Papuans have the lowest life expectancies in Indonesia, the highest maternal and child mortality rates, the lowest educational levels and the highest rates of tuberculosis.
The late Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas once described the distant and rebellious Indonesian province of East Timor as a ‘‘stone in Indonesia’s shoe’’.
Papua is also a stone in Indonesia’s shoe. It is a stone the size of California, with the last great remaining tracts of virgin forest in south-east Asia. Its wealth in coal, gold, copper, oil, gas and fisheries is colossal. A single mine there is Indonesia’s largest taxpayer.
Migrants from across the archipelago flock to Papua, which hosts the highest economic growth rate in Indonesia. They fill unplanned cities like Jayapura and Timika to bursting; they drive the machinery, staff the hotels and shops, and work the plantations that are transforming once-virgin land into deceitfully green circuit boards.
Papua’s wealth does not, however, accrue in the lives of its daughters and sons. The indigenous population generally lacks access to health and education services. Papuans have the lowest life expectancies in Indonesia, the highest maternal and child mortality rates, the lowest educational levels, the highest rates of tuberculosis, and an HIV infection rate that is 10 times the national average and climbing. They are the poorest, the sickest, and the quickest to die.
After Indonesia’s independence in 1949, Papua was withheld because of the possible need for a land to settle Dutch Nazi collaborators. Altruism was only articulated later. To disarm the Indonesian Communist Party of a popular cause, the Kennedy administration forced the Dutch to hand over the territory to the UN in 1961 before an Indonesian administrative takeover and an engineered referendum. Papua’s experience in Indonesia under the dictator Suharto was a pendulum that swung between neglect and overwhelming violence directed at the slightest hint of rebellion. An anti-government insurgency has waxed and waned since incorporation, but has never died: it is the last active insurgency in Indonesia.

Since the departure of Suharto administrative reforms haven’t improved Papua. Decentralisation passed state responsibilities to districts that lack the capacity to provide them. Decentralisation’s handmaiden is pemekaran, administrative osmosis that creates new structures at a viral rate. Such structures are theoretically supposed to be more responsive to citizens. But in Papua newly empowered indigenous elites agitate for their own administrative entities in order to award no-show jobs to supporters and access national subsidies directly. Decentralisation weakens services, while pemekaran kills them.After Indonesia’s independence in 1949, Papua was withheld because of the possible need for a land to settle Dutch Nazi collaborators. Altruism was only articulated later. To disarm the Indonesian Communist Party of a popular cause, the Kennedy administration forced the Dutch to hand over the territory to the UN in 1961 before an Indonesian administrative takeover and an engineered referendum. Papua’s experience in Indonesia under the dictator Suharto was a pendulum that swung between neglect and overwhelming violence directed at the slightest hint of rebellion. An anti-government insurgency has waxed and waned since incorporation, but has never died: it is the last active insurgency in Indonesia.
The Indonesian government has sought to resolve Papua’s myriad issues. But the policy responses have failed. The last great opportunity to improve the lives of Papuans and reconcile Papua to its place within Indonesia occurred under President Abdurrahman Wahid, who began a period wistfully referred to as the Papuan Spring. Papua’s special autonomy law, created in consultation with Papuans, returned the majority of Papua’s extracted wealth to the area, in order to improve health, education, and other services. A special Papuan body with broad powers, the Papuan People’s Council, was established.
After Wahid’s impeachment, president Megawati Sukarnoputri, current leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, emasculated special autonomy and the council, outlawed independence symbols, and cut the area into two provinces in direct violation of the law. The nascent trust that Wahid helped develop was eradicated. Special autonomy devolved into a slush fund, with much of the wealth absorbed by administrative costs or otherwise "lost". Affirmative action policies that were intended to create a cadre of Papuan technocrats instead led to even more no-show jobs: in the midst of governance failures, Papua has double the national average of civil servants.
