Diplomacy, or turning a 'blind eye’?

By David Robie

AUSTRALIA is “short-sighted, elite centred, state-centric, militarised and law-and-order driven” in dealing with Papua New Guinea and the Bougain ville secessionist crisis, believes a leading Sydney academic. Unless Canberra changes direction on its Bougainville policy, one of the major sources of regional insecurity will grow.

Dr Peter King, of Sydney University’s Peace and Conflict Studies Centre, says that having linked the security of Austra lia with that of the state of PNG, “Canberra appears blind to the fact that the PNG elite, and many of the foreign companies with which it cooperates, are becoming a ma jor source of insecurity for the people of PNG”.

Dr King was among more than 160 academics, peace researchers, diplomats, defence attaches and peace activists from 23 countries who last month explored regional issues crucial after the end of the Cold War. According to the Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association’s secretary general, Dr Kevin Clements, the region is the only part of the world where military spending is still increasing.

Dr Clements told the Asia-Pacific security conference at New Zealand’s Canterbury University that means of promoting peaceful conflict resolution were urgently needed. He also said there was regional concern about Japan’s

rapid ascendancy in military spending.

“Japan now has the fourth highest level of military spending in the world and this is causing major problems with unresolved problems from World War Two surfacing again,” he said. “Spend enough on military equipment and eventually there is a tendency to use it.”

Dr Clements said that at a time when the military build-up had declined in the Middle East and in Europe, it was still expanding in the Asia-Pacific region.

Countries such as China, North Korea and Japan had been encouraging the growth of arms markets. The conference sought solutions that would help after the militarisation.

Among decisions were the establish ment of an Asia-Pacific Conflict Resol ution Group and data base at Sydney’s Macquarie University which would po tentially promote peaceful solutions in Bougainville, East Timor and Irian (West Papua). The data base would make a special effort to include infor mation based on oral material from indigenous societies. A call for the establishment of a South Pacific human rights research and monitoring group was also endorsed.

Discussing indigenous minorities in the

region, a conference statement said: “It is evident that much more strenuous efforts need to be made to allow indigenous people to assert their own power through the restoration of rights associated with land and other resources, and ensuring an adequate voice in all forums, and promoting some form of

meaningful sovereignty.”

A declaration by the Maori people of Aotearoa demanded that all nuclear testing in the Pacific cease immediately: that the atmospheric testing facility on Johnston Atoll be closed; and that colonialised governments withdraw from countries with indigenous people.

In discussion on South Pacific security, Dr King was critical of the “conventional wisdom” in Canberra that it must “prop up the post-colonial state in PNG at almost any cost” against threats from within, such as Bougainville, and from without, such as Indonesia.

Dr King, whose views arc outlined in a forthcoming new book, Threats Without Enemies , said: “It is PNG’s politicians and bureaucrats who profit when foreign companies exploit PNG’s forests for timber, whatever the impact upon local communities and the ecology. It was the PNG government which failed to make the required regular reviews of the 1974 Bougainville mine agreement, thus al lowing grievances on the island to escalate until they exploded in 1989.

“It is the government’s own security forces which now loom as a threat to PNG’s fragile and much abused consti tutional order. Yet Canberra continues to offer remarkably uncritical economic and military support to this government.

In response to threats from secessionists and raskol gangs, Canberra augments police as well as military aid, thus ignoring Bougainville’s profound griev ances about the behaviour of the security forces, and accepting a definition of‘law and order’ which largely ignores elite corruption and misbehaviour.”

Like the PNG state, said Dr King, the Suharto regime in Indonesia was a significant source of insecurity for its people who had suffered from “repress ive, corrupt and authoritarian rule”, particularly the East Timorese and West Papuans. “In the interests of realpolitik commercial advantage and short-run tranquility, Australia has turned a blind eye to these problems. Yet they will not go away, and have the potential to wreck the ‘befriend Indonesia’ policy entirely.”

Dr King advocates that Australia

should reject its “inadequate policies” 4

and instead dedicate itself to regional self-determination and support for demo cratic, non-corrupt and civilian forces in Indonesia and PNG. He calls for pro posals of imaginative resolution of the

conflicts in East Timor, West Papua and Bougainville such as a “quasi-state” solution; suspend the Timor Gap Treaty providing for joint Australian- Indonesian development of oil resources pending an East Timor solution; and phasing out military aid to Indonesia.

He also believes long-term develop ment aid should be conditional on a clean-up of high-level political and bureaucratic corruption. “As things stand, Australian police are in effect assisting over-privileged, irresponsible and corrupt black mastas to repress their less fortunate brethren.”

A Solomon Islands scholar at the University of the South Pacific, Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, called for a rethink of Solomons policy over Bougainville.

“The government must draw clearly its stand on the issue so as not to jeopardise the safety of its people. The nation cannot continue to sympathise with Bougainvilleans while at the same time attempting to maintain its relations with PNG,” he said. But the two policies were conflicting. “The government has to realise that the Solomon Islands political, economic and strategic interests are at stake.” □