With limited access to higher education in the provinces of Papua and West Papua, many young Papuans decide to leave their hometowns and migrate to major cities in Java, including Surabaya in East Java and Jakarta, to get a better education.

However, that opportunity, given only to a lucky few, also comes with a price: having to deal with everyday racism making their lives more difficult.

Andi Marani, 26, a native Manokwari who has been living in Yogyakarta for the last eight years, said that while he enjoyed the city and had made strong and loving friendships with fellow students from various cultural backgrounds, as a young Papuan, he also found it challenging to find a place to live there.

It was not unusual for landlords to express their approval of his rent application by phone only to reject him once they found out where he was from.

“They would say all the rooms were occupied or that they were doing renovations,” he told The Jakarta Post.    

“Sometimes, as I hang up the phone after another rejection from a kos-kosan[rooming house] owner, […] I think to myself, ‘What if I told them that I am from Makassar or other parts of Indonesia?’ If I told them that, would they allow me to stay, would it be easier for me to find a place to sleep?”  

When he began to feel desperate, he said, he was willing to beg the kos-kosan owners to give him and his fellow Papuans a place to stay.

“I told them we are university students. We need a place to live and sleep in our own room to study well. I told them if they need an agreement letter or they want us to meet the community around the house and the head of neighborhood units to ensure them that we are going to [behave], we would do that. But it’s still hard,” he said.

For Papuan students outside of Papua, racism is the norm.

Fennie Kocu, who was born in Timika, left her family to study in Yogyakarta when she was 13 years old, only to be the brunt of racial slurs.

“I heard them talking in Javanese, telling each other to stay away from me because they thought people like me, Papuans, smelled bad. They also asked me whether I had a television at home. They labeled us with degrading insults. As a kid, I did not have the courage to stand up for myself, so I just kept my mouth shut. But it hurt me and really affected my self-esteem,” she said.

With strikingly different features — darker skin, curly hair and a larger physique — from the local Javanese, Papuan students are easily spotted. Like Andi and Fennie, many have experienced a form of racism that rarely, if ever, made national headlines. That is, until a few days ago, when security personnel and members of nationalist groups called Papuan students “monkeys” during a fracas in Surabaya and Malang in, East Java.  

The incident triggered a wave of protests across Papua and West Papua that began on Monday and continued until Thursday.

The protestors argued that the derogatory terms showed that some Indonesians looked at Papuans as subhuman, which supported the narrative of pro-independence groups who believe that racism is at the core of injustices in the region.

Anie Soetjipto, a lecturer at the University of Indonesia’s (UI) School of Social and Political Sciences, explained that the stereotypes given to most ethnic groups in Indonesia were based on their cultural characters. But when it comes to Papua, these stereotypes are based on their physical differences.

“In Surabaya, when they call Papuan students ‘monkey’, they attack these students’ physical features and their race — this is racism,” she said.

The commonly held stereotypes of Papuans, she explained, were thus different from the ones about Javanese, Bataknese or Minangkabau people.

In its strongest statement, the Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP) called on Papuan students living outside of their province to return home. The assembly said it would send 50 of its members to Manado in North Sulawesi, Makassar in South Sulawesi, Yogyakarta and Bali next week to pick them up.

“Papuan university students must return home. We will come to them and [convince them to] return to their homeland, to this monkey city, to this monkey zoo,” MRP deputy chairman Jimmy Mabel said in Jayapura on Wednesday.

Jhon Gobay, the chairman of the Papuan Students Alliance (AMP), said the incidents in Surabaya and Malang were only the tip of the iceberg of discrimination and racism Papuan students must face every day.

“This [what happened in Surabaya] has happened for too many times in other cities. This is how Indonesia has been treating Papuans. And I don’t think it will stop anytime soon […] It is never about the lack of development in Papua; it is about how they treat us as human beings; it is about how they violated our human rights. For us, the only solution for this never-ending racial abuse is a referendum, giving Papuans the freedom to have their own nation,” he told the Post.

For Andi and Fennie, what matters now is for Indonesia to end racism against Papuans and they be treated as individuals who should not be judged by the actions of other Papuans and whose actions do not represent all
Papuans.

Andi said: “If one or two Javanese people or other students from other ethnicities make a mistake, their groups of friends won’t be judged by their mistake. But that is not the case with Papuan students. My friends and I are not seen as individuals; our actions will represent everyone from Sorong to Merauke. One mistake that we make will bring stigma to all Papuan students. And this is just not fair.”

Fennie expressed a similar sentiment: “I always feel the need to prove myself as a ‘good Papuan’ to them. There is a fear that I will not be accepted by them, that I am not good enough because of where I am from. And that makes me very sad.”

Popular

Volcano erupts in North Sulawesi, hundreds evacuated

Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

Ramadan boosts consumer confidence, retail sales