The Australian, 5 June 2002

"Papua, Timor separate pasts"

To respond to Mr. Joe Collins (Letters, 24/5) it is necessary to put the issues of West Papua into perspective.

• The East Timor case is different. The UN has never recognised Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor but it recognised Indonesia's sovereignty over West Papua.

• The Dutch colonial government would not have experienced force and pressure from "highly motivated lobbyists-the US, the UN, and Australia" if it had allowed a complete decolonisation of Indonesia in the first place. The Dutch should not have ignored an international legal principle, which asserts that the boundaries of nascent post-colonial countries conform to their pre-sovereign ones, supporting Indonesia's sovereignty over archipelago. According to this principle, at the time of proclamation of independence on August 17, 1945, Indonesia had automatically exercised its rights of sovereignty over the Netherlands East Indies, including West Papua (also called Dutch New Guina). For whatever reason, in principle and logic, the question of Indonesia's sovereignty over West Papua ends there. Because of the colonial power's ignorance of that international legal principle, that the decolonisation of Indonesia was not completed until its sovereignty over Papua was restored through war with the Dutch, and later through United Nations mediation.

• Mr Collins' claim that 1025 (the correct figure is 1026) Papuan representative councils were "under coercion" to vote for integration with Indonesia, appeared to contradict the report of the UN Secretary General which stated "Without dissent, all enlarged councils pronounced themselves in favour of the territory remaining with Indonesia". The presence of these representative councils of West New Guinea, in fact, was recognised by 1962 the New York Agreement.

Lutfi Rauf
Indonesian Embassy

 

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Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia, Canberra - Australia