Antony Balmain – As East Timor prepares to vote in a United Nations ballot to decide its future, documents show Australia played an active and secret role to ensure Irian Jaya became a part of Indonesia in another UN-supervised vote – the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969.
The secret government files show Australia colluded with Dutch, United States and UN officials to rubber-stamp the Indonesian takeover of Irian Jaya, or West Papua, the western half of New Guinea island.
The documents show an uncanny similarity between Australia's response to events in West Papua and our later reaction to the Indonesian takeover of East Timor in 1975. While Australian diplomats were well-aware of Indonesian repression in the territory, they advocated that Australia stand back and say little.
They also show that Australia obstructed efforts by West Papua leaders to travel to New York to put the case for independence to the UN.
The diplomatic cables, intelligence documents and government reports are contained in 13 Department of Territories files due for release in January 2000. They were released early by the Department of Foreign Affairs to SBS television's Dateline program.
One secret US Government document given to Australia before the self-determination process started in July 1969 shows UN officials believed almost all West Papuans supported independence.
The document, prepared by the US embassy in Jakarta, said: "Personal political views of the UN team are ... 95 percent of Irianese support the independence movement and that the Act of Free Choice is a mockery."
In the act, 1025 West Papuans, selected by Indonesia, voted on behalf of the entire population of some 800,000. The vote took place over three weeks, ending on 4 August 1969.
The process fulfilled a 1962 agreement initiated by the US to avert war between Indonesia and the Netherlands, Indonesia's former colonial ruler. The rest of what had been the Dutch East Indies became independent in 1949, but the Netherlands had originally wanted West Papua to become a separate Melanesian nation.
A clear indication that the Netherlands and Australia knew there would not be a fair vote is contained in one top-secret report, written by a Dutch intelligence officer and distributed to Australia and Indonesia.
Dated 27 June 1969, the document said: "The Act of Free Choice cannot be carried out honestly according to Western ideas. The 'electors' will also be appointed by the Indonesians. But finding enough Papuans willing to act as 'electors' for the Indonesians may turn out to be quite a problem. So there will be no free choice by the people."
The documents show Australia, at the request of Indonesia, arrested and prevented two pro-independence West Papuan leaders from travelling to the UN, just weeks before the vote.
Willem Zonggonao, 26, and Clemens Runawery, 27, were detained when they crossed into then-Australian administered New Guinea, carrying testimonies from West Papuan leaders calling for independence and for the UN to abandon the Act of Free Choice.
"Because we refused to sign the paperwork, they put us in jail," Mr Zonggonao, previously a member of the Indonesian West Irian Assembly, said in a recent interview from Port Moresby.
"Then ASIO (the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) interviewed us and we were ... flown to Manus Island." Scores of West Papuan refugees were sent to Manus Island, 300 kilometres north-east of New Guinea, to ensure they did not engage in political activity.
Mr Zonggonao said the West Papuans chosen to participate were "indoctrinated by military officers and told if they didn't vote for Indonesia they would have their tongues cut out".
The Australian ambassador to Indonesia at the time, Mr Gordon Jockel, witnessed the Act of Free Choice in Irian Jaya and in one cable wrote: "In the two or three days we had in Biak and Djajapura, it was easy to see the mass of the Papuans there are sullen and discontented."
In a cable to Canberra on 22 July 1969, Mr Jockel acknowledged the Act of Free Choice had "had many bad effects". Jakarta was engaged in indoctrination and, "with their traumatic fear of separatism, it has led them into repression which has in turn increased the spread of anti-Indonesian sentiment".
The documents show Australia maintained a secret military and intelligence relationship with Indonesia, aimed at eliminating armed pro-independence dissent.
The documents show Australian military officers collected evidence of Indonesian atrocities, including rapes, beatings, lootings and torching of villages.
One report, dated 29 August 1969, stated: "Our previous information on rapes committed by Indonesian soldiers has been confirmed in a number of cases. The Bobol and Tamus people are quite definite on this score and ... in particular one girl from Bobol ... was raped by a number of soldiers when she was 11, several years later again, and again when she was 16 and then married."
Despite these abuses, the files showed Australia played a leading role in a campaign to ensure the Act of Free Choice was accepted without debate at the UN General Assembly in November 1969.
Indonesia, backed by Australia and the Netherlands, lobbied countries including Malta and several West African nations to not question the legitimacy of the self-determination process. A September cable from Sir Patrick Shaw, the Australian ambassador to the UN, shows Dutch and UN officials hoped there would be no debate in the General Assembly about the vote.
While many West Papuan leaders were calling for a new act of self-determination, the UN Secretary General, Mr U Thant, ultimately ratified the wish of the Irian Jayans "to remain with Indonesia".Antony Balmain is an SBS journalist based in Melbourne.