JAKARTA, Indonesia— Prominent Papuans
pleaded for the U.S. to give them money and arms in the mid-1960s to fight
Indonesia’s colonization of their vast remote territory, according to recently declassified
American files that show the birth of an independence struggle that endures
half a century later.
The documents add to the historical evidence of
deep Papuan grievances against Indonesia at a time when clashes between rebels
and Indonesian security forces have flared in the impoverished region and
Papuan nationalists have succeeded in drawing more attention to their cause at
the United Nations. Indonesia’s defense minister said last week that activists
who attended a recent pro-Papuan independence meeting in Vanuatu should be
arrested on return to Indonesia.
The files are among the thousands of pages of
cables between the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta from the
1960s that were declassified earlier this year. The 37 boxes of telegrams are
stored at the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland and
researchers are working on making them available online.
Papua, which makes up the western half of the
giant island of New Guinea, remained in Dutch hands after Indonesia shook off
colonial rule at the end of World War II. Many Indonesians saw their
government’s campaign in the early 1960s to take Papua from the Dutch as the
final victory in their struggle for independence. But to Papuans, with a
Melanesian culture and history distinct from Southeast Asia, Indonesia was a
hostile colonizer.
The rest of the world looked away as a rigged vote
of a little more than 1,000 hand-picked and closely managed Papuans cemented
Indonesia’s control in 1969. The Netherlands, which before annexation was
preparing Papua for self-rule, did not object. The U.S., which in 1967 helped
American mining company Freeport secure rights to exploit rich copper and gold
deposits in Papua, did not want to upset a status quo favorable for U.S.
business or destabilize Indonesia’s pro-U.S. government.
An April 1966 cable from the State Department
recorded the “eloquence and intensity” of Markus Kaisiepo, an exiled Papuan
leader, who spoke with a senior U.S. official about the “desperate plight of
the Papua people under Indonesian rule.”
Kaisiepo said Papuans were determined to have
independence but were completely without financial resources or the military
equipment needed to “rise against the Indonesian oppressors.”
Kaisiepo, whose son would also become a prominent
advocate for Papuan independence, asked if the U.S. “could provide money and
arms secretly to assist him and his movement.” He was rebuffed, as was another
Papuan leader, Nicolaas Jouwe, who made a similar request to the U.S. in
September 1965 and also to Australia.
The documents also show how officials looted the
region after Indonesia annexed it in 1962 and brought about a collapse in
living standards, stoking anger that boiled over into outright rebellion. But
the biggest source of resentment was Indonesia’s reluctance to honor its
U.N.-supervised and U.S.-brokered treaty with the Netherlands, which mandated
that Papuans would decide in a plebiscite whether to stay with Indonesia or
become self-ruled.
After U.N. troops left Papua, Indonesians systematically
looted public buildings and sent the booty to Jakarta, the April 1966 cable
said, citing Kaisiepo. Hospitals built by the Dutch were stripped of beds,
X-ray equipment and medicines, desks were taken from schools and soldiers stole
anything “that took their fancy” from private homes.
Other cables citing American missionaries working
in Papua described widespread food shortages, and how Indonesian officials
bought up all consumer goods and shipped them out of Papua for a profit. When
shipments of goods and food arrived at ports, Indonesian troops would
commandeer them.
Victor Yeimo, chairman of the pro-Independence
West Papuan National Committee, said the documents are “very important” because
they provide evidence of crimes against Papuans by the Indonesian military and
the U.S. role in denying self-determination. Administratively, Indonesia
divides the region into two provinces, Papua and West Papua, but Papuans refer
to both as West Papua.
“Information gained from these documents shows the
world and today’s generation that the U.S. and Indonesia have been hand-in-hand
in hiding the truth all along. The economic and political interests of the U.S.
played a big role in West Papua’s colonization,” Yeimo said. “We, West Papuans,
have been butchered since Indonesia first entered our land and up to now. And
we have never seen any justice.”
Papuans were not without supporters in the U.S.
Embassy in Jakarta but their views did not prevail. In August 1965, the
embassy’s political officer Edward E. Masters recommended the department leak
word of violent uprisings against Indonesia’s rule in Papua to the world press.
Without the glare of publicity, Papuans would suffer “complete colonial
subjugation” by Indonesia, he wrote in a prescient cable.
Citing the U.S. role in negotiating the 1962
treaty between the Netherlands and Indonesia, Masters wrote “we would appear to
have a special responsibility to see that the terms of that treaty concerning
ascertainment of the true wishes of the Papuan people are respected.”
Another cable written by Ambassador Marshall
Green, however, described Papuans as “stone-age” people. Their “horizons are
strictly limited,” it said, and they weren’t capable of deciding their own
future, contradicting other assessments by the embassy of Papuans’ widespread
desire for independence.
Word of violent uprisings, which began about March
1965, began trickling out of Papua as American missionaries who were working in
the region visited Jakarta and embassy officials tapped sources in the Indonesian
military for information.
In June 1965, rebels launched a full-scale attack
on a government post in the town of Wamena that killed at least a dozen
Indonesian soldiers and an unknown number of Papuans.
“No figure on the number of Papuans killed is available
but one informant described it as a ‘slaughter,’ since almost the only weapons
in the hands of the highland Papuans were knives and bows and arrows,” said a
cable sent two months later.
The same document reported that rebels overran
most of Manokwari, a major coastal town, in early August and held it for a week
until beaten back by Indonesian soldiers.
A massacre by Indonesian forces the previous month
may have been a catalyst for that attack.
A Dutch missionary told U.S. officials that rebels
had shot three soldiers raising a flag in a valley near Manokwari in late July.
“Indo reaction was brutal,” said a cable
transmitted in September 1965. “Soldiers next day sprayed bullets at any Papuan
in sight and many innocent travelers on roads gunned down. Bitterness thus
created not easily healed.”
By early 1967, there were persistent rumors within
Indonesia and abroad that 1,000 to 2,000 Papuans had been killed by an
Indonesian air force bombing campaign.
The Indonesian government denied it, asserting
instead that 40 tribesmen were killed in “strafing” runs by an air force bomber
in response to an ambush of paramilitary police, according to an April 1967
cable.
The number of police wounded in the ambush: two.
___
