VZCZCXRO3076
OO RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHHM
DE RUEHJA #2769/01 2740922
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 010922Z OCT 07
FM AMEMBASSY JAKARTA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6514
INFO RUEHZS/ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS PRIORITY
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA PRIORITY 1283
RUEHPB/AMEMBASSY PORT MORESBY PRIORITY 3466
RUEHWL/AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON PRIORITY 1829
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 4360
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 0885
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 JAKARTA 002769 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP, EAP/MTS, EAP/ANP, INR/EAP 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/01/2017 
TAGS: PGOV PINS ECON PHUM ID
SUBJECT: PAPUA ON LOW BOIL, BUT LITTLE SIGN OF A BLOW UP 
 
 
JAKARTA 00002769  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
Classified By: Pol/C Joseph Legend Novak, reasons 1.4 (b,d). 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY:  Poloff visited Jayapura, the capital of 
Papua, September 17-19.  The province remains one of 
Indonesia's least developed regions and officials are 
frustrated at the slow pace of fund disbursement under the 
GOI's Special Autonomy plans.  Worries about the role of the 
military persist.  Ethnic Papuans increasingly resent the 
dominant role played by migrants.  Most Papuans are focused 
on day-to-day challenges and have little time for politics, 
however.  Poloff, for public outreach, addressed students at 
Papua's major university on U.S. foreign policy.  Over all, 
Papua seemed a bit tense--with Papuans very frustrated with 
the Indonesian government--but there seemed little sign of 
any imminent blow up.  END SUMMARY. 
 
IN THE WILD, WILD EAST 
 
¶2. (C) "That's not Papua," Protestant pastor Rev. Andreas 
Ayomi told poloff while pointing to Jayapura, Papua's main 
urban center (such as it is), through a restaurant window -- 
"Papua is far away."  He went on to explain that 
"Indonesians" dominated the town's economy while the mainly 
rural Papuan populace lived a relatively impoverished 
existence.  Rev. Ayomi's comments highlighted the key themes 
that recurred throughout poloff's September 17-19 visit to 
Jayapura: significant development challenges; ethnic rivalry; 
and a struggle to define the real Papua.  (Note:  Septel will 
report on poloff's visit to Timika, U.S. company Freeport 
McMoran's vast mining operation to the southwest.) 
 
A GOVERNOR WITH A PLAN? 
 
¶3. (C) Papuan officials spoke of their plans for development. 
 Vice Governor Alex Hesegem told poloff that the provincial 
government hoped to make faster progress on Governor Suebu's 
ambitious development plans, which have placed bureaucratic 
reform, infrastructure construction, health and education at 
the very top of the develop9 QANaOQQernment under 
Special Autonomy.  Virtually every Papuan interlocutor poloff 
spoke with expressed the same frustration with the slow pace 
of implementing Special Autonomy.  (Note: The governor was 
unavailable to meet as he was traveling during poloff's 
visit.  Several contacts complained that Suebu is 
increasingly away from Jayapura, with negative impact on the 
effectiveness of provincial administration.) 
 
¶4. (C) Hesegem also described the one development strategy 
that was moving forward -- Governor Suebu's village-based 
development plan.  To implement this initiative, Suebu--an 
ethnic Papuan politician who served as an appointed governor 
of Papua from 1988-1993 and became Papua's first directly 
elected governor in 2005--has disbursed 100 million rupiah 
(approximately USD 1,100) for small-scale community 
development projects in hundreds of villages.  This effort 
has created widespread support for Special Autonomy and for 
Governor Suebu personally in many of Papua's remote villages. 
 Representatives of the Papua NGO Forum questioned the value 
of Suebu's cash distribution, however.  According to them, 
many villages spent most of the money on events to welcome 
the governor and his entourage, including elaborate banquets, 
cultural shows and a lot of beer for local men. 
 
¶5. (C) Relations between Papua and West Papua are very good, 
with Suebu and West Papua Governor Bram Atururi collaborating 
effectively on development plans.  Other contacts agreed that 
relations between the provinces were positive, but only 
because of the good personal relationship between the two 
governors.  Many legal and institutional issues remain 
unresolved between the two areas.  (Note: The status of West 
Papua, created after the issuance of the 2001 Special 
Autonomy law, remains legally ambiguous.) 
 
