Letter

In response to Indonesia remembers the coming of democracy, 27 years later

And not a word about West Papua

The Jakarta Post editorialises bravely by recalling how Indonesia’s vibrant democratic tapestry has been woven “of our blood and tears”. But the weaving of that tapestry is still going on with the blood and tears of West Papua.

We have a regional problem to face, namely how we define the TNI’s ongoing West Papuan operations even while the 27 years is being celebrated, even as we are told an ominous revision of the TNI Law comes into force focusing upon the expansion of “military operations other than war”.

Is the Jakarta Post expecting us, as regional friends, to join with the editorial in forgetting what the “coming of democracy” has meant for West Papua and for Melanesia after 64 years of Indonesian “settlement” of a territory with such indigenous human and mineral wealth?

The Jakarta Post editorial raises an issue for us even as we turn to openly face all in our Asian and Southwest Pacific region with peaceful face-to-face post-colonial neighbourliness. But how are we then to speak out against the unjust colonisation of Melanesian West Papua, in some quarters justified by a militarising ideology that construes Indonesia as the “Father of all Nesias”?

— Bruce Wearne from Ballarat Central