1) Foreign diplomacy not enough to solve the Papua issue
Kornelius Purba (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta ● Wed, December 21, 2022
My mind has flashbacks of former foreign minister Ali Alatas telling me about the real power of the Foreign Ministry many years ago when I read the speech of Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi during the first Indonesia-Pacific Forum for Development (IPFD) in Bali early this month.
Alatas’ experience in dealing with East Timor at the time can be a good reminder for Retno in negotiating the Papuan issue. Of course, she fully understands it as she was part of the Foreign Ministry under Alatas.
Retno chaired the first IPFD, which resulted in the Bali message statement. She said Indonesia had intensively cooperated in development projects with Pacific nations since 2019, during which the government granted 211 technical and development aid packages to Pacific nations.
To be honest, one of the main motives behind the Pacific approach is to “appease” the people in the region who have strong emotional and cultural bonds with the people in Papua. Vanuatu is one the most outspoken critics of Indonesia’s Papua policy, as well as Jakarta’s treatment of East Timor before it voted for independence in 1999.
The Bali meeting was attended by ministers, senior officials and representatives of Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Delegations from the United States, China, France, Japan and South Korea also turned up for the event.
“We must maintain the Pacific as a peaceful, stable and prosperous region,” Retno said during the opening of the meeting on Dec. 7.
In dealing with Papua, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo seems to emulate the “divide and rule” tactic of the Dutch to maintain its colonialism in the Dutch East Indies for more than three centuries. Just recently, his administration formed four new provinces in Papua, in addition to the existing provinces of Papua and West Papua. The government believes it will be much easier to quell separatist aspirations in Papua if the people are not united.
Alatas’ experience in dealing with East Timor and Retno’s familiarity with the Papua issue have much in common.
I by no means doubt her ability to realize her vision on Indonesian diplomacy in the Pacific Islands. I even dare to suggest that she abandoned the ministry’s tendency to opt for ad hoc approaches toward the Pacific nations, including the assignment of four Indonesian embassies to cover Pacific nations. The current approach only leads Indonesia to the elites. Therefore, a well-planned and implemented strategy to reach out to grass roots should be prioritized.
However, the Foreign Ministry is not the sole government institution conducting diplomacy. Other ministries and state institutions are also involved in foreign affairs, but oftentimes there is no coordination among the agencies.
In an interview with The Jakarta Post after ending an 11-year tenure as foreign minister in 1999, Alatas said the developments in East Timor were beyond the control of the Foreign Ministry. In fact, Indonesia’s foreign diplomacy was mirroring the country’s domestic situation.
"I must admit that sometimes I became very frustrated at the slow pace in which we could move and the setbacks that sometimes happened, completely out of the control of the department of foreign affairs [...] Being an issue that preceded the national context, other people decided what was happening in East Timor, not the foreign ministry,” Alatas told me.
Alatas left his post just three months after East Timor opted for separation from Indonesia in a United Nations-organized referendum in August 1999.
If I could interpret Alatas’ statement, no matter how perfect and genius he was in defending Indonesia’s sovereignty in East Timor, when the atrocities and human rights abuses persisted, his diplomatic efforts would be meaningless.
The Papua cause is completely different from East Timor’s. The UN, as well as most parts of the world, recognizes Papua as a legitimate part of Indonesia, but never East Timor. The problem, however, is the perception that Jakarta treats Papua the way it treated East Timor during its occupation in 1975-1999.
Retno needs to take more concerted measures in dealing with Pacific Islands nations, including ending the practice of assigning four Indonesian ambassadors to the region. It will be more practical for Indonesia to have only one embassy which covers the whole Pacific Islands.
The Foreign Ministry already has the Pacific and Ocean Directorate, which focuses on Pacific nations. It falls under the Directorate-General for Asia-Pacific and Africa. The directorate should be upgraded to reflect Indonesia’s rising interests in the Pacific.
Currently the Indonesian Embassy in Port Moresby in PNG is also accredited to the Solomon Islands. The embassy should just concentrate on Indonesia’s relations with PNG, because the country directly borders Indonesia.
The embassy in Canberra also covers Vanuatu, while the embassy in Wellington also covers Samoa, Tonga Kingdom, Cook Islands and Niue Islands. Our ambassadors there have been preoccupied with bilateral relations issues. The additional tasks will add burdens and it is impossible diplomats can spare enough time to deal with small nations in the Pacific.
In the meantime, the Embassy in Suva, Fiji, is also accredited to Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu.
Minister Retno needs to consider the embassy in Suva as the center for Indonesia’s diplomacy in the Pacific Islands, taking over additional tasks from embassies in Port Moresby, Canberra and Wellington. It means the embassy in Suva should get more staff and budget.
The roots of the Papua issue come from our own home, not overseas. The Pacific Islands nations are sensitive to the suffering of their Melanesian brethren in Papua, but cannot provide any solutions to us.
The words of Alatas about East Timor serve as a good reminder for us to address the Papua problem. Retno can do more to end the Papua conundrum, but referring to the remarks of the late Alatas, the Papua issue is simply beyond the Foreign Ministry’s control.
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The writer is a senior editor at The Jakarta Post.
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https://thediplomat.com/2022/12/new-indonesian-military-chief-downplays-extent-of-papua-conflict/
2) New Indonesian Military Chief Downplays Extent of Papua Conflict
The past few years have seen growing numbers of violent incidents in the eastern region, home to a long-running separatist insurgency
By Sebastian Strangio December 21, 2022
of the failed efforts by Papuan tribal chiefs to declare independence from Dutch colonial
rule in 1961, in Jakarta, Indonesia,Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022.
