[Kabar-Irian] News: May4-5 2006 (2)
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The Wall Street Journal Home Page
Australian Appeasement
By TOM SWITZER
May 3, 2006
SYDNEY -- He's a wimp. He's an appeaser. He kowtows to foreign aggressors.
These are just some of the barbs that the Australian political and
religious left have been hurling at Australian Prime Minister John Howard
in recent weeks. His crime? Assuring Jakarta that allowing asylum seekers
from Papua to stay in Australia does not mean that Canberra supports
independence for the restive Indonesian province.
The commotion began last month, when Australian immigration bureaucrats
granted temporary-protection visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers, who
claimed they had been persecuted for participating in pro-independence
activities. That prompted furious protests from Jakarta, and the recall of
the Indonesian ambassador to Australia. Mr. Howard responded by rewriting
Australia's commitment to the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention to ensure
that future visas of boat-people will be processed offshore. This means
that they would not be entitled to the same refugee treatment as the 42
Papuans.
Accommodating Jakarta in this way may have been unsettling to those
Australians who wax sentimental about Papua's right to
"self-determination." Admittedly, polls show that 75% of Australians
support independence for Papua, the former Dutch colony that passed to
Indonesian control in 1962. But that's hardly the whole picture. If
Australians were asked the related question of whether they would support
the disintegration of the Indonesian state -- which Papuan independence
would make more likely -- the answer would almost certainly be very
different.
Mr. Howard can hardly be blamed for seeking to promote stability in the
world's largest and most populous Muslim state. Indonesia's territorial
integrity is already under severe stress, following the 1999 breakaway of
East Timor and with violent secession movements not just in Papua, but
also in Aceh. Rather than being bent on territorial expansion, Jakarta is
battling simply to maintain the status quo. Supporting such a worthwhile
goal is not akin to weakness or capitulation.
Furthermore, Papua is not East Timor. Papua is far more economically and
symbolically important to Jakarta than the former Portuguese province that
was part of Indonesia from 1975-99. Unlike East Timor, for instance, Papua
was a part of the Dutch East Indies, to which Indonesia is the successor
state, and unlike the East Timor case, the United Nations regards Papua as
part of the sovereign state of Indonesia. In 1999, Jakarta reluctantly
approved a U.N.-mandated independence referendum for East Timor. But it is
implacably opposed to any such initiative with respect to Papua.
Papua's human-rights situation is also significantly different. While the
Australian Greens and the religious left attempt to equate Papua's plight
with that of East Timor from 1975 to 1999, the analogy is flawed. To be
sure, the Papuans, have their grievances. But these are not linked to
allegations of genocide as they were in East Timor. For example, some
Papuans are irked by Indonesia's transmigration program, which has
imported huge numbers of Javanese Muslims into the largely Christian
province. Another Papuan complaint is that they receive very little of the
proceeds from the province's massive copper and gold mines. Valid
complaints perhaps, but scarcely on the same scale as East Timor's
grievances.
It is easy for many on the Australian left to sneer at the maintenance of
stability and order as an unworthy foreign-policy objective. But the
collapse of a state like Indonesia would come back to haunt Australia.
Indonesian help, after all, is required to stop people-smuggling and
illegal fishing, fight terrorism and prevent drug shipments to the
Antipodes. Problems in the archipelago's busy sea lanes could interfere
with Australia's merchant and naval shipping. And if Papua did breakaway
from Indonesia, it would probably become dependent on Australia for
security and aid almost indefinitely.
Giving in to the hectoring crowd might win Mr. Howard applause from moral
absolutists at home. But he would be in danger of creating an Islamist and
a nationalist backlash in Indonesia. Many Indonesians still resent
Australia's leading role in securing East Timor's independence in 1999,
and remain suspicious of Canberra's commitment to respect the territorial
integrity of its northern neighbor. Those suspicions have already been
rekindled by granting visas to the 42 Papuan asylum seekers. Indonesian
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for instance, responded angrily to
that decision. "Don't insult us, don't toy with us and don't deny us
justice," he demanded. If a moderate liberal democratic leader in
Indonesia feels the need to react in such a strong way, just imagine the
views of Islamists and hard-line nationalists if the Australian government
aggravated the situation.
Mr. Howard is on the right track. As Winston Churchill once warned,
"Appeasement in itself may be good or bad according to the circumstances."
In this case, if appeasement helps prevent further ruptures within an
already troubled Indonesia, it's the only course Australia can follow.
Refusing to cooperate with Jakarta would not help the people of Papua, and
might even deepen rifts within Indonesia. For this, both Australia and the
region would pay the price.
Mr. Switzer is opinion page editor of the Australian in Sydney.
KABAR IRIAN ("Irian News") www.kabar-irian.com
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