Sudirman Nasir, Melbourne
It is neither easy nor comfortable to talk about Papua, especially if you are an Indonesian who is currently living in Australia. That's not simply because of the strained relations between the two countries after Australia granted temporary visas to 42 Papuans. Indeed it's mostly because of common ignorance of the detailed history of Papua among Indonesian youths, including myself, particularly the history of human rights violations in the province.
For me it's even more difficult since I have never been to Papua at all. The distance and of course the high cost of traveling from my home city of Makassar in South Sulawesi to Papua have prevented me from visiting the land of Cendrawasih (the bird of paradise).
I joked with one of my Australian friends in Melbourne who asked my opinion on the situation in Papua. When she asked me why I had never been in the province, I asked her why she had never been to Darwin.
Jokes are a useful icebreaker when discussing sensitive topics.
Like many other Australians, she strongly supports the decision to grant protection visas to the Papuans, saying she believes they genuinely face a severe threat of human rights abuses at home. For the first time since I met her, she praised Prime Minister John Howard. Like many students and lecturers in the university, she never identifies herself as a Coalition (Liberal and National Party) supporter.
The biggest difficulty in arguing about the validity of human rights violations in fragile provinces like Papua, Aceh and East Timor (when the province was still under Indonesia's control) is the fact that for a long time Soeharto's New Order government monopolized access to information there. One of my Papuan friends once told me we were part of a blind generation during Soeharto's era.
In the case of East Timor, for instance, many members of my generation were surprised when we read The Eyewitness, an anthology of short stories written by prominent author Seno Gumira Ajidarma. It poignantly describes the brutal experiences of people in an unnamed place during occupation by unknown foreign soldiers. Later we found out that Ajidarma based his work on East Timor, and the foreign solders he described were based on the Indonesian Army.
During Soeharto's era it was impossible to report the brutality. It's no wonder if many of my generation trusted the credibility of people like Ajidarma more than that of government officials.
The human rights violations in East Timor were not so different from the cases in Aceh and Papua. Many of us who have the privilege of accessing various human rights reports from those areas are surprised by how ignorant we were about the sufferings of our fellow Indonesian citizens in the provinces. I met several Acehnese and Papuans in exile in Australia, and for me their exile status explains many things.
If a person or a group of people decide to leave their homeland and are uncertain about when they will return home, they must be driven by very strong reasons. So let us imagine how the 43 Papuans sailed through the Arafura Sea on a frail boat to Australia without any certainty about they could go home. It must be far from an easy decision.
My Australian friend's question about whether the Indonesian government can be trusted to guarantee the safety of the Papuans if they return to their homeland is very difficult to answer too. How can we make sure they will be free from threats and abuses after witnessing the brutal attitude of many soldiers and police officers? My answer was, ""I don't know"".
Ironically, she also said ""I don't know"" when she answered my question about the future of Australia's indigenous people, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. She blamed her government's policies which structurally and culturally discriminate against them.
We finally concluded that Papua would remain a dilemma for Indonesia and Australia. As long as the Indonesian government makes no significant changes to its policies in order to increase the welfare of the Papuans, including ending human rights abuses, they have valid reasons to resist and to seek political asylum from other countries, especially Australia.
It is also apparent that the Australian government is facing a dilemma in dealing with asylum seekers from Papua. On the one hand, many Australians will pressure their government to accept these Papuan asylum seekers. On the other hand this will strain ties with Indonesia, their very close neighbor to the north.
Howard eloquently revealed the dilemma he was facing when he warned Papuans against pursuing independence from Indonesia, as ""they may be going to end up with a lot more human rights abuses and deprivation of liberty than would otherwise be the case."" (The Age, April 8). It is apparent that my Australian friend was disappointed with Howard once again.
The writer is currently studying at the University of Melbourne.
