Achmad Sukarsono, Jakarta – A group of Indonesian legislators on Thursday endorsed a proposal that would give rebellious Irian Jaya province more powers including an all-indigenous upper house and a locally-recruited police force.
The proposal, drafted by Irianese academics and obtained by Reuters, is the first to give more authority to the resource-rich territory that has been endorsed by any lawmakers.
Sixty legislators from the 500-seat parliament endorsed the proposal, said MP Simon Patrice Morin, a key backer of the draft, who warned the government to take note of the document. Morin said the proposal would soon be formally submitted to the government, which has failed to meet a promise to give Irian Jaya wide-ranging autonomy by May 1, and also to a full session of parliament.
MPs have rejected the government's own draft on autonomy for Irian. A special autonomy law for Aceh, Indonesia's other main separatist headache, is close to final debate in parliament. "For the people there, a deadline is not important. The important thing is content. And the content of the government's draft was unsatisfactory," Morin told Reuters on Thursday.
The MP from the former ruling Golkar party said the endorsed draft had been repeatedly revised in Irian Jaya, also known as Papua, before being given to President Abdurrahman Wahid last month by the provincial governor. It was unclear what Wahid thought of it. The proposal still has to be submitted formally to the government before it can be debated in parliament.
"This is the best Papua can come up with. The people actually have lost trust in Jakarta. But the intellectuals told them this is a way out ... a middle way," Morin, himself Papuan, said. "It's an issue of 'take it or leave it'. We may back off a bit but Jakarta has to understand this is the basic design Papuans can take." He admitted separatists groups had slammed the decision to draft anything which still kept Irian part of Indonesia.
Demands for independence have simmered for decades in the far eastern province, fuelled by human rights abuses, ethnic tensions and resentment at Jakarta's plundering of its mineral wealth. Papua people's assembly
Most Papuans are also fed up being treated as second-class citizens in their own land where migrants from other parts of the archipelago dominate commerce and the bureaucracy.
With that in mind, the draft has included a controversial article supporting a bicameral local parliament with an upper house only open to appointed indigenous community leaders called the Papua People's Assembly.
"This will guard the indigenous voice when there is a demographic shift. So, they will not become a forgotten minority group in the future," Morin said. "We do not want their dissatisfaction piling up further and tearing society apart," he said.
Jungle-clad Irian Jaya is home to about 250 tribes, most of them still living a stone-age culture with men wearing nothing more than feathers and penis gourds. The province is also the site of one of the world's largest copper mines run by Freeport McMoRan of the United States.
The draft also supports the establishment of a police force comprising local recruits and separated from Jakarta's command. Many police in Irian Jaya are not locals and have been accused of human rights violations and siding with migrants. This has also triggered sporadic attacks from pro-independence tribes on police offices in remote Irian towns.
Irian Jaya was incorporated into Indonesia in 1963, after heavy diplomatic pressure on the Netherlands, the country's former colonial ruler. In 1969, a UN-run plebiscite was held among local leaders, which resulted in a vote to join Indonesia. The vote has been widely criticised as unfair.