Sian Powell, Jakarta – Hiding in a tattered hut in West Papua's dense jungle and existing on food brought by sympathetic villagers, university student Everistus Kayep is confused by the maelstrom that has engulfed his life.
Two weeks ago he was studying maths and management at Cendrawasih University, on the outskirts of West Papua's provincial capital of Jayapura.
A native Papuan, he had been monitoring the accelerating tension in Indonesia's remote and resource-rich province. Demonstrations had erupted in Java while hundreds of kilometres to the east, in West Papua, blockades were manned by tribal locals armed with bows and arrows, skirmishes broke out at the Sheraton Hotel in Timika and security guards employed by the giant US-run Freeport gold and copper mine were attacked. Resentment was building.
West Papuans believed they were being robbed of their wealth: profits from their gold and copper, timber and gas were funnelled straight back to Jakarta, leaving the province mired in poverty and disease. They feared the often brutal Indonesian security forces and saw the collapse of their hopes for autonomy and the forcible splitting of their province. The five-month-old Papuan People's Council, or MRP, was on the verge of collapse. Once seen by West Papuans as the shining hope of autonomy, the council has simply been ignored by Jakarta.
West Papuans are oppressed, marginalised and sometimes tortured, according to reputable judges, including the US Department of State. On Thursday, independent assessors at Australia's Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs said 42 of the 43 West Papuan asylum-seekers who sought sanctuary would be offered visas, a decision tantamount to conceding they had been persecuted and one that infuriated Jakarta.
Thursday was a turning point for many West Papuans, a rare victory in a campaign that has been riddled with violence and punctuated with world leaders routinely and regularly denying support for the rebels. Yet in Indonesia the denial is too often seen as support for the way West Papuan troubles have been handled and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, despite his 2004 election promises, has done little to ease the pain in the benighted province.
Ten days ago Kayep joined a protest outside the university, which disintegrated into a riot that left dead four police officers and one air force officer.
"My task was to document it, I was taking photos," he says. "As I was taking a photo of a police officer being mobbed, I was almost shot with a rubber bullet." Police later said they found a car nearby full of rocks, along with Molotov cocktails, knives and bows and arrows.
"We didn't do that; we students only prepared speeches, banners and pamphlets," Kayep says from his hide-out. "We don't hate the police, we are just struggling for the closure of Freeport."
He believes a double game was being played out. "That intelligence officer from the air force [who was dressed in civilian clothes], he was doing the provoking," he explains. "The evening before he was disturbing people, riding a bike and shouting 'Oi'. The next day he came again and people saw him throwing rocks at Brimob [Indonesia's brutal paramilitary police]."
Police have denied using provocateurs and have pointed to the fact no protesters were killed. It's true that although furious police officers beat up students, none were killed, a laudable development in the history of Indonesian policing.
Hundreds of students remain in hiding in the jungles, hunted by the police. "We are the children of the jungle, so we feel safe in the jungle," Kayep says.
West Papua police spokesman Kartono Wangsa Disastra says it's certain the university students took part in the violence, along with others, and he sees the work of Papua's best-known separatists, the Free Papua Organisation, or OPM, behind the scenes. The fear of rebels has fuelled an increased deployment of troops, yet the activists are scattered, poorly armed and in trouble.
While OPM is down to a few hundred members by all accounts, there are many other movements spreading and shifting shape under the rebel umbrella.
Edison Waromi, law and politics director of the Papuan National Authority, declines to say whether his group organised the protest, but he is happy to take credit for the asylum-seekers' victory. He says he appointed activist Herman Wanggai as the leader of the group on the voyage intended to draw international attention to West Papua's plight.
The Indonesian navy is in the process of boosting and enlarging its bases on the south coast of Papua, in tandem with an increased deployment of security forces across the province.
"They fled because the situation was not safe and they were threatened," Waromi says. "We know there are international conventions that guarantee the rights of asylum-seekers. We hope this will put up a portrait of Papua during the last 40 years, a portrait of injustice in Papua. In this climate, Jakarta must be sensitive to the fact that Papua's problems have already become an international issue." He says he hopes an independent nation of Papua will be part of the South Pacific group rather than Southeast Asia.
This kind of talk drives a spike of fury deep into Indonesian hearts, where the loss of the tiny half-island of East Timor still rankles.
Independence is not an option, not least because Papua's vast wealth is essential to Indonesia's bleeding budget. Freeport is the nation's biggest taxpayer, contributing $US1.1 billion ($1.55 billion) in taxes and royalties to Indonesia last year; only a tiny proportion found its way back to Papua.
Many ordinary Indonesians still blame Australia and the UN for the loss of East Timor. Now Australia has offered West Papuans asylum, and mounting resentment in Jakarta makes it clear this is likely to be the biggest blight on Australian-Indonesian relations since East Timor.
As with the East Timorese, Papuans consider themselves different from other Indonesians. Largely Christian and Melanesian, they resent the racist attitudes of mostly Muslim Indonesians and they see the Act of Free Choice used to legitimate Indonesia's absorption of their homeland as a monstrous deception. Yet all this could be dealt with if the economy worked and Indonesia provided reasonable measures of autonomy.
Adriana Elizabeth, Papua research co-ordinator at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, says West Papuans endure human rights abuses and economic deprivation. "Of course there are groups fighting for independence, but they are only small," she says, adding that most West Papuans are simply trying to get by, and the hardships of their lives have fuelled their support for the rebels and their distrust of Jakarta.
"The problem is development. If the problems of the economy were dealt with, I don't think there would be a dilemma for them. If not, the asylum-seekers won't stop. The Government should think clearly how to quickly foster development and build human rights in Papua."
[Additional reporting: Emmy Zumaidar.]