The Guardian 25 January, 2006
Repression and profits in West Papua
Tom Pearson
The genocidal ruthlessness of colonial occupation was demonstrated last Friday when four high school students were murdered in West Papua by the Indonesian occupation forces. Aged 13-15, the four were gunned down in reprisal for the escape of 43 independence activists who landed as asylum seekers on Australian shores last week.
One of the murdered students, Moses Douw, was a relative of Amatus Douw, one of the 43 asylum seekers. Repression by the Indonesian military has been especially intense in the area where the children were slain, the Paniai region’s towns and villages — where the independence movement is particularly strong — with raids on homes, arrests, imprisonment and torture.
A fifth student was wounded and is in hospital, the Indonesian human rights group ELSHAM said. Another person was badly beaten. The killings followed protests against the arrest of 12 separatists and comes in the wake of discussions earlier this month between the Australian and Indonesian governments involving closer intelligence and military cooperation under the guise of anti-terrorism.
The asylum seekers have been locked up in the Christmas Island detention centre under the Howard Government’s mandatory refugee detention regime. The Indonesian Government has stated that if they are granted refugee status it would "strain" relations between the two countries.
The occupation of West Papua is tied to the exploitation of the country’s rich mineral resources. There are now 10,000 Indonesian troops in West Papua to try and crush the independence movement and protect the operation of the massive Freeport-McMoRan Grasberg copper and gold mine. The ruthless anti-union miner Rio Tinto is a joint partner.
Last December the New York Times newspaper exposed the cronyism, corruption and destruction of the environment by the Freeport mine and its owners. Freeport management has given the Indonesian military in the region more than US $20 million from 1998 to 2004 in bribes and kickbacks according to company documents obtained by the Times. Between 1992 and 2004 Freeport gave the Indonesian Government US$33 billion.
The company has dumped one billion tonnes of mine waste into the Aghawagon River in a vast, untouched wilderness. The waste — which the company itself estimates will increase to six billion tonnes during the life of its operation — has mostly been dumped in the mountains near the mine and into river systems which flow into wetlands near the United Nations special status Lorentz National Park.
The International Commission of Jurists says that because the 43 asylum seekers came directly to Australia they must be given legal status. "Under Australian law they’re [the government] obliged to treat them as lawful refugees", said the Commission’s John Dowd.