'No free choice’

Press, 30 May 1981, Page 8

'No free choice’

Another witness, William Zongano, a member of the Irian Jaya Parliament under the Indonesians as well as a member of the Indonesian Parliament, told the tribunal that the Dutch, prior to 1962, had allowed the “West Papuan" people their own national anthem, their own flag, and their own political parties, However, after the Indonesian takeover, he said, political parties had been disbanded, the West Papuan flag had been publicly burned, it had been forbidden to sing the national anthem, and the West Papuan school syllabus had been replaced with a: pro-Indonesian one. The headmaster of a Dutch reform private school near Jayapura in 1963, Mr Adoll Henesby, told the tribunal that he had been “directing the school choir" when sever, Indonesian tanks had pulled up before the school and soldiers had walked in tc find the West Papuan flag hanging on the school walls-

He was arrested and held prisoner for 10 months without being charged and during his time in prison he and others like him were sent by the authorities “back to school to be indoctrinated.” r

Asked by a tribunal member whether he felt akin in any way to the Indonesian

people. Mr Henesby said, “No. Our language is different, our way of doing things is different, our food is different; and all those things.”

Mr James Joku, a traditional village leader said that from 1962 to 1965 he was detained by the Indonesian authorities for being involved in anti-Jndonesian demonstrations.

He said that during 1965 and 1966 he had spent 10 months as one of 68 men sharing 3 cells measuring 6m by 2m. The men had taken it in turns to sleep because they could not all lie down at the same time. When he had first been arrested and taken to an Indonesian military camp he had been beaten so badly that he had been unconscious for three days, he said. Horrific tales of repression throughout the years leading up to the plebiscite, the “act of free choice” in 1969, continued from the tribunal witnesses.

Mr Henk Joku, a former bureaucrat, told of January, 1963, mass arrests of village men who were “badly beaten, kicked, and told to drink their own urine.” Details of beatings, rape, torture, denial of rights, and the political repression of Melanesians in Irian Jaya

were aired by witness after witness.

But it was the 1969 “act of free choice” that most enraged the more articulate witnesses. In the plebiscite, a little, over 1000 people voted out of a total population of nearly a million. That was how it was, said Mr William Zongano: “I was a member of Parliament, and I know very well.”

Mr Moses Werror, a witness who was part of an Indonesian delegation to the United Nations in 1961. claimed that on the streets of Jayapura in the months leading up to the plebescite, Melanesians were forbidden to discuss the vote or “you would be picked up straight away and put into jail.” Former Governor Bonay told the tribunal that of the 1025 people chosen by the Indonesian Government to vote, a large number were Indonesian military personnel.

“There was widespread torture and beatings, mass arrests, and people were in fear at that time,” he said. “My estimation is that during the period preceding the act of free choice there were at least 30,000 Papuan people that were killed.” The: tribunal is thus striking- at the very basis for Indonesia's hold over. Irian Jaya.- .■■ - - -