Ivy Susanti, Jakarta/Jayapura – The government plays down the controversial study by Dutch historian Prof. Pieter Drooglever on 1969 vote in Papua, saying that his report was purely academic.
"We view the report as an academic study which is no different from other studies on Papua," Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Yuri Oktavian Thamrin said.
He said that the Dutch government, despite commissioning the study, apparently did not give much support to the idea that Indonesia had orchestrated the vote which saw Papua's integration to Indonesia.
"The Dutch government recognizes Papua as part of Indonesia. That's why the substance of the study has no legal or political relevance to the facts," Yuri said on Friday.
Professor Pieter Drooglever from the Institute of Netherlands History in his new book, Een Daad van Vrije Keuze (An Act of Free Choice), detailed how the Indonesian government rigged the vote by more than 1,000 Papuan tribal leaders who supposedly represented the territory's population of 700,000.
Meanwhile, Papuans supporting the movement for the separation of the province from Indonesia demanded on Thursday the United Nations review the controversial vote.
Meanwhile, Amris Hassan, a deputy of the House of Representatives Commission I on foreign affairs, said the government must be prepared to counter such a finding with solid arguments and to establish lobby groups to stop it from becoming an international issue.
Such a finding was evidence that separatist movements in Papua were still up and running, Amris said.
"The fuss is no longer about the decolonization of Papua, but the referendum. And these separatists continue to spread the issue through the United Nations, foreign organizations and churches. We should be careful because we cannot stop them," he said.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) legislator emphasized that quick and effective lobbying should begin at the UN and in influential countries to keep the issue from blowing up.
Fadel Al Hamid, the secretary of the Papua Tribal Council, a non-governmental organization, which has often acted to oppose the government, said that the new finding should open the way for a resumption of dialogue between the central government and the Papuan people.
"The Indonesian government has always said that the integration of Papua into the Indonesian territory is final, but (some) Papuan people think there was manipulation in the vote that led to the integration. The emergence of a third party with a new scientific finding, should provide a bridge for the two opposing camps," he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
He added that the Dutch government could also become a mediator for talks between the Indonesian government and the Papuan people.