Tropicalities

A Dutch friend of ours who keeps in close touch with what goes on in West New Guinea is almost frothing at the mouth over the story of how the Dutch are NOT helping to develop their former Territory of West New Guinea.

WHEN the Indonesian Government took over the administration of West New Guinea in May, 1963, the Dutch Government agreed to put up $10 million a year for three years to help the Indonesians develop that territory.

The money was to be channelled through the United Nations and the Indonesians were to use it to buy whatever West New Guinea needed.

“This was a most generous gesture on the part of the Dutch,” our friend said, “but what has happened?

“The Indonesians have been buying Volkswagens in Germany, shipping them out to Sukarnapura (formerly Hollandia), then reloading them into Indonesian ships and sending them to Indonesia.

“So West New Guinea gets little if anything from Holland’s $10 mil lion a year, and the Dutch are too scared to say anything because they are now investing large sums of money again in Indonesia.”

New Voice For West New

Guinea Exiles

Meanwhile, a small news-sheet called the Pacific Courier, which has not many kind words to say for President Soekarno, has begun ap pearing in the South Seas. The Courier is published in the Nether lands by the Freedom Committee of West New Guinea Abroad, and its editor is Nicolaas Jouwe, a leading West New Guinean until he and his friends were forced into exile at the time of the Indonesian takeover. Now they do what they can from Holland to keep the spark of West New Guinea nationalism alight. They get no help from the Dutch Government, for officially the West New Guinea issue is dead.

Issue number one of the Pacific Courier outlines the steps which have led up to Soekarno’s recent announcement that a plebiscite “won’t be necessary” in West New Guinea now, and says that America

has now realised it was wrong in allowing Soekarno to have “the gift of New Guinea”.

“Although we Papuans,” says the paper, “would really have the right to question the US as to how far she was entitled to decide the fate of the Papuan people in 1962 and deprive them of their rights, we should, we think, say here that we are highly pleased with the courage of the Americans that already now makes them frankly admit the mis takes they made.”

The Pacific Courier submits it is still too early to regard New Guinea as “lost”, because the “right of self determination is a fundamental human right” and doesn’t depend on Indonesian promises.

Nice sentiments, but unfortunately very much like wishful thinking. . . .