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| Illustration Genocide In the Land of Papua , Indonesia By ( Photos , www.malanesia.com ) |
By . Tom Davies #
Imagine a protest. A protest against the
actions of a tyrannical, oppressive military administration totally
intolerant of dissent. Now imagine that protest was broken up in a
coordinated attack by police and military forces, killing dozens of
unarmed civilians and capturing many others. Imagine many of those taken
into custody being raped, tortured and horrifically mutilated by their
captors. Now where would you imagine events like this would have taken
place? Syria perhaps? Or maybe North Korea? Perhaps under one of the
particularly bloodthirsty dictatorships in Africa or South America? You
would consider something like this a massacre. A heinous crime by a
government against its people which you would hope would cause an outcry
from the international community.
You’d be wrong on all counts. The events described took place in
1998, in a place which, were it not for its political situation might be
considered a paradise in the middle of the south pacific. You’ve
probably never even heard of it before, just as you’ve probably never
heard of the 1998 Biak Massacre before. Events like these are not
unusual there; they’re framed against a backdrop of half of century of
conflict and aggressive military occupation. They call this region West
Papua, but you may know it best as the other half of the island upon
which sits Papua New Guinea, a place better known internationally for
debatable tales of cannibalism than its neighbour, which has been
occupied by Indonesia since the 1960s, where atrocities and conflict are
an all too regular occurrence.
I first learned about West Papua almost by sheer chance when
attending a panel debate in London last year. The debate was on
outmanoeuvring tyranny and included figures such as the legal
representative of the Free Syrian Army and a noted anti government
activist from Azerbaijan. However it was a strange figure sitting at the
end of the panel that seemed of most interest to the crowd, resplendent
in a Hawaiian shirt and tribal headdress. The head of the panel
introduced him as Benny Wenda, an independence leader from West Papua.
Wenda was 37 years old at the time, but you could be forgiven for
thinking him ten years older, which in the context of his life is hardly
surprising.
Wenda was born in 1975 in Baliem Valley in the West Papuan highlands,
thirteen years after the Indonesian annexation of the region. When he
was just one years old the Indonesian military bombed his village in
response to an uprising of the highland Lani people against Indonesian
military rule. Many of Wenda’s family were killed in the repeated
airstrikes and he himself incurred a severe leg injury, resulting in
impaired growth. For the next six years Wenda and many other West Papuan
highlanders lived in hiding in the jungles of central West Papua. After
the Lani people finally surrendered to the Indonesian government, he
went on to study at a University in Jayapura, West Papua’s largest city,
and became a noted independence leader and Secretary General of Demmak,
the Koteka Tribal Assembly.
In 2002 Wenda was imprisoned for leading a procession at an
Independence rally which allegedly turned violent. This occurred during a
clampdown on the Independence Movement only a few months after the
assassination of noted pro-independence figure Theys Eluay. Facing a 25
year prison sentence, Wenda escaped from custody whilst on trial and was
able to flee across the border to Papua New Guinea, where he was
reunited with his wife, Maria, at a refugee camp and granted political
asylum in the United Kingdom. He now lives with his family just outside
Oxford, and campaigns for West Papuan Independence at events such as the
one I attended.
During the debate in London it was Wenda that stole the show. Under
any other normal circumstances any of the other panellists,
distinguished activists and campaigners all would have been of great
interest to any self-respecting political wonk. But it was Wenda who
captured the imagination of the audience; his story was so tragically
untold, half of the well educated crowd had until that morning not even
been aware that the land of his birth existed. His story was so
beautifully sad, so poignant and when he rounded off his plea with a
rendition of a song he had written whilst imprisoned on a handmade
ukulele painted with the flag of West Papua independence, you could see
some members of the audience barely able to choke back tears. Which, in a
room filled with hardnosed young political activists and other assorted
current affairs buffs, is quite something indeed.
West Papua is often labelled as a forgotten genocide. The atrocities
committed by the Indonesian government are simply too diplomatically
unimportant, too far outside of western spheres of influence to be
deemed worthy of much note by most media sources, or of much action by
western governments. The conflict is completely unheard of by the vast
majority of people, but it is estimated that 100,000 people have been
displaced, and from 100,000 to over 400,000 people may have died over
the past fifty years; a high proportion of those civilians. Countless
Independence leaders have been arrested, imprisoned or assassinated by
the Indonesian military. However, despite the occupiers worst excesses,
the United Nations has provided Indonesia with diplomatic support and
neighbouring nations, such as Papua New Guinea and Australia, have
pursued policies of appeasement towards Indonesian control of West
Papua. Apart from a handful of activists and politicians abroad, the
West Papuan people stand virtually alone, deprived of their right to
self determination and largely ignored by the international community.
The scale of the violence in such a reasonably small and sparsely
populated nation is equalled only by the excessiveness of the Indonesian
response to pro-independence activities. In 1978, five leaders of
pro-independence faction, the OPM, surrendered to save the village they
were caught in and were subsequently beaten to death with red hot iron
bars and their bodies thrown into a pit latrine. The 125 villagers were
then machine gunned down as suspected OPM sympathisers. In 1981, 10
Papuans were killed and 58 disappeared without a trace in the Paniai
region, whilst later that year an estimated 13,000 Papuans were killed
in the central highlands from September to December. On June 24 1985 in
the same region, 2,500 people were killed in a single day. In July 2009,
after the raising of the Morning Star flag (an act deemed illegal by
the Indonesian government) in the West Papuan village of Jugum, more
than 30 homes were burnt to the ground by the military, and in 2011 at
least five people were killed when police opened fire on an independence
rally. These are just a snapshot of the extreme violence committed
during a conflict, which shows no signs of stopping.
Indonesia has found in West Papua what might be referred to as its
Vietnam. A war it can never truly win against an indigenous populace who
clearly do not accept its place as their vassal. The difference is,
despite the brutal methods and significant military might used to quash
the dissent, the violence has continued unabated for over fifty years.
Indonesia has not relented in its claims of sovereignty over the region
and, whilst its activities in West Papua remain shielded from
international scrutiny, why would it?
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