1936, the Year of the Olympics and the Alternative Olympics: a Cocktail of Sport and Politics

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
International Relations, Politics, Popular Culture, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture, Sport

1936 was a momentous year for the Olympic movement, the official, IOC-sanctioned Olympic Games was hosted by Nazi Germany’s Berlin. Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did in Berlin 80 years ago this month. When Berlin was awarded the Games in 1931, Germany was still under the governance of the democratic Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists, the Roma (gypsies) and other targeted groups of German society … and much worse was to come!

As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.

The US Olympic Committee debated the issue at great length. American Olympic association heavyweight, Avery Brundage (later controversial head of the IOC) was “gung-ho” for going ahead with participating, running the (now hackneyed) line that politics had no place in sport. The head of the American Amateur Athletic Union, JT Mahoney, and many others, were in favour of boycotting. The patrician Brundage was widely thought to be anti-Semitic and racist (in 1935 he alleged there was “a Jewish-communist conspiracy” trying to prevent the US team’s participation in Berlin). Ultimately Brundage’s lobby narrowly carried the AAAU vote in favour of going. The American decision to participate in Berlin was pivotal in salvaging the Games for the host city[1].

Catalonia's Olympiad Stadium Catalonia’s Olympiad Stadium

International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games (clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s thunder!).

Politics and sport, the National Socialist way

In the end, although only two countries, the USSR and Spain, withdrew from the Berlin Games in favour of the Barcelona Olympiade, support for the Barcelona alternative games was widespread. The Olympiad was not state-sponsored in the fashion of the IOC carnival but backing came from progressive bodies and associations within western countries (trade unions, socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc.). The Peoples’ Olympiad was also supported by various individuals – eg, dissident Germans with first-hand experience of the Hitler state and Jewish-American athletes opposed to Nazism[2].

SASI preached a cooperative and fraternal spirit to the 6,000 athletes from 22 countries who committed to participate. Whereas the Berlin Games were perceived as an affront to the Olympic ideals, Barcelona was intended to be based on a foundation of international solidarity that would elevate the “brotherhood of men and races” and “show the sport-loving masses (a Olympiad) that is neither chauvinistic or commercialised”, one devoid of the “sensational publicity of stars” that was characteristic of the IOC-run Games[3].

Olimpíada Popular poster: International worker-athlete brotherhood Olimpíada Popular poster: International worker-athlete brotherhood

The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[4].

Most of the mainstream IOC sports had been slated for inclusion in Barcelona and one or two former ones like amateur rugby revived. Also tacked on to the Olympiad were a variety of cultural activities such as folk dancing, theatre, music, chess♚ and an “Art Olympiad” (the promoters advertised the event also as a “Folk Olympiad”)[5].

Avery Brundage and the IOC were not alone in condemning the ‘rebel’ Olympiad in Catalonia, the Spanish right-wing press slammed the idea saying, variously: it would be a “second class Olympics” because it was open to all-comers, it was a “Jewish-communist” games, etc.[6]. On the Left the Spanish Marxist Workers’ Party (POUM) opposed the Peoples’ Olympiad on two grounds – the preoccupation with sports was “a waste of time” distracting the working class from its ‘proper’ objectives, and they mistrusted the motives of the democratic socialists (ie, SASI)[7]. Another instance of the lack of unity of the European Left in the face of the threat from the totalitarian Right.

Estadio Montjuïc Estadio Montjuïc

In July 1936 on the eve of the games opening, the Peoples’ Olympiad was thwarted when the Spanish military led by General Franco staged a coup against the republican government. The outbreak of a full-scale civil war in the country resulted in the Olympiad’s cancellation. Some of the overseas athletes A number of the overseas athletes who had already arrived in Barcelona stayed, joining the Republic side and fighting in the International Brigades against Franco’s Falange forces. The Berlin Olympics kicked off as planned on 1st August with the politics indeed overshadowing the sport[8]. Barcelona and its Montjuïc Stadium had to wait another 56 years before it finally got its chance to hold the Olympic Games in 1992.

