Police supervised airlifts from the northern camps; official statements stressed that all refugees would be relocated - by force, if necessary.
Realistically, it is widely agreed that reaction to such violent removal is counterproductive: it attracts outside media attention, revitalizes Papua New Guinea's public support and mobilizes activists, either to prevent refugees from leaving or to launch new attacks within West Papua.
Officially, most of the border camps are closed, but some services established by aid workers are maintained. The West Papuan refugees are Christians who believe their faith and prayers will result in a positive resolution to their predicament. As Nonie Sharp concluded in a passionate plea for the West Papuan people in her book, The Rule of the Sword: For the delicately balanced, fragile and repressive Indonesian state, time is now on the side of East Timor and West Irian The further prospect of a free West Papua may yet emerge.
It could, however, take several years. But an independent state, or a province with considerably more autonomy than at present, would depend on political pressure on Jakarta rather than any hope of an OPM victory in the "forgotten war. The prospect remains of a long stay in the forest, but the internal breakdown of the Indonesian state, like the supernatural powers attributed to the West Papuan Morning Star flat Osborne a , is an article of faith among those who resist the Indonesians.
Some of the refugees, severely traumatized by events in their own country, wish for Permissive Residential status and a new life in Papua New Guinea. The unresolved political status of the refugees remains their major problem.
The Australian section of the International Commission of Jurists recommended after visiting camps in and that Australia should share in resettling refugees, but discrimination against black Melanesians and their alleged lack of sophisticated skills have managed to prevent this. Officially, the White Australia policy is dead and buried, but its specter still haunts immigration policies. Economic and political refugees from Asia are now acceptable, but the handful of West Papuans who have attempted to land in Australia have been jailed and returned to their fate in Indonesia.
Large-scale mining at Ok Tedi is the only manifestation of change in the otherwise undeveloped, isolated Western Province of Papua New Guinea. The site for the relocation camp is in dense forest between the Fly and Strickland rivers.
There is no airstrip, and access is by river transport via the Fly, a vast river that drains the area's 10, millimeters of annual rain fall - , million tons of water each year Jackson From the air the camp is visible as a bright red circle of mud n the newly cleared forest. Despite the difficulties - literally impenetrable forest, total lack of rock, and periods of relentless, bucketing rain - a trafficable road was pushed through from the river to the camp in later There are no barbed-wire fences at East Awin; from the camp, the giant wall of rain forest around the perimeter blocks the horizon on all sides.
During my visit in late , refugees expressed a fear that local Papua new guinea nationals would blame them for taking the land and would demand compensation for their occupation and use of resources.
The East Awin site cannot sustain the numbers of people now living there or the thousands more yet to arrive; in the future such threats will have to be take seriously. The Awin area was not settled permanently due to a lack of sago palms, a basic supply for food and building materials.
The torrential rains leach into the lowland soils and inundate large tracts of land. Unlike the subsistence farmers throughout most of the island of New Guinea, the Papuans off the southern swamps and forest, on both sides f the border, are hunters and fishers who leave their permanent villages according to the seasonal inundation to seek food over vast ancestral hunting grounds.
The soil will not provide long-term subsistence even though the destruction of the primary forest in the camp area has supplied short-term fertility for garden crops.
The supply of wild animals pigs, marsupials, reptiles, and birds, especially cassowaries and edible greens - which have supplemented the tinned fish and rice rations from the UN - will dwindle under population pressure, and the forest will vanish as gardens push further out from the settlement.
Refugees have worked hard building gardens, houses, and schools, rebuilding when available materials rotted under extreme climatic conditions. Enthusiastic response to educational opportunities offered in the camp may dwindle as refugees accept the lessening hope of resettlement in a third country and the impossibility of utilizing their skills in the closed world of a refugee camp. After nearly seven years isolated in rainforest camps, refugees languish with little sign of change - forced out of their own country by the military government of Indonesia, an embarrassment to a hapless Papua New Guinea consumed by economic and political problems, unwanted by any third country, and aware that, environmentally, the region cannot sustain them.
They persist in their belief that one day - some day - the internal disintegration of the Indonesian state will allow them to return to their homeland and attain their goal of self-determination.
Detained in the wilderness by isolation, captured in a timeless void of official vacillation, and forgotten by a world that abandoned them inn their time of need 30 years ago, they may well turn to prayer as they wait, sequestered by the rain forest and the interminable falling rain. In the text, New Guinea Refers to the geographical landmass and surrounding islands. Iryan is a Biak word meaning "hot [or steamy] land rising from the sea.
Bodley, ed. Tribal Peoples and Development Issues. A Global Overview. More recently, George Monbiot's Poisoned Arrows Abacus, is an account of his secret journey through Irian Jaya in late , where he saw the effects of transmigration and military repression on the West Papuan people; he ends with a plea to the outside world to petition the UN to stop the Indonesian government's inhumane policies.
Our website houses close to five decades of content and publishing. Any content older than 10 years is archival and Cultural Survival does not necessarily agree with the content and word choice today. Learn about Cultural Survival's response to Covid Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine. The Battle over Resources West Papua promised land space for over-populated Java, but the newly acquired province also contained exploitable material wealth - minerals and forests. A Mass Exodus The first refugees who crossed into Papua New Guinea in the influx were educated urban dwellers fleeing for their lives during the extensive military operations of that year.
What Fate for Border Dwellers? Note In the text, New Guinea Refers to the geographical landmass and surrounding islands. References Gault-Williams, M. Hyndman, D. Jackson, R. The Bulletin. Osborne, R. The Guerrilla Struggle in Irian Jay. National Time. Robie, D. London: Zed Books. It is home to many unique species, including rare orchids, birds of paradise and tree kangaroos. West Papua is home to over diverse tribes, all speaking their own unique languages with unique cultures.
The majority of the indigenous population still live traditional subsistence lifestyles. Tribes living high in the mountainous interior practice small scale agriculture, cultivating yams and sweet potatoes and keeping pigs. In the coastal lowlands a hunter gatherer lifestyle is led, with sago and fish making up large parts of the diet.
Over the last fifty years Indonesia has carried out a social engineering project on a massive scale by relocating hundreds of thousands of people from across Indonesia to live in camps cut into the forests of West Papua. This program of transmigration has long been heavily criticised and has brought problems for both the indigenous population and transmigrants alike.
As a result the population of West Papua in was around 3. A few large towns have appeared as the major population centres across West Papua, attracting both indigenous and migrant residents alike. The largest of these is Jayapura, the capital of West Papua on the north coast. Other large towns include Wamena in the central highlands, Manokwari on the birds head peninsula and Timika in the south serving the giant Grasberg mine.
A huge programme of missionary activity over the last fifty years has seen almost the entire indigenous Papuan population take on the Christian religion whilst still keeping many traditional beliefs alive. As the Dutch began to prepare the people for independence, the name of the emerging independent state was West Papua. This name was strongly disfavoured by the indigenous population who refuted Indonesian rule and continued to push for recognition of West Papua as an independent state.
In in a failed attempt to try to appease independence aspirations, Indonesia instigated a special autonomy package and renamed the entire province to Papua. Even more confusingly, in the Indonesian government separated the land into two provinces: Papua and West Papua. All this naming and renaming only seeks to confuse and divert attention from the central issue which is that the people of West Papua have still been denied their right to self determination and as such Indonesia should have no legal right to control the territory.
The overwhelming majority of the Papuan people would like to see an independent West Papua and the aim of the Free West Papua Campaign is to help them have this aspiration recognised.
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