Such “corona complaints” piled up ahead of Christmas and the year-end holidays, marked by groans, last-minute cancellations and massive losses, again, in tourism. But in the easternmost provinces of Papua and West Papua, people just want peace. With thousands having fled gunshots, being at home with the family with a meal would be the loveliest Christmas and New Year’s gift.  

Yet days before Christmas, the news that some 5,000 Indonesian Military (TNI) troops will be deployed to Papua raised eyebrows.

“December is the most awaited month,” wrote Filep Wamafma, West Papua’s Regional Representatives Council member. “Christmas ornaments are displayed […] along with the playing of Christmas songs all around town. […]  Papuans’ souls are united in Christmas celebrations […] Betel and nuts are the unifying dishes.”

But then comes the jolting news of troops being sent across Papua, he added. 

“Have that many troops been deployed to other areas in Indonesia?” Filep wrote Wednesday on the JPNN news website.

Investigations into violent incidents and killings confirmed heightened insecurity in certain areas, but the new deployment, he wrote, would only reflect repeated “militarism” that never solved anything.

Refugees needing water or firewood “are sometimes hindered by locals”, said humanitarian volunteer Raga Kogeya. Locals were hostile toward displaced people or feared being branded “OPM”, or the Free Papua Movement, jubi.co.id reported from Jayapura. The church in Nduga regency in the highlands claims 37,000 residents have fled to neighboring regencies since 2018.  

By December 2019, over 240 Nduga residents had died. Apart from construction workers, who pro-independence militia claimed to have shot, dozens of infants have died from sickness and starvation, according to investigations involving the regency administration, the local church and activists.

Just because few are watching, potential triggers of unrest are too often downright reckless — authorities know full well they have enough public support as long as they are defending the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.

On Nov. 17, the Merauke Police in Papua reportedly arrested 54 participants of a hearing with the Papuan People’s Assembly, held to discuss the extension of the Papua Special Autonomy Law. Police said they suspected intentions of subversion amid many objections to extending the law, which expires next year.  

On Wednesday, the Army’s Military Police chief, Lt. Gen. Dodik Widjanarko, expressed a rare acknowledgement of crimes committed by TNI personnel, saying nine soldiers in Intan Jaya regency had been named suspects for burning the bodies of two civilians who were identified as relatives of the murdered elderly reverend Jeremiah Zanambani, suspected of being shot by soldiers on Sept. 19.

The two men died following “exaggerated action beyond decency” during an interrogation to determine whether they were separatists, said Dodik.

“To eradicate traces [of the deaths], the victims’ bodies were burnt and their ashes were disposed in the Julai River […].”   

Meanwhile, a recent appeal from Papuan church leaders reveals an even deeper pain than the loss and fear from recent violence and suspected extra-judicial killings: the sense of being abandoned.   

On Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, 147 Catholic leaders in Papua and West Papua wrote to the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI).  

“We are surprised and [we] feel forgotten on hearing that the KWI instantly stated its response and expression of mourning regarding the [beheadings] in […] Sigi, Central Sulawesi, while the grief and anxiety over the murders of Papuans seemed to have escaped the attention, protection and solidarity of the KWI,” said Father John Bunay as quoted on katolikana.com website.

Actually, Church leaders at the national level have urged President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to withdraw all the military troops from Papua as civilians have always been the bulk of casualties between the military and whatever armed group soldiers were supposedly hunting.

Investigators of the pastor’s murder in Intan Jaya and the ensuing empty villages from which hundreds fled in fear of their safety, questioned whether the violence is part of efforts to overcome resistance to the government plans to begin to extract the gold in the so-called Wabu block near the Freeport mines — estimated to reach a whopping 8 million troy ounces.

Both sides of the “Papua troubles” have been talking past each other, with hardly any common ground.

Papuans have repeatedly expressed they still suffer racism while the country’s political and business elite only care about their gold and copper, vast arable land and other economic opportunities.

The general disinterest over the Papuans‘ failure to enjoy those riches contrasts with the bristling to every report of the “raising of the Morning Star”, the flag of the separatists, which brings back the insulting “loss” of East Timor.

At best, Indonesians believe that by jailing corruptors, mending the special autonomy law and improving Papuans’ education and infrastructure, everything will surely be OK. Independence is out of the question as the United Nations’ approval made the 1969 integration permanent, our officials, experts and even media reiterate. Therefore, “stop fantasizing” about representing Papuans, one of our young brilliant diplomats told a Vanuatu delegate at a UN September gathering on human rights.

Some Papuans have tirelessly tried to shake fellow Indonesians out of their own fantasy.

As some describe themselves as “stowaways” or “uninvited guests” to the ship or house called Indonesia, indigenous Papuans are always suspected as troublemakers aiming to sink the ship or burn the house down, the late priest Neles Tebay wrote.

“Therefore, they never feel at home in Indonesia for they always deal with Indonesian security forces,” he wrote.

Neles had listed “nine stakeholders” in a “conflict-prevention policy for Papua”, stressing the government should not “monopolize” the process of such a policy. Yet apart from students and migrants, the stakeholders also include the “separatist” organizations —precisely  those the government and politicians refuse to acknowledge, just as they refused to talk to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) before the December 2004  earthquake and tsunami.

Some have asked: Would the war have ended in Aceh without the terrible calamity?

In post-terrorism days, Papua’s aspirants for independence lack the global sympathy the Timorese earlier enjoyed. The government, thus, has ample space to “monopolize” the formulation of any policy on Papua.

Yet the inclusion of local perspectives with Papuan intellectuals advising the President rings hollow; it’s hard to see those claimed attempts to improve the sense of Papuans’ Indonesian citizenship as long as they don’t feel at home.

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The writer is a freelance journalist.