Merdeka in West Papua : peace, justice and political independence

Several hundred kilometres from this scene, in June the following year in Jayapura, West Papua's largest city, footage bearing witness to thousands of urban West Papuans taking to the streets was anonymously recorded and later uploaded to YouTube (Westpapuambaham 2011). The leader of the protest continuously booms, "Papua!" through a distorting megaphone; the charging crowds-painted in the red, white and blue of the nationalist West Papuan Morning Star flag, dressed in feathers and traditional jewellery or in West Papuan design-inspired batik-yell back, "Merdeka!" (Westpapuambaham 2011). This demonstration marked the lead-up to the biggest popular protests in West Papua's history, calling for West Papua's provincial governments to "return" to Jakarta its much resented and unsuccessful 2001 Special Autonomy Law and for a referendum on West Papua's political status. Since the 1962-63 Indonesian takeover of their land, West Papuans have been campaigning for independence through diplomatic, civil resistance and military means. The 2001 Special Autonomy Law was the Indonesian government's post-Suharto attempt to appease the international community and West Papuans by responding to West Papuans' calls for independence with a compromise promising greater autonomy for the province. On paper, it included significant concessions to the Papuans, such as committing more profits to flow back into West Papua from its lucrative U.S.-owned Freeport McMoRan gold and copper mines, permitting freedom of cultural expression, including the right to fly their Morning Star national flag, "straightening" the different Papuan and Indonesian understandings of West Papuan history and promising improvement of education and health facilities (Widjojo et al. 2008). In practice, however, few of these promises came to fruition and, in less than a decade, most Papuans already considered the implementation of the law a failure. "Papua merdeka"-that is, an independent, peaceful and justly governed Papua-is a vision West Papuans share, whether they live in cities, remote rural locations or the diaspora. It is a vision that unites by way of an "imagined community" (Anderson 2006). "Papua merdeka" is also the catch-cry of the independence movement in West Papua and its diaspora. This article sets out an overview of the various meanings of the term that have been advanced by various scholars as they have attempted to define its significance and application. Some of the critics whose arguments I critique here deny that merdeka must include political independence. However, in so doing, I contend,2 they also deny the integrity of the movement. In contrast, I use conflict transformation theory to further explore the meanings of merdeka from the perspectives of West Papuan leaders I interviewed in West Papua, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.3 I demonstrate that, in fact, there is considerable unity among West Papuan leaders about what merdeka entails and in the belief that merdeka cannot be achieved in West Papua until its baseline-political independence- has been attained. To more clearly understand West Papuans' insistence that independence must accompany their ultimate goal of peace with justice (merdeka) in West Papua, a brief overview of the West Papua's colonial history is useful. Various scholars besides [Richard Chauvel] have reflected on the meanings of merdeka, many drawing on its roots in West Papuan "millenarian" or "utopian" discourses, such as Koreri (a West Papuan spiritual and nationalist movement analyzed at length by Danilyn Rutherford [2003:24-30]). Anthropologist Eben Kirksey and J. A. D. Roemajauw, former member of the West Papuan performance group Mambesak, draw on correspondence with the late Viktor Kaisiepo, a West Papuan who lived in the Netherlands, when they define merdeka as "variously a desire for divine salvation, equitable development, environmental sustainability and political independence" (2002:191). Anthropologist Brigham Golden's definition differs slightly but critically from that of Kirksey and Roemajauw, however, when he contends that merdeka is "supra-political in Papua ... whose meaning fundamentally transcends the political concept of 'independence' " and is more closely linked with "a liberation theology, an ideology of moral salvation in which a Christian desire for a world of human dignity and divine justice is finally manifest in Papua" (2000:33, emphasis added).