- The Guardian
- Issue #2130
West Papua: The Jakarta method
Before the US – especially the CIA – meddled in the situation, the Dutch government had started to give the Melanesian people of Papua Barat (West Papua) their independence. However, the US interfered and forced the country to be handed over to Indonesia – an ASIAN nation.
West Papuans are not ASIANS! The only common factor that they had was that the Dutch colonised both countries.
Then in 1965, the CIA assisted general Suharto to overthrow the government of Sukarno and replace it with a fascist dictatorship which lasted until 1998. The death toll caused by the mass murders of progressive Indonesian people by the Indonesian military (TNI) and its vigilantes numbered between 500,000 and 3 million.
This brutal overthrow became known as “the Jakarta Method” and the CIA has used it in about 25 other countries since. [See Vincent Bevins’ book The Jakarta Method – Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World]
In 1968, Suharto said that he would give the West Papuans an Act of Free Choice. The TNI was sent to intimidate the people to vote to stay with Indonesia. Those who didn’t were murdered or “disappeared.” The whole process was totally undemocratic and representatives chosen by the TNI were told they had to vote publicly in front of Indonesian soldiers. The UN officials who were there were useless.
The exercise was a total sham and the West Papuans refer to it as the “Act of NO Choice!”
Suharto’s dictatorship then went on to commit genocide in Papua Barat – about 500,000 people murdered since 1962; East Timor – where the TNI wiped out about a 1/3 of the population; and Acheh – where the TNI wiped out tens of thousands. Drastic action was also taken against parts of Indonesia where the people rebelled against the total brutality of the TNI – eg the Moluccan Islands (Maluku).
On-going resistance by the East Timorese and Achehnese, the massive corruption of the Suharto dictatorship, the Asian economic crisis in 1968 with Indonesia’s economy in severe crisis led to the downfall of the corrupt Suharto family and its cronies.
This led to an independence referendum in East Timor supervised properly by the UN despite the mass murders of pro-independence East Timorese by the TNI and its militias.
There should also be a UN organised independence referendum in West Papua too, but the US and its allies would block it. The reason being that along with the Indonesian government, US corporations have profited greatly out of the stealing of West Papua’s resources of copper, gold, oil, timber, and other forest products.
The TNI genocide in West Papua continues today. And looks very likely to continue under the presidency of the brutal and corrupt Prabowo Subianto – a former TNI general and a Suharto son-in-law.
If the leaders of the US and its allies were really committed to democracy, human rights, social justice, the rule of law, independence and fair dealing between nations as they claim, the UN would be able to supervise a true Act of Free Choice in the country without the presence of the mass-murdering and torturing TNI to terrorise the people which it tried to do in East Timor.
A very important book exposing this very sordid and shameful history is JFK Vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia by Professor Greg Poulgrain of the University of South Queensland.
UNTUK PAPUA BARAT – MERDEKA!
Andy Alcock
