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Papua: Bows, Arrows and a Tense Gold Mine

So close to Australia , so far from hope

Riot police blamed for killings

Low population in Papua an indication of genocide

Freeport mine destruction ‘terrible’ sight from space

 

Papua: Bows, Arrows and a Tense Gold Mine

8 September 2006, by John McBeth

TIMIKA, Papua - For centuries, Papua's warlike mountain tribesmen have used
bows and arrows, spears and knives to settle their differences over women and
pigs - and not necessarily in that order of priority.

But a recent pitched battle on the outskirts of the lowland boom town of
Timika on the south coast of the Indonesian province has underlined what can
happen when urban migration and traditional practices collide. The resultant
clashes - and an  influx of illegal highland miners - represent the latest
headache for US mining giant Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, far and away
Indonesia 's largest foreign taxpayer.

The battle stemmed from the drowning of the epileptic seven-year-old son of a
Dani tribal headman. Angry that better care had not been taken, the boy's
hot-tempered uncle - a member of the closely related Damal tribe - killed
one the headman's brothers and wounded another with a bow and arrow.

In the days that followed, tribesmen from both sides engaged in a week-long
series of running skirmishes that left 12 of the combatants dead and another
150 wounded from arrow and spear wounds. Then, true to tradition, the two
sides held pig roasts and an arrow-breaking ceremony in a show of reconciliation and agreed to let matters rest.

Three weeks later, fighting erupted again in Kwamki Lama, a largely Dani
settlement. Three more tribesmen died and another 80 were hurt before security
forces managed to separate the two sides. But with a third tribe, the
Ekari, now joining in the clashes, community workers are wondering how to bring an end to the continuing spiral of violence.

This, after all, isn't Papua's rugged mountains, where deep valleys separate
tribes and provide the space needed to calm emotions and work out peace deals.
In the villages scattered around Timika, a town of 60,000 people, seven
different tribal groups - some of them harboring age-old grudges - live in
uncommon and uncomfortable proximity.

Once a clapboard settlement serving only ethnic-Javanese transmigrants,
Timika owes its lifeblood to the Freeport Indonesia copper and gold mine,
which has acted as a magnet for thousands of highland tribesmen and migrants from other parts of Indonesia looking for jobs and economic opportunities unavailable on other more crowded islands. With more than 18,000 workers, Freeport is one of Indonesia 's biggest employers.

By the time Freeport 's Grasberg operation goes underground, scheduled for
2012-14, Papuans will have become the core of the company's workforce, rather
than the minority that they are now. But the recent outbreak in ethnic
tensions adds a new complication to the planned changeover.

The attraction Timika holds for the highlanders, in particular, underlines
the fact that for all their isolation and ancient customs, they are just as
interested in money and an education for their children as anyone else. But
it may take more than a generation for them to come to terms with an urban
environment where historic grievances have no place.

Money also creates its own problems. "There's a lot of social jealousy," said
anthropologist and author Kal Muller, who has spent three decades in Papua.
"In many highlands societies the basic ethic has been egalitarian, with
respect gained not by accumulating capital, but by distributing capital. Here, a lot
of money is spread around and the distribution is very uneven."

Tribe on Tribe

There has also been a dramatic change in the demographic balance. Mimika, the
district surrounding Timika, was once home to only the highland Amungme and
the lowland Kamoro tribes, who lived in relative harmony. But Freeport 's rich
Grasberg mine, into which the company has poured more than US$12 billion in
investment over the decades, has drawn an increasing number of Dani, the
dominant
Papuan tribe that now makes up 60% of Timika's highland population.

Dani migration is nothing new. Originally from the Balien Valley , 200
kilometers northeast of Timika, they have been pushing westward for centuries.
Indeed, those who have settled on the more fertile northern slopes, well to
the north and west of Freeport 's high-altitude mine, are now known as the Western Dani , or the Lani as they like to call themselves. Even their language is
different in a region with 250 different dialects.

The only reason thousands of Amungme tribesmen ended up where they are now is that the Dani expelled them from their original home before the turn of the
20th century. There was no mine then, but since it opened in the early 1970s
the Amungme have found themselves under pressure again from the same tribe
that pushed them out of the more fertile northern side of the highlands.

