wfn.org | WCC NEWS: West Papuans "traumatized" WCC team tells Indonesian government

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World Council of Churches - News Release

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>For immediate release - 29/07/2008 10:28:36

WEST PAPUANS "TRAUMATIZED" WCC TEAM TELLS INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT

Free high resolution photos available (see below)

West Papuans have yet to recover from the trauma of human rights
violations. At the same time continuing in-migration is
threatening to marginalize them in their resource-rich province,
an ecumenical team from the World Council of Churches (WCC) told
top-level Indonesian government officials.

Papuans appear to be traumatized because of migration to their
island, Rev. Prof. James Haire told Indonesian social welfare
minister Aburizal Bakrie 24 July.

A theology professor from the Uniting Church in Australia, Haire
was one of a six-member ecumenical team of "Living Letter (
http://overcomingviolence.org/index.php?id=5725 )s" who
visited West Papua and other parts of Indonesia from 18-24 July.

Living Letters teams representing the member churches of the WCC
travel to locations around the world in advance of
theInternational Ecumenical Peace Convocation (
http://overcomingviolence.org/en/iepc )in 2011. They listen,
learn, share approaches and challenges in overcoming violence and
in peace-making, and pray together for peace in the community and
in the world. 

"As Indonesia democratizes and undergoes reform, and thus
experiences the free movement of population from other provinces
into Papua, an irony is that these factors unintentionally tend
to marginalize the indigenous Papuans," said Haire, speaking on
behalf of the Living Letters team.

At the root of the problem is a transmigration programme
sponsored by the 1965-1998 Suharto government. It had encouraged
other Indonesians to migrate to West Papua in order to make the
Papuans, who had long been fighting for independence, a minority
in their own territory. 

The post-Suharto government stopped the transmigration
programme, but it could not stop waves of other Indonesians
seeking to do business in West Papua, again tilting the economic
scale to the disadvantage of less educated, largely illiterate
Papuans. 

With the continuing spontaneous in-migration of mostly Muslim
traders, the population now is about 2.4 million, with about 1.4
to 1.5 million West Papuans, most of whom belong to churches such
as the Christian Church of West Papua or the Indonesian Christian
Church (GKI), a WCC member. 

Autonomy has recently been granted to Papuans. However, trained
bureaucrats and public servants still often come from outside the
island, again unintentionally tending to disadvantage the
position of the Papuans, note d Haire.

"All these emerging marginalization trends plus the serious
concerns for education, healthcare, and economic livelihoods need
to be addressed," he added.

>Give and take

In response, social welfare minister Bakrie told the Living
Letters team that the Indonesian central government had not
failed West Papua. 

"The central government actually gives five times more budget to
West Papua than to the Javanese and other provinces because the
Papuans are too backward," he said. "Other provinces are actually
subsidizing Papua."

One problem, according to Bakrie, is that the new West Papua
autonomous provincial government has to spend 80 percent of the
funds given to them for facilities such as office buildings and
equipment. 

"Another problem arises when people more adept in trading and
com merce come to West Papua and end up more economically well
off," he said. He stressed that under democracy the government
cannot stop people from other provinces doing business in the
mineral and timber-rich province, which comprises one fifth of
Indonesia’s total area.

Despite what the social minister said was a substantial amount
of funds the central government is pouring to West Papua, it
appears that the central government is still getting more from
the province than what it is giving back, says Dr Mathews George
Chunakara, the WCC programme executive for Asia, who accompanied
members of the Living Letters team to West Papua. 

He cites the poor health care, low literacy rate, and poverty of
the Papuans despite the gold, copper and timber that have been
extracted and continue to be extracted in the province. 

"This situation is a great cause for anxiety and anguish for the
Christian Church of Papua because its members have yet to recover
from the trauma of massive human rights violations" suffered
under Suharto, he said. 

Human rights violations in West Papua were also denounced by the
WCC before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in
March 2008. "Papuans still are subject to torture, ill-treatment,
arbitrary arrests and unfair trials by the Indonesian
authorities," the UN body was told (
http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=5684 ). The WCC oral intervention
blamed the "ongoing militarization" of the island for this
"pattern of intimidation" against Papua's indigenous people. 

Earlier on 23 July, the Living Letters team also met with the
deputy foreign affairs minister Andri Hadi, more regretful of
past government policies in Papua. 

"We made a mistake in Papua. We acknowledge that justice has not
been well-served there," he told the team, citing the
transmigration policy that had been in place some 15 years under
Suharto’s regime. 

But he assured that the central government is trying hard to
empower local people so they can become leaders in their own
communities and need not "import" outsiders to lead Papuans. 

More information on the Living Letters visit to Indonesia:
http://overcomingviolence.org/en/iepc/living-letters-visits/indonesia.html

Photo gallery:

http://overcomingviolence.org/en/news-and-events/photos/visit-to-indonesia.html

High resolution versions of these pictures are available upon
request.

>WCC member churches in Indonesia:
>http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=4671

Additional information:Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507
6363media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith,
witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical
fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings
together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches
representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic
Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from
the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.