유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유
♔ a double blow for Barcelona as it also earlier had lost the 1924 Olympic bid (to Paris)
♕ the infrastructure for the sports tournament was already in place – the main stadium and hotels (to be converted into a state-of-the-art Olympic village) had been constructed for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and upgraded for the city’s bid for the 1936 Games
♚ Chess has a long tradition (since 1924) of staging its own brand of international Olympics, the Chess Olympiads, now held biennially
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[1] H Gordon, Australia and the Olympics ; ‘The Movement to Boycott the Olympics of 1936’, (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), www.ushmm.org
[2] British support of Barcelona (and opposition to Berlin) was formidable, promising a big representation of UK athletes for the Olimpíada Popular, TUC (Trade Union Congress), ‘Labor Chest – Opposition to the Nazi Games, British Workers’ Sports Associations’ (Press Release), 9-Jun 1936), in Documents on the Popular Olympiad from “Trabajadores: The Spanish Civil War through the eyes of organised labor”, BTU Congress (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www.contentdm.warwick.ac.uk
[3] ibid.
[4] J Freedland, ‘The Anti-Nazi Games that never were’, Evening Standard (Lon.), 16-Jul 2012
[5] ‘The Peoples’ Olympics in Barcelona’, http://iberianature.com/
[6] G Calomé & J Sureda, ‘Sport and Industrial Relations’ (1913-1939): the 1936 Popular Olympiad’, (1995), www.ddd.uab.cat
[7] ibid.
[8] Photos of the Berlin Games at the time of the event capture how completely Nazi propaganda lorded it over the ideals of the Olympics – the massive Nazi swastika symbol is seen to dwarf the Olympic Rings at venues, ‘The Olympics: Playing Political Games’, (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www2.warwick.ac.uk

‘Democratised’ Olympics? The International Workers’ Olympiads

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
International Relations, Politics, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture, Sport

The second week of the Rio Olympics is now in full swing with the track and field disciplines having taken over from the swimming events. The conspicuous media coverage of the ‘unofficial'(sic) medal tallies in these games and the keen, vicarious interest of patriotic supporters in the performances of their national teams is as high as ever. By way of contrast to today’s highly competitive and commercialised IOC Olympics, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a very different kind of Olympiad, one lacking in individual competitiveness, centring largely round the Second World in the 1920s and 1930s.

During the interwar period (1919-1939) the newly-communist state of the USSR isolated itself from the capitalist world, this also meant opting out of the western system of sport, including the quadrennial Olympic Games♜. The USSR leaders viewed the Olympics as a capitalist and inherently exploitative and chauvinistic sporting event run by and for the West’s elites¹. The Bolsheviks certainly wanted to engage the Soviet citizenry especially its youth in physical activity, but wanted to create a sporting and physical culture that was ‘proletarian’ in nature to match the state’s avowed ideological position². Eschewing the IOC games’ ‘bourgeois’ individualism and record-seeking, the Soviets envisaged a sporting movement that would be class-based, collectivist and mass-oriented³.

Spartakiad 1931 Spartakiad 1931

As an alternative to the Olympics the Soviet Union in the early 1920s introduced the Spartakiad⁴, an ongoing, international multi-sports event sponsored by itself. The state organisation responsible for organising the event was called Red Sport International♔ (RSI or Sportintern), under the aegis of the powerful Comintern (the Communist International). The Spartikiad was the brainchild of RSI’s first president, Nikolai Podvoisky who came to the position from being Vsevobuch (responsible for organising the military training of Soviet youth).

RSI was formed in opposition to the IOC’s First World-dominated Olympics, but also in opposition to the rival Socialist Workers’ Sport International (Ger: Sozialistische Arbeitersport Internationale, SASI) which was founded as the Lucerne Sport International and based in that German-speaking Swiss city in 1920 (see Postscript). SASI organised a series of Workers’ Olympiads over the ensuing two decades.

The early (unofficial) Spartakiads were purely Soviet Republic affairs involving formations of the Red Army and Spartak Youth Physical Culture. Later participants included trade unions, the Dynamo Physical Culture Sports Society, the Patriotic Defence Society (DOSAAF) and other labour-based sports clubs and associations. From 1928 to 1937 athletes from sports clubs and associations outside of the USSR were invited to take part in the Spartakiads.

RSI Vs SASI
Predictably the separate sports tournaments of the USSR-sponsored RSI and the SASI (backed by the German parliamentary socialist Left and a mixture of independent socialists, syndicalists and anarchists) became vehicles to endorse the virtues of each body’s political stance … the Soviets saw the sporting activities of RSI as opportunities for political education of the masses (although they were quite frustrated at the limited success in this objective). There were calls in the 1920s for SASI and RSI to unify their multi-sport movements and some tentative connections made, but these were made against a backdrop of the non-crystallisation of the Left in Europe. Communists and social democrats committed the fatal political mistake: bickering and fighting with each other rather than focusing on the common enemy, a greater threat to them from fascism and the Far Right in Europe (eg, as happened in Weimar Germany). Ultimately the two workers’ sporting organisations couldn’t bring themselves to merge as the ideological divide between moderate (democratic) Left and Far Left widened⁵.

