Don Greenlees, Jakarta – The letter came to American-owned Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc and the Indonesian Government a few days after three of the miner's employees were gunned down at its operations in a remote and mountainous corner of Papua.
The message caused unease not just in Freeport's corporate offices, but among other foreign investors eyeing their prospects in resource-rich Papua. It declared a roadside ambush on August 31 that killed the three Freeport employees, including two American school teachers, was only the start. A three-month campaign targeting commercial interests in Papua was under way, the letter warned. It was signed by a hardline commander of the separatist Free Papua Organisation (OPM), Titus Morib.
In its three decades of operations, Freeport has received many threatening letters. Most such threats turn out to be hollow. But after the deaths of the American and Indonesian employees – the worst incident of violence against Freeport staff – the company is taking no chances. Security posts have been reinforced along the winding road that connects Freeport's mountain-top copper and gold mine with the swampy coastal plains of southeast Papua. Military patrols have been stepped up in the lowlands. And Freeport employees now only travel the road in convoys accompanied by military details. The security precautions were given ample justification last Saturday.
Soldiers using a Freeport vehicle to deliver food to a military post came under fire. In the brief skirmish, one of the soldiers was wounded in the leg. The arrival of the letter and the ambush of Indonesian soldiers days later should have been enough to identify Freeport's opponents. But the identity and the motives of the gunmen who grabbed international headlines with the killing of Americans two weeks ago has become a politically charged guessing game in Indonesia. Scraps of evidence combine with personal bias to produce a variety of theories for who is responsible. The stakes are high.
Neither Indonesia nor the Papuan independence movement, which is relying on international sympathy to keep its cause alive, can afford the opprobrium of killing foreign school teachers. After the August 31 killings, military commanders in Papua were quick to name the shooters as members of the rebel OPM. Human rights groups and the independence movement alleged it was a military trick – the gunmen were either soldiers or Papuans hired by soldiers.
Indonesian police in Papua set up a team to investigate, and pointedly said they weren't buying the military's story without proof. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation sent officers to examine the scene and interview survivors and members of the security forces. It is a measure of the low credibility of the Indonesian armed forces that senior US and other Western diplomats still do not rule out any possibility, including the involvement of soldiers. Sources familiar with the FBI's inquiries say the question of ultimate responsibility for the August 31 killings has been left open.
The caution is owed to the army's chequered record in Papua, including hard evidence that members of its special forces were responsible for the assassination of independence leader Theys Eluay in November last year. Moreover, OPM has not been in the habit of killing foreigners. Foreigners have been kidnapped in the past, but never executed. In 1996, Kelly Kwalik, the leader of an OPM outfit operating near Freeport, kidnapped six young European researchers. The Europeans were rescued in an army operation, although they witnessed two Indonesian hostages being hacked to death by the rebels. Anxious to steer the spotlight away from Papua's separatist struggle, human rights groups and independence leaders say they suspect the latest violent incidents are part of an effort by the military to discredit the independence movement overseas and justify a crackdown.
Security analysts familiar with the recent attacks share some misgivings about the military. The day after the killing of the Freeport employees, soldiers patrolling near the ambush site claimed they shot dead one of the guerilla fighters responsible. But there was a catch: when the Papuan's body was examined, it was clear rigor mortis already had set in. An autopsy showed the man had died as much as 24 hours before he was allegedly shot.This episode raised an obvious question.
Was the military trying to fabricate evidence to back its claims of OPM responsibility? Despite such concerns, Freeport executives and Jakarta-based analysts say the steadily accumulating evidence suggests a band of gunmen is present in Freeport's area of operations and is determined to carry out a campaign of attacks. Cartridges collected from ambush sites show they are in possession of a few M-16 or SP-1 rifles, the latter a 1950s semi-automatic.
Such weapons are known to be in the hands of the two key suspects: Mr Morib, the alleged author of the letter to Freeport, and an associate, Goliath Tibuni. This group, loosely associated with Mr Kwalik, was believed to be behind one of the most daring OPM actions – a raid last September on the town of Ilaga, about four days' walk northeast of Tembagapura. At Ilaga, police lost at least one M-16 rifle and some ammunition. Analysts believe this maverick OPM element has the will and the capability to carry out the type of attack that was visited on Freeport's civilian workers and military guards. "It is more likely an OPM splinter group carried it out," says one analyst, who had been initially sceptical about OPM involvement. But Papuan human rights activists and the independence camp insist that by the time the violenceerupted they had overcome a history of disunity and dislocation between, and within, the OPM and the civilian political wing of the independence movement.
After strenuous lobbying, there had been a marked increase in communication between civilian and armed activists. Although lacking modern communications, OPM commanders have said they were trying to co-ordinate by sending messages to even the most remote areas by courier. The result of this activity was that hardliners were said to have bowed to the will of the politicians and agreed that a peaceful diplomatic strategy, not a military strategy, was the way forward.
An official with the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy, John Rumbiak, claimed Mr Kwalik and some of his field commanders agreed to pursue a peaceful campaign on August 25 at a meeting in the mining service town of Timika, near the Freeport mine. Although Mr Rumbiak acknowledges it would take only a small number of dissidents to bring the campaign undone, he has spent several days in Timika investigating the August 31 shooting and he sticks to the view that militaryinvolvement cannot be discounted. "I rule out the OPM," he said. "At the moment my investigation is concentrating on the military." His views are backed up by police chief I Made Pastika: "There is no strong indication that the perpetratrors were the OPM; there are no indications."
Whether they are right or wrong, the sudden upsurge in conflict has disturbing consequences. The August 31 ambush is the first time foreigners have been deliberately targeted in the many bloody separatist and communal conflicts to break out since the fall of former president Suharto. It raises the worrying question of where the conflict in Papua could go. President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her armed forces, already vigilant about separatist demands, are unlikely tomiss the opportunity to tighten the screws on the independence movement and its small armed wing.