Comprehending West Papua Edited by Peter King, Jim Elmslie & Camellia Webb-Gannon Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney Comprehending West Papua Peter King, Jim Elmslie & Camellia Webb-Gannon Editors The West Papua Project November 2011 Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies ii Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies A West Papua Project book ISBN: 978-0-9808286-7-2 Published by the West Papua Project at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Sydney. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the permission of the authors. Cover image: courtesy of West Papua Media This edition © 2011 Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney iii Contents Background 1- Editors’ introduction ... 2 2- The pro- and anti-plebiscite campaigns in West Papua: Before and after 1969, Pieter Drooglever ... 11 Section one: New media activism and resistance 3- Free the people? Free the media! Broadcasting Papua’s songs of freedom, Nick Chesterfield ... 29 4- Internet advocacy and the MIFEE project, Paul Barber and Rosa Moiwend ... 37 5- Pathways to dialogue for Papua, Jason MacLeod ... 50 6- Culture as strategy: West Papuan diaspora aspirations for justice, Camellia Webb-Gannon ... 81 Section two: Papua/Jakarta politics 7- Policy failure and political impasse: Papua and Jakarta a decade after the ‘Papuan Spring’, Richard Chauvel ... 105 8- Injustice and historical falsehood: Integration of the territory of Papua into Indonesia in 1969, Socratez Sofyan Yoman ... 116 9- Jakarta-Papua dialogue and community participaton, Neles Tebay ... 129 Section three: Recent international context of the sovereignty debate 10- Self-determination and Papua: The Indonesian dimension, Peter King ... 148 11- New Zealand as a potential West Papuan peace broker: Learning from Bougainville, Maire Leadbeater ... 159 12- West Papua and the changing nature of self-determination, Akihisa Matsuno ... 177 iv 13- Reflections on the New York Agreement, the Act of Free Choice and developments since, John Saltford ... 191 Section four: Short term and long term goals and diplomatic strategies 14- A self-governing Papua within Indonesia versus the archaic notion of an independent nation-state: Choice between reality and a dream, Franzalbert Joku ... 202 15- The case and the cause for returning West Papua to the United Nations General Assembly, Rex Rumakiek ... 209 16- The resistance struggle of the West Papuan people organisationally requires Trias Politica, Herman Wainggai ... 221 17- Papuan perspectives on peace in West Papua, John Ondawame ... 235 18- West Papuan independence policies: Tension in the transition, Jacob Rumbiak ... 251 19- Reclaiming the messianic promise, S. Eben Kirksey ... 278 Section five: Obstacles to peace in Papua 20- Comprehending Papua: Breaking Papua’s political-security deadlock – costs and benefits of the various options, Bilveer Singh ... 295 21- Large corporations and obstacles to peace in Papua, Kylie McKenna and John Braithwaite ... 318 22- Torture in West Papua (Indonesia): A spectacle of dialectics of the sovereign and the abject, Budi Hernawan ... 339 23- Comprehending West Papua: Demographic transition and the 2010 Indonesian census, Jim Elmslie ... 358 24- Comprehending West Papua through culture: Indigenous perspectives on contemporary Sentani Malo painting, Yvonne Carrillo-Huffman ... 369 Notes on Contributors ... 385 Appendix: This is a separate file with images illustrating Chapter 24, as well as photographs documenting the Comprehending West Papua conference. v Background 1 Chapter one: Editors’ Introduction Peter King, Jim Elmslie and Camellia Webb-Gannon Comprehending West Papua derives from a report that the co-editors wrote for the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at Sydney University in July 2010 entitled, Get up, stand up; West Papua stands up for its rights.1 The co- editors -- Peter King, Jim Elmslie and Camellia Webb-Gannon -- are co- conveners (King and Elmslie) and coordinator (Webb-Gannon) respectively of the West Papua Project at CPACS. The Project was established in 2000 as an intellectual meeting place and research centre focused on the profound conflict that is occurring in West Papua. The Get up, stand up report covered the mass civil society protests by West Papuans against Indonesian rule in mid-2010 and the background to this political insurrection. The report received widespread publicity and positive feedback so we decided to capitalise on this by organising a conference at Sydney University in February 2010. We asked those whom we considered the world’s leading authorities on the political impasse in West Papua and its historical roots to present short papers on the theme, Comprehending West Papua, with a view to helping Papuans, Indonesians and the rest of the world conceive new (or re- conceive old) ways out of the impasse. We gave invitees the option of sending their papers for proxy presentation if they were unable to attend. The conference was a resounding success, with participants from West Papua, Indonesia, Vanuatu, New Zealand, The Netherlands, England, the United States, Singapore, Japan and Australia. We believe that it is the most significant academic-level conference that has ever been held on the political situation in West Papua. 