A joint statement by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, (Sydney University), the Uniting Church of Australia and the West Papuan Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy (Elsham) has said that evidence points to Indonesian Army involvement in an incident last Friday that caused one policeman killed and two government officials badly wounded has the potential to precipitate widespread bloodshed in Indonesia's contentious Melanesian province.
The incident arose from the latest in a series of attacks in West Papua's remote Puncak Jaya regency which have resulted in the deaths of eight people, including a prominent Papuan pastor.
The military operation in the Mulia area, purportedly against OPM (Free West Papua) guerrilas has already resulted in up to 5000 highlanders being forced from their villages and the destruction of homes, food gardens and livestock. Reports have filtered out of at least fifteen deaths from hunger, thirteen of which were children, with people eating grass to survive. The area has been closed by the military.
Friday's attack now threatens an escalation of military repression across the highlands. It has been revealed that one wounded official, a local finance administrator, has recently reported extortion by the military of the regency government of Puncak Jaya. The money extorted, around $250,000 earmarked for development, was used to fund the military operations. A church leader exposed the extortion earlier this month.
"It is likely that Papuans have been used to carry out this attack by the army special forces, Kopassus, who have been using local groups in Papua in the same way they manipulated East Timorese to fight their own people", said John Rumbiak, International Advocacy Coordinator for Elsham. He warns, "This is a precursor to civil war."
"The military threatens the administration of President Yudhoyono with a situation where he must give them the green light for a new military operation. They have already begun to engineer incidents which will destabilize his presidency."
Journalists (domestic and international) have been barred from entering West Papua since shortly after the election of the new President Yudhoyono. The banning of journalists was a measure taken before the start of the military offensive in Aceh last year.
Reverend John Barr of the Uniting Church in Australia has called for an urgent humanitarian assistance mission to be allowed into the Puncak Jaya area and a halt to the military assault: "Papuan leaders, from civil society and the churches, are united in their opposition to the use of military force, which is having such disastrous consequences for the local communities," he said.
Tom Beanal, a senior member of the Papua Presidium Council, has called for immediate dialogue and a demilitarization of the Papuan highlands: "The people must not be provoked into reaction ... there will be an explosion in Papua if Jakarta does not stop military operations," he said.
Targeted assassinations
A week after the inauguration of President Yudhoyono, sixteen key West Papuan leaders, mostly Papua Presidium Council members, were targeted for assassination. A source close to the President has confirmed that the killings were to be conducted by members of BIN (Indonesian intelligence) and a "Black Operations" group. ("Black Operations" consists of hundreds of ex-Suharto loyalists, military men who, following the fall of Suharto, left office in possession of automatic weapons). They have been professional and well-funded instigators of ethnic, political and religious conflicts throughout Indonesia.
The group is displeased with the election of Yudhoyono as president and his commitment to resolve the West Papuan issue peacefully.
Dr. Ikrar Nusa Bakti, a well respected Indonesian academic of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, has pointed out that ongoing attempts to divide Papua into three provinces have received strong backing from the TNI and National Police because of their politicial interest in weakening "separatist" sentiment. With the split, which would also entail establishing more military and police bases in the new provinces and regencies, "separatist rebels" could be more easily controlled, he argued.
The decision made last week by the Indonesian Constitutional Court to declare the new province of West Irian Jaya legally invalid is only an apparent setback for the hardline groups because the court failed to order the dissolution of the new province. Their goal remains to create tension and conflict in Papua and elsewhere.
President Yudhoyono has advocated dialogue with West Papuans. In his first weeks in office he held meetings with key Papuan leaders and parliamentarians seeking peaceful solutions to the four-decade long struggle in Papua. The strategy favored by the new president includes the early implementation of Special Autonomy, promised by the Megawati administration but never implemented.
Yudhoyono indicated the position he takes on the military's role when, referring last week to the operations in the highlands, he called for care to be taken to minimize civilian casualties in Papua. "Don't let the people suffer from excesses during the operation," the President warned.
Nevertheless, following a troop build-up in Papua over the past two years there are now more than 25,000 soldiers stationed in the province and they are a ticking time bomb for the future of the Papuans and the whole Pacific region as well.
Professor Stuart Rees of Sydney University's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies has called on the TNI to refrain from action that will only cause further alienation and upheaval for the Papuans. "These people have suffered enough. It's time there was a negotiated and internationally supported solution ... here is an enormous opportunity for the new Indonesian administration to promote peace with justice."