phill Parsons
And why are we taking these extraordinary steps. Because our first line of defence against refugees is playing its trump card to beat us up over Papua.
THE HOWARD Government, having excised offshore islands form the migration zone, now proposes to make the island continent the same as an offshore island.
This means that if an asylum seeker makes it to Australia they can and will be transferred offshore, most likely to Nauru, for ‘processing’ and resettlement in a third country, if one can be found.
Having destroyed a wild place at the end of Christmas Island to build an Immigration Detention Centre at some $400M cost are we now to have yet another process with another camp built elsewhere.
And why are we taking these extraordinary steps. Because our first line of defence against refugees is playing its trump card to beat us up over Papua.
Before the Tampa incident and SIEVX, the overloaded refugee boat where many drowned, [the incident still has dark mysteries surrounding it], Indonesia was a very porous barrier, allowing refugees to make their own, often unsafe, bids to cross over to an offshore island or even the Australian mainland.
Shades of the period after Vietnam reunified and boatloads of refugees made their way to foreign shores, including Australia.
And how was that refugee flow dealt with. We took them on board, it was seen as our duty. Eventually camps in surrounding countries like Malaysia and Thailand were set up and those with a genuine fear of persecution from the new government of Vietnam were found homes.
In the 1990’s Hong Kong forcibly repatriated to Vietnam the few who could not find refuge for whatever reason.
The former refugees are now a part of the Australian community along with their children and granchildren.
Why, in that period when many people from the Middle East were risking their lives to find refuge in Australia, we did not set up a proper que and process them expeditiously at offshore locations is beyond me, unless the political advantage of the White Australia Policy hang in the backs of the minds of the Howard government driven by One Nation’s Toehold on the political fortunes of the conservatives.
Now those people from the Middle East who made it here are attempting to become a part of the Australian community over a double hurdle of religious difference and the fact that many of the current terrorists are from similar backgrounds besides the difficulties all migrants have faced.
We now have a new proposal to make the border impenetrable after some Liberals sacrificed their chances at promotion to take a principled stand on the treatment of asylum seekers already here.
Following that stand have we seen these matters in the media recently. No.
So instead of waiting for an opportunity to stab Georgiou, Moylan and Baird in the back, in this case by changing the rules again, Howard should have been grateful that this weeping sore had been band aided.
But no, we had Papuans escaping from the persecution of Indonesia. All 43 who arrived and those who did not make it.
And so now changes must be made, honest Amanda admitting the obvious, under pressure from Indonesia. They took their Ambassador home.
What is directly driving this trickle of Papuans.
Various measures of genocide are being used on the Papuans.
Genetic by transmigration, the deliberate use of disease by sending HIV infected prostitutes to Papua where the understanding of the issue among Papuans is low, [We all know only bad Muslims and Christians will become infected] and by the old, and now less acceptable, tools of oppression, murdering your opponents, the Papuan leaders, the students and the resistance fighters of OPM
Classical Imperialism by the Javanese — behind the internal unrest in Indonesia
These are the matters that came to international attention confrontation in Borneo followed by exploitation of the forest resources now threatening the entire island’s forest habitats, and Exploitation of the resources of Aceh with a long running insurgency, and invasion and oppression of East Timor, and suppression of movements for independence in Papua.
From each of these places the wealth has flowed back to some Javanese and foreign elites, development in each place deferred to the never never time.
And the places that do not come to international attention, where logging degrades forest and the subsequent burning by ill educated citizens in search of their place in the sun covers Asia in a deadly smoke haze, the beaches that have been taken for private tourist hotel developments or the mines and petrochemical plants pollute the local environment. A subset of the matters that draw international attention. Remind you of something readers.
Confrontation had an important internal dynamic for the first Indonesian President Sukarno, part of rebuilding national cohesion through the exploitation of the external threat. Remind you of something readers.
The other places of international importance should be fresh in people’s minds, 2 of them resolved by the actions of modern Presidents whilst Papua is held onto tightly, its valuable resources currently supply a strong wealth flow and the prospects for further finds are high.