In 1997, with over-aggressive Dani settlers intruding on their hillsides and
sweet-potato gardens and taking the virginity of young girls whose bridal
bounties had already been paid, the Amungme hit back. Eleven people died in
the fighting, which ended with authorities relocating most of the more than 3,000
Dani to a new lowland area west of Timika.

Although they continue to populate 17 valleys, the 10,000 Amungme still feel
increasingly like strangers in their own land. Those who have settled in the
lowlands have been nudged out of Kwamki Lama, and the tribe itself now faces
the prospect of losing the privileged position it once enjoyed as the original
benefactor of Freeport 's largesse.

The Damal may have fared even worse. Enforced inter-marriage with the
dominant Western Dani has, over the years, in essence reduced them to
little more than a sub-clan - even if the recent clashes suggest that old enmities
remain a lot closer to the surface in an urban setting than they do in the highlands.

Added to Timika's melting pot have been settlers from the Nduga, Ekari and
Moni, three other highland groups. There are also stragglers from the Asmat
and Senpan tribes who have drifted in from further down the swampy southeast
coast, which borders the shallow waters of the Arafura Sea separating
Indonesia and Australia .

The town itself has a similar yet different mix. Old-time Javanese migrants
mix with tens of thousands of native Buginese - traders from distant South
Sulawesi - and lowland Papuan settlers from as far away as Maureke, on the
Papua New Guinea border in the east, to the island of Biak and the provincial
capital Jayapura on the north coast and the former oil center of Sorong in the west.

With the world gold price rocketing from $250 to $650 an ounce in just two
years, hundreds more Dani have been trekking south to join an army of illegal
gold miners now working in the tailings, or waste rock, flowing downstream
from the Freeport mill. The number of gold panners has grown from several hundred to more than 3,000, most of whom sell the gold to military middlemen who then pass it on to dealers in Timika.

There are concerns that with the gold running out in an alluvial deposit near
Nabire, on Papua's north coast, more fortune hunters will head across the
highlands to Timika, potentially adding more ethnic tension to a problem
authorities seem unable or unwilling to solve.

So close to Australia , so far from hope
6 September 2006, by Hamish McDonald

Home is literally nowhere for one West Papuan political refugee.

The Sydney Morning Herald-POLITICAL leaders in Canberra and Port Moresby want the voices of a
diplomatically awkward rebellion buried in East Awin, Papua New Guinea , a
settlement in a vast and sparsely populated landscape of rivers, swamps and
forest.

To reach East Awin takes an expensive flight to the little town of Kiunga , a
two-hour trip up the Fly River , followed by a three-hour truck ride through
axle-deep mud, and finally a 12-kilometre walk when the road becomes
impassable for normal vehicles.
Paulus Samkakay's quest for political asylum took him to the fringes of
Australia , took the life of his youngest child and ended in bitter
disappointment here.
Samkakay, 35, was the political refugee from Indonesia 's restive West Papua
whom the Howard Government turned away earlier this year.
He made it to Australian territory, the Torres Strait island of Boigu , on
May 11, only to be held in detention at an out-of-the-way hotel and blocked
from journalists and human rights lawyers.

Two months later, he was turned over to Papua New Guinea , under an agreement
signed in 2003 that asylum seekers spending more than seven days in transit
through PNG are deemed to be Port Moresby 's responsibility.
While his application was being studied by Australian authorities, his wife,
Yokbet, and three children waited in a tiny village just inside PNG
territory, and the youngest, a three-month-old girl, died of an unknown
illness.
Reunited in July, the couple and their two remaining children were
transferred to East Awin, placed in a small guesthouse and told they had six
months before they had to build their own house and find their own source of
income.
"I came to the land of the kangaroo with big hopes," Samkakay said, his eyes
filling with angry tears.
The dockfront activist from Merauke, a port town on the south coast of
Papua , is a prime example of the kind of refugee Canberra does not want, if
it wants any at all.
He embodies the disillusionment of most Papuans with Indonesian rule. His
late father, Boneffasius Samkakay, had been one of 1000 local figures
hand-picked by Indonesia to carry out the 1969 act of self-determination
after a transition from Dutch rule.
They dutifully delivered a 100 per cent pro-Jakarta vote, and Samkakay
carries the certificates of appreciation given to his father from former
president Soeharto and the Indonesian army commander at the time, General
Sarwo Edhie Wibowo.
But he also carries a carefully folded Morning Star flag, the flag of the
Papuan independence movement whose appearance at sneak flag-raisings across
the border is usually followed by tough crackdowns and long jail terms.


