The West Papuan capital of Manokwari kicked off on Monday the public protests in Papua as a response to racial abuse in Malang and Surabaya on Aug. 16 and 17.

Accordingly, the Papuans started burning the provincial legislative council building down. Shortly after the riot, the indigenous people in Jayapura, the capital of neighboring Papua, held a long march to the governor’s office for another show of protest.

Based on our team field report, three issues were raised during the series of events: structural marginalization in the economy, politics and environment; discrimination in the form of racial abuse; and a referendum as an alternative to address the first and second issues.

The same tone of demonstrations also raised occurred in Bintuni, Serui, Yapen, Biak, Kaimana, Nabire and Merauke. Small-scale riots erupted in Manokwari, Sorong, Teminabuan, Timika and Fakfak. According to locals, some residents have been injured and one death was reported in Fakfak after the clash between the “pro-Indonesia” group and “pro-independence” groups.

The question remains, why did most of the riots flare in certain places? There are three answers to this. First is the slow police investigation into those involved in the racial abuse cases in East Java, according to Jayapura-based lawyer Latifa Anum Siregar. The Papuans initiated the protests in response to the ill-treatment.

Second is the involvement of civil society figures and local elites. Prodemocracy activist Antoni Ibra found that all groups, including youth and student organizations, church and customary leaders, and local politicians, led the peaceful demonstration in Jayapura. Governor Lukas Enembe even joined the mass protest. Likewise, Catholic priests led the peaceful rally in Merauke.

Third is local economic marginalization as a result of demographic changes. The small-scale riots broke out in migrant-dominated areas like Fakfak, Manokwari, Sorong and Timika, where non-Papuans have settled and marginalized indigenous Papuans. In his 2017 article “The Great Divide: West Papuan Demographics Revisited”, researcher Jim Elmslie shows that non-Papuans have dominated coastal areas, such as in Sorong and a few in highland areas, such as Timika.

One local Papuan told me the indigenous people could not compete with migrant settlers since they had been well-prepared to run businesses before arriving in Papua. Such demographic and economic marginalization, along with a catalyst such as racial abuse, provide a pretext to trigger social conflicts.

Racial abuse against Papuans has been commonly practiced ever since Papua became part of Indonesia through the 1969 Act of Free Choice.

Their physical appearance is the most common targeted element of the abuse. Intimidation and discrimination are also part of their daily life experience when they are away from their homeland, as in the Malang and Surabaya cases.

The police’s besieging of a Papuan student dormitory in Yogyakarta in 2016 led seven young Papuan students to jail,
although the students were merely expressing their concerns about political problems in their homeland.

The students found difficulties in renting boarding houses due to the stigma levelled on them as drunkards and troublemakers.

The most recent cases of racial abuse merely serve as a common gesture to narrow down the deep-seated grievances among Papuans.

The racial abuse has provided us a space and an opportunity to reflect on our failure in the event of nation-state consolidation.

Competing nationalism among Papuans and Indonesians is a crucial grievance, but remains unresolved. Historically, Papua was not part of the nation-state building of Indonesia.

For the indigenous Papuans, they were not rooted in Indonesian nationalism. The project of becoming one nation had a different trajectory paved for Indonesian and Papuans.

In the 1960s, educated Papuan elites were given a chance by the Dutch colonists to form their own nation. However, the plan was never realized.

The United Nations-sanctioned Act of Free Choice, which hand-picked only 1,024 locals to participate in a referendum, legitimized Indonesia’s claim over Papua.

For many Papuans, however, Indonesia has “robbed” their political right to become an independent nation. Hence, they began their long-running struggle to reclaim their right, either through nonviolence or armed movements.

The historical burden of competing nationalism has been passed on to Papuan youths who have access to education inside and outside Papua.

The Papuan student and youth organizations, such as the Papuan Student Alliance and the West Papua National Committee, have long called for a referendum to clarify the competing historical perspectives.

Their experience of being in conflict-affected society since childhood reinforces their sentiment of being overlooked. When they express their aspiration publicly, they face constant racial abuse. Such mistreatment in fact is a legacy of the Dutch colonists toward people in their colony.

Other than a referendum, another solution to the competing nationalism and its impact is a dialogue. Civil society groups, such as NGOs and the church, have proposed this mechanism.

The idea is bringing together the conflicting parties to share and discuss their different perspectives and aspirations to resolve Papuan political, historical, economic, human rights problems. Yet, dialogue is not popular among Papuan militant and armed groups.

On the other hand, the central government seems to opt for a security approach to deal with social conflicts in Papua.

Just recently the government formed a new military command in West Papua, which means deployment of more reinforcement troops to Papua.

The question is to what extent the security approach and other reactive and ad hoc measures can manage or even address the long-running grievances and distrust among Papuans toward Jakarta.

The Nduga case is an obvious example of how the central government poorly handles the Papuan armed conflict.

__________________________

The writer is a researcher at the Marthinus Academy-Jakarta, conducting fieldwork in Papua.

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