Papua: The Dangers of Shutting Down Dialogue
Jakarta/Brussels |
23 Mar 2006
The key institution charged with easing tensions between Papuans and Indonesia’s central government may be about to collapse, with grave consequences given the region’s current volatility.
Papua: The Dangers of Shutting Down Dialogue,* the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the Papuan People’s Council (Majelis Rakyat Papua, MRP). Although it has faced huge challenges, the MRP is the most representative body to emerge so far and has the support of key Papuan institutions. Failure to bolster it could deal a fatal blow to the autonomy package granted to the restive province in 2001, in which many Papuans are already losing faith.
Created in late October 2005 as the centrepiece of the autonomy deal, the MRP was almost immediately confronted with two major crises: stalled talks over the legal status of West Irian Jaya, the province carved out of Papua in 2003, and riots over the giant Freeport gold and copper mine this month.
“The anti-Freeport violence was a way of venting frustration over long-running grievances ranging from a lack of justice for past abuses to poverty and corruption to the role of the military in the province”, says Crisis Group Analyst Francesca Lawe-Davies. “But the very institution that should have a key role in managing these tensions, the Papuan People’s Council, is currently paralysed – partly by government mishandling but also by its own ineptitude”.
Despite initial hard-line rhetoric, the MRP had begun to show signs of willingness to compromise, but rather than reciprocate, the central government sidelined it. To revive genuine dialogue and salvage the institution before autonomy is further damaged, Indonesian President Yudhoyono should meet the MRP in Papua, thus acknowledging its importance, and the MRP for its part should move beyond non-negotiable demands and offer realistic policy options to make autonomy work.
If the MRP can manoeuvre its way through the two crises, it may yet be able to take on other outstanding grievances and become what Papua has always lacked, a genuinely representative dialogue partner with Jakarta. If it fails, not only will its own legitimacy be diminished, but local resentment against the central government will almost certainly increase.
“The central government needs to realise that it is in its own interest to help the Papuan People’s Council succeed”, says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group’s South East Asia Director. “If it fails, Special Autonomy – the best hope for Papua-Jakarta relations – will be badly, if not irreparably damaged”.