Both sports internationals were large-scale organisations, each with over two million members by 1928. Both professed to be anti-bourgeois but crucial differences surfaced rapidly. SASI took a strongly anti-militarist stance (the Olympiad’s slogan was “No More War”), and insisted that members follow its policy of political party neutrality (on both counts antithetical to RSI). SASI’s political non-alignment drew hostility from RSI who attacked it for a failure to espouse revolutionary goals, labelling its members as ‘Mensheviks’ and ‘reformists’. RSI also pursued a strategy of trying to ‘white-ant’ SASI by forming communist factions within it. SASI for its part earnestly resisted attempts by RSI to radicalise its movement and impose a communist dominance over it⁶.

Frankfurt WO 1925
Frankfurt WO 1925

SASI held its first Workers’ Olympiad in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1925. Around 150,000 spectators attended and a world record was broken in the 4 x 100 metres women’s relay race. SASI fostered the ideals of international solidarity and brotherhood among athletes, this was in stark contrast to the IOC which had compromised its own Olympic principles by allowing Belgium and France to ban the defeated (so-called) “aggressor nations”, Germany and Austria, from the 1920 and 1924 Olympics♕. The display of national flags and anthems at Worker Olympiads were forbidden … all athletes competed under a single red flag and “The Internationale” was sung at ceremonies which comprised displays of free exercises by a mass of gymnasts. The sense of brotherhood engendered by SASI discouraged the quest for records and the idolisation of individual athletes⁷.

Another feature distinguishing the Workers’ Olympiad from the IOC Olympics was that the best performed athletes were awarded diplomas instead of medals. As well, there was no exclusive accommodation for competitors such as Olympic villages, worker-athletes were billeted with local, working class families⁸.

The 1931 SASI Olympiad in Vienna♚ was probably the most successful tournament, introducing innovative sports such as fitness biathlon (run-and-swim) and “military sport”. It attracted 250,000 spectators (more than attended the 1932 Los Angeles Games), with competitors from 26 countries numbering in excess of 75,000 (cf. a mere 1,410 competing at the LA Games). Workers’ Olympiads were not restricted to elite performers, they were in fact overtly non-elitist … open to participants regardless of ability. SASI’s games had a more socially progressive approach … where the IOC had only 107 women competitors in LA in 1932 (about 7% of the total), Vienna had 25,000 female athletes attend in 1931⁹.

The next Workers’ Olympiad was set to take place in Barcelona in 1936, the same year as the Berlin Olympics, and was intended to be a protest against the IOC’s awarding of the Games to Hitler’s Germany. It was however called off at the 11th hour owing to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (see separate post). Hastily rescheduled for 1937♤ in Antwerp, this Olympiad was considerably reduced in scale (15 participating countries) … no German athletes because the Workers’ Gymnastics and Sports Federation of Germany (ATSB) had been outlawed by the Nazi regime upon coming to power. As a partial reconciliation SASI did permit RSI sporting clubs and bodies to take part. Exotic or novel sports at Antwerp included Basque pelota, Czech handball, table tennis, motor cycling and chess¹⁰.

Antwerp WO 1937 Antwerp WO 1937

The 1937 Workers’ Olympiad was the last of SASI’s sexennial multi-sports labour-centred events, as the outbreak of World War II put paid to plans to hold the 1943 Workers’ Olympiad scheduled to take place in Helsinki. The global war also called a halt to the Moscow-controlled Spartakiads (Red Star International itself was dissolved in the late 1930s).

Emerging from the war as allies of Britain, France and the US, the USSR moved towards a position of greater engagement with the world. Embracing the West, to the extent it did this, was partly a recognition of the need to modernise the Soviet Union, and this was essential if the USSR was going to compete with and overtake the capitalist world in industry, technology and agriculture. A key part of engaging internationally was to integrate into the Western international sports system, starting with the major sports in the USSR, football and weightlifting. The Soviets got themselves onto the world governing federations in these sports and then extended the process to other highly participatory sports¹¹.

As the muscle-flexing of the Cold War was starting up, the USSR recognised the value of using sport to project and enhance great-power status, so a clear aim was re-admission to the Olympic Games fraternity. The Soviets did not try to participate at the 1948 London Games but timed their return for the 1952 Games in Helsinki where they were successful in winning 22 gold medals. At Melbourne in the 1956 Olympics the USSR finished first (above even the mighty USA) in the medal tally. Such a demonstration of communist sporting supremacy over capitalist nations in this world arena brought the Soviet Union a real measure of international recognition¹² (in the same way as Soviet technological breakthroughs in the “Space Race” did).

