IssuesOfTheDay: Letter: Looking across Papua’s border

March 10, p. 8

I would respond to several comments on an article titled “How to deliver peace in troubled Papua province”, (The Jakarta Post, March 1). Those who believe you can look across the eastern border and see a peaceful and prosperous, independent PNG where there is harmony are sadly mistaken. PNG as a nation state barely exists outside the major settlements, as people living rurally never look beyond their clan and tribal affiliations.
To them the idea of a unitary nation state that incorporates all clans is an alien concept. If you call a taxi after sunset at Port Moresby it will come with two men. One is the driver and the other is his security guard. Crime rates are extremely high. More people die of gunshot injuries in PNG than in the Indonesian half of the land-mass.
A survey by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development puts PNG’s intentional homicide rate at 9.06 per 100,000 population and Indonesians at 1.05 per 100,000 population (slightly fewer than in Australia).
The same tribal mindset applies in West Papua. In an “independent” Papua, does anyone imagine that the individual clans, tribes and neighboring villages will forget their differences and swear allegiance to the flag? Wake up and smell the coffee. (By David, Jakarta)

Your comments:
Dear David, your statistics are strongly biased: “Development puts PNG’s intentional homicide rate at 9.06 per 100,000 population and Indonesians at 1.05 per 100,000 population [slightly fewer than in Australia].” You should compare the homicide rate in PNG to the homicide rate in West Papua, not Indonesia.
The scores of Papuans who are murdered every year by Indonesian security forces are at least one order of magnitude higher than the figure you give for PNG and at least two orders of magnitude higher than the average you give for Indonesia. You are the one who is still sleeping and who needs a strong coffee.
Filippo Gian Carlo
France

It seems like there is a lot of selective and biased material here. No one is saying PNG is a paradise. But at least the people of PNG are free to develop as a nation and are making real progress; they have a seat at the UN and can and do play an active role in world affairs.
The traditional landowners are the legal owners of their land. PNG has many problems to confront but at least they have their pride; it is their country, although they readily accept international help and advice.
And yes, Port Moresby does have its problems as a rapidly growing capital with associated security issues, but please don’t judge the whole country by the visible ills of one city.
Foreign visitors are free to enter and are welcomed to PNG and to travel throughout the country, hence the growing tourism industry — something not presently possible in Papua.
Nairdah
Sydney

Those who ever come to West Papua would learn and be amazed that different people throughout Indonesia (Sumatera, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Bali, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), Maluku) are accepted and respected by West Papuans as the same human beings living side by side.
West Papua itself has 252 ethnicities but they believe in Unity in Diversity, values they learned from Indonesia.
Thus, I think our negative thinking about them should be put aside for a while and we should think honestly about the positive things that they have done in order to make changes in their own lives.
If our minds are preoccupied by negative thoughts, then we always look down on other people and never help them.
Anyway, on the basis of the above philosophy, West Papuan never imagined that the coming national dialogue would lead to contradictory ideas from both parties, but it will bring a good solution to the long-standing conflict.
West Papuans have learned from both the Dutch and Indonesia that dialogue is the human way to solve every conflict, rather than by the gun, by disappearances, by jail sentences or by ignorance.
Izak Morin
Jayapura

David: You are a racist, plain and simple. The people you call “tribal” are every bit as “modern” as you are. You imagine your life to be free of violence, as you whizz around Jakarta in your air-conditioned life of exploitation?
To dismiss the capacity for self-rule of an island full of vibrant and diverse cultures on the basis of the violence of a post-colonial capital city: This is a most useless attempt to dress up your white supremacism as political theorizing.
Rankle
Malmo, Sweden

For many Papuans just one simple statistic tells the story: Over the years since their different political statuses were consolidated, the population of indigenous Papuans on either side of the border, which were previously roughly equal, is now dramatically less on the western side (Indonesia).
You do not need to endorse the idea of a post-colonial nation-state as a salvation for oppressed people in order to recognize that Papuans are suffering under Indonesian rule.
To affirm that Papuans are somehow doomed to remain ruled by “tribal” “passions” and are therefore unfit for self-determination harkens back to the most regressive colonialist racism and is unworthy of print.
Syumo
Tunis