Louise Byrne
~ Land, Liberty and Solidarity ~
Celebrating Melanesians’ sacred relation
with their land, and the virtues of
justice, peace and love
Jacob Rumbiak preparing to place the Melanesian offering on the altar at All Saints Anglican Church in East St Kilda, 10 November 2002
On 10 November 2002 in Melbourne, during Sanap Wantaim (‘stand up together’ in Papua Nugini pidgin) a pig was ceremoniously sacrificed, and the intersection of Dandenong Rd and Chapel St was named “Morning Star Corner”. A Catholic bishop, some monks, and a bevy of Anglican priests joined the priests of culture from Melanesia Pacific to enact the sacred moment in All Saints Anglican Church in East St Kilda. It was a moment of high culture—and political symbolism as well, because Dandenong Road (Highway No.1) at Cape York in far north Queensland is just a short boat ride from West Papua which has long been a no-go zone for Australian politicians. This is a story about what the sacrifice and the naming might mean for us, in Australia, and for our Melanesian neighbours.
Pigs in many Melanesian cultures are the signature of successful negotiation. Nurtured by women to facilitate marriages, war, and peace, their sacrifice celebrates ‘closure’ - or in the pidgin language of Papua Nugini “dis pela bisnis pinis”. In the rich land of symbolism, the pig, sacrificed, paved passage for West Papua’s Morning Star flag to rise over the intersection of Dandenong Road and Chapel Street. Flying a flag as a measure of support is language recognised around the world. The one raised over “Morning Star Corner” was sewn by Wah, an Australian-Vietnamese outworker from Dandenong, who was once a political prisoner of North Vietnam’s communist regime, and also one of Australia’s first boat people.
Three or four hundred cheered the blood-stained Morning Star as it took wing on an afternoon breeze from Port Phillip Bay. The stain on the flag, the remains of the blood sacrifice, reminded of the price that colonists usually demand for liberty. White Australians escaped that demand, but the presence of Torres Strait Islanders reminded of the indigenous blood on Australian soil. There were East Timorese in the crowd too, and a few Dutch, and some Indonesianists as well. An old Australia digger was there too. He was a gunner on the ‘Arunta’, bombing the north coast of West Papua during McArthur’s infamous campaign to annihilate the Japanese.
The commitment made at All Saints on 10 November 2002 was the most recent that Australian institutions had made with West Papua’s self-determination movement. In 2000, the Australian Council of Trade Unions signed a Memorandum of Understanding, agreeing to support de-militarisation and independence. In 2001, twenty-two religious organizations, including the Victorian Synod of the Anglican Church, signed “Call to the Peoples of the Region” a document of similar commitment. In August 2002, RMIT University installed West Papua’s Jacob Rumbiak as Senior Research Associate, subtly acknowledging his status in Indonesian academia and his identity as a Melanesian citizen.
Participants of Sanap Wantaim proclaimed their commitment to West Papua’s self-determination when the head of the pig, the blood sacrifice, was placed on the high altar of the church. Though the pig has never had a place in Judeo-Christian history, the participants understood the contractual aspect of the employment of Melanesian cultural symbols. The fact that agreement could be rendered more potent by compromise was noted by Rev. Janet Turpie-Johnston, an Australian indigenous Anglican priest who led part of the ceremonial.
The Morning Star flag was first raised in Hollandia (now Jayapura) in 1961. It expressed West Papuans’ political aspirations in cultural terms (the Morning Star is an important character in the creation story of the north coast) and heralded the coming of independence that the Dutch government had schedueled for 1970.
During the Indonesian occupation, raising the flag has become the hallmark of a remarkable nonviolent movement for political change. The movement was formally launched in 1988 in the name of ‘West Melanesia’; the architect, Dr Thomas Wainggai, was immediately incarcerated, and died in Cipinang prison, a few cells away from Xanana Gusmao. His legacy galvanised and united the Papuans—primarily because it is a participatory political journey towards a way of being, beyond independence, that references both West Papuan traditional religions and the Christian principles they have adopted.
