Delegates Issue Independence Call for Irian Jaya

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Delegates to a historic people’s congress in resource-rich Irian Jaya ended their weeklong conference Sunday with a formal declaration that the province is not part of Indonesia and should be recognized as an independent nation.

The declaration, issued at a congress that opened with a youth choir singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” heightened the growing sense of optimism among many of Irian Jaya’s 2 million people but was unlikely to engender any support in Jakarta, the capital.

With Indonesia having seen one province, East Timor, leave the republic last year, President Abdurrahman Wahid has said independence for other regions is not open to discussion. He maintains that the congress that met in Jayapura, the provincial capital, was illegitimate and unrepresentative. The majority of people in the California-size, easternmost province of Irian Jaya (also known as West Papua) want to stay with Indonesia, he said.

“We should not, because of complacency, allow Papua to suddenly break away like East Timor,” Rep. Akbar Tanjung, speaker of the People’s Representation Council, told reporters on Bangka Island. “We cannot tolerate any other part of the Republic of Indonesia’s breaking away.”

Irian Jaya, a remote province of dense jungles, snowcapped mountain peaks and stone-age tribes, has millions of acres of unharvested timberlands and a wealth of oil and gas under its waters. It holds the world’s richest gold mine, owned by a subsidiary of U.S. company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. Freeport is Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer, although the indigenous Irian Jayansa Melanesian ethnic group contends that Jakarta sends precious little of the revenue back to the province for development.

With banners proclaiming independence strung throughout Jayapura, speaker after speaker at the congress advocated breaking off from Indonesia and honoring Irian Jaya’s Dec. 1, 1961, declaration of independence. “West Papua is not part of Indonesia,” the congress said in a statement Saturday.

Tom Beanal, one of two co-presidents of the Papuan People’s Congress, told the 2,780 delegates that they were charged with expressing the will of the people under existing democratic and legal mechanisms. “It is the ultimate end for the people of West Papua to part from Indonesia in a peaceful and democratic way,” he added.

The Indonesian military has killed hundreds of Papuans during Jakarta’s 37-year rule, and a separatist group, the Free Papua Movement, or OPM, has carried on a low-level war against the army for decades. In Indonesia’s westernmost province, Aceh, where an unrelated independence conflict has dragged on for 23 years, a cease-fire went into effect Friday.

In its final resolution, the people’s congress said differences with Jakarta should be worked out peacefully and avoided any threats or implications that the OPM would increase military pressure.

Wahid had been scheduled to open the congress in Jayapura but canceled at the last minute, fearing that his appearance would endorse the legitimacy of the delegates’ demands. But Wahid visited Jayapura on New Year’s Eve and offered to open discussions on any issue--including greater autonomy--except independence. He has increased federal aid to Irian Jaya by 20%, to $47 million.

Irian Jaya, which shares the island of New Guinea with the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, was colonized as part of the Dutch East Indies in the 1820s. Occupied by Japan in World War II, Jayapura was liberated by 80,000 Allied troops in 1944 in the biggest amphibious operation of the war in the southwestern Pacific.

The Dutch transferred Irian Jaya to Indonesia in 1962 as part of decolonization. Jakarta promised to let the Papuans vote on independence by 1969 but instead assembled 1,000 tribal leaders and, while soldiers stood by, asked for a show of hands from those who favored integration with Indonesia. The result, Jakarta said, was unanimous. Indonesia’s 1963 annexation of Irian Jaya was recognized by the United Nations in 1969.

Irian Jaya and East Timor are the only two provinces added to Indonesia since its independence in 1945. The Papuans have become more vocal in their demands since President Suharto’s fall from power in 1998 ushered in a more liberal political era, and East Timor’s referendum to break from Indonesia in 1999 raised the hopes of anti-integration forces in Irian Jaya and Aceh.