The recent visit to Fiji by West Papuan freedom fighter, Benny Wenda, signals a shift which may just end in a new member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
Since 2011, Fiji has been Indonesia’s closest ally in the South Pacific, blocking every attempt by the United Liberation Movement of West Papua to join regional discussions and gather support for an end to Jakarta’s rule.
When Frank Bainimarama seized power in December 2006, Indonesia and China offered his interim government legitimacy which Fiji’s traditional allies withheld in the hope that he would return the country to democracy.
At the United Nations, Indonesia supported Fiji’s nominations to key appointments within the UN system, allowing the Bainimarama regime to trumpet – through a controlled media – its recognition on the international stage.
In return, Fiji ensured that human rights abuse – including torture and arbitrary killings of Papuans at the hand of Indonesian security forces – were treated in regional fora as “internal matters of a sovereign nation’’.
While Vanuatu and Kanaky (New Caledonia) pushed for the West Papuan opposition to have a seat at the MSG table as full members, Fiji and Papua New Guinea refused to budge.
PNG shares a porous 824-kilometer border with Indonesia from Wutung in the north to Wando in the south. The Indonesian army has 300,000 troops with two regional commands based in Papua while across the border, the PNG Defence Force can muster only 3600 troops.
Should Indonesia decide to push east – as it did to annex Papua from its Dutch rulers in 1963 – PNG will be powerless to stop a military advance. Already, Indonesian troops cross the border at will.
Research shows that for decades, Papua New Guinean troops have watched as Indonesian forces violated PNG sovereignty several times a year.
The incursions are made to hunt animals or intimidate refugees living along the border.
The PNG Defence Force (PNGDF) has long viewed such TNI actions as part of a campaign of psychological warfare designed to remind Papuans just how vulnerable they are to Indonesia’s military.
Given Fiji’s global ambitions under Bainimarama, PNG’s fears of a huge military machine on its western border and the Solomon Islands’ need for economic support, West Papua’s attempts at recognition were severely hampered.
Only Vanuatu dared speak on their behalf in the MSG family and the late Tongan Prime Minister, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, spoke for them at the United Nations.
But in a matter of three weeks, two West Papuan delegations have visited Fiji to press their case.
One group, under Wenda’s leadership, met Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and two of his three deputies – National Federation Party leader, Dr Biman Prasad, and Manoa Kamikamica of the People’s Alliance Party.
Rabuka has pledged support for the ULMWP’s application to join the MSG, an issue outstanding since 2015.
“We had the FLNKS (Front de Liberation National Kanak et Socialiste) before New Caledonia became part of the MSG,” Rabuka told the Fiji media.
He said this provided precedent for West Papua’s full membership of the Melanesian bloc.
“Yes, we will support them because they are Melanesians.’’
But his PNG counterpart, James Marape, ran out the well-rehearsed line used in the past by his predecessors: “We do not want to offset the balance and tempo.”
While Marape remains hesitant, Indonesian troops continue to carry out atrocities, most recently killing and mutilating four Papuans at Timika, a mining town in south central West Papua in October 2022.
More than 500,000 Papuans have been killed by Indonesia since 1962 and Jakarta has embarked on a trans-migration policy which seeks to change forever the population of West Papua by introducing more than 300,000 non-Papuans to the region.
With the FLNKS and Vanuatu firmly behind the ULMWP joining the Melanesian Spearhead Group, it remains to be seen whether Rabuka will put Fiji’s support behind the Papuans.
All indications are that Papua will become the next full member of the MSG and that Indonesia will retain its associate membership as a matter of courtesy from its Pacific friends.
Fiji’s ambassador to Indonesia, Amenatave Yauvoli, was a former Director-General of the MSG and is a diplomat of considerable skill and experience.
If Fiji takes that path of including Papua in the MSG family, Yauvoli will have the unenviable task of trying to maintain a friendship forged out of necessity by Bainimarama and Indonesia’s former President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in 2011.
For now, Wenda is celebrating a small success – finally a Fijian government leader who will listen to their plight.
“The people of West Papua are celebrating because after 16 years somebody in the Fiji government has stood up for West Papua,” Wenda said after meeting Rabuka in Nadi on the periphery of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat leaders’ meeting.
“That gives us the confidence that the issue is in Melanesia’s hands.’’
While there can be no argument that the issue is in Melanesia’s hands, the question is – what will Melanesia do?
Fact File – West Papua
- Part of the former Dutch East Indies
- Granted autonomy by the Netherlands in December 1961
- United Nations receives mandate to oversee Papua in 1962
- Annexed by Indonesia in 1963
- Referendum of 1026 Papuans gives control to Indonesia after seven years of human rights abuse
Why the church lobbies for a free West Papua?
For 60 years, churches and civil society in the Pacific have lobbied metropolitan nations to allow West Papuans to choose for themselves a political future.
Australia – as the United States’ local enforcer – and PNG as the nation under most threat from Indonesia, have constrained those efforts at every turn.
Canberra and Port Moresby have consistently argued that Indonesia has territorial integrity over West Papua. They fail to recognise that the region was part of a Dutch colony and allowed autonomy 62 years ago.
Australia fears an influx of boat people on its northern border if Indonesia is forced to give up its annexed territory.
In doing so, they attempt to classify Papua as part of a greater Asian community.
But Papua has been part of the Pacific since 1950, with Marcus Kaisiepo and Nicolas Jouwe representing the then territory of Dutch New Guinea at the first South Pacific Conference in 1950. This was a year after Indonesia gained independence.
Indeed, the Dutch were ready to hand over independence to Papua until the United States and its proxy, Australia, became involved with their interests in the territory’s rich resources.
The U.S. was also concerned about the Communist threat in South-East Asia and needed Indonesia’s support to act as a buffer and staging point in the Vietnam War.
It was against this backdrop that the Netherlands lost control of its Pacific territory, the U.S. gained an asset and Australia made money while the United Nations oversaw the process.
The Pacific churches – all born out of Christian missionary movements – formed a regional collective at Malua, Samoa in 1961, the year before Samoa’s independence.
At that conference, Pastor Willem Maloali of what is now the Gereja Kristen Injili di Tannah Papua (Evangelical Christian Church in the Land of Papua), represented his people and their aspirations.
“We see ourselves as part of the Pacific and that is why we joined those talks,” Malaoli recalled at his home in Jayapura in 2016.
“Hopefully one day we will be free to determine our future – whatever that may be – as Pacific people.’’
In 2013, the link between Papua and the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) was renewed in Busan, South Korea.
“For us it’s about justice,” said PCC General Secretary, Reverend James Bhagwan.
“The human rights abuse in West Papua cannot be allowed to continue and we must stand in solidarity with God’s people everywhere.’’
A story of 4 Papuans
When Indonesia invaded Papua in 1962, the action had serious repercussions for a group of medical students.
The Dutch authorities had sent seven West New Guineans, as they were known at the time, to Papua Medical College, Port Moresby.
Four more attended the Central Medical School, Suva. In May 1963 when the United Nations annexed Dutch (West) New Guinea, Indonesia demanded that the students be flown home immediately.
The Port Moresby-based students applied for political asylum in a letter to Prime Minister, Robert Menzies. In Fiji, Welby Korwa, Jesse Ajomi, Alex Mambraku and Otniel Burdam were allowed to remain and complete their studies.
Dr Korwa joined Fiji’s Medical Department upon graduation and served in public hospitals before establishing a surgery in Cumming Street, Suva. Dr Ajomi worked for the Fiji government as a dentist all his professional life, retiring in the mid 1990s.
