grossly understated

Biak massacre grossly understated

By Andrew Kilvert

responsible for the deaths of over 300,000 Melanesian West Papuans in their 30 year occupation of the territo ry. The story of Biak was not widely reported because there was a discrep ancy in the reports of numbers of bod ies washed up on the beaches. An early report said 33, a later one was 53 and the last one said that 70 bodies had washed up or been caught in fishing nets. As Hamish McDonald the editor of the Foreign Editor of the Sydney Morning herald put it, “In these cir cumstances we are going to hold off on publication for the time being”.

Amongst those bodies was the remains of a woman still clutching her dead baby who washed up near Manokwari. There were also the remains of many children.

Because the investigations, which at times involved personal risk to those involved, did not correlate exact ly they were deemed non-news. This was despite the fact that these accounts supported each other in many ways. The difference in body count was because the three different human rights organisations which looked into it were there at different times during the recovery of bodies.

In July 1998 the community of Biak island joined in the independence demonstrations which were taking place around the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya in response to the noises about human rights coming out of the new president in Jakarta and spurred on by new dialog over East Timor.

This went on for six days as people camped out around a campfire next to the market place. On July 6 1998 at 5.30 am, after bringing in an extra battalion from Ambon Island, the army opened fire on the sleeping crowd. As everybody was lying down asleep on the ground when the shooting started,

they fired low and as the people stood up to run away they were shot in the legs. Many of the people there were school children who were expressing the long felt outrage at the Indonesian occupation of their Pacific Island. As they ran they were cut down and many crawled to the safety of nearby houses.

As the sun rose the army formed them selves into small units which went from door to door looking for wound ed people who had been at the rally.

These people were arrested and many others who were identified as being involved were also forced down to the docks. Others were simply gunned down in their houses in front of their families.

Survivors say 24 people were killed during the initial shooting. After this about 200 people were rounded up and taken down to the docks where they were made to lie face up in the tropical sun. As they lay, groups of soldiers marched over their faces and stom achs. In the afternoon they were forced to crawl down the street to the police cells where the 200 people were crammed into the tiny cells in the sear ing heat. For days they stood unable to sit because of the conditions forced to urinate and defecate whilst standing.

Many of these people were school children. When they began getting sick, several were released to act as spies for the military, to go out and track down the other ‘ringleaders’.

They reported every day and recieved beatings when their reports where not considered to be good enough.

Meanwhile outside the cells there were people dying in their houses from untreated wounds. They couldn’t go to the hospital because it was occupied by the army and was already over crowded with wounded who were kept under guard and who weren’t receiv ing medical treatment anyway. The chemist shops in town were guarded

by military intelligence spies. After

being imprisoned for several days, 139

of those arrested were taken down to the docks and loaded onto two frigates, .one of which had brought the army battalion from Ambon. These people were loaded aboard and the frigates set off in opposite directions, one dump ing the people in the ocean near Biak island the other dumping them off shore near Manokwari.

There has been no reports of people surviving the ordeal and so there is no accurate information as to their last hours although it is fairly certain, judging by the bodies which were recovered, that they were dumped alive. As the bodies began washing up on the beaches there was absolute silence among the Australian media, despite the fact that the information was readily available. So whilst the media faithfully reported on the with drawal of troops from East Timor and the ‘discovery’ of mass graves in Aceh, mass graves which were never lost in the first place, there remained total silence on the Biak story. As fam ilies met their relatives off the planes from Jayapura and wept together covertly under the scrutiny and suspi cion of the Indonesian military guards, the world and particularly Australians remained ignorant of what was going on so near to our shores.

When the first of the bodies began washing up on the beaches the military was quick to recover them, claiming they were the victims of the PNG tsunami which occurred nearly 1000 km down the coast. As others washed up this story became more ludicrous as many of them were bound at the wrists and ankles with ropes and one of them was wearing a Golkar T-shirt which is the shirt of the ruling Indonesian Government party. About two days after the initial killing and before the people had been dumped into the ocean, an Australian Army Captain arrived in Biak to carry out an ‘offi cial’ investigation in to the killings on behalf of the Australian department of Foreign affairs. Still now on Biak Island there are at least twenty people who are facing life imprisonment in Indonesian gaols if found guilty of the charges of Separatism and Rebellion.■