Ben Dolven, Jayapura, Wamena and Timika – No matter where you go in Irian Jaya, it's hard to avoid the signs that this remote province is desperate to break free of Indonesia. Street vendors hawk flags and T-shirts reading "Ballot Yes, Bullet No" in the main square of the capital, Jayapura. Further afield, separatist groups man checkpoints along trekking routes in the central highlands, collecting contributions from hikers. (The men are polite, but you would be foolish not to make a donation.) Graffiti abounds, like the red-painted "Ready or not, Papua is coming" that adorns a building in the mining town of Timika.
For travellers, Irian Jaya is a largely untrammelled marvel: beautiful treks through traditional villages in the highlands, pristine beaches near the main cities and some of the most diverse ecological turf on the planet. But today, it gives visitors a peek at something else as well – a separatist movement trying to find its feet.
Irian Jaya is the furthest-flung piece of Indonesia's restless archipelago, closer to the Solomon Islands than to Jakarta, and distinct – ethnically, religiously, linguistically and culturally – from the rest of the country.
Butting up against Papua New Guinea, it is blessed with huge mineral deposits, enormous timber stocks and offshore natural-gas deposits; yet it remains Indonesia's poorest area. But emboldened by East Timor's breakaway and support from Australia and some Pacific island nations, locals are pressing their grievances. December 1 marks the anniversary of Irian Jaya's 1961 declaration of independence from the Dutch colonial power – beginning a period of autonomy that lasted until Indonesia took over in 1963. Listen to conversations throughout Irian Jaya, and you get the sense that December will be a hot month.
Even in the relatively wealthy air-conditioned oases of Jayapura, the talk is of politics and a probable escalation of the fight against Indonesia. The Prima Garden CafZ, for instance, is straight out of a middle-American postcard. But if it looks like Peoria, it isn't.
On a steaming hot day in September, a retired tour guide, who worked under the colonial Dutch government in the 1950s and early 1960s, bought me a coffee and spoke quietly about the independence bid. He, like many, pointed to two dates – the December 1 independence day, and also December 15, when many claim Indonesia's leaders promised their province independence back in the early 1960s.
Do people really expect Indonesia to give up control over the province and its resources? "They must," the guide said, without a trace of doubt. And if they don't? He paused and shook his head. There'll be problems, he said, "closer to December." Then, a beefy pair of Indonesian military officers wandered in, edged into our conversation, and spoke about an incident in early September when a soldier was killed in the province's west and his weapons were seized.
With the movement swirling, Irian Jaya is a tricky place in which to travel, but not an impossible one. I spent two weeks trekking in its highlands and visiting the towns of Jayapura (a lovely city nestled in a narrow coastal valley, close to white-sand beaches) and Timika (an unlovely mining town where the size of the population has exploded over the past decade). There were occasional signs of trouble – in Jayapura, students blocked the road to the airport for around three hours – and reports continually trickled in about flare-ups between the military and locals.
Concerns over safety have sent the number of visitors plummeting in the past two years. There are few commercial flights operating to Wamena, the main base for highland trekkers. The trickle of visitors – sometimes two a day, guides told me, sometimes none – travel by cargo plane or on flights operated by missionaries. The Papuan explanation for the tourist drought speaks volumes about attitudes toward Jakarta: The problem, locals said, was that Indonesians were telling the world that Irian Jaya was dangerous.
The Baliem Valley, in which Wamena nestles, is the province's most visited tourist destination. Surrounded by deep mountain gorges amid peaks of up to 4,000 metres, and dotted with traditional sweet-potato farming villages, the valley was reached by Western explorers only about 50 years ago. Missionaries have been active since then, but the valley's villages remain traditional: Men wear penis sheaths and little else; women carry sweet potatoes in straw bags tied around their heads. Visitors hike from village to village, staying in local houses, either thatched in straw or covered by rickety roofs. The hiking is arduous: The valley's fertile soil allows villagers to grow their crops on steep hillsides of up to 60 degrees, and trails meander through most of the fields.
These are lives lived in the raw: In our journeying, we stumbled into several traditional rites, including a human cremation and a ritual pig slaughter. We saw the male population of one village tramping happily, with bows, arrows and Morning Star flags – the separatist banner – to an independence festival. We saw another group jogging urgently down a trail with bows, arrows and eight pigs slung on stakes. These, according to our guide, were gifts to another village – an apology for an extramarital affair between members of the two towns.
Important stuff: Two other villages had failed to patch up a similar difficulty and had been feuding for two years. Several people had been killed.
The Baliem Valley is one of the hotbeds of the independence movement, and Wamena – where security forces still have some degree of control – has seen some terrible clashes. On October 6, 31 people died when police clashed with a pro-independence militia known as Task Force Papua over the raising of the Morning Star. Indeed, much of the violence in Irian Jaya in recent months has started with the raising of the flag. The rule, controversially set out by President Abdurrahman Wahid, is that the Morning Star may be flown, but only if it's below the Indonesian flag. Many see Wahid's decision as a dangerous miscalculation, pointing to the violence that often ensues when the military try to enforce it.
Outside Wamena, the order to fly the Morning Star only alongside the Indonesian flag is scarcely an issue – there aren't any Indonesian flags to fly. Instead, there are periodic way-stations operated by the pro-independence Satgas Papua, a loosely organized paramilitary force that rarely carries arms publicly. Tour guides march up to straw-thatched huts flying the independence flag, salute smartly and ask the travellers they're leading to contribute about 5,000 rupiah (60 cents) to the militia members. Guides take other precautions as well: Mine told me he had hired two members of Organisasi Papua Merdeka, a long-feared independence group, as porters for our group. He explained that it's a good idea to be politically correct when among independence forces.
Not everyone was sanguine about where this was heading. One migrant who had worked for more than a decade in Timika's local government admitted he was worried about the future and intended to go home to Sulawesi within the next year. An American aid worker was worried that campaigns against Aids and sexually transmitted diseases were being held back because locals wouldn't listen to the Indonesian volunteers. (Aids rates are still relatively low, though many venereal diseases are rampant.)
But the calls for independence don't come at the same volume everywhere. I stopped in the mining town of Timika, near the province's biggest source of wealth – the giant copper and gold mine operated by Freeport Indonesia amid rugged and soaring mountain ranges. It's the world's third-largest copper mine and the largest known deposit of gold. It's also a huge environmental and political hot potato: Local activists say Freeport doesn't hire enough of them, environmentalists point to damage caused by mining to forests, and newspapers elsewhere in the province carry anti-Freeport headlines as part of their calls for independence.
The perfect spot for the independence movement? Not quite. In the town market, an older Papuan man approached me and, thinking I was a Freeport employee, hesitated ... and then asked me for a job. For just a moment, commerce trumped politics.