The acts of violence which have taken place in Papua over
the last fifty years or so – in the name of an Indonesian nation possessing an
exclusive sovereignty – may go unnoticed by many decent folk (as the intermational media are prevented from operating in Papua) but they are particularly painful to me.
I studied New
Guinean Ways as a student, and have gained some
understanding and appreciation of them over the years. I do not subcribe to the fantasies of those of dismiss Papuans as a 'stone-age peoples'. They have finely tuned ways of Being of the highest order.
I also gained some understanding of how people who consider
themselves ‘civilised’ and ‘superior’ to others cannot govern to ensure the
well-being of those others. From many accounts, Javanese elites have such an
attitude towards Papua’s First Peoples.
Just as it is painful to witness what is happening in Papua,
so too is it painful to witness the ongoing acts of violence - now located on a
much more subtle level – which have marked the 214 years of occupation of this
place we know by its foreign name as “Australia”.
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr – like others who have
held that office – is always careful to couch his gentle querying of human
rights abuses in Papua with explicit statements about recognising Indonesian
sovereignty over Papua.
I suspect that underlying this is the knowledge that
Anglo-Australia – lacking any form of Treaty or Treaties with this country’s
First Peoples – instinctive knows not to invite scrutiny of its own claims to
sovereignty. There is no Treaty of Waitangi, nor even the thin patina of
‘legitimacy’ for a hostile regime with the hasty "Act of Free Choice" which
took place in Papua in July 1969 (while world attention was on the moon landing).
When Bob Carr recently called for an inquiry into the role of
Detachment 88 in treating Papuan independence activists as “terrorists” a
high-level member of the Indonesian elite responded:
“ Mr Mahfudz is
a member of the PKS party, which is strongly Islamic, and
part of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's governing coalition.
“In an interview with The
Age, the head of Indonesia's parliamentary commission for security,
Mahfudz Siddiq, seemed to confirm that Detachment 88 was present in West Papua, partly because, he alleged, Mr Tabuni
was ''one of the actors behind a series of violent actions'' there.
''That makes the presence of Detachment
88 and its involvement in some cases in West Papua as being very much about
doing their job. Several cases in West Papua
at that time were already seen as terror,'' Mr Mahfudz said.
Independence activists have denied that Mr Tabuni was
involved in a series of killings in the lead-up to his death.
Mr Mahfudz also chided Mr Carr because he
said he had never heard Australian politicians complaining about Detachment 88
killing Muslim terror suspects.
''In my opinion, it is too far for Bob
Carr to mention human rights training to Detachment 88. Did Australia give any
comment when Islamic activists got killed or injured by Detachment 88 while the
anti-terror squad was raiding a house?'' Mr Mahfudz said.
''I think Australia must be careful about these statements
because they could be seen as having double standards.''
GANGSTER THIEFDOMS
The notion of sovereignty of modern nation-states sets up a
construct which separates one part of life from the rest of life. Within this
artificial construct there is deemed to be some form of exclusive authority related to a myth of a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of
violence.
This can be compared with gangsters who, in terrorising the
locals, agree with other neighbouring
gangsters that they will not interfere in each other’s reigns of terror, and
will turn a blind eye to any acts of violence directed by the local gangsters
to people within the bounded area.
This way of manipulating the world’s people has enjoyed
considerable success during the last few centuries. But its time has come, and
now the cluster of beliefs necessary for such illusions are weakening, and the
modern nation-state is dissolving before our eyes.
Those who benefit from the modern-nation state arrangement
will use all in their power to resist this change – and they are extremely
nasty people convinced of the rightness of their One Nation approach to life.
But life is much
greater than they are and new permutations are underway.
It is time for all of us who are dominated and manipulated by
Nationalist gangsters, of one kind or another, to stop taking their
claims seriously, and to insist that new and healing ways are the only acceptable standards in the 21s century.
PAPUA
During the late 1960s, when in my twenties, I was drawn into
modern anthropology by a Dutch Professor, Jan Pouwer, who had worked in what
was then Dutch New Guinea.
To my knowledge (and in my memory) he never spoke directly of
the tragedy which had befallen the people of the former Dutch part of New
Guinea. Perhaps, in the late 60s and early
70s, it was still early days.
I did, however, learn much about the ways of life of the
First Peoples of New Guinea. I learnt enough to know that they are very
different from the ways of life of Javanese peoples (as complex as those ways
are).
Jan Pouwer stressed the role of reciprocity as a total
social fact for New Guinean ways. This
makes for very different kinds of cosmologies, social and ecological
relationships and senses of identity to those which accompany the notion of the
modern nation state.
After World War 2 a myth was created about a modern nation
state called Indonesian which took its boundaries from the former Dutch empire
in this side of the planet. Papua was included in this nationalist fantasy,
even though the ways of life of Javenese nationalists and Papuan peoples bore
little comparison.
The ongoing tragedy in Papau was made possible by the
failure of international forces – forces which are themselves constituted by a
myth of an exclusive national sovereignty – to insist that the new Indonesia
did not automatically include all of the former Dutch colonial possessions.
The cold war played a part in all of this,
with Javanese nationalists skilled at playing off competing imperialist powers
on both sides to obtain a ‘home’ advantage – but for whose home?
Papua has clearly provided sources of wealth for the social
complex represented by Indonesian nationalists – Freeport’s
Grasberg mine being a case in point. Papau has also provided ‘living-space’ to
non-Papuan Indonesians – the well-known ‘transmigration’ occupation - as a means of resolving some difficulties for
the Indonesian nation-state.
But the idea that Papuans fighting for survival of their
ways of life – against Javanese forces of occupation – can be categorised as
‘terrorists’ is just too absurd to be taken seriously.
We have seen how such myths – the doctrine of terra nullis
in Australia’s
case – simply cannot be upheld as credible once they reach their use-by date.
It takes more resources to promote the pretence than can be afforded.
As though obeying some kind of unstated law, life simply
opts to move on to a new position. We are on the move now.
So too with the myth of an exclusive Indonesian sovereignty
in Papua. Papua's First Peoples must be regarded has having a form of co-existing soveriegnty within a regional complex.
In saying this, however, I am not an advocate of
independence in which one ‘superior’ group is displaced and replaced with
another ‘superior’ group.
I see “independence” as belonging to the same cluster of
‘modern’ beliefs which have caused so much suffering on our planet. An
Independent Papua will suffer from the same problems as all modern
nation-states.
They all require ongoing acts of violence (physical and/or psychic)
to sustain themselves since they are inherently unstable.
My preference is for networks of ‘interdependence’. This
will require a global shift to become possible (and not, I hasten to add, the
global shift of modern consumerist ‘globalisation’.)
Solving the problems in Papua and Australia
needs a changing global context.
While I acknowledge that there is a process underway which
involves the notion of ‘autonomy’ in Papua – and that this may be a realistic
and achievable outcome if pursued in good faith – my fundamental belief is that
the notion of an exclusive form of national sovereignty must be dissolved in
order to provide for co-existing forms of sovereignty within new social
formations.
Nationalism of the exclusive national soveriegnty type sets up a
narrative by which all manner of obscene acts of violence can be
justified by those commiting them. Those people who subscribe to these
narratives are themselves trapped.
There is much work to be done on this front if we are to
replace the destructive ways of the modern nation-state with truly healing
solutions. And in both Papua and Australia
we are faced with healing challenges of awesome dimensions.
Is there any room for healing movement in Papua by way of fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigneous Peoples in relation to the Indonesian modern nation-state (and Australia)?
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Brief background reading.
PART TWO - AUSTRALIA to follow.