In the post-war period the Soviet Union continued holding Spartakiads, but they now had new purposes. The Spartikiads and other such massive-scale, multi-sport extravaganzas (kompleksnye sorevnovania) were still PR vehicles to propagate positive values of youth, optimism and world peace. The Spartakiad continued right up to the breakup of the USSR, and its sporting activities bolstered national defence by providing paramilitary training for Soviet youth. But the event was now held one year prior to the Olympics, the Spartakiad became an internal Olympics trial, a mechanism to find and develop new talent for the upcoming Games¹³.

Postscript:
The origins of worker gymnastic and sporting associations and clubs lie in Central Europe in late I9th century and arose out of an increase in workers’ leisure time, eg, Germany led the way with the formation of the Worker-Gymnasts Association (Arbeiter-Turnerbund – ATB) in 1893. Swimming, sailing, athletics and other sports swiftly followed suit. By soon after the turn-of-the century these types of organisations had spread to other European states. In 1913 worker sport associations representing Germany, England, Belgium, France and Austria, met at a congress in Ghent and formed the first International Workers’ Sports Association. The advent of world war the following year however put the IWSA’s activities in abeyance for the duration¹⁴.

₪┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅₪
♜ in this formative stage of the Soviet Union, “Socialism in One Country” was the prevailing strategy of the Party (advanced by Stalin) – consolidating the ‘progressive’ and revolutionary conditions within the USSR, which meant postponing its export to the outside world
♔ originally known as the International Red Sports and Gymnastics Associations, underscoring gymnastics’ place in organised recreational pursuits in this period
♕ both worker sports associations (especially SASI) railed against the IOC for its practice of social exclusion, racist attitudes and failure to promote policies of gender equality at the Games
♚ the same year RSI held an All-Unions Spartakiad in Berlin
♤ the 1937 Summer workers’ event was preceded by an Arbeiter Olympiade Winter in Czechoslovakia

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References:
¹ a succession of aristocratic heads of the IOC (de Coubertin, de Baillet-Latour, Brundage) accentuated the elitist nature of the organisation and the event
² more pragmatically, the government also understood that the proletarian sports meets would provide youth with valuable training for later national military service
³ B Keys, ‘Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38(3), 2003, www.blogs.bu.edu
⁴ the Spartakiad took its name from Spartacus, the 1st century Thracian gladiator who led the slave rebellion against Rome, a deliberate contrast with the Modern Olympics movement which took its inspiration from the Ancient Olympics with its aristocratic nod to the mythology of Greek Gods, ‘Spartakiad’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakiad
⁵ ‘A Workers’ Olympics?’, Workers’ Liberty, 01-Aug 2012, www.workersliberty.org
⁶ DA Steinberg, ‘The Workers’ Sports Internationals 1920-28′, Journal of Contemporary History, 13(2), Apr 1978
⁷ B Kidd, ‘Radical Immigrants and the Workers’ Sports Federation of Canada, 1924-37′, in G Eisen & DK Wiggins [Eds], Ethnicity and Sport in North American History and Culture
⁸ ‘A Workers’ Olympics?’, op.cit.
⁹ ‘Socialist Workers’ Sport International’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ SocialistWorkersSportInternational; ‘Red Sport International’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedSportInternational; Kidd, op.cit.
¹⁰’1937 Workers’ Summer Olympiad’, (Wikipedia),https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 1937WorkersSummerInternational
¹¹ Keys, op.cit.
¹² ibid ; J Riordan, International Politics of Sport in the Twentieth Century
¹³ R Edelman, Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sport in the USSR
¹⁴ G Kuhn, Playing as if the World Mattered: An Illustrated History of Activism in Sports

Accommodating Indonesia by Sacrificing West Papua: Australia and the West’s Regional Realpolitiks

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
International Relations, Politics, Regional History

From the first, inchoate Papuan calls for independence (Merkeda) and separation from Indonesia, the West has conveniently chosen to ignore the justness of the West Papuans’ right to self-determination and a post-colonial future. There has been a mixture of motives for these omissions – revolving largely around an insurance policy of political self-interest and opportunities for economic self-gain. Over the past half century Australia, the US and the UN have at different times ably served the Indonesian cause in Western New Guinea (WNG).

imageThe US manipulated the 1962 negotiations between the Netherlands and Indonesia (the New York Agreement) and undercut the Dutch position essentially for ideological self-interest. After overtures and military hardware from the USSR to Sukarno were warmly received in Jakarta, the need to keep Indonesia in the anti-communist camp became critical to Washington’s thinking of the day. The support for Indonesia’s designs on West Irian later lucratively opened the door for US mining companies (I have already outlined how Freeport Copper and Gold, in conjunction with the Suharto regime, richly profited from the mineral-saturated province).

