INDONESIA NEEDS THE MILITARY CO-OPERATION of Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand to preserve peace, stability and security in the region. This is an enduring message that was stressed again last week at a function hosted by Indonesian Ambassador to PNG, Bom Soejanto. The function was organised to celebrate the 63rd anniversary of the Indonesian armed forces. Dignitaries from diplomatic corps and senior members of the PNG disciplinary forces were amongst the attendees who gathered at the Ambassador’s residence in Korobosea (Port Moresby). The news article from The National (20/10/08) privileges the relationship between Indonesia and PNG. Ambassador Soejanto reports that Indonesia and PNG enjoy a mutual policy of military co-operation.
Each party has its own defence attache stationed in each other’s capital city. There have been exchange visits by high ranking officers on both sides. There have been bilateral seminars and information sharing though subject matter and expert change. There are also opportunities for PNGDF members to either study or train in Indonesia. The two countries are also co-operating in joint exercises and patrols and joint exercies and patrols and joint border operations due to a defence cooperations agreement drafted three years ago and the draft plan will be finalised soon
Security and internal stability within the region is of paramount importance and it becomes increasingly so when threats from Islamic fundamentalism abound along with the reports of human trafficking and illegal immigration across international borders. However, Indonesia has a particular vested interest in talking about the military co-operation with Papua New Guinea. It is not a mistaken assumption that Indonesia requires the co-operation of PNG in order to maintain its control over West Papua. No doubt part of the co-operation would mean that PNG continues to acknowledge that West Papua is an integral part of Indonesia.
So long as PNG keeps quiet and ignores what Indonesia is doing to West Papua and its indigenous people, that would be seen as part of the deal to co-operate with Indonesia. What Indonesia imposes and executes upon West Papuans is already legitimised under the terms of the agreement and there is no way PNG could speak on behalf of its Melanesian brothers and sisters. In fact it is always a very sad thing to acknowledge that the PNG Government has never showed any moral concern about the plight and struggles of West Papuans. West Papuan resistance to Indonesia’s presence is seen and taken as a threat to the territorial integrity of Indoensia. Under the terms of such mutual co-operation, PNG must support what Indonesia is doing to West Papua and the Melanesians of West Papua.
I wonder what was going on in the hearts and minds of the PNG security personnel who gathered at the Ambassador’s residence to celebrate 63 years of Indonesia’s military anniversary? Apart from the cocktails and finger-foods, I wonder what was going in the hearts and minds of those PNG State Officials who attended the ceremony? I wonder whether if the important PNG State Officials would be thinking about what the Indonesian military has done to countless number of West Papuans who have been killed, murdered, raped and disappeared mysteriously in the last 40 years of Indonesia’s military presence in West Papua? But its not only West Papuans by the way. This celebration is happening only a few months after we heard of Indonesia’s military incursions into PNG and their abuse against Papua New Guineans who live in border villages.
So are we celebrating and therefore participate by complicity in what Indonesian military has done to the Melanesians of West Papua in the last 40 years? I read the message from the Indonesian Ambassador with a pint of salt. It appears as a political strategy to neutralise any kind of moral sensitivity towards the campaign for a FREE and INDEPENDENT West Papua. By emphasising mutual regard and co-operation, the message causes Papua New Guinea and other countries in the region to disregard what the Indonesian military has done and continues to do to West Papuans. Indonesian military has inflicted the most brutal and unconceivable atrocities against the Melanesians of West Papua. Except for diplomacy and State morality, there is no reason to celebrate 63 years of Indonesia military hostility because 40 of those years has been spent on a cruel policy of decimating and obliterating the Melanesian peoples of West Papua.
Published on
October 15, 2008 in
Politics.
WHEN SILENCE ISN’T GOLDEN! is not just a cute aphorism but is equally a poignant imagery that puts the sonoric into a metaphoric dialogue with the perceptual as if these senses share a unity to which our linguistic habits of thought seem too eager to compartmentalise and segregate. The imagery also invoke its own inversion: if silence could also be golden, one wonders what riches (and problems) will accompany its presence? The phrase silence is not golden comes from a recent editorial viewpoint expressed in the Solomon Star in which the anonymous author casts a methodic doubt over the ”way of silence”. Here the methodical “way of silence” refers not to anything like a shamanic scheme of cognitive insight or a philosophical view of contemplative wisdom but to the field of moral visibility and public accountability.
While bearing in mind the power and eloquence of silence, the Solomon Islander who pens that editorial article argues that at times, keeping silent offers the best possible exit route out of a situation of conflict and doubt but at other times “silence is not the way to go”. If the political theory concerning the spiral of silence means that one’s perception of the distribution of public opinion motivates people to express their political opinions, then the author of that letter was doing just that by questioning why the Solomon Islands government was committing itself to a coveted policy of silence over several pressing issues. Firstly, it appears that the city of Honiara has been subjected to bouts of power cuts in recent weeks but the city residents have got no explanation from the government about this situation. The only explanation the residents of Honiara got was defeaning silence.
In retrospect, the author detects a pattern in successive governments in Solomon Islands to maintain a particular attitude of silence over matters of public importance and fears that the “silences are growing in strength“. The examples cited include the commission of inquiry into the 1991 plane crash in Marau (in eastern Guadacanal) where 15 people died and the recent inquiry into the China town riot of April 2006. Referring to the recent inquiry, the author asks: “Why has the government gone so silent about the findings of the Report and is not sharing its findings with the public?”
This Solomon Isander is not alone in expressing concerns like this about how endless amounts of public money have been used in commissions of inquiries with no conclusive statements or decisive actions taken to address the motivations behind the commission of inquiries in the first place. Instead what people get back is a response characterised by indifference and silence on the part of governments. This is certainly true in Papua New Guinea where numerous inquiries have not seen the light of day. The present Somare government of PNG for instance has been very silent over a number of issues including the clandestine operation that saw Julian Moti being spirited into Solomon Islands in the cover of the night in a decommissioned PNG military airplane. Other issues include the Ekonet deal, the off-shore account in Singapore involving monies earned as royalties from logging exports, the dollar-diplomacy saga involving Taiwan, the purchase of Tolukuma gold mine and the “unconstitutional” basis of the recent gas deal. These are but a sample of scandals that have made controversy synonymous with endemic silence.
All of these cases go to highlight that a pervasive culture of silence has come to characterise the nature of Melanesian state governments to respond to the legitimate demands of accountability and trusteeship that its citizens rightly deserve to have. Instead the deepening spiral of silence is likely to insert a wedge between the people and the governments with the result that issues of trust and accountability will turn into an administrative project of managing suspicion and mistrust and ultimately governance will become a nightmare of jeopardies. Unless the statecraft is based intrinsically and inevitably on an opposition between the state and its citizens, the admonition behind the imagery of silence is not golden speaks to a problem of disunity between the State and its subjects.
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