“Wah Wah Wah!” came the jungle cry as I watched dozens of OPM (Free West Papua) guerrillas stream down mountain ravines towards our village, adorned in cassowary feathers, smeared in pig fat (to stay warm in the mountain air) and armed with bows and arrows.
They descended for an independence flag-raising ceremony and pig feast in Mapenduma village, in the Nduga highlands of West Papua. They had come to hear speeches from their commanders, including Daniel Kogeya and to meet me, the first journalist to ever venture there.
Nearly 30 years ago, I reported for this masthead on their struggle for independence which had many of the characteristics of neighbouring East Timor’s quest, but none of the publicity. Today their situation remains much the same: a long-running guerrilla war, an estimated 200,000 dead since Indonesia’s invasion in 1963, plus tens of thousands of refugees both internally displaced and along the Papua New Guinea border. Forgotten.
West Papua remains the most significant war in our immediate region, yet few hear about it. That’s because Indonesia forbids all foreign media from visiting, or any INGOs from operating there. It continues to target local journalists. In fact, across the entire Asia Pacific region there is only one other place so deliberately cut off from the world – North Korea. The war undermines Indonesian claims of support for democracy and a free press, while also highlighting the hypocrisy of Australia’s claims to support peace and the “Pacific family” in our region.
Australia continues to back Indonesian forces there. Yet for all the new concentration on Australia’s defence, the only war in our actual neighbourhood is never mentioned in “white papers” or “defence reviews”. Why? It’s the only real war in the Pacific that continues at a time everyone is focused on China.
In late 1995, it was Commander Daniel Kogeya and his men who took seven Europeans hostage some weeks after I left them. An Indonesian special forces operation intervened after three months. While the Europeans were rescued, two Indonesian students – who got caught up in the stand-off – were shot and killed. Afterwards, many villagers were murdered in payback by Indonesian forces.
Kogeya was eventually captured, tortured and killed by Indonesian forces. But his movement continues with the OPM Central Command in the mountains above Freeport mine and is responsible for the latest kidnapping of New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens.
While international attention has focused on the pilot, another “kidnapping” last month went largely unreported: the arrest of West Papua’s Governor Lukas Enembe.
Kidnapping can never be condoned, but context is important. In a region completely cut off from international media and scrutiny, West Papuans have few avenues to publicise their struggle. This is another desperate cry for international intervention since the UN and regional powers have failed them. The UN bears much responsibility since its fraudulent Act of Free Choice in 1969 officially handed West Papua to Indonesia.
More than 50 years later, it appears we can never offend Indonesia even as its military operates with impunity in West Papua. Why are we forging closer defence ties with Indonesia, which maintains strong military and security links with Russia, attacks regional interests and undermines our Pacific “step up”?
Locals believe Indonesia was most likely behind a massive cyberattack on Vanuatu recently which brought down the entire government’s intranet, paralysing its ability to function online for six weeks. This was the most serious cyberattack on any Pacific nation so far and feels like an “Estonia moment” - when that Baltic country became the first nation to come under a sustained cyberattack, by Russia.
For decades Jakarta, Washington and Canberra have been complicit in the greatest injustice found in our immediate region – allowing Indonesia to continue its brutal occupation of West Papua unhindered so as to profit from its considerable resources, mainly by US-owned Freeport which operates the world’s largest gold mine there.
In the end, American corporate interests in West Papua should not be allowed to trump legitimate Australian and Pacific security interests at a time when building a regional Pacific alliance to counter China (and Russia) is the main game. Indonesia seems not to have got the memo and does not appreciate how much criticism Australia gets in Melanesia because of its appeasement of Indonesian aggression. Thus, Pacific nations seek to minimise Indonesian influence while welcoming Chinese engagement.
At a time Australia is pushing its climate change credentials, it seems unconcerned the most significant ecocide going on in our region is the destruction of West Papuan rainforests by oil-palm conglomerates. This is happening in the second-largest wilderness area in the world after the Amazon basin.
Just across the sea from us, 4 million West Papuans remain hostages to war, greed and timid diplomacy. No-one comes out of this long-running tragedy looking good; not Indonesia, not the UN, America, Australia or the paralysed Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), supposed to represent Melanesian interests.
Some see West Papua as “the Ukraine of the Pacific”. So it’s ironic that Australia is helping faraway Ukraine but not the one next door to us whose struggle is equally justified and ultimately more consequential for us.
In West Papua, we remain on the wrong side of history, and humanity.
Ben Bohane is a Vanuatu-based photojournalist and producer who has reported the Pacific since 1994. He is co-founder of the Australian war photography collective DegreeSouth.
PODCAST: THE DETAIL
The Week in Detail: West Papua, forestry slash, and light pollution
Every weekday, The Detail makes sense of the big news stories.
This week, we looked at the conflict in West Papua where local man Phillip Mehrtens is being held hostage, whether we can curb the devastation caused by forestry slash, why young New Zealanders are switching off from homegrown news and media, the clean up effort on the ground in Hawkes Bay, and the importance of protecting nighttime darkness for our own good and that of te taiao.
Plus, a new edition of our Long Read.
Whakarongo mai to any episodes you might have missed.
The pilot, the rebels and West Papua’s independence struggle
New Zealander Phillip Mehrtens was taken hostage earlier this month by the rebel group the West Papua National Liberation Army.
How did a Christchurch pilot end up a pawn in the decades-long struggle for West Papua's independence?
Dr Cammi Webb-Gannon from Australia's University of Wollongong, an expert on decolonisation in the Pacific, calls Phillip Merhtens "incredibly unlucky" - a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Tom Kitchin talks to Webb-Gannon as well as RNZ's Johnny Blades about the complex geopolitics Mehrtens has been caught up in.
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Teuku Faizasyah confirmed that the New Zealand government had sent representatives to Timika, Papua, to monitor pilot Philip Mehrtens who was held hostage by the Free Papua Movement (OPM) for the past two weeks.
“The New Zealand Embassy in Jakarta deployed their consular officers to Papua. New Zealand's representative specifically deals with consular matters for its citizens,” said Faizasyah via text message to Tempo, Thursday, February 23.
According to the report of New Zealand-based news media RNZ on February 15, three New Zealand diplomats and two staffers from the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry landed in Mimika to monitor the progress of the search for the Susi Air pilot by the separatist group.
Chief Media Advisor of New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Corinne Ambler told Tempo on Thursday, February 23, that the welfare of its citizens is the top priority.
“We are doing everything we can, including deploying New Zealand consular staff, to secure the safe release of the hostage,” Ambler said.
“We are working closely with the Indonesian authorities to ensure the safe release of the New Zealander,” she said, adding that the captain’s family asked for privacy “at this incredibly challenging time.”
New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson stopped short of providing further details about the rescue efforts. Yet Ambler said, “this is an evolving situation.”
Meanwhile, Faizasyah emphasized that the rescue operation of captain Mehrtens was the authority of the Indonesian government.
Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Mahfud MD has not yet responded to Tempo’s request for confirmation regarding the progress of the rescue and the stagnant diplomatic approach.
On Tuesday, February 21, Mahfud claimed the government had already discovered the whereabouts of Captain Mehrtens and had surrounded the areas of the Papuan armed group.
DANIEL A. FAJRI
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