Credit: AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana
Indonesia’s newly appointed military chief has played down the seriousness of the situation in Papua, after several years of worsening conflict in the restive eastern region. According to a report by BenarNews, Adm. Yudo Margono, who was sworn into his position on Monday, was responding to a question from a reporter about whether the increase in violent attacks over the past few years had reached the level of an emergency.
“Not yet. I don’t think it has reached that level,” he said. “So far it remains a criminal law enforcement issue, so Indonesian police are in charge, but we are helping law enforcement.”
The questioner referenced an incident on Monday in which police fired on villagers who had attacked a police station in Tolikara regency, in the newly formed Papua Highlands province, with “sharp weapons and arrows,” as CNN Indonesia reported. In the incident, one resident was reportedly shot dead and another eight were injured.
The incident reflected the growing level of violence in the two provinces of Indonesian Papua, which is home to a long-running separatist insurgency.
Yudo’s comments came a day after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced that he supports plans to reduce the troop presence in Papua – though not a softening of the government’s policy there. According to Reuters, the Indonesian leader said that “the reduction of military troops in Papua is good, but we need to continue to be stern.” Otherwise, he said, armed rebel groups will always continue to operate there and “the problem will never end.”
While the Papuan independence movement dates back to Indonesia’s annexation of the former Dutch colony in 1963, the situation has worsened considerably since 2018, when guerilla fighters of the West Papua National Liberation Army killed 16 laborers working on the Trans-Papua Highway. Jakarta responded to the attack by deploying thousands of troops to the region. The ensuing conflict has resulted in deaths on both sides, dozens of arrests, and the mass displacement of Papuan villagers caught in the middle of the conflict.
According to a recent report from the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, the frequency of violent insurgency-related attacks has increased from an average of 11 incidents per year between 2010 to 2017 to 52 incidents per year during 2018-2021. In November 2020, the United Nations said that there had been “repeated reports of extra-judicial killings, excessive use of force, arrest and continuous harassment and intimidation of protesters and human rights defenders” since 2018.
The situation has worsened further since April 2021, after Papuan separatist rebels ambushed and assassinated Brig. Gen. Gusti Putu Danny Nugraha, the head of Indonesia’s intelligence agency in the eastern province. The assassination led the government to formally designate Papuan separatists as “terrorists” and deployed further troops to remote parts of Papua and West Papua provinces.
It is tempting to view Jokowi’s comments about a possible reduction in the Indonesian troop presence in Papua and West Papua as a step toward a more humane and effective policy – and an admission that the hard line toward the region has failed. But the Indonesian leader’s continuing call for a “stern” policy almost guarantees that no matter the exact number of deployed troops, his administration will continue to lean into the spiral of conflict that has engulfed the region since 2018.
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3) Nationalist thugs break up Papua rally marking 61 years since Trikora operation
CNN Indonesia – December 19, 2022
Jakarta – An action in front of the United Nations representative office in Jakarta by Papuan activists commemorating 61 years since the Triple Commands of the People (Trikora) military operation was forcibly broken up by members of a group calling themselves the "Defend the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia" (Bela NKRI).
Based on CNN Indonesia's observations at the location, as soon as the Bela NKRI members arrived, they broke through the police lines and headed in the direction of the Papuan protesters. They then began pushing and shoving the demonstrators trying to forcibly remove them from the location.
The Papuan protesters tried to hold their ground asking the group not to keep pushing them. They also protested the intimidation saying that the Papua action was peaceful. Eventually they were force to leave the location.
The action was held to commemorate the 1961 Trikora operation which they said was inappropriate because if forced Papua to integrate into the NKRI.
"We're holding a peaceful action. Our friends see the Trikora operation as being inappropriate", said one of the representatives at the action, Surya Anta, on Monday December 19.
The former political prisoner also questioned the presence of the Bela NKRI group saying that the Papuan protesters had already submitted a written notification of the action in front of the UN offices with the police.
"The police need to be asked if they [the Bela NKRI group] have [also] followed police regulations by providing a letter of notification [to police] or not because we provided a notification", said Surya.
In the end, at 3.30 pm the Papuan protesters withdrew and disbanded because of the continued pressure from the Bela NKRI.
According to a statement by Central Jakarta Metro District Police Chief Senior Commissioner Komarudin, there were indeed two groups that held a demonstration in front of the UN office in Jakarta today.
According to Komarudin, the two groups held the action without first providing a written notification.
He said that the chaos broke out when the Bela NKRI group was giving a speech and members of the Greater Jakarta Papua Student Front suddenly arrived at the location.
"They were shocked (the Bela NKRI), so when they (the Papuans) arrived, they tried to remove them", said Komarudin when contacted.
According to Komarudin, the chaos broke out at around 3.30 pm. He claimed however that there was no scuffle between the groups or items thrown during the incident.
"No (there was no pushing or shoving or throwing things), there were officials on the ground, we blocked them, we separated them", he said.
Komarudin said that the chaos only lasted around 10 minutes adding that by around 4 pm the situation was under control again. (yla/dis/tsa)
Notes
Operation Trikora was declared by Indonesian founding President Sukarno in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta on December 19, 1961. It was an Indonesian military operation aimed at harassing and forcing the Dutch out of Netherlands New Guinea in 1961-62 rather than one intended to suppress a nascent independence movement. Under the threat that Indonesia would move from armed infiltrations to a large-scale military attack, US sponsored negotiations led to the signing of the New York Agreement on August 15, 1962 in which the Netherlands agreed to hand over administration of Western New Guinea to Indonesia pending a UN administered plebiscite. Seven years later under the newly installed Suharto dictatorship, the treaty led to the so-call "Act of Free Choice" in 1969 in which 1025 hand-picked Papuans "voted" at gun-point for the territory remain part of Indonesia.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Massa Aksi Trikora Papua Bubar, Sempat Didorong-Dilempar Kertas".]
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