SBS Dateline

July 14, 2004

West Papua - Backgrounder, by Mark

Davis

And now to the Indonesian side of the island of New Guinea, West Papua. Both Australia and America have been courting the co-operation of Indonesia. Australia in particular has moved to renew training and intelligence links with some of the most notorious units of the Indonesian military. For its part, Indonesia has asked for more understanding in how it deals with its own security issues in rebellious provinces like West Papua. That understanding became a little more complicated this week with the release of some extraordinary documents from the US National Security Archive. Mark Davis will be speaking with the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, but first a look at the documents and the issues.

Reporter: Mark Davis:

Since it took formal control of West Papua in 1969, Indonesia has faced consistent charges of severe human rights abuses there - abuses against tribal people in remote valleys far from the glare of media and international observers. Thousands of Papuans have been killed under Indonesian rule.

For decades, the Papuan resistance movement, the OPM, seen here in footage smuggled to Dateline last year, have sought international recognition that Indonesia illegally seized their country through a sham election.

News Report: The Act of Free Choice on whether or not West Irian was to remain in the Republic of Indonesia…

They’ve long held that the 1969 Act of Free Choice was a rigged and illegitimate election, just over 1,000 hand-picked Papuans delivering a predetermined outcome. It now seems the US State Department essentially agreed with that view. This week, 120 pages of cables and memos were released from the US National Security Archive, which are potentially damaging to Indonesia’s legal claim to West Papua. Cable upon cable lists the concerns of US ambassadors and other staff about how the UN-monitored election was being conducted. Indonesia could not win an open election, they say, and they document the actions taken by the Indonesian military and senior government officials to secure the vote from a hand-selected few.

“A Greek tragedy,” says the US Embassy, “where the conclusion is preordained.” For the West Papuans, these documents will add fuel to the legal claims they’re pursuing at the UN and around the

world that their annexation by Indonesia was illegitimate, a message being heard with some sympathy in Europe, Ireland and the US.

As we showed last year, West Papuans were making a desperate call for international observers. From across the highlands came accounts of the Indonesian military burning villages to the ground and killing those they suspected of supporting the independence movement. This OPM rally called for a ceasefire in the highlands and pleaded with Australia or the UN to assist in peace negotiations. This commander, Yustinus Murib, wrote to John

Howard, Kofi Annan and others asking for their diplomatic intervention. He was killed by

Indonesian forces before he got a reply.

– www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html