Fabio Scarpello, Jakarta – A recently published Dutch-report has rekindled hopes of "correcting the course of history" in Papua, Indonesia's easternmost province and theatre of a struggle for independence ignored by most of the world.
"This is the evidence of the historical distortion. This is going to change everything. It will change the future of the Papuans. Thanks to this report, the international community will not be able to deny the truth any longer," the general chairman of the West Papuan Baptist Church, Reverend Socrates Sofyan Yoman, told IPS.
The 740-page report, 'Een Daad van Vrije Keuze' or 'An Act of Free Choice', commissioned by the Dutch Parliament in 2000 and authored by Pieter J Drooglever, was released in The Hague on Nov. 15.
The Act of Free Choice was the last straw of a very messy decolonisation process by the Netherlands, who once ruled over most of the modern day Republic of Indonesia, then called Dutch East Indies.
Papua, which occupies the western half of New Guinea Island, was not included in the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1949. Strategic reasons – as well as the lack of substantial historical, cultural, religious and ethnic links between Papua's native Melanesians and Indonesia's mostly Malay Muslim inhabitants – convinced the Netherlands to hold on to Papua and set it on a path of self-determination to be achieved by 1970.
Back then, Papua was called Netherlands New Guinea. Before assuming its current name under Indonesia President Abdurrahman Wahid in 2000, Papua was also called West Papua, West Irian and Irian Jaya.
The Dutch wish for Papua to decide its own future never materialised.
Leafing through the layers of history, it is clear that Papua was a small token in an international game that saw Indonesia prevailing with the blessing of the United States and the sanction of the United Nations.
Jakarta never stopped claiming sovereignty over Papua. Tension led to low-level Indonesian military incursions at the beginning of the 1960s and the threat of open war. Gripped by the Cold War syndrome, Washington feared that Jakarta could fall under the spell of communism and pressured the Netherlands to let Papua go. The United Nations watched powerlessly.
On Aug. 15, 1962, the Netherlands and Indonesia – without consulting the Papuans – signed the New York Agreement on the future of Papua.
It specified that from Oct. 1, 1962 Papua was to be placed under the control of an ad-hoc UN body that would hand it over to Indonesia on May 1, 1963. After seven years, Indonesia was required to consult the Papuans on whether they wished to remain a part of Indonesia or become independent.
This consultation was the Act of Free Choice, which Drooglever in his study labels a "sham". The vote was cast over six weeks from July to August 1969 by 1,022 representatives hand-picked and threatened by Jakarta "The Act of Free Choice ended up as a sham, where a press-ganged electorate acting under a great deal of pressure appeared to have unanimously declared itself in favour of Indonesia," wrote Drooglever in an English summary of the study, which is in Dutch.
Actually, the study says nothing that various historians had not said before. What gives it an aura of "final word" is the fact that it was commissioned by the Dutch government, and that it draws its information from the archives of the Dutch, US, British and Australian governments, as well as from interviews with some of those who were chosen to vote.
"They were flown to the Netherlands especially to give evidence in 2003. One of these, Reverend Obed Komba, was arrested on his return to West Papua and has been held in prison or under house arrest ever since," Richard Samuelson from the Oxford-based Free West Papua Campaign told IPS.
Samuelson also pointed out that Drooglever was banned from conducting research in Indonesia thus had no access to Jakarta's archives.
Although the Indonesian and the Dutch governments have dismissed Drooglever's endeavour as "irrelevant" – the Dutch foreign minister who commissioned the study has since moved on – Papuan activists have pounced on it hoping to use the report to propel "the Papuan issue" onto the world stage.
"The book proves that Jakarta stole our rights of self-determination, our history and our basic human rights," said Yoman, stressing that the Indonesian Military (TNI) has been guilty of gross human rights abuses in the province ever since the hand-over.
A report by the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies released in August and titled 'Genocide in West Papua', details eyewitness accounts of Indonesian military involvement in rape, arson and torture in the province. Such abuses have also been widely documented by various international organisations.
"The UN has not responded to our call for help, but now it is different. Now they cannot refuse it anymore. Thanks to this report, the international community will not able to deny the truth any longer," Yoman added.
There are signs of a budding interest in the issue. A Mar. 26, 2002 appeal to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to review the UN conduct during the Act of Free Choice is slowly gaining ground.
According to the West Papua Action website, in addition to 81 NGOs the appeal has now been endorsed by 40 members of the European Parliament, the majority of Irish MPs and several others from Britain, Finland, New Zealand and the US Senate.
On Dec. 12, 2004, Baroness Symons, the UK Foreign Office Minister, was the first representative from a western government to acknowledge that Papuans were coerced into joining Indonesia.
"He (the Bishop) is right to say that there were 1,000 handpicked representatives and that they were largely coerced into declaring for inclusion into Indonesia," Symons replied to a query from the Bishop of Oxford in the House of Lords.
According to Samuelson, by far the most important pro-Papuan development to date was a reference to the Papua issue in the US State Department Authorisation Bill last July. The reference was omitted by Congress in early November and never made it close to being passed into law, yet it gave the case a massive boost onto the international stage.
"It was important because it pushed the West Papua issue, and most especially the Act of Free Choice, higher up on the international agenda, and because it showed Indonesia that West Papua is now an international issue, whether Jakarta likes it or not," added Samuelson.