>From AWPA

Pacific Magazine (Islands Business)
December 2002
Editorial: We Say

The bombings in Bali are a setback for the independence movement in Indonesian-occupied West Papua. In its October edition, Islands Business in appeasing Indonesia by using their membership of the Pacific Islands Forum to block the Forum from embracing the self-government cause in West Papua. Since the Bali atrocity Australia, judging from how its political leaders and the Australian media have reacted, is frantic to forge the closest possible chummy links with the Indonesian regime.

In particular, it wants to be good mates with the Indonesian military establishment, which has been, and is, the primary instrument for crushing political opposition to Indonesian rule in West Papua, as it was in East Timor and in other parts of Indonesia opposed to rule from Jakarta.

What the Australians, supported by the Americans, are intent on is to support those sectors of the Indonesian political and military power that oppose militant Islamic groups so that they can be used as allies in countering the terrorism behind the Bali bombings and the September 2001 attacks in the United States. That is a perfectly understandable motive. Unfortunately, it means that for Australia, good relations with more than 200 million Indonesians is bound to have a far greater priority than relations with the seven million practically powerless Pacific Islanders.

Australia has a very powerful motive now for keeping the Forum off Indonesia’s back about West Papua. Disturbingly, the Australian Defence Minister, Robert Hill, is reportedly in favour of being mates with Kopassus, Indonesia’s notoriously murderous state terrorist force, with the purpose of getting a joint counter-terrorism deal with it. Australia trained Kopassus people in the past until the murderous nature of Kopassus’s activities in East Timor and elsewhere became too embarrassing for it to keep doing so. Kopassus in recent years has been connected to massacres in West Papua and most recently with the murder in November 2001 of the West Papuan leader, Theys Eluay.

Even Indonesian authorities are now conceding that the Indonesian military was behind the murder of several American and Indonesian employees of the Freeport mine a few months ago. The Indonesians initially blamed Papuan freedom fighters. But, it now seems they were engineered to direct the finger of accusation at the Papuans. Only one Forum country, Vanuatu, is prepared to stick up for West Papua; it was made clear to an Indonesian representative who visited Port Vila recently that he was not welcome. Indonesia1s first ambassador to Fiji presented his credentials in Suva in November. The priority for him is to persuade other Forum countries against lining up with Vanuatu.