Churches back Jakarta against separatists

Press, 30 December 1985, Page 21

Churches back Jakarta against separatists

NZPA-AFP Jakarta

Churchmen in the eastern province of Irian Jaya have rallied behind the Indonesian Government against local separatists and say they will send an envoy to work for the return of refugees from adjoining' Papua New Guinea. A conference of Irian Jaya’s Protestant Church (G.K.I. ) in October, which was also attended by other denominations, declared in a final communique its support for the Government in the unity, and sovereignty of the nation.” Irian Jaya became part of Indonesia in 1963.

But the province, with 1.1 million Melanesians out of a. total population of 1.3 million, has been periodically rocked by the independence campaign of several hundred militants of the Free Papua Movement (0.P.M.). The church conference, which was held at Biak in Irian Jaya and was also attended by Catholics, Adventists, Pentecostalists and Baptists, asked that “the Government involve the Church in Irian Jaya in bilateral negotiations” with P.N.G. to bring back some 10,000 Irianese refugees

there. The Rev. Fredelin Ukur, general secretary of the Alliance of Indonesian Protestant Churches, told Agence France-Presse the Churches are to send an Irianese priest to P.N.G. early next year. He said the envoy would “go to Papua New Guinea with the agreement of Port Moresby authorities” and would “meet refugees, inform them and explain to them that they can return to Indonesia and live freely.” About 10,000 Irianese fled the province to neighbouring P.N.G. last year amid clashes between the O.P.M. and Indonesian authorities.

P.N.G.’s policy has been to encourage the refugees to return to Indonesia, while quietly asking Jakarta for official assurances that their safety be guaranteed. So far, only trickles of border crossers have returned to their villages of their own accord, citing rumours of Indonesian military reprisals. Mr Ukur said the Protestant Church had agreed when the O.P.M. was born to mediate between it and the Jakarta Government, but now felt “the O.P.M. has brought nothing for Irian

and that the way to development for the province lies in national unity.” The Rev. Jan Riberu, a Catholic spokesman at the October conference, said that the Catholics regarded the O.P.M. as a “trouble facto?’ and would not hold dialogue with it. The Church’s support for the Government stems from its “comfortable situation” in this country of 168 million people, of whom 98 per cent are Muslim and “its special status in Irian Jaya,” according to diplomats here.

Most of the province’s population is Christian with 700,000 Protestants and 280,000 Catholics. There are 170,000 animists and 150,000 Muslims. More than half of Irian’s primary schools, health clinics and air transport network are Christian-run.

Christians are strongly represented in national politics .and the economy. But the clergy has also voiced its own criticisms, particularly of Jakarta’s transmigration programme for the resettlement of 680,000 people from overcrowded Java in Irian Jaya between 1984 and 1989. The Irianese fear the policy could put Melane-

sians there in a minority position in the next decade. The O.P.M. opposes a heavy influx of officials and peasants from Java, which it terms a “Javanese colonisation” of Irian Jaya, the western portion of the island of New Guinea.

Father Riberu wants transmigration to continue but argues that more people should come from the mainly Christian islands of Flores, Timor and the Moluccas, whose inhabitants are ethnically closer to the Melanesians.

Mr Ukur agrees, adding that the programme should be implemented gradually in order “not to create culture shock.” Irianese Christians are worried that ill-managed transmigration could cause trouble in the remote province where many still lead a stone-age-like existence, said diplomats here. Rather than backing the separatists and risking a confrontation with the Jakarta Government which could threaten the over-all position of Christians in Indonesia, they are attempting to exert some influence over the transmigration movement in a tactic which one diplomat dubbed a piece of “realpolitik.”