[Note:
"Irian Jaya" is now styled "Papua" by the Indonesian
government, and "West Papua" by Papuans]
Witness to a Bloodbath
Lindsay Murdoch
Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 1998
The weeks after the fall
of the Soeharto regime in Indonesia were full of
hope and excitement in Irian Jaya. The people of
the western half of the island of New Guinea, who
had lived under the thumb of the Indonesian regime
since 1969, could sniff the scent of freedom. On
1 July, the anniversary of their 1971 proclamation
of independence, supporters of the Free Papua movement
took to the streets, flying their flag. What followed
was an atrocity, reports Lindsay Murdoch.
For four days the striped 'morning star' flag of
the West Papuan independence movement fluttered
on top of a 35-metre water tower at Biak's jetty.
It was a powerful symbol of defiance, prompting
the arrival on the windswept coral island, just
off New Guinea, of hundreds of Indonesian troops.
Villagers sang and danced into the night, celebrating
what they believed was their escape from 35 years
of Indonesian repression. The people of Biak have
traditionally seen themselves as great warriors
and they collected Molotov cocktails and spears
to defend their new land and lives as independent
West Papuans. But church leaders, fearing a bloodbath,
convinced them to hand over the weapons, promising
God would protect them. The villagers pledged on
the Bible, however, to defend the morning star to
the death.
Embolded by international calls for East Timor and
Irian Jaya to break away from Jakarta's rule, independence
leader Dr Filip (Yopy) Karma declared before hundreds
of people on 2 July that the people of West Papua
would stand united and 'live or die' under the flag.
'We, the people of West Papua, declare that the
Republic of Indonesia cannot interfere in the affairs
of West Papua,' vowed 39-year-old Karma, a provincial
government employee.
The July flag-raising in Biak and several other
Irian Jaya towns at the same time, including the
capital, Jayapura, marked the anniversary of a 1
July 1971 proclamation of independence of West Papua.
The Indonesian military had learnt of arrangements
to raise the flags and sent a memo to police stations
warning of a 'rash of OPM-led pro-independence actions'
(OPM is the acronym for the Free Papua movement).
The memo warned of elements inside and outside Indonesia
wanting to destabilise the country and fuel anti-Indonesian
sentiments. The flag-raising in Biak on 2 July had
turned violent, fuelling anger among the Indonesian
security forces on the island and prompting orders
to bring in troops from Ambon and other provinces.
After a local military commander had, in his words,
tried to 'give guidance and direction' to the demonstrators,
the crowd turned on soldiers and police, apparently
wounding 13 troops, two of them so seriously they
had to be airlifted out of Irian Jaya. Still, the
mood beneath the flag at the water tower on the
evening of 5 July was festive. A new demand by military
commanders to leave the area was ignored and they
settled in for the night.
The attack came at 5.30 the next morning. Of about
200 people at the tower, most were asleep when the
soldiers opened fire from four sides. 'They treated
the people like animals,' one of the villagers later
told Australian teacher Paul Meixner and his partner
Rebecca Casey, who were awoken in their nearby house
by the gun shots. The soldiers fired low and many
of the villagers were shot in their legs and arms
as they scrambled to their feet and ran for their
lives. Some wounded were shot again as they tried
to crawl to their homes. Others were dead before
they knew what was happening. A woman sleeping next
to a villager was shot in the chest. 'She asked
me to help ... she was just drooping,' the witness
told the couple in a video-recorded interview. Rebecca
Casey says witnesses told her of blood and dead
bodies around them. Karma was shot at point blank
range in the elbows and knees and rifle-butted in
the head after falling to the ground, two witnesses
told her. Karma was dragged off to jail and faces
life imprisonment on charges of rebellion.
Human rights and church groups that have investigated
the massacre and the military's subsequent abuse
of the survivors have failed to establish how many
people were killed, raped, tortured or thrown into
the sea from two Indonesian navy ships, never to
be seen alive again. But they agree the atrocities
were among the worst committed by the military in
the former Dutch territory now known as Irian Jaya
since it became part of Indonesia after a sham United
Nations-sponsored referendum in 1969. They have
gathered evidence they say disproves claims by the
Indonesian military that only one or two people
were killed when soldiers went to disperse the crowd
and take down the flag. They also have evidence
that bodies washed up on shores were not victims
of the tsunami that swamped the Papua New Guinea
coast 900kilometres away two weeks later, as claimed
by Indonesian authorities. Many of the bodies were
washed up before the tsunami hit and were almost
certainly those of people rounded up on Biak.
When the shootings started, locals rushed to the
house where Meixner and Casey were staying and told
them to stay inside. Over the next few nights, until
the couple were forced to leave the island, villagers
came to them and gave graphic accounts of the military's
reign of terror. Rebecca Casey says that in the
hours after the shootings about 200 people, some
of them wounded and others who only came into Biak
town to get petrol and rice, were taken to the docks.