At the time of the so-called “Act of Free Choice” in 1969, Ortiz Sanz, the UN’s official observer at the plebiscite, allowed Indonesia free rein to determine how the poll would be conducted. Jakarta chose a form of consultation with community elders known as Musyawarah, rather than the “one man, one vote” principle. The Musyawarah system (allowing less than 0.2 per cent of the population to vote) flagrantly breached the 1962 New York Agreement. Jakarta then employed its military muscle on the ground to intimidate (and in some cases bribe) a select sample of Papuan voters into allowing integration of the WNG territory into Indonesia. The UN effectively sold the Papuan majority “down the river” by rubber-stamping the manifestly fraudulent result. As John Saltford noted, “U Thant and the UN Secretariat allowed the UN to involve itself in a dishonest process which deliberately denied the Papuans political and human rights”.

In the lead-up to the West Irian vote Washington again endorsed the Indonesian position as the correct one. US national security adviser Henry Kissinger echoing the earlier, dismissive tone uttered by President Kennedy on Papuan self-determination, advised Nixon that “independence was meaningless to the Stone Age cultures of New Guinea”. Interestingly Kissinger later became a member of the board of Freeport and a key lobbyist of the Indonesian government on behalf of the New Orleans-based multinational!

Australia right through the fifties to the early sixties backed the Dutch plan to facilitate self-determination for WNG, slowing bring the colony to a state of readiness for self-determination, and presumably self-rule. Australia was far more conservative about how long this would take for both parts of New Guinea to achieve. The Netherlands however went ahead, from the 1950s on it started building indigenous political structures, trade unions, etc, with a view to possible self-rule for WNG sometime around 1970.

imageCanberra’s support for this option was more about blocking Indonesia’s designs on the territory than about advancing the interests of the Papuans. Australia’s strategic focus in the (still) Eurocentric fifties was on the avoidance of having an Asian power (especially one with a leader showing leftist tendencies) sharing a land border with any territory administered by it. At this time Australia was responsible for the Territory of Papua New Guinea in the eastern half of the island (later granted independence in 1975), and there had even been some discussion of a pan-Papuan Melanesian Union – although it is debatable how seriously this was ever mooted [R Chauvel, ‘Australia’s strategic environment: the problem of Papua’; JR Verrier, ‘Origin of the Border Problem’].

The US’s involvement in Indo-China in the cause of anti-communism steered the Liberal government in Canberra in a different direction. To counter Soviet influence on Indonesia the Kennedy and Johnson administrations put their support first behind the Sukarno regime, and after it fell, the Suharto regime as “a bulwark against the spread of communism” in south-east Asia. Australia, in what was increasingly becoming its default position, followed the US line … accommodating Indonesia’s wishes on West Irian would uphold the status quo and maintain the regional balance.

Aust & Indonesia discuss mutual interests
Aust & Indonesia discuss mutual interests
In addition to being a supporting pillar in Washington’s Cold War ‘army’, Canberra had its own, more immediate, regional geo-strategic considerations concerning WNG. In 1962 the Menzies government changed tact on the issue. This happened because external affairs minister Garfield Barwick persuaded the cabinet to switch sides. Australia’s immediate defence concerns were still focused on the dangers inherent in “an arc of instability” existing to the north, but Barwick argued, that the creation of an independent micro-state (that would probably not be viable) within the orbit of a large, emerging Asian powerhouse with an axe to grind, was the worst result for Australia [R Chauvel, ‘Australia’s strategic environment: the problem of Papua’].

The Menzies government rationalised that letting Jakarta have the former Dutch New Guinea colony would satisfy the Indonesians’ territorial ambitions*. And already there were signs in Canberra’s thinking that the integration of Dutch New Guinea into Indonesia was a done deal waiting to happen. As Barwick’s successor as EA minister Paul Hasluck revealing put it in 1965, the process of self-determination need not amount to a plebiscite but can merely be “an act of ascertainment” [cited in W Henderson, West New Guinea: The dispute and its settlement].

The Government of Australia raised no objections to Indonesia’s reliance on a grotesque, wilfully skewed plebiscite in 1969 to meet its desired ends. In fact the new Liberal-Country Party external affairs minister Gordon Freeth endorsed Jakarta’s symbolic consultative process. Without blinking the Gorton government in Canberra subsequently and routinely endorsed the Indonesian takeover of the territory.

