The Secret War Against the Defenseless People of West Papua
By John Pilger, t r u t h o u t, March 9, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030906D.shtml
In 1993, I and four others traveled clandestinely across East Timor to
gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship.
Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I
could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data
Incomplete." Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous
forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in dispatching, proportionally, as
many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with
the "international community."
In East Timor, I found a country littered with graves, their black crosses
crowding the eye: crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides,
crosses beside the road. They announced the murder of entire communities,
from babies to the elderly. In 2000, when the East Timorese, displaying a
collective act of courage with few historical parallels, finally won their
freedom, the United Nations set up a truth commission; on 24 January, its
2,500 pages were published. I have never read anything like it. Using
mostly official documents, it recounts in painful detail the entire
disgrace of East Timor's blood sacrifice. It says that 180,000 East
Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops or died from enforced
starvation. It describes the "primary roles" in this carnage of the
governments of the United States, Britain and Australia. America's
"political and military support were fundamental" in crimes that ranged
from "mass executions to forced resettlements, sexual and other horrific
forms of torture as well as abuse against children." Britain, a
co-conspirator in the invasion, was the main arms supplier. If you want to
see through the smokescreen currently around Iraq, and understand true
terrorism, read this document.
As I read it, my mind went back to the letters Foreign Office officials
wrote to concerned members of the public and MPs following the showing of
my film Death of a Nation. Knowing the truth, they denied that
British-supplied Hawk jets were blowing straw-roofed villages to bits and
that British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns were finishing off the
occupants. They even lied about the scale of suffering.
And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the
"international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary
of the crushing of a defenseless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of
West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province - stolen from its people, like
East Timor - is one of the great secrets of our time. Recently, the
Australian minister of "communications," Senator Helen Coonan, failed to
place it on the map of her own region, as if it did not exist.
An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been
killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure,
according to refugees. In January, 43 West Papuans reached Australia's
north coast after a hazardous six-week journey in a dugout. They had no
food, and had dribbled their last fresh water into their children's
mouths. "We knew," said Herman Wainggai, the leader, "that if the
Indonesian military had caught us, most of us would have died. They treat
West Papuans like animals. They kill us like animals. They have created
militias and jihadis to do just that. It is the same as East Timor."
For over a year, an estimated 6,000 people have been hiding in dense
jungle after their villages and crops were destroyed by Indonesian Special
Forces. Raising the West Papuan flag is "treason." Two men are serving
ten- and 15-year sentences for merely trying. Following an attack on one
village, a man was presented as an "example" and petrol poured over him
and his hair set alight.
When the Netherlands gave Indonesia its independence in 1949, it argued
that West Papua was a separate geographic and ethnic entity with a
distinctive national character. A report published last November by the
Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague revealed that the Dutch had
secretly recognized the "unmistakable beginning of the formation of a
Papuan state," but were bullied by the administration of John F. Kennedy
to accept "temporary" Indonesian control over what a White House adviser
called "a few thousand miles of cannibal land."
The West Papuans were conned. The Dutch, Americans, British and
Australians backed an "Act of Free Choice" ostensibly run by the UN. The
movements of a UN monitoring team of 25 were restricted by the Indonesian
military and they were denied interpreters. In 1969, out of a population
of 800,000, some 1,000 West Papuans "voted." All were selected by the
Indonesians. At gunpoint, they "agreed" to remain under the rule of
General Suharto - who had seized power in 1965 in what the CIA later
described as "one of the worst mass murders of the late 20th century." In
1981, the Tribunal on Human Rights in West Papua, held in exile, heard
from Eliezer Bonay, Indonesia's first governor of the province, that
approximately 30,000 West Papuans had been murdered during 1963-69.
Little of this was reported in the West.
The silence of the "international community" is explained by the fabulous
wealth of West Papua. In November 1967, soon after Suharto had
consolidated his seizure of power, the Time-Life Corporation sponsored an
extraordinary conference in Geneva. The participants included the most
powerful capitalists in the world, led by the banker David Rockefeller.
Sitting opposite them were Suharto's men, known as the "Berkeley mafia,"
as several had enjoyed US government scholarships to the University of
California at Berkeley. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved
up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West
Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests.
However, the prize - the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest
copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold - went to the US
mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US
secretary of state, gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade East
Timor, says the Dutch report.
Freeport is today probably the biggest single source of revenue for the
Indonesian regime: the company is said to have handed Jakarta $33 billion
between 1992 and 2004. Little of this has reached the people of West
Papua. Last December, 55 people reportedly starved to death in the
district of Yahukimo. The Jakarta Post noted the "horrible irony" of
hunger in such an "immensely rich" province. According to the World Bank,
"38 per cent of Papua's population is living in poverty, more than double
the national average."
The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's Special Forces, who are
among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in
East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the
British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard
government in Canberra announced that it would resume "co-operation" with
Kopassus at the Australian SAS base near Perth. In an inversion of the
truth, the then-Australian defense minister, Senator Robert Hill,
described Kopassus as having "the most effective capability to respond to
a counter-hijack or hostage recovery threat." The files of human-rights
organizations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. On 6 July
1998, on the West Papuan island of Biak, just north of Australia, Special
Forces massacred more than 100 people, most of them women.
However, the Indonesian military has not been able to crush the popular
Free Papua Movement (OPM). Since 1965, almost alone, the OPM has reminded
the Indonesians, often audaciously, that they are invaders. In the past
two months, the resistance has caused the Indonesians to rush more troops
to West Papua. Two British-supplied Tactical armored personnel carriers
fitted with water cannons have arrived from Jakarta. These were first
delivered during the late Robin Cook's "ethical dimension" in foreign
policy. Hawk fighter-bombers, made by BAE Systems, have been used against
West Papuan villages.
The fate of the 43 asylum-seekers in Australia is precarious. In
contravention of international law, the Howard government has moved them
from the mainland to Christmas Island, which is part of an Australian
"exclusion zone" for refugees. We should watch carefully what happens to
these people. If the history of human rights is not the history of great
power's impunity, the UN must return to West Papua, as it did finally to
East Timor. Or do we always have to wait for the crosses to multiply?
--
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