Whatever the title it left an estimated 100,000 Indonesians and 6,000 Dutch dead before the conflict was settled following intense pressure on The Hague by Washington. However, the west end of the island of New Guinea stayed with the Dutch till it was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 through an UN-sponsored ballot.

 

The authenticity of the poll has long been challenged by Wenda and his predecessors. It was called the Act of Free Choice with 1,025 voters selected from an estimated 700,000 Papuans. 

Western media observers labelled the exercise an Act Free of Choice.  The result was unanimous support for Indonesian control.

 

Cynics claim the low-intensity struggle waged since then with little independent scrutiny is more about money than sovereignty. 

 

Explainers tag the province ‘resource-rich. That’s an understatement. The Grasberg mine, once owned by the US company Freeport, but now majority held by the Indonesian government, is the seventh-largest gold mine and the second-largest copper mine in the world. Both minerals are fetching top prices.

 

This is one reason why Indonesians have little sympathy for the ‘terrorists’ who are usually imagined to be puppets controlled by nameless outsiders. These sinister forces apparently want to plunder the goodies and impoverish the nation, repeating the policies of the Dutch colonialists.

 

The loss of another province after the East Timorese voted for independence in 1999 would further destroy the ‘Unitary State’. This concept is held as strongly as Australian politicians invoke the ‘Anzac Spirit’ to demonstrate their nationalism.

 

Reinforcing the international conspiracy theory is that Wenda, 46, isn’t in his homeland. He lives in Oxford after escaping from a jail in West Papua in 2003 and fleeing into Papua New Guinea. He’d been charged for leading an independence rally and faced 25 years behind bars.

 

With the help of European NGOs, he got political asylum in Britain where he leads a global campaign for independence.

 

Another activist working from overseas is Indonesian Veronica Koman, 32, who remains in Australia where she came to study postgraduate law. In 2019 she won the Sir Ronald Wilson Human Rights Awards for exposing human rights abuses in West Papua. 

 

Indonesian authorities want her back to face accusations of sedition. An account with her name tweeted that declaring independence fighters as terrorists meant "Indonesia has just burnt the bridge towards a peaceful resolution".

 

Australia always denies backing Papuan separatists, though supporting NGOs – often faith-based - are operating from the continent. So far this hasn’t become a hot issue in relations between Jakarta and Canberra, probably because Covid-19 is getting a higher priority and the two nations are cooperating on disease control. 

 

 However, it remains a slow burner ready to flare if the death of the one-star general is followed by fierce and unchecked retaliation drawing overseas outrage. Some media are already carrying reports – sourced to the ‘Nemangkawi Public Relations Task Force’ - that nine members of an ‘armed criminal group’ were killed in a shootout three days after the Brigadier General died.

 

Footnote:  I first applied for a journalist’s visa to enter West Papua four years ago. It was endorsed by an Indonesian Ambassador. Despite assurances there are no problems and it’s being processed, I’m still waiting.

 

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 5 May 2021: https://johnmenadue.com/human-rights-abuses-on-our-doorstep-but-we-say-nothing/