After Soeharto's fall from power in 1998, Samkakay was prominent in the
upsurge of open independence activism, becoming a member of a Papuan youth
council.
He was first arrested in 1988 and has had to lie low on several occasions.
Finally in March, in the tense atmosphere following the crossing of the
Torres Strait by 43 Papuans, he says he was summoned to a meeting with local
police, and decided to clear out.
The family walked along the coast to the PNG village of Bula , where they
stayed for a month. At the beginning of May, Samkakay set off for Boigu,
finally making the short canoe crossing, helped by two other Papuans.
On arrival, they handed over a letter describing themselves as political
asylum seekers. Samkakay was immediately arrested, flown by helicopter to
Horn Island and kept in a hotel.
His immigration case officer was in contact with a counterpart in Merauke,
named as Ibu (Mrs) Ida, while the Indonesian interpreter employed by
Immigration kept telling him not to raise independence issues, saying:
"There's no need to talk about things that are already over."
In July, just before being sent back to PNG, he was formally notified:
"Because of Australian law and where you landed, you are not able to apply
for any visa in Australia ."
But in East Awin, a string of settlements in country inhabited by cannibals
about 40 years ago, the 2500 Papuan settlers are far from reconciled to
their fate and precarious subsistence livelihood.
Deliberately chosen for its inaccessibility, East Awin is a gruelling day's
journey to the nearest marketplace in Kiunga for its peanuts and other
produce, with truck and boat fares chewing up much of the earnings.
"From the beginning it was not logical to build a settlement so far from the
river and the road," said Father Jacques Gros, 66, a French-born Catholic
priest who lives in the settlement and walks its muddy roads barefoot. "But
nothing can be done - we have to make the best of it."
The Papuans are from diverse backgrounds, the majority villagers from
directly across the border, some educated people from the cities of Jayapura
and Biak on the north coast, some Dani highlanders from the Baliem Valley .
Most arrived in the late 1980s after a flare-up of violence.
A further 8000 Papuans are squatting in camps close to the border between
the Star Mountains and the Torres Strait, not regarded as refugees.
Many remain in close contact with the rebel Free Papua Organisation, the
OPM, which keeps up a political and guerilla struggle against Jakarta rule,
and whose operatives such as John Wakom live along the Fly and maintain
contact with its armed groups.


Fear of Indonesian spies and informers pervades the community. The murder of
a European journalist in Kiunga some years ago, found with his throat cut in
his room at a Catholic school, is attributed to an agent.
On an overnight visit to East Awin, this reporter was advised by the PNG
Government's camp manager, Jex Punai, to lock all doors and keep a parang,
or machete, by his bed: "It's just a precaution. You just never know, there
are so many factions here."
After hopes raised by the Indonesian political flux following Soeharto's
fall in 1998, the Papuans realise they are facing more difficult times as
Jakarta regains some strategic importance for the West.
"We were sold out in the Cold War and now it's happening again in the war
against al-Qaeda," says John Ondawame, who runs the Papuan independence
movement's sole quasi-diplomatic office in the region, located in Vanuatu .
Ondawame said the OPM's armed resistance was weak, but important, and the
Papuan cause was getting more notice internationally. "The situation is the
reverse of Aceh," he said, referring to the fierce separatist war at the
other end of Indonesia which has ended in an autonomy agreement.
Afonsina Hambring, 49, who spent three years in the jungle with her husband,
an OPM commander, before crossing to PNG in 1988, leads the Papuan women's
association here. Their main activity is prayer. "Every second we pray that
God will start a war to change us," she said. "To make us one. Let's not get
to the position of East Timor , fighting against each other."
Paulus Samkakay, sent to East Awin by Australia , is determined not to be
silenced as a condition of his "permissive residence".
" I am under orders from the PNG Government not to engage in any political
activity," he said. "But I will not agree - it is within my human rights. I
am a supporter of independence and will keeping saying so. If Australia will
not take me, maybe Holland ."

Riot police blamed for killings
6 September 2006, by Marianne Kearney

Courier Mail ( Australia ) - Papuans claim that Indonesian riot police have used an ongoing tribal warfare in eastern Papua to kill at least three Papuan villagers.

Two tribes armed with spears, bows and arrows and traditional machetes have been warring since last Thursday in Kwambi Lama, a village close to the giant
Freeport copper mine.

