[The Indonesian government has had harsh colonial policy vis-a-vis the people of West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya). Whereas East Timor became a cause cilhbre, West Papua has been passed over. The United Nations is not interested. Yet the forgotten people fight on for their cultural and political identity. By our special correspondent Damien Faure.]

The Kiunga mission's little motorboat had just left the Fly River. The stream suddenly narrowed, the trees took on a darker shade of green, and for a few minutes we were surrounded by luxuriant and ghostly vegetation, then the boat emerged into a magnificent inland lake.

This could have been an earthly paradise, except that we had just left Papua New Guinea and entered the former Irian Jaya, now West Papua, the 26th province of Indonesia. In the bow stood Father Jacques Gros, a member of the congregation of Saint Vincent de Paul and a Catholic missionary who covers the border from the highlands to the shores of the Torres Strait. Behind him were two local leaders of the TPN (1), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM).

The first houses on stilts appeared. All along the bank dozens of children gathered to cheer the arrival of the first motorboat in three months. Gradually a strange assortment of shadowy outlines emerged in the Memeyop military camp. An impressive figure, taller than the others, stood out from the crowd, a thin man with a white beard, in battledress. This was Bernard Mawen, commander of the liberation army in the southern section of West Papua, a legend.

Units of Indonesia's special forces, Kopassus, had been after him for years and he survived only by an exceptionally cool head and great courage. The Indonesian army has never really paid any serious heed to the non-aggression pact between the TPN and the Jakarta government, signed in 1998 after the fall of President Suharto. The ruthless hunt for the leaders of the independence movement continued, as witness the assassination of the head of the Papua Presidium, Theys Eluay, found dead in his car near Jayapura, the capital of the province, in November 2001.

For almost four decades men like Bernard Mawen or John Koknat, another military leader of the OPM, have fought for the independence of their land, a former Dutch colony, which became a province of Indonesia in 1969 after a rigged referendum, described as the "Act of Free Choice". The cold war was at its height and this "referendum", held under the auspices of the United Nations Organisation (UNO), was approved by the United States and the international community, although only a few Papuans, hand-picked from a population of 800,000, voted to join Indonesia. So West Papua, renamed Irian Jaya (Irian victorious) (2), with Jayapura (formerly Hollandia) as capital, became a colony of Jakarta.

The Papuans were treated abominably by the Suharto regime. Brutality and war crimes were routine – the army used napalm in 1977 against villages on the Baliem plateau suspected of harbouring resistance – and their culture was denied. Every possible effort was made to destroy the values and identity of the Papuans, whose traditions are similar to those of other Melanesians, such as the original inhabitants of Australia and the Kanak of New Caledonia. They were regarded as primitive by the occupying authorities and forbidden to practise ancestral rites.

In the Baliem valley they were not allowed to wear the ritual penis sheath. To relieve the pressure on Java, home to half the population of Indonesia, and to strengthen the hold on Papua, the Jakarta government instituted a transmigration programme under which people from Java were moved to Irian Jaya (3).

This demographic colonisation was rapidly consolidated. Land that had belonged to Papuan tribes for thousands of years was given to the newly arrived Javanese and vast opencast gold, nickel and copper mines opened in the central mountain range.

Sem Karoba, the OPM coordinator in Europe, described what happened: "Since 1969, our people have been killed and our villages shelled. We have no control over our education and we are not allowed to speak our own language. Our houses are destroyed. Our culture is despised because our traditional religion teaches us to believe in the trees, mountains and rivers. The mining companies tell us we must believe in one god, not the gods of nature."

Possibly moved by this religious faith, the mining companies, especially the American company Freeport, have been spewing out chemical waste and playing havoc with nature for decades, causing a vast ecological disaster and forcing part of the local population to leave (4).

As Sem Karoba said: "One of the main reasons for colonisation is that our land is rich in natural resources. The foreign companies are plundering it for rare timber, gold, silver and copper. If you ask me why I'm fighting, my answer is I'm fighting because my mountains are bleeding, my forests are stripped and my rivers are poisoned."

Ignored by the international community, the armed resistance movements number 60,000 men. They are poorly equipped compared with the Indonesian forces, which have sophisticated weapons, and their only hope lies in the natural protection of the jungle and mountains close to the border with Papua New Guinea, where tens of thousands of Papuan refugees have fled since the outbreak of hostilities.

The fighting continues despite the changes in Indonesia since 1998. After the fall of President Suharto, a dialogue opened between the OPM and the new authorities in Jakarta, first with Jusuf Habibie and then in 1999 with President Abdurrahman Wahid. Wahid proved willing to seek conciliation, even changing the name of Irian Jaya to West Papua. But the end of the dictatorship brought a renewed desire for a complete break, especially after East Timor achieved independence (5).

