Shops, Perplexed People,

A Ghost Town Of Empty

Military Splendour

The article which follows was written by a non- Australian who recently visited Indonesia and West New Guinea. He has no political or business affiliations, but wishes to remain anonymous to avoid the possibility of embarrassing any private individuals or Indonesian Government officials with whom he had contact during his stay in Indonesia and West New Guinea.

Three years after the Indonesian takeover, West New Guinea's capital has become . . .

From a special correspondent I have just had the nightmare experience of seeing a country in the throes of economic chaos. I have also seen an emerging, primitive people in utter perplexity at the sight of a power which has stepped in, ostensibly to guide them to a happier future, but which has so far brought them little but the empty shells of grandiose buildings and even more grandiose

promises.

[N short, I have had a little insight into West Irian, formerly known is West or Dutch New Guinea, which Indonesia took over some three years igo. More particularly, I have been laving a look at West Irian’s capital, Sukarnapura, formerly called lollandia.

“Are you taking your own food vith you?” a casual acquaintance isked me when he learned that I iroposed to visit Sukarnapura. “The ihops are empty, you know.”

I passed this off as the sort of exaggeration that one hears in any s acific Islands territory where the ipeaker has temporarily been unable o buy colour film or his favourite irand of cigarettes.

In any case, as I explained, I was »oing to stay at the better of the wo hotels, where the tariff was equivalent, at the official rate of exchange, to nearly SAB a day.

The hotel, I decided on reaching sukarnapura, must have been a ielightful place four years ago, and n many ways it still is, for it is far nore suited to the climate and to gracious living than any of the hotels n Papua-New Guinea.

Unfortunately, of the five electric sockets with which my room and its verandah were provided, only one lad a bulb in it; and no more were ;o be had.

The running water was off on my

arrival and was off every following day for periods of hours, usually just when most needed. So also was the town’s electricity, some nights from six until about eight, and on other nights from eight or nine until some unknown time in the middle of the night—in all cases without warning.

Meat served once

Breakfast at the hotel consisted of rice gruel; lunch was rice with either egg-plant or beans or cucumber plus about an ounce of curried fish or a hard-boiled egg. Dinner was a varia tion of the same items.

Of 12 meals served, meat was provided only once, and this consisted of small shreds of some animal’s stomach—but not a sheep’s, if that is what tripe is.

Once a banana was served for dessert.

A pot of pre-sweetened tea without milk was served on the verandahs of each room once during the morning and once during the afternoon.

This is an exact and full account of the food available in what was once a first-class hotel and still is the best in the place.

Let there be no misunderstanding.

The management and staff did every thing within their power for the guests.

In fact, all officials and all private

individuals with whom I had any contact at all were courteous, friendly and obliging.

The situation is simply beyond control. The food is not there, and now that enormous reserves of capital have been squandered, it will be a long, long time before imports can be built up again.

Like abandoned town

After my first meal, I strolled down to the town to get something more to eat, either in the market or in shops or restaurants. This was where I had my second shock.

Sukarnapura is like an abandoned town on an old worked-out gold digging.

Perhaps a third of the shops have been given up by the proprietors in despair and are simply padlocked, bare shells. As for the rest—and I had plenty of time to make in ventories—l do not think that their entire stock-in-trade would fetch $2OO if offered at auction, (Over)

Pitiful inventory

Certainly it would look pitiful in even the smallest store at Koki, Port Moresby’s market.

I can give an exact list of the stock to be bought in all the combined shops of Sukarnapura: Two or three gross of tiny plastic flowerpots with plastic flowers, some plastic toy hunt ing horns, two or three dozen paint brushes, a dozen or so rusted kitchen or bush knives, several dozen boxes of women’s talcum powder, some “black-market” local cigarettes at the official equivalent (believe it or not) of $2 a packet of 20 and, sometimes, little dobs of sweetmeats apparently made of grated coconut and grated, cooked taro or the like, coloured pink.

Little else available

Name anything else you like, from chewing gum or “lolly water” to shirts or pants or cameras or film or radio sets or suit cases or flour or sugar or tea or any groceries at all —and you won’t find it, with one exception.

One shop had a small pile of reject canned goods—squashed or bloated or rusted tins, with labels half-torn or missing.

They appeared to be mostly tins of beans or other vegetables. Probably the tins of bully-beef had gone long before.

In the market on most days you had to be early to buy bananas, and I never saw more than a total of five pineapples.

I paid the official equivalent of $1 for a hand of bananas. All market prices were on the same scale.

Was it any wonder then that the hotel manager could not provide more for his guests than he did?

Now, this is where the catch lies: The “official equivalent”.

In a country in financial collapse, nothing to do with money makes any sense, and most transactions are by barter. There are three different rates of exchange for the Indonesian rupiah, one of them quite favourable to the tourist.

However, the West Irian rupiah is something different again, and in theory cannot be interchanged for the Indonesian rupiah except through a bank and under special conditions.

The West Irian rupiah is theoretically a guilder, at 10 to the £ sterling approximately, and all official prices are on this basis.

Thus, the hotel tariff is 33 rupiah a day; and food that is rationed and

drawn from Administration stores, such as rice, is also priced on this basis.

But as there are no general goods in the country and nothing to spend one’s money on, the prices of such things as can be bought on the open market (and I have listed them as far as Sukarnapura is concerned) have risen to fantastic levels —prices that bear no relation to the prices of “official objects” such as rationed rice or hotel tariffs or air fares, for example.

