Two recent accounts by former Australian defence force personnel who worked in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya (now West Papua) in 1977 suggests there was ADF knowledge at that time of alleged atrocities committed by Indonesian troops.
The Defence Department has issued a qualified denial of a claim made by the Asian Human Rights Commission that military aircraft supplied by Canberra were used in bombing runs over Papuan villages resisting Indonesian rule.
Defence told Fairfax Media that ''an initial search of Defence archives does not support the claim that two Iroquois helicopters were supplied by Australia to Indonesia in the 1970s''.
But it side-stepped questions about ADF knowledge of the alleged massacres detailed in the report. The commission claims, in a report released on October 24, that both US-supplied Bronco aircraft and Iroquois helicopters were used in bombing and strafing runs over Papuan villages that were suspected of aiding the Free Papua Movement (or OPM). It said at least 4000 and possibly up to 9000 Papuan civilians died in air and ground attacks launched by Indonesian troops in 1977-78.
Now two accounts from former ADF members operating in the region at the time have come to light. The Australians were part of Operation Cenderawasih, a mapping exercise of Irian Jaya being carried out by an army survey team, supported by RAAF Iroquois helicopters and Caribou and Hercules aircraft.
The first account, by former major Don Swiney and former sergeant Peter Jensen, was published in 2011 in an Australian survey corps association newsletter.
The authors say ''The Indonesian Army [in July 1977] was conducting an intense operation against the OPM, including setting villages alight with rockets from the air and accompanying ground operations.''
Mr Swiney was the commander of the Australian field survey squadron. He told Fairfax that ''I was aware of a ground operation based at Wamena and I estimated at the time of in excess of a battalion of [Indonesian] troops supported from the air by an OV-10 [Bronco] aircraft. This aircraft was armed with rockets. I witnessed from the air, huts in villages that had been burnt out but how that was done, I can only surmise.'' The Australians had a forward base at Wamena near the Baliem Valley ( a focus of OPM activity ) and were sharing an airfield with the Indonesian army from which they observed rockets being loaded onto Indonesian-operated aircraft.
The second account, written recently by former RAAF crewman Paddy Sinclair for a squadron reunion, also refers to Indonesian atrocities.
Mr Sinclair was on board a RAAF Iroquois helicopter that crashed while on survey operations in July 1977 on a steep, jungle-clad ridge near the Baliem Valley. An Indonesian army surveyor was also on board. In his account of the crash and subsequent rescue, Mr Sinclair reports that he and another crewman had used masking tape to write the word ''AUSTRALIA'' in makeshift letters on the tail of the helicopter.
Mr Sinclair says this was because ''Indonesian military were allegedly carrying out atrocities against the local population using Bell Iroquois aircraft painted in the same livery as the RAAF helicopters.''
However, another ADF source disputes this, saying ''AUSTRALIA'' was emblazoned on the tail as a way of alerting the OPM not to mistake the RAAF helicopter for an offensive aircraft.
Richard Woolcott, who was Australian Ambassador to Jakarta in 1977, said he had not received reports about atrocities from Australian defence attaches at the embassy.
The Hong-Kong based Asian Human Rights Commission claims the Indonesian army's 1977-78 assaults against Papuan villages constituted a '' neglected genocide''.