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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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