Transmigration
Indonesia has few ways to address its burgeoning population, one being the classical of colonialism, filling the outliers of the empire with the surplus population from the metropolis and so flooding the indigenous culture, introducing diseases new to them and providing a local reserve should any local rebellion occur. Remind you of something readers.
A program of education has developed a middle class in Indonesia, some 30M living in the major cities of the archipelago, but it leaves the other several hundred million ill informed and susceptible to the rantings of extremists.
This can easily be exploited if you mobilize one side of a division against another as we saw with the Muslim extremists of Lashkar Jihad used against Catholic communities. A power struggle played out with the lives of citizens far from the capital, no hands soiled here. Remind you of something readers.
Of course there is a danger when you educate a population, they are susceptible to ideas and a different sort of war has to be fought. One over history and culture. Remind you of something readers.
Development within a limited resource base is and will always remain difficult. Indonesia was fortunate to have oil fields. Less fortunate was that they were managed by the elite who siphoned off that element which could have been used to start programs of local development so that now communities may be using their local resources to grow themselves, eg; Madam Suharto aka Madam 10%.
I am not sure if they took the mindset of their former colonial masters or it was also their own from the time when Indonesia was broken into insular principalities.
Freeport mine is in Papua. Like the Bougainville copper mine it produces enormous wealth. Was that wealth used to assist the Papuans [or their brothers in Bougainville] to come into the world or did it flow into the tools of control and ego. A military with the latest in war toys for external threats that don’t exist, just great for dealing with troublesome locals.
Other huge developments to exploit Papua’s resources are proposed.
Megawati, when she was President, brokered an agreement for some autonomy for Papua. It has been eroded thereafter. A great stalling tactic whilst you work on fixing the problem.
If this reminds a reader of the Regional Forest Agreement and its addition of the Community Forest Agreement combined with a Forest Practices System that is now so toothless it must be viewed as a failure and a Private Timber Reserve process that is simply a way of overcoming objections by the use of a rubber stamp then I would not be surprised.
Now SBY is faced with his opportunities. Exploit the Australia bogey within Indonesia for his re-election, oppress the Melanesian inhabitants of Papua until they become like the other indigenous tribes of Indonesia and fatten some Javanese on the wealth taken from the rest of Indonesia.
This has not been the style of the current President.
He was trying to settle the Aceh issue until a seismic sea wave made the endeavors of Homo sapiens into many dead among much rubble and wreckage. In the interests of rebuilding that malay culture the struggle for independence and control of Aceh’s wealth has been suspended.
He has left Timor Leste to find its own path to the sun. May they overcome their current troubles and enter an age of growth. Hardliners may have to bend a little there.
He has the opportunity to give Papuans some real autonomy with the Republic, especially in maintaining their culture, in providing health and education and in using their resources to assist in guiding whatever development Papua wishes to take within the whole. This is the win for all concerned.
Failure to do so will see this ongoing sore sour relations between Australia and Indonesia, as the people of this country are repelled by the idea of a supposedly modern state willfully destroying a stone age people to steal their wealth.
phill Parsons’ black armband view of Indonesia’s oppression of Papuan desires can also be taken as a description of the treatment of the first Tasmanians by the colonists, however, this comment is unlikely to appear on the new ABC once the board is stacked.
Howard has a difficult task in balancing the experiences that all Australians have had with Indonesia, Confrontation 1962-65, Timor 1975-99, the refugee flow from there and the Bali bombings, with serving the national interest by maintaining civil relations at a government to government level with a neighboring country whose location will make it important in Australian affairs whilst they both exist.
Assisting that country to give its population a decent standard of living based on education and health, supported by good government is essential to our own security and well being.
A country that is considering a nuclear power plant on a fault line, that is over exploiting its indigenous forests, that has reduced its fish resources and has a growing population is not one well placed to face a future where dangerous climate change will add to the pressures it communities face.