PUTTING THE ACCENT ON THE MILITARY 
 
¶6. (C) The military remains a very important presence.  Berty 
Fernandez, a Department of Foreign Affairs official seconded 
to the provincial government to handle border issues with 
 
JAKARTA 00002769  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
Papua New Guinea, focused his remarks on the military's 
influence in Papua.  Fernandez claims that the Indonesian 
Military (TNI) has far more troops in Papua than it is 
willing to admit to, chiefly to protect and facilitate TNI's 
interests in illegal logging operations.  Fernandez, who 
worked with Suebu when the latter was Indonesia's Ambassador 
to Mexico, claims to be personally close to Governor Suebu. 
The governor, according to Fernandez, had to move cautiously 
so as not to upset the TNI, which he said operates as a 
virtually autonomous governmental entity within the province. 
 
 
¶7. (C) When pressed for details on the alleged troop build-up 
and TNI's illegal logging activities, Fernandez had none and 
said he was still investigating the matter.  Mission has no 
other information to corroborate Fernandez's claims, which 
are frequently made by Papuan NGOs and human rights 
activists.  Coming from a member of the governor's own staff, 
however, the allegations take on an even more serious cast. 
Papuan People's Council (MRP) Vice Chair Hanna Hikoyoge also 
told poloff that the MRP was concerned that the TNI had too 
powerful a role in Papua. 
 
JUST WHOSE PAPUA IS IT ANYWAY? 
 
¶8. (C) Church leaders and Papuan NGOs frequently pointed to 
the key role played in the provincial economy by migrants 
from other parts of Indonesia.  A visit to Jayapura confirms 
this impression.  Non-Papuans overwhelmingly own and staff 
the city's small businesses while ethnic Papuans are largely 
confined to Jayapura's few traditional markets.  WhQJFse, ethnic Papuans are increasingly resentful of the 
dominant economic role played by outsiders or, as some 
Papuans would have it, "Indonesians."  (Note: Although there 
is little reliable information on Papuan demographics, most 
observers estimate that nearly half of the province's 
residents now originate from outside Papua.) 
 
GETTING PAST THE PAST 
 
¶9. (C) Very few Papuan contacts raised the matter of 
revisiting the 1969 Act of Free Choice, a favorite hobbyhorse 
of Papua activists outside of Indonesia.  Instead, Jayapura 
contacts seem much more focused on fixing Papua's 
contemporary problems than they are in righting an alleged 
historical injustice.  (Note: The Act of Free Choice was a 
UN-sanctioned vote where approximately 1000 Papuan 
representatives elected to integrate Dutch New Guinea into 
Indonesia.  Papuan activists regard the vote as a sham 
engineered by the Indonesian government to sabotage Papuans' 
aspirations for independence.) 
 
¶10. (C) Director of the Catholic Justice and Peace 
Secretariat Budi Hernawan complained to poloff that many 
 
SIPDIS 
outside activists do not distinguish between political 
advocacy, such as support for Papuan independence, and taking 
a sincere stand on human rights or doing anything concrete. 
Outside activists, he said, know little about the current 
situation in the province and provoke a reaction from the 
military and security services by using rhetoric and symbols 
associated with Papuan separatists.  Hernawan, who has 
excellent access in very remote areas of Papua, contends that 
most Papuans are more concerned with the material struggles 
of their daily lives than they are with abstract notions of 
political independence. 
 
ON CAMPUS 
 
¶11. (SBU) Poloff addressed appr@QQ>'Qj 
asked why the USG did nothing while Freeport made billions of 
dollars and Papuans remained poor.  Poloff responded that 
Freeport had negotiated its Contract of Work with the 
Indonesian government.  He advised the students that since 
Indonesia was now a democracy, it was up to the Indonesian 
 
JAKARTA 00002769  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
people to raise this matter with their own leaders through 
the democratic process, a point that prompted applause and 
shouts of approval from the audience.  Poloff also vigorously 
disabused the audience of the notion that the U.S. was only 
interested in Indonesia as a counterterrorism partner.  He 
explained that as East Asia's largest democracy and an 
influential country with enormous economic potential, 
Indonesia was important to the U.S. for a broad range of 
reasons. 
 
BLOW UP? 
 
¶12.  (C) Over all, Papua seemed a bit tense--Papuans are 
clearly very frustrated with the Indonesian government over 
the slow pace of Special Autonomy implementation and over the 
migrants.  There seemed little sign of any sort of near-term 
blow up over it all, however.  Papuans seem largely resigned 
to trying to make things work.  Poloff underlined to GOI 
interlocutors the need for more effective decentralization 
and more effective delivery of government services. 
HEFFERN