Forced famine or seasonal?

By Evelyn Hogan

KURIMA district has had fam ines before. The whole of the Highlands of the Island of New Guinea suffers from per iodic failures of the sweet potato crop.

When rain falls heavily three to eight weeks after sweet potato is planted, the tubers don’t develop.

In PNG, cash crops have been intro duced and roads give access to markets.

If the crop fails, people buy rice. In 1984, when food shortages through the High lands provinces affected 750,000 people, food aid encouraged people to remain in their own villages. Through a regular planting program, people soon recover a steady production of sweet potato.

At the same time in Irian Jaya, food aid donated by the World Food Pro gramme remained in the warehouses of Wamena and Nabire. Officials gave the excuse that it was difficult to get food in without road access. But corruption by local officials is suspected.

This current famine only occurs in the Kurima District. The Jayawijaya Regent in charge of the area, Jos B. Wenas, said the famine was caused by the villagers in Silimo being occupied by planting wild

coconuts, a favourite delicacy, and forgot

to plant sweet potatoes. One report said “In Irian Jaya, tribal villagers are still heavily dependent on food found in the forests and are unused to agriculture.”

The delivery of food aid already has proved a contentious issue because of the ncidental effects. In 1981, when there vere food shortages in the Southern Highlands, the Provincial Nutritionist vrote: “I would like to put on record my dew that indiscriminate food aid vithout strong evidence of nutritional leprivation in the area concerned can 'ery often have contradictory effects to hose intended.” He said strengthening ocal coping strategies was better.

But it seems strange that, for the first ime in 20,000 years in these mountain 'alleys, people have forgotten to plant, frekkers who recently returned from the laliem Valley say that, immediately lorth of Kurima, people are very well fed m their traditional diet of sweet potato nd vegetables. There is a heavy military •resence south of Kurima. Evidence now oming out of Irian Jaya indicates that, ince 1989, government teams have argeted a number of villages in the Lurima region with the intention of elocating their populations. Armed with warnings that the area was quake-prone, persuader” teams visit villages to coax eople into moving. They are offered )od, school and health facilities if they

move; and nothing if they don’t.

Government educational and health teams have moved away from the Hupla village of Soba and the Yali villages of Ninia and Holuwon, which in the eyes of the government have ceased to exist. For those that stay behind, there are no supplies from the Kabupaten govern ment, and the village schools remain closed. When local people facing food shortages asked the Departement Sosial for rice they were told, “Go to Elelim where you belong.”

Food aid supplies arrived in Wamena in late January for the stricken Silimo area with 27 kampungs and a population of about 12,000. However, as with the 1984 famine, the food is still in the warehouses and officials use the excuse that the helicopters used could not fly through the thick fog. Yet on January 24, a group of government officials visited the area by helicopter.

In Silimo, 148 have died in the famine affecting 12,000 yali people. Yet instead of taking food into the area, Freeport Indonesia Inc. (FII) helicopters have been used to move 600 people from Silimo to the new settlement at Elelim, off the end of the road north of Wamena. (FFI mines in Irian Jaya and has expanded into a new 6.5 million acre

exploration area.)

Fll’s new exploration area covers the whole of the central highlands. A section, including Soba, Ninia and Holuwon, projects into the Jayawiyaya Ranges east of Silimo. Road development, planned for the year 2005, will connect the area to Wamena. Significant reserves of gold and copper are in these ranges.

Traditional landowners have been moved for Freeport’s sake in the past.

The Jayapura-based Kabar dari Kampung report in 1988 that, in Janu ary 1978, FFI issued a directive that the traditional owners of the area, the Amungme, were forbidden to enter and traverse Freeport’s current mine site at Tembagapura, the international airfield at Timika, the Portsite of Amamapare and the copper smelter.

People were forcibly moved from the cool area near the mine down to the heat and humidity of the coast. Within two years, people were suffering from malnu trition and malaria, and 216 children died when a epidemic swept through the new settlement.

If the famine in Silimo was caused by freak climatic conditions, then the action of the Indonesian state in not delivering food aid to allow the people to remain in their ancestral area, amounts to neglect.

If the famine has been the result of forced movements since 1989 to clear a crucial part of FH’s new exploration area, the result would be genocide. □