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CIAO DATE: 10/5/2006
Papua: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
September 2006
Abstract
No part of Indonesia generates as much distorted reporting as Papua, the western half of New Guinea that has been home to an independence movement since the 1960s.
Some sources, mostly outside Indonesia, paint a picture of a closed killing field where the Indonesian army, backed by militia forces, perpetrates genocide against a defenceless people struggling for freedom. A variant has the army and multinational companies joining forces to despoil Papua and rob it of its own resources. Proponents of this view point to restrictions on media access, increasing troop strength in Papua of the Indonesian armed forces (TNI), payments to the TNI from the giant U.S. copper and gold mining company, Freeport, and reports by human rights organisations as supporting evidence for their views.
Others, mostly inside Indonesia, portray Papua as the target of machinations by Western interests, bent on bringing about an East Timor-style international intervention that will further divide and weaken the Indonesian nation. Specifically, according to this view, Western interests are encouraging an international campaign to review and reject a 1969 United Nations-sponsored plebiscite, called the Act of Free Choice, that resulted in Papua’s integration into the Indonesian republic. Should that campaign be successful, the international legal grounds for a referendum on independence would be established. They believe that the independence movement consists of a small band of criminals who have no real support in the population at large.
Neither portrayal of Papua is accurate, but both are extraordinarily difficult to dislodge – particularly because both contain kernels of truth that fuel false assumptions.
