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Violence in Papua
On 17 August 1998,
Indonesia's 53rd anniversary of independence, I met a winded
teenager on a trail leading to the village that I call Misty Ridge, which
was my ethnographic field site in Papua (also known as Irian Jaya). The
boy had been given urgent instructions by the 'Kepala Desa' (Village Head)
to sprint back to the village and hoist the red and white Indonesian flag.
Four distant gunshots had been heard minutes before by the 'Kepala Desa'
while he was visiting a neighbouring village. He feared that a passing
military patrol had begun shooting Misty Ridge villagers for not conducting
independence day celebrations. The source to the gunshots was never determined,
but this incident served as a chilling backdrop for my research until
I left the field in early 1999. 
* By S. EBEN KIRKSEY
During the period of colonial rule of Java,
Indonesian subjects were expected to participate in the independence
celebrations with enthusiasm. In the last IIAS
Newsletter (No.25, p. 23), Keith Foulcher discussed the well-known
example of how, in 1913, Soewardi published a sarcastic critique of
these celebrations. Non-participation in independence festivities was
used by Indonesian colonial subjects as a strategy of resistance against
the representations of the colonial order. Contemporary Papuans are
employing similar strategies. The Kepala
Desa's fear of military reprisals against this modest form
of resistance hints at the extensive, but hitherto under researched,
subject of violence in Papua.
Thadius Yogi,
of Papua's TPN (National Liberation Army), and his wife.
EBEN KIRKSEY
My 1998 research project in Papua used the lens of ethnobiology
to focus on cultural change. After returning to Western academia and completing
the write-up stage of this project, I found my thoughts returning to violent
events that I had witnessed in Papua. Two students were shot dead by the
Indonesian military on 1 July 1998, less than 100 metres from where I
had been chatting with staff of the Anthropology Department of Universitas
Cenderawasih in the capital of Papua. Later in the same week I happened
to be on the island of Biak where, in the space of two days, several hundred
Papuan civilians were shot, drowned at sea, or tortured.
Currently I am exploring a wide range of historical sources
to determine how violence has structured debates about the control of
Papua. Direct physical violence was used by the colonial government of
Netherlands New Guinea, and is currently being used by the Republic of
Indonesia, to control Papuan forms of expression. Even in this era of
post-Reformasi (post-Reform)
in Indonesia the threat of violence continues to determine the types of
public discourse that are possible in Papua.
Symbolic violence1 against Papuans has been used
in a more subtle campaign to legitimize the rule of outsiders. Papuans
have been imagined as savages: specifically, they have been called cannibals,
headhunters, primitives, wild men, heathens, pirates, members of cargo
cults, rebels, insurgents, and guerrillas. The roots of these images lie
outside of Papua but they were appropriated by the Dutch, and other European
colonizers, who systematically applied them to Papuans in the colonial
genres of travelogues, ethnographies, newspapers, administrative reports,
and political treaties. I hope to understand how these representations
were instrumental in establishing the legitimacy of colonial rule in Papua
and how depictions of the savage nature of Papuans continue to help maintain
Indonesian control over this contested territory.
The large majority of Papuans employ non-violent strategies
of resistance against Indonesia in a self-determination movement that
they call the OPM (Organization of Papuan Freedom). The media has depicted
the OPM as a terrorist organization that threatens the unitary state of
Indonesia with violence. Some Papuan groups, such as the TPN (National
Liberation Army), as distinct from the OPM, maintain an argument similar
to that of Franz Fanon2 saying that Indonesian neo-colonialism
is an inherently violent political institution and that the only way to
achieve complete independence is to wage war. Many Papuans denounce violence
and seek a peaceful solution to their conflict with Indonesia through
bodies such as the UN. My research will engage sub-altern perspectives
of Papuan interlocutors to understand their strategies of resistance.
*
Notes
1. Bourdieu, Pierre, Language
and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity (1999).
2. Fanon, Frantz, Toward
the African Revolution:
Political Essays, New York: Grove Press (1967).
 S.
Eben Kirksey, MA is a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford
who has conducted field research in West Papua, Indonesia, and Central
America. He was a Research Guest at the International Institute of Asian
Studies during the summer of 2001.
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