The laissez-faire Australian policy towards Indonesia’s oppressive neo-colonial treatment of its Papuan province and people continues to the present. In fact recent Australian governments have been frantically trying to curry favour with Indonesia, making pronouncements on the West Papua issue that at times sound uncomfortably close to appeasement. In late 2013 the then Australian PM, Tony Abbott, obsequiously reassured the Indonesian president at the time (Yudhoyono) that his government would do everything in its power to stop protestors using Australia to criticise Indonesian treatment of Papuans in the province (“as a platform for grandstanding against Indonesia” as he phrased it) [S Rollo, ‘Ending our pragmatic complicity in West Papua’].

For Indonesia’s part it too has a new president, ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, who has expressed a greater interest in the troubled province than his predecessors, and has made some limited concessions. In 2015 he released five Papuan political detainees and lifted restrictions on foreign correspondents within the provinces** (although this has been put in doubt by later contradictory statements).

It is too early to say if Jokowi’s ascension will signify real improvements in the Papuan community’s situation. Both Wahid and Habibie in the Papuan Spring interlude committed themselves to reforms but these did not really materialise. Even with genuine goodwill and intent on the part of the president, it has been shown in Indonesia that the political and military elites can block the way to meaningful changes occurring.

The Indonesia/West Papua conflict has reached a kind of impasse. Indonesia believes that Western New Guinea belongs to it. It sees itself as the rightful heir and successor to the Dutch East Indies empire. It is in possession of that last piece of the East Indies jigsaw and it has the title deeds (albeit tainted) to it in the shape of the 1969 UN-sanctioned plebiscite! Jakarta fought hard diplomatically and by other means in the 1950s and 60s to get West Papua and it is not prepared to relinquish this prize, as far as it is concerned it is non-negotiable! External criticism and talk of “human rights” in West Papua is sternly viewed as interference with Indonesia’s internal affairs.

Melanesian world
Melanesian world
The Papuans, through different lens, see it otherwise. They view the Indonesian identity as an external impost on their Melanesianness, they see themselves as ethnically and culturally distinct from the many other parts of the archipelago. The separatist rebels know that they can never defeat the Indonesian Army militarily, but so barbaric and oppressive is the war Indonesia is waging against militia and civilians alike, that OPM and other pro-independence elements would never give up the struggle whilst they still have any means to resist. The Papuans also have right on their side, they know that the 1969 vote that was supposed to demonstrate the population’s will was an undemocratic, tokenistic process with a transparently contrived result.

Whilst Indonesia persists with its discriminatory practices, behaving as an occupational power with its terror and torture tactics against the Papuans, it can never hope to win the hearts and minds of the population. The great majority of Papuans, from their everyday experiences with Indonesian authority, live with the realisation that, without any say in the matter, they have gone from one form of colonialism (Dutch) to another, more oppressive, colonialism (Indonesian).

imageLike other intractable conflicts around the world it cries out for mediation by a third-party. Comparisons are often made with the Timor/Indonesia conflict which dragged on for decades and at times seemed a pretty hopeless cause for the East Timorese before they finally achieved their freedom. One vital difference between the two though is that the UN supported Timorese independence, but with West Papua the UN has has never given diplomatic recognition to the Papuans’ cause***.

Jakarta refuses to even contemplate granting the West Papuans sovereignty. On a pragmatic level, unlike Timor, they’ve got too much invested in the provinces. Moreover the government has a profound belief in its right to the western Papuan land, based on the ideological underpinning that it sees itself as the natural and therefore rightful heir to the Dutch East Indies – which the western portion of New Guinea was part of (another key difference to Timor-Leste which was a Portuguese colony before the Indonesian invasion).

Indonesia is doing all it can to isolate the Papuan independence movement in the region, applying pressure to dissuade other nearby Pacific states from accepting West Papua into the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). However, someone needs to encourage Jakarta to enter into a dialogue on autonomy for Papua with OPM/pro-independence representatives and to convince it that it is in its interest to do so – otherwise the situation will just perpetuate as a stalemate with further bad PR for Jakarta and a very costly exercise of never-ending military occupation draining the Indonesian coffers … and the issue will continue to cast a shadow over the Indonesian Republic’s human rights credentials.