Fantastic prices

The daily cost at the best available hotel is the same as 3i packets of execrable cigarettes in the shops.

The price of the flight from Sukarnapura to Biak is the price of 15 packets.

It is as if you could fly from Port Moresby to Lae for $4.50! (This is reckoning on the basis of the cost of cigarettes or of hands of bananas at the P-NG price level).

The hotel proprietor is thus obviously unable to provide much more than rice for his guests at 33 West Irian rupiah per day, yet his tariff is fixed by the government and cannot be changed.

A government employee, however, can draw clothing, food, cigarettes and numerous other perquisites, within limits at very reasonable prices. Drawn from the government, a packet of cigarettes, even imported ones, costs little more, even on official rates, than in Australia, while clothing that he can draw is extremely cheap.

He can buy motor-scooters at a reasonable price and stay in the best available hotel. Nine-tenths of the guests at the hotel mentioned were Administration servants, and of these fully half were West Irian by race, and mostly young men in minor Administration posts. The higher officials lived in the large number of charming houses left by the Dutch Administration.

Deadweight

Politically, therefore, the Indo nesian Government is ensuring for itself the material satisfaction at least of the most advanced and most vocal of the indigenous population.

A further political weapon (though this may be two-edged) is the enormous deadweight of the police and army.

In an impoverished little town with empty shops and run-down capital equipment, it was nauseating and—even to a foreigner—oppressive and intimidating to see smart police and military barracks wherever one turned.

Day after day, and all day long, military convoys raced up and down the winding roads of the hilly town, sirens screaming.

They were preceded by white painted jeeps with military police and guns at the ready. Then came the top brass in luxurious limousines, then bren-gun carriers and heavy military trucks, all loaded with fully armed soldiers or police.

There was no limitation of funds

there! Nothing but the smartest and the newest in the way of vehicles, uniforms and equipment—and all this in a ghost town of empty shops, broken and dusty windows and perplexed New Guineans from the bush, looking for something different from plastic babies’ toys or painters’ brushes to spend the money on they had earned by lugging bananas in to sell.

But, of course, if the United States and Russia vie with each other to pour money into the country for military purposes, presumably the money must be spent for military purposes, even though its by-effects are to cow and intimidate the indigenous population and cause con cern and anxiety to Indonesia’s neighbours.

Success possible

These were the facts as observed.

The surveillance by military and political police, however, was such that I did not think it either safe for myself or fair to my interlocutors to put any too penetrating questions to any of the numerous people to whom I spoke—and these included Indonesians, West Irians and foreigners resident in the country.

Nevertheless, the situation seems to be such that if Indonesia can over come its present economic collapse

"UNO, don't sell us like animals!" said these posters in West New Guinea just before the Indonesian take-over in 1962.

You don't see these demonstrations now, but the feeling is there underneath.

Rioting "possible"

(which is not sudden, but has been developing steadily and continuously ever since independence), it might succeed in winning over the people of West Irian to acceptance of con tinued union with Indonesia.

In many ways, the censensus of West Irians and foreigners whom I spoke to was that some cards had been well played.

A great deal of attention has been paid to educational and health services—even though shortage of personnel has meant that many of the new establishments are grossly under manned, while the economic chaos has meant pitiful supplies of materials.

There is, moreover, great dis satisfaction among the people about shortages, and rioting is regarded as a possibility.

As far as “race relations” are con cerned, Indonesia does not seem to have provided itself with a tenth of the headaches that this sore point has given Australia.

Living accommodation and general standards of living would at least appear to be based purely and simply on the status of the individual ad ministration officer.

Without going into too many pain ful details, the situation in this respect would be the same in Papua-New Guinea if the chief hotels of Port Moresby had at least as many Papuans residing in them as Aus tralians, and if the desirable resi dences of Boroko were occupied by as many Papuans as expatriate staff.

No liquor problem

A further source of difficulty noticeable in P-NG that is con spicuous by its absence in West Irian is the liquor problem.

Indonesia, as a basically Mohammedan country, frowns on the use of alcohol, and, except for expatriate personnel, does not drink.

With no example to emulate, there fore, and with severe restrictions and enormous prices surrounding the whole complex of alcohol-drinking, it is not surprising that I saw no drunkenness nor, indeed, evidence of drinking at all.

There seems, on the other hand, to be no proselytising on behalf of Islam. The Protestant and the Catholic churches in Sukarnapura were full on Sundays while the mosque was a very unobtrusive, little affair.

Of course, like everybody else in Indonesia these days, missionaries have to watch their step.

At present there is an atmosphere of tension, caution and even fear in all circles such as I have never felt since visiting Nazi Germany before the war.

Tense atmosphere

In fact, in such a tiny place as Sukarnapura, I felt infinitely more anxiety-ridden than at any time in Germany, where one had to be very obtrusive indeed to attract any official interest among the vast population

and among the huge number of foreign visitors and residents.

Because of this, I was very correct in all my behaviour in Sukarnapura.

I followed currency regulations so far as I could find my way through the maze of them; I never took my cameras out of my suitcase; I never asked anyone any dangerously in discreet questions. Yet I have seldom felt so relieved as when I walked up the steps into a TAA plane and found myself theoretically, at least, on Australian soil and able to look forward to a full stomach again and

to puff at some Virginian cigarettes

at 30 Australian cents a packet!