West Papua

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for tirelessly raising this issue in this House and thus doing something to remedy the paucity of the comment that one gets about this pretty worrying situation.

I declare a previous interest: from 2001 to 2009, I visited West Papua—which for the purposes of this debate, as the noble and right reverend Lord said in his introduction, is taken as comprising the two Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua—annually as a member of an independent panel set up by BP to offer the company advice on what can loosely be described as the performance of its corporate social responsibility in connection with the development of a large natural gas field situated under the waters of Bintuni Bay in the Bird’s Head region of West Papua, and a liquefied natural gas plant on the southern shore of the bay.

This panel, headed by former US Senator George Mitchell, visited Papua every year. We had talks with government and parliamentary leaders and NGOs in the capitals of the two provinces, Jayapura and Manokwari. We visited the sites for meetings with BP and its contractors and we held what the Americans would call town hall meetings in each of the 10 or so directly affected villages neighbouring the sites. We then discussed our findings with Indonesian Ministers and international agencies such as the World Bank in Jakarta, and presented the company with our recommendations. While I would not claim to be a genuine expert on West Papua, I have some familiarity with the region and its problems.

It is certainly extremely welcome that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has initiated this debate. That there have been and still are abuses of human rights in West Papua, mainly committed by members of the Indonesian armed forces and police, is really not in doubt. But because of what I regard as the Indonesian Government’s misguided policy of banning visits to the provinces by international journalists and NGOs, too little is known about these abuses, their nature and the background to them. Where secrecy prevails, rumour and allegations flourish, which is why I regard the Indonesian Government’s policy as misguided.

One part of the background that needs to be borne in mind is the massive size of West Papua and the sparsity of its population. They may be the poorest provinces of Indonesia but they are also the least populous. Those areas where the most abuses have taken place—the two provincial capitals, the mountainous regions along the international boundary with Papua New Guinea, and the area around the huge copper and gold mine being operated by Freeport-McMoRan at Timika—are often separated by hundreds of miles of trackless jungle from other, largely peaceful parts of the two provinces.

To address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, about faith relationships, another dimension is the peaceful coexistence across most of the provinces of communities of Catholics, Protestants and Muslims. In the villages around Bintuni Bay, it was normal to find Catholic and Protestant churches and a mosque in the same village.

As one of the Muslim imams said to us when the panel talked to him, “Please do nothing to disturb the amity in which our communities have lived for many centuries”. That was sage advice, and the Indonesian Government, often beset elsewhere in the country with acute interfaith tensions, would do well to heed it.

What can be done to avoid the human rights abuses that take place? Part of the solution lies in better training for, and tighter control over, the Indonesian military and police. I look forward to the Minister responding to the point that was made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, about the training that we give them, the effect that it has and whether we have any evidence that it is actually producing better performance. Just as important as that is to make a living reality, not just a paper reality, of the regional autonomy that Indonesia has granted to its provinces. Raising the living standards and the access to healthcare and to education of indigenous populations, which are among the poorest in the world, is another.

Above all, the Indonesian Government need to demonstrate respect for the cultural particularities and identity of indigenous Papuans. These are real and based on centuries of history. Any attempt to homogenise the provinces to a kind of Indonesian norm, or to encourage substantial inward migration from other parts of Indonesia, would inevitably raise tensions and lead to the sort of incidents at which human rights abuses have occurred and are still occurring. As the example of East Timor showed, a policy of repression is only too likely to be counterproductive; it is far better to pursue the objective of reconciling Papuans to their continuance as a part of Indonesia by generous policies of regional autonomy and economic development. To be fair, these are the proclaimed policies of the Administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, but too often in the past practical application has diverged from these admirable objectives.

What role should Britain play in all this? We should certainly not just snipe from the sidelines when allegations of human rights abuses are brought up, although we should not turn a blind eye to them. We should also do our best, I suggest, through our aid programme, the provision of training and scholarships and the enlargement of responsible inward investment—such as I believe BP has provided in the Tangguh project, which is now undergoing rapid expansion—to create the conditions and the capacity-building that will encourage Papuans to believe that a peaceful and prosperous future is not beyond their reach. I hope that the Minister can say something about the way in which the Government are playing a positive role in West Papua, both now and in the future.