New solution needed for Papua

Neles Tebay ,  Abepura ,  Papua   |  Fri, 02/08/2008 11:53 AM  |  Opinion

The House of Representative issued on Jan. 22, 2008 some 21 drafts of bills around the creation of 21 new regions in Indonesia, including the formation of four new provinces in Papua.

The new provinces include South Papua, Central Papua, South West Papua and West Papua.

In December 2007, the House also issued drafts of bills on the formation of new regencies, including six new regencies in Papua province.

While respecting the House's right to take the initiative to propose new drafts of bills, the question should be: Who is going to benefit from the creation of new four provinces in Papua?

Are the four new provinces created for the sake of the indigenous Papuans?

Is the creation of new provinces to address problems in Papua?

The reality in Papua speaks that some 1.5 to 2 million indigenous Papuans have not been able to fulfill available jobs created by newly created regencies.

They lack skillful people due to the poor quality of education service in Papua and many jobs are vacant in all regencies across Papua.

In order to run government services, the local government accepts non-Papuans coming from elsewhere in Indonesia.

Many migrants have been prioritized in job promotions.

So the migrants are now administratively qualified to occupy a strategic position in government offices in all regencies.

Meanwhile, many Papuans working as public servants in all government offices are not administratively qualified to occupy the jobs.

It means all jobs in the government offices will be occupied by the non-Papuans.

In such a situation, the House decided to create four new provinces in Papua.

My question, then, is: For whom have the new provinces been created?

It is not for the Indigenous Papuans.

The non-Papuans coming from other Indonesian provinces will certainly occupy the jobs.

The creation of new provinces, in turn, will withdraw more migrants to come to Papua. It will change Papua demographics.

The number of migrants will increase very quickly. Indigenous Papuans will become the minority in their own land.

So new provinces are created by Jakarta in order to marginalize native Papuans.

The formation of new provinces has nothing to do with the problems in Papua.

Papua has a vertical conflict between the Indonesian government and the indigenous Papuans.

There are also horizontal conflicts between the Papuan tribes and between the Papuans and the migrants.

Other problems in Papua include poverty, illegal logging, deforestation, environmental destruction, poor quality of education and health care services and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The House should know the lack of provinces is not the root cause of all these problems.

That's why these problems cannot be settled through the formation of new provinces.

For example, Papuans' poverty will be settled through establishing new provinces.

As is happening now in the newly created regencies, the government will spend a large amount of money to build new houses and offices, to buy new cars for the officials, and to pay for official and unofficial trips for government officials to all the new provinces.

Although Jakarta will form 10 to 20 new provinces in the Western half of the Island of New Guinea, the problems in Papua will remain unsettled.

The creation of new provinces is not the proper solution to Papua's problems -- but serves to address Jakarta's interests.

The Papuans know the problems in Papua have already been accommodated in Law no. 21/2001 on the special autonomy for Papua Province.

So the proper way of addressing the problems is not by creating more provinces but by implementing consistently the autonomy law.

Papuans, then, cannot continue relying much on the implementation of the autonomy law. Therefore, only one possibility remains -- to look for new solutions to Papua's problems.

And the new solution should be jointly discovered in a genuine dialogue between the government of Indonesia and the representative of Papuan People, with the help of a third neutral party as facilitator.

The writer is a lecturer at the Fajar Timur School of Philosophy and Theology in Abepura, Papua.

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