Ismira Lutfia & Markus Junianto Sihaloho – A senior member of the self-styled separatist government of the Republic of South Maluku said on Tuesday that his movement would reconsider its aspirations for an independent state.
Speaking to the Jakarta Globe by phone from Amsterdam, John Watilette said the group, also known as the RMS, would consider backtracking from its push for independence from Indonesia if that was the will of the people of South Maluku.
"If that is the voice of the people, we should listen to it," he said, "but only if it is voiced without repression."
Watilette, who was expected to assume the RMS presidency in the coming weeks, said that the RMS government-in-exile would contact people in South Maluku to discuss the issue further.
"We want to hear it directly from the people, not from local government officials," he said, adding that the Maluku community in the Netherlands was in constant contact with their communities in Indonesia.
Watilette said that the RMS had heard a significant number of people had expressed their reluctance to continue the push for a separate state.
"However, we hear there are also many people there who are still pro-independence," he added, saying that most did not dare speak up for fear of arrest by local authorities and human rights violations in detention.
Watilette recently told the Nederlands Dagblad daily that an independent state in South Maluku was no longer a priority. In an interview with Radio Netherlands, Watilette said that the RMS would be satisfied with a form of autonomy similar to that introduced in Aceh.
The Netherlands-born Watilette was reported by the Dutch media to be the first RMS leader from the second generation of Maluku migrants who settled in the Netherlands in the 1950s, and was regarded as more pragmatic than previous leaders.
Indonesia's ambassador to the Netherlands, Junus Effendi Habibie, told Radio Netherlands after Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on Monday that he welcomed the exiled RMS government's moves to give up its separatist intentions.
A spokesman from the embassy, Firdaus Dahlan, said the ambassador had "responded positively" to the new RMS position.
He said the ambassador had also called on the Maluku community in the Netherlands to accept the system of regional autonomy, saying that special autonomy would be inappropriate because the central government had already decentralized power to the local governments.
Negotiations over the issue, the embassy said, would be out of the question since Indonesia did not recognize the RMS.
According to the UNHCR, there are about 50,000 people from Maluku currently living in the Netherlands, some of whom have taken up Dutch citizenship.
The RMS movement began in 1950 when soldiers from South Maluku that were loyal to the Dutch staged a failed revolt in favor of an independent state after the Indonesian government reverted to the unitary republic from the system of federal states.
As many as 12,000 people were temporarily resettled in the Netherlands with the hope that they would one day return to South Maluku, however, this never eventuated and in 1986, the Maluku community there was recognized by the Dutch government as a permanent feature of Dutch society.