In December 2000 the second Papuan People's Congress (the first was in 1961) declared the 1969 referendum null and void and called for renewal of the negotiations for independence started in 1961. But this initiative was not ratified by the UN and a few months later it was vigorously rejected by the Indonesian army and parliament.

The armed forces felt threatened by Wahid's policy of openness and increased attacks on the separatists. The new president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, has promised major changes in the government and autonomy for West Papua, but the recent assassinations of Eluay and William Onde, one of Mawen's lieutenants, show that the Indonesian army and some of the Javanese ruling class are not prepared to relinquish their privileges.

A recent report by an NGO, the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA), reveals that many of the armed Islamic movement, Laskar Jihad, have moved into West Papua from the Moluccas (6). Laskar Jihad was behind the latest outbreak of fighting between the Muslim and Christian communities in the islands, in which there were many casualties.

These forces cannot operate in West Papua without the support of the Indonesian army. According to the AWPA report, a Laskar Jihad force of 3,000 men landed in West Papua in May and military training camps have been set up near Manokwari, where there is a large community of Javanese Muslim settlers. Arms have been distributed, along with tracts and videos praising the Jihad forces in the Moluccas.

In Jakarta the coordinating minister for political affairs, security and social welfare, Lt Gen Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said in May that the government does not intend to review its plan of regional autonomy for the province of West Papua and that independence is not on the agenda. In his speech at the meeting of the national council, Susilo said that in his view the OPM represented a threat to the unitary state of Indonesia and must be eliminated.

The Indonesian government had been defied by a few freedom fighters but it seriously intended to re-educate the separatist movements. Besides resisting the Indonesian state, the separatists also face the problem of creating a unitary body. The military wing of the OPM is not united and no undisputed leader has emerged with the ability to organise consistent resistance.

John Koknat tried to muster support in countries in the South Pacific (East Timor, Vanuatu, Fiji, Australia) during a tour in January. He also claims to be the commander in chief of the organisation, whereas others name Mawen as supreme commander. This difficulty in presenting a united front may be due to the fact that there are, and have been for centuries, many tribes (and dialects) in West Papua and feuds are endemic.

The OPM is split between the Papua Presidium, led by Tom Bernal since the murder of Eluay and located at Jayapura; the Presidium in exile, at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, a more radical political branch of the movement, of local leaders who have fled the country and are now political refugees; and the TPN, the armed wing of the OPM with Mawen as commander. Since Mawen's predecessor, Mathias Wanda, was released from prison in December 2001 the two men no longer see eye to eye.

The three organisations have been at loggerheads for years, blaming each other for fleeing the country or collaborating with the enemy, but there seems to have been a move to work together after the recent assassinations. The separatist movements reject Jakarta's plan for autonomy. As Mawen told us, seated in front of the Free Papua flag, the Morning Star, in the military camp at Memeyop, "We reject the plan. We want the UN to pressure Indonesia to stop the massacres of Papuans and hold a free and fair referendum to enable the people to determine the future of West Papua. How much longer is the UN going to remain at the beck and call of Indonesia?"

He knows that autonomy cannot guarantee the Papuans' human rights. Their only hope lies in independence. He also knows that the battle will not be won in the field alone: it must be fought on the diplomatic front in the UN. Koknat is more radical. The OPM may have chosen "the path of peace and dialogue overseen by the UN, but that does not mean that we are not going to fight. We have nine commanders and 60,000 men in the armed wing of the OPM and we can always call on them to continue the struggle."

But the OPM troops sometimes fight with bows and arrows; they have very few automatic weapons, compared with the thoroughly modern Indonesian special forces. The Papuan problem cannot be solved by force of arms alone. A political solution will have to be found.

But the Papuan people are not represented, even nominally, as a future independent member of the UN and their claims remain unheard. The world is unaware of the struggle of this people, one of the most ancient on earth. The Jakarta authorities see autonomy as the end of the conflict. They are talking about economic development and redistribution of wealth. But the Papuans no longer believe in promises. This is not just about redistribution, it is a battle for the identity and survival of an entire people.

Notes:

1. Tentara Pembebasan Nasional, or National Liberation Army.
2. Irian: Ikut Republik Indonesia Anti Nederlan, or Follow the Republic of Indonesia against the Netherlands.
3. Transmigration was also practised under Dutch rule but on a limited scale.
4. The mines are on high ground and the local people were forced to move to low-lying areas infested with mosquitoes. Many Papuan refugees subsequently died of malaria.
5. In the case of East Timor, the UN always opposed forced annexation. In the case of West Papua, they sanctioned it. See Any Bourrier, "East Timor: hell to paradise", Le Monde diplomatique English edition, June 2002.
6. AWPA Newsletter no 28, May 2002, Sydney. Translated by Barbara Wilson.

[The author is a filmmaker, director of the documentary West Papua, Kimsa Films, Paris, 2002.]