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Papua, Kashmir: Peace in the backyard, peace in the world
As different as the histories and cases of Kashmir and Papua are, there are similarities.
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Protesters burn posters featuring images of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a protest in Quetta on August 6, 2019, a day after India stripped the disputed Kashmir region of its special autonomy. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed August 6 to challenge at the UN security council India’s decision to strip Kashmir of its special autonomy, and demanded action from the international community as tensions soared between the nuclear-armed rivals. (AFP/Bananas Khan )
Why is there so much strife in the world?
I was pleased to learn that Indonesia has attempted to contribute to world peace, brokering a number of Muslim-related conflicts.
I was glad to find out that academically we’re also pretty serious about peace when I discovered the Rumah Perdamaian (Peace House) of the School of Strategic and Global Studies (SKSG) at the University of Indonesia (UI). The Peace House has been in existence for about a year, while the SKSG has been around from the 1980s under different names.
About two weeks ago, the SKSG conducted two seminars in a row, on Kashmir and Papua, both embroiled in violent conflicts.
The one on Sept. 16, titled “Kashmir: a fair solution”, presented four speakers: Pakistani Ambassador to Indonesia Abdul Salik Khan, Baskoro Nugroho Ajie of the directorate of South and Central Asia from the Foreign Ministry, SKSG lecturer Mulawarman Hannase and Abu Aly, a lecturer at the Islamic State Institute (UIN) Laa Roibain Bogor. Also present was Zahir Khan, head of the Kashmir Solidarity Forum.
The partitioning of India in 1947 resulted in a territorial dispute involving India, Pakistan and China. Pakistan controls one-third of the territory, India one half and China the rest.
However, relations continued to be strained, with none of the countries formally recognizing the area of the other, resulting in four wars fought between India and Pakistan, in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999.