West Papua’s nonviolence movement is little known or understood in neighbouring Australia, where our capitalist-based culture is attuned, by tradition, to competitive, adversarial negotiation. One scholar, Jason McLeod, has placed it in the tradition of Martin Luther King’s civil rights work and Mahatma Ghandi’s anti-colonial movement, but for one reason or another, the innovative, energising, and disciplined campaign hasn’t managed to attract the attention, or support of the international community.
So when Australians sign treaties with West Papuans, and raise the Morning Star flag in solidarity, what are we committing ourselves to? Are we creating relationships with people, whose long and lonely battle against Jakarta’s militant regime has produced a political elite that is aware of the responsibilities that nationhood entails? Or are we committing to the sort of social disintegration evident in Papua New Guinea—and now East Timor—where inappropriate infrastructure and policies sit beneath civil unrest and a future bound to the vagaries of Australian foreign aid?
Before considering the long term, there are a few responsibilities that Australia must shoulder immediately in order to live up to its reputation as a good international citizen—or even an ordinary one. Politicians need to create policy that pursues review of the New York Agreement of 1962 and subsequent Act of Free Choice in 1969. Talks must be instituted between Jayapura and Jakarta under the auspice of a third party. Murder and oppression (which have worsened since Bali, with the military in Papua now talking of creating “rivers of blood”) could be reduced dramatically if the Indonesian government was forced to de-militarise the province. Foreign logging, fishing and mining companies have to be encouraged to adopted financial, environmental and social accountability measures.
Australians must also reflect on the image we maintain of West Papuans as pig-gorging, bow-and-arrow shooting tribals going nowhere. The image took off in the sixties, when President John F. Kennedy described Dutch New Guinea as “700,00 cannibals living in the stone age”. Most media titillate their reports with photos of the highland men in their penis gourds, or the resistance looking fierce in pig fat and boar tusk and pathetic in threadbare uniforms and hand-made guns. Such perceptions need overhauling, for many tribal leaders (including those from coastal regions where they don’t wear the gourd) have been making good use of the Indonesian education system—or failing that, seeking the advice of their children, a generation of well-educated, politically sophisticated Irianese.
There is an enigmatic, almost self-effacing quality to West Papuans independence struggle, offset at times by well-crafted resistance manoeuvres—like the formal announcement of ‘West Melanesia’ in 1988; the demands made by the ‘Delegation of 100’ which took President Habibie by surprise; and at Abdurrahman Wahid’s ‘national’ congress in Jayapura, when thousands of highlanders usurped the agenda and demanded independence. The latest, in February 2002, was the formation of the United West Papua National Front for Independence. Eighty leading members of what are usually described as ‘the factions’ (including the Organisasi Papua Merdeka, the Presidium, West Melanesia Council, and DEMMAK (Penis Gourd Council) created a peak body. The Front was immediately recognised by Sir Michael Somare, Tony Bias and Bernard Narakobi, the three Papua New Guinea big men considered to be the founding fathers of their own nation. In the months since, the organization has established a strong presence in Suva under the patronage of Ratu Masake Koroi, the Prime Minister’s brother, and Director of the Fiji Broadcasting Commission.
The United West Papua National Front has published a comprehensive blue-print that defines its philosophy and organization for the remaining years of resistance, and for the transition to an independent Melanesian nation on the western rim of the Pacific. Enviably confident—when none but the most stalwart are sharing the troubles, let alone the aspirations of West Papuans—the paper is a showcase of thought about a modern democracy, a republic with a president, that is, in part defined by tribal and traditional values. The tribes, for instance, will not compete with political parties or independents for representation in the parliament, but will exert their influence through a proportionate number of seats reserved for ‘traditional democracy’. The religious sector and the nongovernment organizations, including women’s and student groups, is collectively identified as the ‘moral force’ and is given a role to arbitrate and censure above and beyond that of the executive’s role.
All in all, the West Papuans appear to be involved in a process that might begin to re-define the western understanding of social democracy. I think it is an appropriate moment for Australia’s intellectual elite to get involved.
Louise Byrne for Arena Magazine
December 2002
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