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Papua killings could set back US
plans
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON
- The killings of two US teachers and an Indonesian
colleague in an ambush on the road to the giant Grasberg
gold and copper mine in the eastern Indonesian province
of Papua could set back hopes by the US government for
quickly renewing close military ties with Jakarta.
While the Indonesian military, which claimed to
have shot one of the assailants shortly after the August
31 ambush, has blamed the killings on guerrillas
associated with the Free Papua Movement, the regional
police chief and a local rights group have suggested
that the culprits may have been from the army.
The US State Department announced here the
dispatch this week of experts from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) to help the police investigation of
the case.
Congressional aides who keep a close
eye on the Indonesian military have warned that if the
military is found to be responsible, tens of millions of
dollars in US military aid and training may be at stake.
"If the police and the FBI find that the army
was responsible, I think a lot of people up here will
want to take a new look at the wisdom of the aid
package," said one aide whose boss has opposed renewing
military aid to Indonesia until there is more evidence
that the civilian government really controls the army
and that the army is prosecuting senior officers
implicated in serious rights abuses.
It was only
last month that the administration of President George W
Bush persuaded Congress to ease strict conditions on
renewing military aid for Jakarta. Military ties were
suspended in 1999 after army-backed militias rampaged
through East Timor following landslide approval by its
inhabitants for independence from Indonesia in a United
Nations-sponsored referendum.
Last month's
ambush came amid rising tensions in Papua between the
independence-minded indigenous population and
pro-Jakarta elements. This tension is between groups
including the Free Papua Movement and the Presidium of
the Papuan Council (PPC), an umbrella group that
represents the province's many ethnic groups, on the one
hand, and the army and Indonesian migrants who have
moved to Papua over the past three decades, on the
other.
A mineral- and timber-rich territory that
was promised independence by the Netherlands, the
colonial power, Papua was annexed by Indonesia, with
crucial US backing, in 1969. Since then, the province,
renamed Irian Jaya until last year, has been the site of
sporadic clashes between the security forces and the
Free Papua Movement, known by its local acronym OPM.
The biggest single investor in the province has
been Louisiana-based Freeport McMoRan, whose Grasberg
holding is the world's biggest gold and copper mine.
Freeport has long relied on the military to provide
security for its operations, a relationship that has not
endeared it to local communities.
Freeport has
been accused by local and international rights groups of
condoning serious human-rights abuses, including murder,
committed by the military against the local population
who until recently have seen very little of the wealth
produced by the mine returned to their communities.
The relationship between the military and
businesses active in the province, including a number of
Asian logging companies, has been a major source of
conflict and local anger, according to a report issued
on Friday by the Brussels-based International Crisis
Group (ICG).
In addition to providing security,
the military has often acted as partners or agents for
foreign companies. The ICG report called, among other
things, for the provincial government to substantially
reduce both the military's security and its business
role as a way of defusing growing tensions. It called
for the police to take on more responsibility for
security.
"There's a direct correlation between
injustice in the management of natural resources and the
strength of the pro-independence sentiment in Papua,"
said Sidney Jones, ICG's Indonesia project director, who
also worked as Indonesia specialist for many years with
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Hoping to quell the unrest, Jakarta this year
approved a special autonomous regime for Papua. It
includes some important concessions, according to the
ICG report, including returning more natural-resource
wealth to the province and giving a greater role to
Papuan customary law, or adat, in determining
such key issues as land use and ownership.
But
it still fails to address Papuans' deep grievances,
particularly because its implementation, according to
the ICG, has been left to an inefficient and sometimes
corrupt bureaucracy. Likewise, adat, which was
ignored when most of the mining and logging concessions
were originally granted, will not apply retroactively.
"There's little hope for the autonomy option
unless Indonesia ends the abusive practices associated
with resource exploitation," Jones said.
Tensions have risen steadily over the past year.
In November, PPC chairman Theys Eluay was murdered by
Indonesian soldiers. In addition, Laskar Jihad, a
radical Islamist militia that reportedly has been backed
by elements within the military elsewhere in Indonesia,
established a presence in the province, spurring fears
of violence between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian
settlers.
As in the case of Eluay's murder, said
Jones, many Papuans believe that the August 31 ambush
was part of a broader strategy by the military to
destabilize the province in order to justify a major
counter-insurgency campaign.
The military's
insistence that the OPM was responsible has generally
been scoffed at. The ambush was carried out with
automatic weapons, something the OPM is not known to
possess. Nor had the rebels ever before launched a
deadly attack against foreigners.
Disclosures by
the police and the Papua-based Institute for Human
Rights Study and Advocacy over the past week have also
cast doubt on the military's version of events. A police
autopsy found that the attacker allegedly killed by
soldiers after the incident had in fact been dead for
some 24 hours before that.
The institute, after
talking with the dead man's family, alleged that he was
a military informant.
The police chief and
others have suggested that soldiers may have carried out
the attack in order to extort from Freeport. The
military in Indonesia has a long history of providing
protection to companies in exchange for money and other
concessions, according to the ICG report.
Freeport has tried to patch up relations with
the local community over the past several years, in part
by increasing spending on local development projects.
Although its continued reliance on growing number of
immigrants who work at the mine has fueled social and
ethnic tensions, the company may also be having problems
with the military, according to some observers.
"When Freeport annoys the military, [the
military] stages an incident to prove to Freeport that
they can't do without the military," Denise Leith,
author of a forthcoming book on the subject, recently
told the Financial Times.
(Inter Press
Service)
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