Up Front

with the Publisher

The issue surrounding the refugee problem on Papua New Guinea’s border with Irian Jaya isn’t complicated. In fact, if it wasn’t so clear cut, it would be caus ing less embarrassment to the Papua New Guinea Government, which might then have a chance of escaping under cover of a verbal smokescreen.

The current problem started in May when there began a steady trickle of men. women and children from Irian Jaya into Papua New Guinea, at a point on the border with south-west Papua.

They said they were escaping from

trouble in their area, which has been a province of Indonesia since 1969.

This trickle grew to what the New Guinea Government says is 218 people.

There then came unofficial reports that Indonesian troops had made forays across the border and a Papua New Gui nean had been shot dead. Worse, that all the occupants of one Papua New Guinea village had disappeared after a clash with Indonesian troops.

Indonesia and Papua New Guinea have an understanding that the border must not be used by groups who cross in either direction to plan subversion against the other side, and also that In donesian citizens who cross the border should be sent back again, although Papua New Guinea says it’s prepared to deal separately with genuine refugees in fear of their lives.

Indonesia is sensitive about the border, and the Papua New Guinea Government wants to honour this agree ment because, for one thing, as Prime Minister Somare told the national parliament not long ago, “You don’t annoy a sleeping lion ".

Unfortunately, ordinary Papua New

Guineans have no great respect for diplomatic niceties and they want a hard line against a country which invades their territorial integrity, or which represses some of its own people to the extent that they are forced to flee across the border. Right or wrong, that’s the way many Papua New Guineans see life on the border, and they are not mov ed by the PNG Government’s assurance that nobody was killed, no villagers dis appeared and that the border-crossers have been encouraged to go back quietly while PNG asks Indonesia not to per secute them.

However realistic might be the PNG Government’s view that it shouldn’t go

out of its way to annoy the Indonesians that it has a duty to retain the present good official relations between the two countries many Papua New Guineans believe that the Indonesians are sup pressing the people of Irian Jaya, and that they have no real right to the place

anyhow.

In short, Indonesia’s presence in Irian Jaya receives no applause from the Papua New Guinean public, and the PNG Government’s official dilemma is that it knows it but can’t acknowledge it.

It is only recently that the government was forced by public pressure to grant citizenship to 157 permissive residents who fled from Irian Jaya more than five years ago, and there are hundreds of others, who have come at different times, and who are virtually stateless persons but who have fitted into the fabric of Papua New Guinea life, and have the

public’s sympathy.

What in all these circumstances, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, should the PNG Government do! I’m glad it’s not my problem. Ido know what it shouldn’t do. It shouldn’t throw away its principles, and damage its integrity, by appeasing Indonesia on the border issue in the months ahead.

That’s what Australia did when it failed to support the Dutch and allowed the Indonesians to absorb the West Papuans at the very time the Papuans had glimps ed the possibility of nationhood.

Papua New Guinea must live with Indonesia. It’s equally true that In donesia must live with Papua New Guinea, and it should remember to tread sensitively on the border while its inter nal policies in Irian Jaya do not endear it

to its neighbour.

Stuart Inder.