BY EUGEN LEPOU

AUCKLAND, New Zealand - Thousands of people rioted in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesia's Irian Jaya, on March 18. Irian Jaya, the western half of the island New Guinea, is a former Dutch colony known as West Papua until it was handed over to Indonesian rule in 1963. West Papuans were protesting the death of a former leader of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), Thomas Wapiti Wainggai, who died in an Indonesian prison while serving a 20-year jail sentence for his opposition to Jakarta's rule over West Papua.

The riots erupted during a funeral procession by over 3,000 people who went to the airport to await the arrival of Wainggai's body. The marchers were stopped by government solders, who fired shots over the heads of the procession. Three people were killed, scores were injured, and 37 were arrested.

These protests followed four days of rioting by several hundred Papuan villagers earlier in March in the mining towns of Tembagapura and Timika. These riots temporarily forced the closure of the huge Freeport gold and copper mine.

The protests began in the mountain town of Tembagapura when a Papuan resident was beaten by security officers while trying to enter a hospital to visit a friend. A meeting held to protest the beating drew 300 people from surrounding villages.

The meeting circulated a three-page list of demands against Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold Incorporated, the U.S.-based company that operates the copper and gold mine. These included firing several security officers, improved housing in Banti and other villages, and better training and promotional opportunities for the company's Papuan employees.

Five hundred government troops were flown into Timika, the lowlands town that services Tembagapura, to put down the protests, which left five Papuans dead and many others injured.

The Freeport operation is the world's biggest gold mine and third biggest copper mine. When Tembagapura was established in the early 1970s to serve the new mine, the villages of the local Amungme people were uprooted and moved.

Freeport dumps about 110,000 tons of waste from its mines into the local river systems a day. The local Papuan population suffers systematic discrimination and physical abuse at the hands of Freeport and its security force in Tembagapura, a company town that is home to 15,000 Freeport employees and their dependents.

Local Papuans are prevented from entering Tembagapura's modern shopping center by Freeport security guards. The villagers may be admitted to the town hospital, however, where they are relegated to segregated wards.

When Indonesia won its independence from Holland after World War II, following a deep-going national liberation struggle, the nationalist Sukharno regime in Indonesia continued to campaign for an end to Dutch rule in West Papua. West Papua was occupied by the Indonesian military in 1963, not long before Sukharno was overthrown in a bloody military coup in 1965.

The Suharto dictatorship brought to power in that coup subjected the Melanesian people of West Papua to cultural and physical genocide. Indonesian place-names, language, and culture were imposed, and the country renamed Irian Jaya.

The OPM developed in the 1960s in opposition to Indonesian rule over West Papua. It calls for the formation of a unified Melanesian state in New Guinea under the slogan "One people, one soul." Possessing few and mostly out-of-date weapons, it has been able to score significant victories against the well-equipped Indonesian occupation forces, and establish its control over large areas of rural countryside and jungle highlands.

Eugen Lepou is a member of the Meat Workers Union in Auckland.  
 
 
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