UNREST IN WEST PAPUA

October 24, 2012

Trouble has flared up again this week in West Papua as protesters were fired upon when their rally turned violent. Security forces said that the demonstrators started hurling rocks at them when they were ordered to retreat to the University, as many of them were students. The protesters claimed that the police were forcing them to have their photos taken, which could have resulted in reprisals later. There were a few casualties on both sides, but no fatalities.

Secessionist problems started in West Papua after a rigged referendum administered by Indonesia led to the annexation of the territory by the Indonesian State in 1969. The Dutch has already relinquished territories of the former Dutch East Indies, on the island of New Guinea, to Indonesia after the Indonesian National Revolution in December 1949, but they held on to Western New Guinea (Netherlands New Guinea), because the locals were ethnically different and wanted to be independent from Indonesia. In 1962 the government in the Netherlands agreed to a transitional United Nations administration as part of the New York Agreement which guaranteed a plebiscite on the independence question. Ever since that condition was flouted, unrest has been flaring up periodically.

Independence is not always synonymous with improvement, but when a whole section of the people within a territory does not feel it belongs to the country, then the government of that country should listen. There are so many ways of reaching mutually beneficial agreements, that just ignoring the problems indicates a serious lack of political acumen as well as a shortage good will. Indonesia should spend more time studying how other governments, like those of the Philippines, Spain and even Britain, to name but a few, deal with their secessionist issues. There may be no easy answers, but unless these issues are tackled, they will not go away and risk getting a lot worse.