'They were forced to crawl along the road while
the soldiers rifle-butted, kicked and walked on
them,' she says. 'They were forced to lie by the
docks and look at the sun for two hours while soldiers
marched on their stomachs and faces. After further
beatings they were then forced to crawl along the
road to the cells. The whole town was blockaded
and there were no people on the streets. Everyone
stayed in their homes and many did not leave them
for days. There were about 28 men to a cell and
many people became sick from the unsanitary conditions.'
Witnesses say that prisoners could not lie down
and were forced to urinate and defecate where they
stood. Some were school children. Witnesses told
Meixner and Casey that some villagers were tied
and repeatedly dunked into the sea from the jetty,
apparently a form of torture to get them to name
independence movement leaders. Others were bashed
and, under the threat of further violence, sent
to spy on independence supporters. Meixner and Casey
believe at least 20 people were killed in the initial
shootings and more than 100 wounded. 'What happened
was an absolute outrage,' Casey says. 'The soldiers
opened fire without warning. The wounded taken to
hospital were denied treatment and relatives were
not allowed to see them.'
Sidney Jones, of the United States-based organisation
Human Rights Watch, says in a soon-to-be-released
report that, according to witnesses, five civilians
lying prone on the ground were deliberately shot.
She says the body of one man who died in hospital
after being shot in the head had not been returned
to his family one month later. Jones quotes a young
man who was in the crowd when the shooting started
as saying the army loaded the dead, wounded and
others on to a truck that was driven into the jungle.
He and 10 others were let off and taken to navy
headquarters where he was held for five days. He
had no idea what happened to the dead and wounded.
Investigators from the Indonesian Council of Churches,
who have released a report into the killings, quote
two witnesses saying they were forced to throw human
corpses into shipping containers. They name four
of the possible victims.
After the shootings, people were too scared to be
seen talking with the couple and Meixner was forced
to abandon his English classes. Before the couple
left the island and returned to Australia they kept
hearing disturbing stories about prisoners, the
wounded and others being taken away in two navy
ships that had brought the soldiers to the island.
'There were two theories,' Casey says. 'One was
that they were being taken to Jakarta where they
would be jailed and the other they had been dumped
at sea.'
Australian student Andrew Kilvert sensed something
terrible had happened when he arrived at Biak five
days after the shootings. He was already rattled,
having seen soldiers brutally put down pro-independence
demonstrations in the provincial capital, Jayapura.
One student had been shot dead. A police intelligence
officer also died after mobs turned on him during
street demonstrations in which Free Papua supporters
paraded the morning star. At the airport in Biak,
family members were weeping and soldiers were everywhere.
In town, a lawyer told him that he had been representing
some of the protesters, who had by then disappeared.
The man was afraid, but wanted the outside world
to know what had happened. According to the lawyer,
24 people were killed on the morning of 6 July.
But many more were killed when soldiers went from
house to house shooting people. Wounded people could
not get medical care and were hiding in homes and
churches. Some died because of lack of medical help.
Women had been raped on the back of army trucks,
the lawyer had claimed. The Indonesian human rights
group Kosorairi says that in the Irian Jaya town
of Sorong 'women had been thrown in the back of
a truck and stripped naked and jumped onto by the
soldiers and one died due to internal bleeding because
she was pregnant'. Kilvert says the lawyer's most
shocking information was that 139 people, including
women and children, had been taken out to sea on
two navy ships. 'He told us that they couldn't have
been taken very far because one of the frigates
had just returned and had only been out of port
a day or two,' Kilvert says. Locals became alarmed
when bodies started washing up. The Christian Evangelical
Church in Biak has documented the finding on 11
July - six days before the tsunami - of 23 bodies
in offshore fishing nets. Another 21 bodies, most
of them men, were found on 13 July in the same area.
On 16 July the bodies of two young women were found
naked near a village east of Biak. On 25 July the
bodies of three women, a boy and child were found
washed up at Opiaref village. The mother was still
clutching the child.
Reverend Phil Erari, of the Independent Council
of Churches in Jakarta, says an investigation by
his organisation uncovered almost unbelievable crimes
committed on at least one of the navy ships. One
witness testified that several bodies were cut up
and put into bags. According to two children who
escaped by jumping into the sea and swimming away,
women were undressed and raped on the deck, Erari
says. The children listened to people screaming
for help. The council's 14-page report says: 'These
two children are key witnesses for the missing persons
case. Another witness also described how he was
miraculously saved. He was put in a plastic barrel
and thrown into the sea.
This witness is ready to testify under oath.' When
bodies began washing up on or around Biak, the Indonesian
military insisted they were from the tsunami. Church
investigators have documented the discovery of 70
bodies. Erari says 10 to 15 of them were almost
certainly from the tsunami while the rest were apparently
Biak victims. The church report concludes that many
of the bodies 'had connection with the report of
missing people since the 6 July incident'.
