Damien Kingsbury – Last weekend's ambush of two buses near the giant Freeport copper and gold mine in the eastern Indonesian province of West Papua has highlighted yet again the problems that underscore relations between Jakarta and the deeply troubled province. And that attack, which left two Americans and one Indonesian dead, and wounded about 15 others, has raised more questions than are answered by the mere reciting of such facts.
No one knows for sure, but the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) claims that since 1963, at least 100,000 Papuans – and possibly more – have died as a direct consequence of Indonesia's occupation of the last regional Dutch colonial outpost. Since then, the OPM has been waging a sporadic, low-level campaign of resistance, aimed at eventually securing the province's independence. Indonesia blames the OPM for the latest attack.
Since the fall of Suharto in 1998 and the ensuing liberation of East Timor in 1999, the Papuan independence movement's non-violent political wing, the Papuan Presidium Council (PDP), has quickly overtaken the OPM as the main outlet for such aspirations. But last November the PDP's charismatic chairman Theys Eluay was murdered on his way home after dinner with the local chief of the Indonesian army's much feared Special Forces (Kopassus). Since then, a dozen Kopassus officers and NCOs have been charged with Theys's murder, and have been identified in the Indonesian press as having acted on an order from a politically active former general in Jakarta.
Resentment among Papuans towards Indonesia stems from two primary causes. First, many other Indonesians are deeply racist towards Papuans. Second, there's the barely restrained economic exploitation of the province's vast resources, with hardly any returns for the indigenous Papuans. Their complaints are usually met with violence.
Papua was this year given "special autonomy" status and a short-term greater share of locally generated wealth. But few observers, or Papuans, believe this is any more than rearranging Jakarta's control over the province. Perhaps the single biggest offender in the province is the Freeport mine complex. Freeport McMoRan enjoys a very cosy relationship with the army (TNI), handsomely subsidising local battalions and their officers. Freeport's largesse extends from Suharto all the way down to the local TNI privates.
Displaced villagers, and those who have had their waterways destroyed by Freeport effluent, have borne the brunt of TNI violence for expressing their concern. Research into the TNI's money trail has shown that the funding it receives comes from Freeport's public relations office, which also funds the local "human rights" office. The TNI has a history of orchestrating violence to justify or increase its authority, and of extracting "protection" payments from big companies. And the TNI has been rebuilding itself since 1998; it now dominates policy areas it considers its own, including claims for independence. But even assuming the most benign activity on the part of the TNI this time, its legacy of repression, violence, corruption and political interference has created or exacerbated most of the conflicts Indonesia now faces. And it is this that has kept alive and strengthened a popular claim for independence in West Papua.
[Damien Kingsbury, a senior lecturer in international development at Melbourne's Deakin University, is writing a book on the TNI (forthcoming, Routledge Curzon).]