Pim Opinion

While most of the Pacific focuses its attention upon the inexorable, if somewhat unsteady, march of the New Caledonian Kanaks towards an inevitable independence from France, a much more complex and difficult war of nerves is in progress across the mountainous, remote, border between Indonesia’s Irian Jaya, and the sovereign and indepen dent nation of Papua New Guinea.

It is the only major land border in the Pacific Islands area, but it cuts through far more than jungle-clad real estate. The problems it poses will haunt the region for many years to come. They have the potential to involve the attention, and anxieties, of nations within, and far outside, this part of the world.

The border is, simply, and ominously, a security threat which, somehow, must be defused with the greatest despatch and the least possible inconvenience and upset to the victims. Prospects for achievement of that devoutly to be desired goal are not good, and appear to be receding.

On both sides of the border national pride and sensitivities are exposed.

In the view of many Pacific people, the Indonesians have no right to be in control of Irian Jaya. They are, they say, simply new colonial masters moving in on native lands and cultures, heedless of local values and interests, concerned only with their own ambitions. They are accused of treating Irianese in an elitist and racist way.

In the United Nations their inheritance of the Dutch colonial mantle was argued before a forum with sad lack of knowledge and understanding, by delegations who demonstrated little real interest in facts or justice.

Sukarno was on a great wave of domestic adulation. He was playing with great world issues, wooed by the Soviet Union and the West, driven by his megalomania, trying to hold his position and his balance on the knife-edge of the inevitable disaster.

The Indonesians were sealing their anti-colonial victory over Holland. The Dutch knew that predominantly Christian, Melane sian West Irian would sit very uncomfortably under Muslim Indonesia and foresaw the trouble which is now upon everyone.

Their rather belated efforts to achieve a separate independence for “West New Guinea” foundered in face of President Sukarno’s threats, and American ambassador Elsworth Bunker’s belief, backed by the White House, and somewhat reluctantly supported by Canberra and other capitals, that lasting regional stability could be achieved by acceding to Sukarno’s demands.

Sukarno made a triumphal entry to Hollandia which was promptly renamed Sukamapura, and the problem went under ground while the Indonesians proceeded with their ’’lndorsation” of the territory, moving in with their language, their customs and to some extent their religion. Had it been a European power embarked on such a course there would have been an international uproar.

In the end Sukarno was eaten by his own ambitions, President Suharto took over with a government which, particularly in Irian Jaya, was predominantly military in flavor if not in total concept, and life went on.

But Melanesians fumed in private and “resistance” groups formed, many of them around people like Arnold Ap who was primarily interested in the preservation of Melanesian language and

culture. Indonesian response to this was stern, even brutal, as the death of Ap betrays.

But it was transmigration, the quite astonishingly large program devised by Indonesia to relieve the population pressures on its other islands, principally Java, which caused the real upset. Some estimates say that 150,000 Javanese have so far moved to Irian Jaya seeking land and a future. In the next three years that figure may double.

In doing this Jakarta’s administrators are accused of taking no more (and perhaps much less) notice of Melanesian land customs and rights than European colonisers of the 18th and 19th centuries. And land is a Melanesian’s most precious birthright.

The border itself divides traditional gardens from the villagers who work them, a point which has been observed in various agreements between PNG and Indonesia about border-crossing rights.

But, since the uprising on February 13, when some members of the Free West Papua Movement (OPM) tried, bravely but rather naively, to gain attention for their cause by raising their flag at the parliament house in Jayapura, the Indonesian Army has been fairly vigorously chasing down dissidents.

This has produced a flood-tide of 11,000 refugees across the border into Papua New Guinea, brought international attention to the situation, and embroiled Papua New Guinea in an extremely difficult confrontation not only with Indonesia, but also with elements inside Papua New Guinea who cannot understand why something is not done to punish those who are affronting and dispossessing their Melanesian cousins and brothers.

PNG’s Michael Somare is therefore in difficulties whatever he does. And the more Jakarta’s hard-eyed envoys tell him of how Indonesia sees itself in a “terrible position,” the tighter the screw turns.

Indonesia is likely to maintain this pressure upon PNG in a primary effort to make life more difficult for the OPM ... to raise the price to PNG of giving them, however involuntarily, a home. But, some factions within the Indonesian government must be tempted by the prospect of rattling the government in Port Moresby to the ultimate extent of producing some subservience to Indonesia.

In Sukarno’s day the office of the Indonesian president had a vast map upon its wall showing, accidentally or not, all of New Guinea encompassed by the Bung’s empire.

One does not propose that Indonesia intends deliberately to foment a revolt within PNG, but pessimistic observers of the border situation see in it some disturbing portents. These are based upon views current with some analysts in the Jakarta administration that PNG is Indonesia’s “soft flank” wherein factional disputes, leading to political instability, may demand some sort of intervention.

Yet, it is very difficult to see Indonesia handling such a problem by direct military action. If Vietnam was a military and political rat trap for the United States, Indonesia would be snared like a moth in a spider net in the jungles of the PNG border area. Nor, in fact, could Indonesia easily defend such a move in international political arenas.

In short, the border situation is ringed about with suspicion, soaked in sensitivity and fraught with danger. It must be treated with the utmost care and understanding by all.