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The tales of Palestine, Indonesia and a forgotten colony
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo recently declared, at a meeting of ulema from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, that Palestine was on “each Indonesian’s breath
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resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo recently declared, at a meeting of ulema from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, that Palestine was on “each Indonesian’s breath.”
In December of 2017, he stated “anything related to providing support to Palestine is part of the commitment of our country and our people.” In 2016 Indonesia hosted the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Fifth Extraordinary Summit of Palestine and Al-Quds Al Sharif in Jakarta.
At that conference, sub-titled “A just solution for Palestine”, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi expressed concern over Israel’s use of force against Palestinian civilians, as well as the changing demographics of Jerusalem in favor of Jewish settlers: Jokowi, for his part, urged unity in the struggle for Palestinian rights. Indeed, an independent Palestinian state is one of Jokowi’s only recognizable foreign policy interests.
These pro-Palestinian positions are nominally in line with the Indonesian government’s image of itself as a state that, once colonized, can now speak for the still-colonized.
Palestine also featured prominently in the 2015 anniversary celebrations of the 1955 Bandung conference, which long ago served as an appraisal of decolonization’s progress, and was the launching pad for the Non-Aligned Movement. The government considered the 2015 conference’s “declaration on Palestine” to be one of its most significant outcomes.
The government’s, and Jokowi’s, pro-Palestinian stance, are worth exploring within Indonesia’s boundaries, especially in its last openly contested colony — Papua.
Both Palestine and Papua are controlled by governments whose sovereignty is disputed by marginalized indigenous persons of a different religion from the majority; those indigenous persons are often jailed and killed as a result. Protests are met with state bullets.
The killing of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza in May of 2018 has as its counterpoint the massacre of four unarmed Papuan teens and the wounding of 17 others in Enarotali by Indonesian police and military in December 2014: The latest of many, notable among them Biak in 1998, Jayapura in 1984, and largest of all, the killing of thousands in the Dani uprising of 1977-1978.
No member of the Indonesian security forces has been called to account for these murders. Now Indonesia demands justice for dead Palestinians whilst denying it to dead Papuans.
Papuans should logically make common cause with Palestinians.
Both Palestinian and Papuan populations have seen their rights and lands pervasively encroached upon by settler populations from the state’s majority religion; those settlers are implicitly supported by the government whose sovereignty is disputed.
Retno’s concern about Jerusalem’s demographics has parallel in Papua: since the Indonesian takeover, Papuans have become a minority in their own land, as non-Papuans from across the archipelago have inundated the territory and monopolized economic opportunities.
Here Indonesia demands the protection of a Palestinian minority’s population centers whilst diluting its own colonized and restive indigenous Christian population with more pliant Muslims, cowed by state power generations previously.
Both indigenous areas are marked by government malaise and neglect, most visible in a lack of essential services, whilst blame is assigned by the sovereign to unskilled, corrupt and politicized indigenous elites operating in restrained environments of local autonomy — and usually run by the worst examples of the indigenous population, those co-opted by the state.
The rights of both Palestinians and Papuans have become chimeric causes célèbres for the leaders of neighboring states who embrace these respective causes in part to distract domestic public attention away from the internal issues such leaders fail to address.
Just as past, and no doubt, future, governments in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and other Pacific states embrace the Papuan independence cause, so Indonesia’s rulers join the long tradition of Muslim leaders using “Palestine” to distract from endemic corruption, rapacious civil servants and elites, conspiratorial and largely unaccountable security structures, failing educational systems, growing intolerance of religious and other minorities, and dire conditions in their own colonies, among other issues.
Papua was the last part of the Dutch East Indies to be occupied by Indonesia. The United States government forced the Dutch to hand over Papua to Indonesia in 1961 as a way to keep the latter from drifting further into the communist camp.
The threat of closer ties with communism allowed Indonesia to accomplish politically what it failed to do militarily; the Israelis, for their part, knew how to fight, seizing the West Bank in 1967.
Two years later, the Indonesians cemented their control over Papua through a faked referendum — the ironically named “act of free choice”. The vast majority of Papuans, then and now, support independence, and in the spirit of the 1955 Bandung conference, it was their right.
To the Indonesian nationalists of that era, Papua was the last step in Dutch de-colonization: for them Papua was “liberated” by Indonesia, and this myth is taught in Indonesian schools, with a few token Indonesian nationalists of Papuan blood offered in support of a hypothesis that disintegrates upon the most cursory examination.
The Papuans traded a benign colonizer for a brutal one: the new Indonesian state, the colonial abused, became abusers and exploiters in their own right, just as Israel has done.
Papua’s colonial status is palpably visible to anyone who spends time there, from the moment one’s plane disgorges migrants, rich and poor, to be picked up by migrant taxi drivers and shuttled into migrant-dominated towns that serve as fulcrums for the exploitation of Papua’s immeasurable natural wealth. Despite the clichéd anti-colonial articulation of Indonesian nationalists, Papua is kept because it is immensely valuable. Its people are an afterthought.
This does not mean that Papua will be decolonized. Barring an unanticipated event, or the dissolution of the Indonesian state as a whole, Papua will remain Indonesian. Bearing this in mind, Indonesia should rationally gravitate toward Israel and other obstinate holders of contested lands, as Israel discretely did toward the late state of Yugoslavia.
Papuans, for their part, should logically make common cause with Palestinians, but for now, a simplistic “Christian versus Muslim” narrative is embraced in Papuan independence circles, alongside the fantasy that, if only the Israelis knew of Papua’s struggle, they would give them guns.
And so the justice that Indonesia seeks in the Middle East, it denies in its sovereign territory. If Jokowi wants to speak credibly of freedom from abuse, then he would do well to ensure such freedoms in Indonesia.
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The writer is a Myanmar-based research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He authored Papua’s Insecurity: State Failure in the Indonesian Periphery, East-West Center Policy Studies, 2015.
