Up Front

with the editor

Although even now it’s pretty well impossible to know the tate that West Irian is in, the recent relaxation of the embargo m visiting journalists has enabled some light to be shed on the cene. And not even rose-coloured spectacles would improve

he sight.

IE pressmen who recently went en masse at the invitation of popular Indonesian Foreign ister, Mr. Malik, got a quick trip nd and their aircraft had more a share of engine troubles, they still managed to be fairly ral in their reports of economic ►s, mismanagement, unhappiness, ilderment, and of a small but e underground movement dedica te the task of throwing the Indo ms out. -ter Hastings, editor of New lea Quarterly, said the same I but with more detail, and with - sympathy for Indonesia, in a s of articles in The Australian had had been granted special >s a week or two earlier.

U these stories were far removed i the boasts of Sukarno and Dr. ndrio in 1962 that the territory the Papuans were about to be ted, after having “been stunted he chains of colonialism for so lat was the year the Dutch were ed out in what PIM described rially as “the most cynical piece itemational betrayal in a genera which has left those closest to dth feelings of apprehension. ie and something like despair”, ice the Indonesians were not at time, nor since, able to over ; their own problems at home is obvious that they wouldn’t be to keep the Papuans in the to which they had begun to accustomed under the Dutch even with the help of the ■ous financial legacy left by h colonialism. though regular supplies of goods i fact, in those early days, arrive ikarnapura, they were promptly hipped to other parts of the ;red republic without the

Papuans getting so much as a smell of them. And because the Press was kept out, nobody really knew what happened after that.

Our own occasional reports came from missionaries and others, most reluctant informants at best. The world was better informed on events in Red China and Mongolia than on Indonesian West Irian after 1962.

Why it's open

The fact that we are getting something now is due to the prac tical honesty of Mr. Malik, who apparently feels that with the UN’s “act of determination” on the horizon for next year there is not much point in continuing to conceal the sorry mess in West Irian. And furthermore, that there are not now any fears left that anybody else would want to nurse the West Irian baby.

That’s the tragedy of it, of course.

Nobody wants the baby, ill as it is with malnutrition. Nobody but Indo nesia, who is stuck with it anyway, and must, to save face, see to it that the act of determination in 1969 results in a West Irian decision to remain with Indonesia.

It will be a simple thing to arrange, and I have no doubt that it will be arranged and that the UN people on the spot will not criticise the arrangements. The UN observer team will be present to report what happens, not to lay down any rules about what should happen.

They will not be international police.

Indonesia won West Irian in 1962 —neither fairly nor squarely—but she won it, and it is now too late to put the clock back.

The Dutch were willing to push the country forward to self determination, and had in fact

suggested 1970 as a date for self-n Alternatively, in September, 19' the Dutch proposed to the Gene Assembly that the Netherlai relinquish sovereignty over West N Guinea, and continue to sup] money and if necessary experienc public servants, on condition tl the country be put under UN sup vision and be gradually prepared : self-determination.

That proposal was really throw] down the gloves to all the g talkers in the UN. The Dutch wl saying in effect that here was chance for all those noisy < colonisers, those persistent insist on the right of self-determination ; all. to put their money where th mouth is and support the right of 1 Papuans of West Irian for a bit what everybody else was getting.

But the UN rejected the plan, a that is when I lost confidence in 1 UN as an organisation willing fight for people as distinct fr<

politicians.

Although they had a long way go. the West New Guineans h been enabled to glimpse a future 1 their race, and it was the Indonesia not the Dutch, who should have be told their run was made too la That was an international betrayal the Papuans, and it’s marked delibly in my black book.

Now it’s history. Even if, by soi mad chance, the West Irianese n< year decided they didn’t want remain with Indonesia, there nobody else who would have the Without a patron they could r survive.

And history, as Gibbon said, simply little more than the regisi of the crimes, follies, and m fortunes of mankind.

Stuart Ind