Australia is the obvious candidate as mediator, but this prospect is problematic on several levels. Australia is hamstrung by the 2006 Lombok Treaty which commits it to support Indonesia’s hold on West Papua, and relations with Indonesia are as sensitive as they probably have ever been. But more germane, both the current Australian government – and the opposition – lack the will to intervene on behalf of the Papuans. A long-delayed justice and a fair deal for the Melanesian population of Papua is just not on Canberra’s radar, rather its priorities lie more in shoring up its bilateral relationship with Indonesia to safeguard its trade and security interests and in heading off the possibility of new influxes of asylum seekers coming to Australian shores.

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* in fact soon after Indonesia had secured its temporary mandate over WNG in 1962 it provoked a confrontation (Konfrontasi) over Borneo with the newly formed Federation of Malaysia, a conflict leading to military involvement from Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

** characteristic of a regime trying to keep its unsavoury authoritarian practices under wraps Indonesia has consistently maintained a media blackout for decades, restricting information on Western New Guinea reaching the outside world (intended to keep the rest of Indonesia in the dark as much as the wider world).

*** in a previous post on West Papua I outlined the negative role played by the UN in hampering the indigenous New Guineans’ free expression of their wishes in the 1969 Referendum on the territory’s future.

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References:
R Chauvel, ‘Fifty years on, Australia’s Papua policy is still failing’, Inside Story, 27 Sept 2012
R Chauvel, ‘Australia’s strategic environment: the problem of Papua’, Agenda, 11(1), 2004
G Harvey, ‘The Human Tragedy of West Papua’, The Diplomat, www.diplomat.com
S Rollo, ‘Ending our pragmatic complicity in West Papua’, The Drum, ABC-TV, 28 Oct 2013, www.abc.net.au
J Saltford, ‘Act of Free Choice’, Independent Parliamentarians for West Papua, www.ipwp.org
JR Verrier ‘Origin of the Border Problem … to 1969’ in RJ May (Ed.), Between two nations: the Indonesian-PNG border and West Papuan nationalism.
‘Is West Papua another Timor?’, Parliament of Australia (Current Issues Brief 1 2000-01), Dr JR Verrier, 27 Jul 2000

Melanesia’s Militarised Zone … Risking Conflict across the 141st Meridian

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
International Relations, Politics, Regional History

Since at least the mid to late 1970s West Irian (AKA West Papua) has been a militarised zone. The Indonesian Army (known as ABRI to 1999, TNI after 1999) has been stationed in the province in increasing numbers to protect extremely valuable US mining interests from sabotage (especially the Grasberg gold and copper mines), and to quell indigenous opposition to Jakarta’s Inkorporasi of West Irian. In the mid 1980s investigative journalist Robin Osborne exposed a “secret war” in Western New Guinea conducted by ABRI since around 1962/63 against a small and poorly armed Papuan militia (known as OPM – Free West Papua Movement) trying to resist the Indonesian takeover [R Osborne, Indonesia’s Secret War … Irian Jaya, (1985)].

imageOPM has been active if sporadic since the 1960s against the occupying Indonesian forces, its hostile actions however limited to guerrilla style attacks on army and police posts (on occasions including assaults on the Freeport mine) and kidnappings of security personnel and transmigrants. The sheer persistence of the low-level insurgency and the resistance of Papuans generally to Indonesian rule has ensured a continuing heavy army and police presence in the province. Up to the time of Suharto’s fall from power, West Irian was declared a militarised zone (DOM – Daerah Operasi Militir) by Jakarta. The ongoing OPM resistance and other provocations such as the raising of the banned West Papuan “Morning Star” flag have met with disproportionate retribution from the security forces.

Amnesty International and other humanitarian NGOs have drawn attention to systematic human rights violations perpetrated by the security forces against Papuan civilians and militia alike, including the widespread use of terror, torture and brutalisation, and rape [‘Indonesia 2015/16 – Annual Report’, AI, www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/Indonesia]. Richard Chauvel has characterised its prevalence as “a deeply ingrained institutional cult of violence in the way members of the security forces interact with Papuans” [R Chauvel, Policy Failure & Political Impasse’ in P King et al (Eds), Comprehending West Papua].

Military actions by ABRI in 1977-78 (code name “Operasi Kikis”) launched aerial bombardments of villages in the Central and Eastern Highlands (using US and Australian helicopters and aircraft to strafe villages) resulting in an estimated 11,000 casualties among tribesmen and villagers [‘Neglected Genocide: Human Rights Abuses against Papuans’, www.tapol.org].

imageThe security forces, whilst intended to pacify opposition in implementation of government policy, have at times appeared to get right out of hand, provoking riots (eg, Wamena 2000 and Timika 2003) and massacres of civilians (Biak 1998). Kopassus, the Indonesian military special forces unit, has been responsible for assassinating OPM and other Melanesian independence leaders.