Sidney Jones says the bodies of 33 men, women and
children were washed ashore from 27 July. She reports:
'There were unconfirmed reports from local people
that some of the bodies had their hands tied behind
their backs and one was wearing a Golkar (Indonesian)
T-shirt, giving rise to the belief that at least
some of the bodies might be those of shooting victims.
Activists have questioned why bodies from the tsunami
only showed up in Biak and nowhere else, whereas
there are many other places along the Irian Jaya
coast closer to Papua New Guinea than Biak.
On the other hand, reports in the local newspaper
Cenderawasih Pos, quoting military sources, stated
some of the bodies were tattooed with marks only
found among PNG natives and other artefacts, including
school books and a map washed up with the bodies,
suggested strongly that they were tsunami victims.
A medic who helped bury the bodies reported that
one had washed ashore with the remains of a house.
All were buried quickly, however, without proper
autopsies, so the cause of death remains uncertain.
John Rumbiak, of the Human Rights Advocacy Team
for Irian Jaya, a group backed by churches and Jakarta-based
non-government groups, says the fact authorities
in Irian Jaya did not notify PNG of the bodies 'raised
suspicion of something fishy going on'. Local groups
and church leaders are urging that the bodies be
exhumed as part of a full investigation. The military's
violent response to the flag raising is likely to
boost Irian Jaya's independence movement rather
than crush it, diplomats and experts say. In October,
a series of pro-independence demonstrations took
place across the province. Many government buildings
were burnt to the ground. Up to 20 people, including
Filip Karma, have been charged with rebellion or
treason and face life imprisonment. If convicted
they will not be the first. In 1989, a former civil
servant, Dr Tom Wanggai, 52, was sentenced to 20
years' jail after raising the morning star flag.
He died later in a Jakarta jail.
Irian Jaya specialist Dr George Aditjondro, who
spent five years living in Irian Jaya and now lectures
at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales,
says that although the independence movement is
portrayed by Indonesian authorities as being a small
group of OPM savages with bows and arrows in the
jungle, it has wide support among indigenous students,
intellectuals, civil servants and villagers. Aditjondro
says the success of the student movement in Jakarta
in ousting Soeharto in May had encouraged people
to renew their struggle for self-determination.
In the euphoria following Soeharto's resignation
anything seemed possible, including an independent
state in the western half of the island of PNG.
People had seized upon a recent letter several members
of the United States Congress had sent to Indonesia's
President Jusuf Habibie calling, among other things,
for talks on the political status of East Timor
and Irian Jaya. Many wrongly interpreted this as
the most powerful country in the world backing their
independence. According to Casey, locals believed
that if the morning star flag flew over Baik for
more than 72 hours, as it did in July, they had
obtained their independence. When people were singing
and dancing in their traditional way in the hours
before the massacre, they believed their new millennium
had begun. Their confidence was not far removed
from cargo-cult beliefs that have in the past spread
through small, isolated Pacific island states. Aditjondro
says that among 240 different tribes in West Papua,
as he prefers to call Irian Jaya, the people of
Biak are the most dominant, with a long tradition
of contact and trading throughout neighbouring islands.
'Biak is the heartland of West Papuan independence
feelings,' Aditjondro says. 'This is probably why
the military acted with such brutality against the
demonstrators.'
The military says 24 people were wounded and one
or two killed when it broke up the Biak crowd and
have announced a fact-finding team to investigate
the events. Its mandate and composition are unclear.
Initially, the military denied any deaths or the
use of live ammunition. Growing calls for a full
and official investigation independent of the military
coincide with proposed talks between President Habibie
and community, church and student leaders from Irian
Jaya early next year. For decades the Irianese have
complained of being treated like second-class citizens
in their own villages. One-third of the province's
1.5million people are settlers from western Indonesia,
who dominate trade and commerce. The Irianese want
the talks to focus on 'aspirations towards a peaceful
settlement of the political status and human rights
violations in Irian Jaya'. But a foreign priest
living in Irian Jaya has told friends in Australia
that while the attitude of the Indonesian military
is very bad, because they don't understand the local
people and the way they express themselves, efforts
to co-ordinate an Irianese political agenda are
weak. 'There is not yet a generally accepted forum
which can voice the issues properly and take a stand
respected by all,' he says.
After sending representatives to Irian Jaya recently,
the Indonesian Council of Churches reported Papuans
demanding 'freedom and liberation from the Indonesian
Government, which they regard as more cruel than
Dutch or Japanese colonialists.'
Casey and Meixner have just moved to Sydney, where
Casey started a new job in marketing this week.
'I can't believe there hasn't been an outcry about
what happened,' she says. 'But it is not too late.'
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