The current Yudhoyono presidency has only issued toothless directives: a 2007 presidential instruction and the creation of a powerless development body. The state has no relevance in most Papuan lives. In the hinterlands where much of the indigenous population lives, it is distinguished by shuttered schools and empty clinics. Its most visible presence is usually in the form of security actors: roadside checkpoints levying fines for imagined infractions.
The impunity of state security actors has been reduced, but abuses continue nonetheless. Any imagined manifestation of treason is punished: the government’s aversion to separatist symbols has led to heavy sentences for flag-raisers in Papua and Maluku. The government simultaneously denies that such prisoners are political: more ammunition provided to independence advocates, courtesy of Jakarta.
Despite all this, Papuans have great affection for the candidate Megawati chose to run for president on her party’s ticket: Joko Widodo or ‘Jokowi’, the hugely popular governor of Jakarta. Papuans have less affection for the other candidate, ex-special forces commander Prabowo Subianto, but not as little as many imagine. The excesses from Prabowo’s past are found in East Timor: a stone since removed from Indonesia’s shoe.
Papua’s indigenous population is perhaps 2 million: 1.25 per cent of the population of Indonesia. The next president may have a hard time diverting attention to Papua. But he needs to. A ministerial-level government development body that assumes responsibility for myriad national, provincial, and district-level services is needed in order to centralise health, education, and other services at provincial levels. This entity would play a co-ordinating role in leading other urgent reforms: curbs on migration are urgently needed, and some migrants may need to be sent back. A moratorium on pemekaran is required. The religious foundations providing health and education services need to be legitimised and funded. The corporate social responsibility portfolios of companies involved in extractive industries require oversight from and synchronisation with such an entity, in order that Papua’s wealth may accrue palpably in Papuan lives.
This entity must also issue sensitive policy recommendations: on the legality of separatist symbols, on the Papuanisation of the police, on lifting unofficial curbs on Papuan military enrolments, and on changing the military’s territorial command structure, which is completely inappropriate for Indonesia’s modern defence environment. The insurgency is so small that it is a law-and-order issue.
Such an entity would report to the governors of Papua and Papua Barat, as well as to the president. It would be staffed by technocrats, and driven by Papuans. My experience shows that for every few no-show civil servants, there exists a responsible one. Papua’s rural schools may be absent of teachers, but they also host unpaid volunteers. Such people not only need inclusion, they need authority.
This entity would also play a role in reconciliation. The Indonesian Institute of Sciences proposed this years ago, in the form of a dialogue, but their recommendations were dismissed. Dialogue has since been reinterpreted by many an independence supporter as a hybrid tribunal where Indonesia will be forced to argue its case. This is a fantasy. Papua’s incorporation into Indonesia may have been coerced, but this does not mean that it can be undone. Papua’s independence would most likely be an unintentional after affect of the failure of the Indonesian state.
But the dead need naming. Suffering must be acknowledged. For Jakarta, this is the least expensive step, and the most politically costly. In the absence of such a truth-telling exercise, fictitious claims will remain credible, especially given government restrictions on foreign reporters. Many a politician naively hopes that this national wound will heal itself. It will not. Papua’s Memoria Passionis compounds over time.
Or the incoming president can ignore the issue. Perhaps the problem will fade; not with a bang, but a whimper. Immigration has already rendered Papuans a minority in their land, and more migrants arrive daily. The longstanding failure of health and education services in indigenous areas will hasten their demise. Many believe that this is policy. Or perhaps Papuan frustration will foment into a new insurgency, and the current amateurs will be sidelined by an entity that can raise funds and access quality weapons: an era of roadside bombs and burning fuel depots.
If the next president is serious about Papua, then he must treat Papuans with both the seriousness they deserve and the dignity that they have been denied. For there exist no military tactics that can defeat insurrections in human hearts: another way is needed.
Bobby Anderson works on health, education, and governance projects in eastern Indonesia and travels frequently in Papua province.