1http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peace_conflict/publications/Get%20Up,%20Stand%20Up%20printed.p df 2 Another aim of the conference was to map and update the global spread of opinion on West Papua. Besides academic assessments, the conference also had important West Papuan speakers and writers representing different diaspora factions pressing for independence or self-determination as well as a few who favour accommodation of the Indonesian government. Unity amongst the West Papuans (long derided) was also examined, set alongside the dramatic demographic transition caused by organised and “spontaneous” in-migration from the rest of Indonesia, which now makes the Melanesians a slight minority in their own homeland. The year 2010 ushered in a new wave of West Papuan independence politics. This momentum-gathering wave is characterised by student and youth leadership with a tougher stance on West Papuan self-determination, the vigourous promotion of the cause through social media and greater international attention to Papuan politics through mechanisms such as WikiLeaks and YouTube, both of which have served to reveal often obscured and sometimes horrific conditions in West Papua. Evidence of this new wave emerged dramatically in June and July 2010, when civil demonstrations, led by a new NGO, FORDEM (Democratic Forum of the United Papuan People), amassed up to 20,000 protesters on the streets of Jayapura. FORDEM comprises the self-proclaimed and widely recognised provisional government set up by the West Papua National Authority (WPNA)-- represented in this volume by chapters from Jacob Rumbiak and Herman Wainggai--and various civil society organisations drawn from the churches and the student and women’s movements. These demonstrations were triggered in response to Jakarta’s rejection of an MRP (Majelis Rakyat Papua—the all- Papuan upper house of the provincial parliament) decision popularly known as SK14, which ordains that “all candidates for elected office at the sub-provincial 3 level had to be indigenous Papuans.”2 The Home Affairs Ministry rejection of SK14 was considered to blatantly undermine the spirit of the Special Autonomy Law of 2001 which specifies that the provincial governors, vice governors and district (regency) chiefs (bupatis) in West Papua must be indigenous Papuans.3 Thus, as discussed in Jacob Rumbiak’s chapter in this volume, the biggest demonstrations in West Papua’s history were launched against Special Autonomy and for a referendum on West Papua’s political status. (These demands were two of the MRP’s 11 bold “recommendations” to the Papua provincial government). Papuan politics experienced a positive shift in the surrounding Pacific region as well during this time. Vanuatu’s parliament passed the Wantok Blong Yumi Bill which committed the Vanuatu parliament to work towards independence for West Papua through avenues such as the UN General Assembly and Decolonization Committee and the International Court of Justice. Vanuatu’s long term support of West Papuan independence is discussed in this volume in chapters by Rex Rumakiek and John Otto Ondawame, the latter making an impassioned plea for the success of the Papua Road Map. The Road Map constitutes a push for effective dialogue between Papua and Jakarta coming from Muridan Widjojo and the Indonesian Institute of Science in Jakarta and Neles Tebay and the Papua Peace Network in Jayapura. Father Neles has blessed the umbrella group established in Vanuatu in 2008, the West Papuan National Coalition for Liberation (with John Otto as Vice Chairman and Rex as Secretary General), as pivotal for bringing Papuans to the dialogue table.4 2 International Crisis Group. 2010. Indonesia: The Deepening Impasse in Papua, Asia Briefing No 108. Jakarta/Brussels: International Crisis Group. Available from http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-east-asia/indonesia/B108-indonesia-the- deepening-impasse-in-papua.aspx. p1 3 There have been two provinces in West Papua since 2003: Papua (capital Jayapura) and— confusingly--West Papua (capital Manokwari). Since early 2011 there have been two