Aside from its repressive role against indigenous Papuans, the occupying military has pursued other ‘maverick’ activities in the name of its self-interest. An US Embassy cable in 2007 quoted an Indonesian foreign affairs official as saying that TNI was operating in the province “as a virtual autonomous government entity” and also admitting that troop numbers in Papua were understated, and that they were there to protect the military’s illegal logging interests and other corrupt practices such as controlling prostitution, trafficking in stolen goods and endangered species [Chauvel].

After the fall of Suharto in 1998 Indonesian policy in West Irian entered a new period known as the Papuan Spring … under the new president (Habibie) tight military controls were relaxed right across the Indonesian archipelago and a spirit of democratic reforms (Reformasi) was entered into. This led to greater autonomy for the troubled province of Aceh and eventually to full independence for Timor-Leste. In Papua the outcome was a heightening of nationalistic feeling among the indigenous population (described as “Pan-Papuan nationalism”), but unfortunately there was only a brief interlude before there was a backlash from the Indonesian elites in 2000 and the authoritarian approach was restored. Army reform was supposed to be part of the new deal but successive governments have stalled on the process and ultimately not delivered on the promises [AMT Supriatma, ‘How Security Reforms work in the Conflict Region’, Indonesia, #95 (Apr 2013].

A disturbing consequence of the army’s reprisals against the OPM rebels has led to Papuan fighters fleeing over the border into Papuan New Guinea with ABRI forces regularly crossing the 141st meridian in hot pursuit. The larger scale military operations of the military have resulted in West Papuan villagers also fleeing east into PNG for their safety, eg, in 1983-84 11 to 12 thousand refugees crossed into PNG causing a refugee problem for the country (a logistics problem as well as a political one as PNG was ill-equipped to handle the influx in the hastily set up camps).

The 141st meridian
The 141st meridian
Despite a 1986 border treaty between the two countries incidents continued to strain diplomatic relations – Indonesia was accused of violating PNG air space and thus its sovereignty (an accusation it initially denied but later admitted), and Jakarta in turn was enraged by OPM rebels using the cover of PNG territory to launch the raids across the border into West Irian [‘Indonesia to apologise for PNG border incursions: report’, ABC News 21 Jul 2008, www.mobile.abc.net.au; ‘Border incursions a sign that West Papua also a PNG issue’, RNZ, 3 Mar 2014, www.radionz.co.nz]

The position of the PNG government vis-à-vis the border tensions with Indonesia is a very difficult balancing act – it has to safeguard its own sovereignty (and to be seen doing it), but it also has to tread carefully to avoid offending its powerful and volatile, much larger neighbour. At the same time the porousness of the long (760 km) border has maintained “grass-roots” contacts between Papuans on each side (eg, tribal ties unite Papuans across the border). Another common concern for both is the damage illegal logging is doing to the of New Guinea as a whole. Many Papuans living east of the PNG border regions are aware of the atrocities and denials of freedoms suffered by their brethren on the Indonesian side. All who reside on both sides of the New Guinea border are aware of the anomalies of the situation, one people, one island, yet politically divided. [‘Line between PNG and Indonesia increasingly blurred’, RNZ, 21 Dec 2015, www.radionz.co.nz]

In the 15 or so years since the Papuan Spring dissipated, Indonesian security forces have behaved with immunity in the Papuan provinces, terrorising village communities at will whilst hunting down rebels and independence activists. They have continued to engage in human rights abuses unabated, especially the extensive use of torture and rape of civilians.

An element of racism resides in the Indonesian forces’ violent treatment of Papuans. This is often overt, eg, the tendency of Indonesian troops to have their photo taken with rebels or tribesmen that they have just killed on patrol – in the fashion of “big game” hunters proudly posing with their wild animal trophy! References to Papuans as ‘monkeys’, ‘primitives’ and ‘cannibals’ are rife amongst the security forces and non-Papuan Indonesians generally [M Bachelard, ‘Papuans face ignorance, corruption and racism from Jakarta’, The Interpreter, (26 Jun 2015), www.lowyinterpreter.org].

Densus 88 "Ghost Owls"
Densus 88 “Ghost Owls”
In recent years there have disturbing allegations that Indonesia’s counter-terrorism unit, Densus 88 (Detachment 88) is operating within West Papua. This special branch of the national security forces, funded, trained and equipped by the Australian government, is suspected of carrying out a targeted assassination of a pro-independence Papuan leader in Jayapura in 2012 [‘Is Australia funding Indonesian Death Squads? Densus 88 in West Papua’, http://arsip.tabloidjubi.com/].