However, a resident of Kwambi Lama claims that the more than 600 riot police and military sent to end the conflict have been shooting indiscriminately into
fighting tribesmen.

The villager claims that police shot Eric Murib on Monday, and an evangelical priest, August Wetapo, over the weekend. "They were killed in Kwambi Lama by
police," Albert Yikwa said.
He said the police killings were in revenge for a weekend shooting incident at the Freeport mine where anonymous gunmen damaged a Freeport vehicle.

Police deny the accusations, saying the two, plus a third man, were victims of the tribal conflict."That's a lie. They died because there is a tribal war," a police spokesman said.
He said that about 50 people injured in the fighting were being treated at the nearby Mitra Masyarakat Hospital .


Low population in Papua an indication of genocide according to a church leader
17 August 2006

Radio New Zealand International-There are claims that the population of Papua province in Indonesia has declined dramatically compared with neighbouring PNG and that the Indonesian military is to blame.

The Reverend Socratez Sofyan Yoman, the president of the Communion of Baptist Churches in West Papua, and other Papuan activists will present seminars in Auckland over the next two days, on West Papua - The Hidden Pacific Conflict. Rev Yoman says in 1969 when Indonesia took formal control, the indigenous population was substantially larger than in PNG - but the neighbour now has nearly six times as many people. He puts the low population down to a range of factors, including poor health care, alcoholism and HIV/Aids, but says the principal factor is the activity of the military. “There are many murdered, many murdered and silent killings happening in West Papua. We need help. Assistance from the international community to stop this terrible situation in West Papua.”

Rev Yoman says they want New Zealand encourage the UN to send human rights investigators to Papua.

 

Freeport mine destruction ‘terrible’ sight from space
19 August 2006, by Ali Bell

Te Waha Nui Online- After decades of unrestricted mining by the Freeport McMoran company in West Papua, the environmental and physical devastation is “terrible”.

This was the message at a weekend seminar on West Papua held at AUT University.

The destruction caused from the Grasberg copper and gold mining site is “so terrible you can see it from space”, says human rights spokesperson and law student Cameron Walker. 

Rivers used for fishing have been destroyed, or are being destroyed, says Walker.

Maire Leadbeater, spokesperson of the Indonesian Human Rights Committee (IHRC), has reported that New Zealand Embassy staff from Jakarta visited the Freeport McMoran mine and commented privately on the degree of environmental destruction.

Norway has chosen not to invest its oil fund in the Freeport mine, because of  “its serious abuse of environmental standards” as reported in the latest edition of the IHRC newsletter cited by Leadbeater.

The mine is destroying the 4884m Mt Jaya.

Already one billion tonnes of waste has been generated from the mine. 

Norway says Freeport has used a natural river system for waste disposal, and also Lake Wanagon.  The waste flows down river systems into the lowlands, leaving a trail of destruction and the river system is now “dead”. 

Wetlands, forests destroyed
Large areas of wetlands and rainforest have been destroyed, states the IHRC. 

In December 2005, the New York Times carried out a special investigative report detailing the physical devastation and human rights abuse, and the benefits to the Indonesian government of the mine – about two per cent of the GDP in 2005.

Freeport McMoran is a US-based and owned company. 

Walker says the company was given “free rein” in 1967 to take West Papuan land from the people, to resettle villagers and compensate them only for the buildings on the land. 

The company was allowed to write its own contract with Indonesia, which had been given colonial rights to West Papua in a United Nations-US diplomatic arrangement in the 1960s. 

Freeport pays Indonesian military and police for “security from angry locals”, says Walker. 

In 1977, some West Papuans cut the copper slurry pipe, and Operation Tumpas, or Operation Annihilation, followed. 

Walker says this operation used cluster bombs and other military tactics.

Tactics used to wipe our resistance
West Papuan Baptist leader Rev Socratez Sofyan Yoman, who also spoke at the seminar, says these tactics were used to try to wipe out the cause of the resistance – the West Papuan people.

In March, there was a big solidarity protest against Freeport and students are still in hiding, afraid to return to university in the face of large scale military brutality.

Joe Collins, of the West Papuan Society in Australia, says one of the strategy statements to come out of the seminar is that there should be a focus on human rights for West Papua, and that “the hidden conflict be more seen throughout the world”.

“Stop them killing Papuans. Stop them killing us, says Rev Yoman”

 

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