1/14/2001
I pulled this from the Sydney Morning Herald. It shows Australia's long track record in appeasing Indonesia.
Time for Australia to stop appeasing Jakarta
Supporting the legitimate aspirations of Aceh and West Papua won't necessarily mean destroying Indonesia, writes Scott Burchill.
The increasingly vocal opposition to independence for West Papua (Irian Jaya) by the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, places him firmly in a long-standing diplomatic tradition. Why have successive Australian governments been so consistently against any changes to the boundaries of the Republic of Indonesia?
Three points deserve consideration.
First, Australia's foreign policy elite is allergic to small, economically dependent states in the neighbourhood.
It's not just diplomatically more convenient to deal with a single metropolitan centre which controls the whole Indonesian archipelago. Strong central administration also reduces the likelihood that economically unviable, politically unstable micro states (for example, East Timor) will emerge to become dependent on Australian aid.
It is also much easier to negotiate seabed boundaries and agreements to exploit shared energy resources, such as those of the Timor Sea, with one interlocutor than with two or more.
However, what happens when the metropolitan power itself becomes an economic mendicant is a question our Government would prefer not to face.
Canberra has always seen Indonesia as chaotic, overpopulated, poor and a potential source of "boat people". Only a strong man like Soeharto was thought capable of holding the place together.
They may not have liked his methods but a unitary Indonesian state was as dear to the hearts of Australian diplomats as it was to the political elite in Jakarta.
Second, Canberra doesn't understand that the contesting and redrawing of political boundaries is a normal feature of international politics. The territorial frontiers of states are rarely immutable.
Some territories reunite after a trial separation (like Vietnam, Germany, Yemen, Hong Kong and soon Macau with China, not to mention the two Koreas).
Others fragment, sometimes peacefully (like Czechoslovakia), occasionally co-operatively (like the USSR) and too frequently violently (such as Ethiopia and Yugoslavia).
After 24 years of struggle against a brutal occupation and international indifference, East Timor - apart from the Baltic states - is one of the few examples of secession ultimately decided by a genuinely democratic vote.
Secession, however, does not always lead to fragmentation. Some separatist movements are political protests against being governed in common with others (for example, Tibet, the Philippines, Aceh, West Papua, Chechnya and Quebec).
Sovereign states restructure when they no longer command the authority and loyalty which they possessed or once claimed to possess. Minority groups may argue that their identities and interests are excluded from the dominant images of nationhood propounded by the state: they no longer feel part of the common national project. Consequently, they start looking for new political structures which more faithfully acknowledge their ethnicity and satisfy their political and economic interests.
This is happening at the western and eastern extremities of the Indonesian archipelago.
Although both Aceh and West Papua can boast of nationalist movements which predate Indonesia's formation 50 years ago, in their current form both are manifestations of Jakarta's greed and brutality.
For decades Acehnese and Papuans have been excluded from the common national project directed from Java, wanted only for their natural rather than their human resources.
In the case of West Papua, resistance to Jakarta's rule has been bolstered by economic exploitation, transmigration and a fraudulent plebiscite conducted, much to its discredit, under United Nations auspices in 1969.
Jakarta's only response to what is essentially a separatist movement of its own making has been to put its trust in force and violence. It sees no irony in its defence of the sanctity of boundaries established by the perfidious Dutch.
Canberra has little influence either way. But if it really wants to preserve the status quo, it should direct its concerns to the source of instability in the archipelago - the Indonesian military - rather than admonish Australian non-government organisations for supporting the rights of its victims.
Better still it should accept that change is inevitable.
Finally, supporting the status quo is not an ethically neutral proposition. Canberra should answer the question, "what is it that you want stabilised?"
During the period of Soeharto's rule, there were horrific mass killings throughout the republic and in East Timor, there was the torture and imprisonment without trial of political prisoners, and the suppression of dissent and organised labour - all with the gratitude of Australia's foreign policy establishment.
Downer now warns that a bloodbath would result if West Papua were encouraged by outsiders to separate. Just how would he characterise Jakarta's behaviour in the province over the past 30 years?
The Acehnese and West Papuans have the right under international law to reconsider their political arrangements, regardless of the preferences of others. Who is to say that a new dispensation for both territories wouldn't ease the levels of tension, violence and dissatisfaction? Both are resource-rich and there is no reason for them to be hostile to Australia.
Despite the anxieties of a small number of officials in Canberra, Indonesia is not disintegrating. A reconstitution of Indonesia's boundaries which allows the disaffected to go their own way would almost certainly end with independence for Aceh and West Papua, and not ineluctably lead to the Balkanisation of the archipelago.
Downer's attempts to assuage elite paranoia in Jakarta about Canberra's imaginary regional designs is an unnecessary replay of past policy mistakes. Silence would be a much wiser policy.
Scott Burchill lectures in international relations at Deakin University.
Reposted from Kumul Board by Wantokz 