Human Rights Alert-- Urgent Information needed on West Papua massacre by Indonesian military.

[Joe Baptista]

>>> ----------
>>> From: "Michael Albert" <sysop at zmag.org>
>>> Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 13:25:39 -0800
>>> To: <znetupdates at tao.ca>, <znetcommentary at tao.ca>
>>> Subject: ZNet Commentary / George Monbiot / Massacre Starts Tomorrow / Dec 1
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The Massacre Starts Tomorrow
>>> And Britain will share the blame for what's about to happen in West Papua
>>> By George Monbiot
>>> Also Published in the Guardian 30th November 2000
>>> 
>>> There's an odd component of globalisation, which I find myself at a loss to
>>> explain. We are, we're assured, living in a global village, whose people are
>>> daily brought closer together. Yet we hear ever less about what is happening
>>> in distant parts of the world. There is less foreign news in the papers than
>>> there has been for sixty years. Foreign documentaries are almost extinct.
>>> Parliamentary debate about overseas issues has all but dried up. In the
>>> midst of the communications revolution, we are becoming strangers to each
>>> other.
>>> 
>>> So the massacres due to begin tomorrow will take almost everyone by
>>> surprise. Indeed, there is hardly a news editor who has even heard of the
>>> land in which they are scheduled to take place.
>>> 
>>> West Papua is the western half of the island of New Guinea, which has been
>>> occupied since 1963 by Indonesia. Tomorrow, local people expect the
>>> Indonesian army to launch a one-sided war, bloodier even than the carnage in
>>> East Timor last year. The troops and militias have been armed and trained
>>> and are awaiting orders. Only the international community can stop them.
>>> But, though Western nations such as Britain are up to their necks in it,
>>> they haven't the faintest intention of seeking to prevent the Indonesian
>>> plan from going ahead.
>>> 
>>> In 1961, the 800,000 Melanesian people of West Papua were promised
>>> independence. Holland, the colonial power, began to transfer the
>>> administration to local people. In 1962, Indonesia invaded. The attack
>>> failed, but John Kennedy, with Britain's backing, coerced the Dutch into
>>> surrendering West Papua to the United Nations, on the grounds that if the
>>> Indonesian government were not appeased it might succumb to communism. The
>>> UN, as planned, promptly gave West Papua to Indonesia, but on condition that
>>> within five years its people would be granted "the right of
>>> self-determination". In the event, 1000 Papuan men were rounded up and
>>> forced to vote on pain of death for Indonesian sovereignty.
>>> 
>>> Since then, tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Papuans have been
>>> tortured, mutilated and killed by Indonesian soldiers. The government
>>> launched a eugenics programme whose purpose, according to the former
>>> governor, was to give "birth to a new generation of people without curly
>>> hair, sowing the seeds for greater beauty". The Papuans have been pushed out
>>> of their lands and replaced by people from the central islands of Indonesia,
>>> brought in by the government to pacify the province. Its forests have been
>>> sold to logging companies, its mountains to western mining firms. When
>>> villagers have sought to defend their lands, they have been bombed and
>>> strafed. Now the whole place is about to explode.
>>> 
>>> Tomorrow, the indigenous people will make a formal declaration of
>>> independence. The Indonesian army has been waiting for months for just such
>>> a moment. Since August, thousands of commandos and paratroops have been
>>> flown into West Papua. British-made Hawk jets have been overflying the
>>> province's central highlands. Their deployment there was, according to the
>>> Financial Times, sanctioned by Britain's Foreign Office. Militias are
>>> currently being trained by the army outside the town of Wamena, one of the
>>> centres of Papuan resistance. Some 12,000 firearms have been flown in,
>>> presumably for distribution to Indonesian volunteers. Local people, by
>>> contrast, are armed with spears and bows and arrows.
>>> 
>>> The Indonesian army has been encouraging the Papuans to rise, planting
>>> agents provocateurs and issuing public statements suggesting that
>>> independence ceremonies will be tolerated (all previous rituals have been
>>> ruthlessly crushed). Here, as in East Timor, the army will seek to unleash
>>> sufficient force to persuade the indigenous people to abandon their hopes of
>>> self-determination.
>>> 
>>> Papuan leaders have repeatedly sought to reach a peaceful independence
>>> settlement with the Indonesian government. But while President Wahid seems
>>> vaguely sympathetic to their cause, vice-president Megawati, who has, in
>>> effect, ultimate control over the province, appears interested only in
>>> delivering lucrative logging and development concessions to the army in
>>> order to secure its support. The Papuans have approached the British
>>> government for help. It has ignored them. And still it continues to sell
>>> arms to Indonesia.
>>> 
>>> When the massacre begins, our officials will doubtless wring their hands and
>>> lament the failure of Indonesia's people to resolve their differences by
>>> peaceful means. Having seen what happened in East Timor and having failed to
>>> do anything to prevent its repetition, the blood this time will be on our
>>> hands. We helped to start all this. Now we must stop it.
>>>