CHAPTER 4 PART 2

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The Production of Oppression

The Caste Barrier

When the Dutch left in 1961, 4950 of the 8800 positions in the public service had been taken over by Papuans.⁸ 'Papuanization' of government services included increasingly the middle and executive positions. Today Papuans do not occupy the high or even most of the medium positions; increasingly, Indonesians are filling even the most unskilled jobs.⁹

Increasingly, migrants from provinces of Indonesia have taken over self-employed functions, especially as petty traders and middle men; they have come to occupy even the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in the public service, in banks and in private business. These are the impoverished people from the provinces of Indonesia - Macassar, Southern Sulawesi and Maluku (the latter two have been centres of separatist movements themselves) who in 1973 were pouring into West Irian at the rate of 2000 to 3000 per month.¹⁰ According to one source, in 1971, West Irian was experiencing the third highest lifetime migration of any area of Indonesia (Jakarta and Lampung being the first and second).¹¹ Today estimated as between 200,000 and 300,000,¹² the migrants are accurately seen as "the most important agent of structural change in the monetary sector of the Irian Jaya economy".¹³

The avalanche of migrants into West Irian may be seen in a context in which the whole functioning of economic and political life in West Irian is focussed around the solution of 'Indonesian' problems.¹⁴ Foremost among these are the twin issues of capital accumulation and the cohesion of the Indonesian state. Because the form of exploitation of the 'internal colonies of the state' is military-despotic, it is radically open to large-scale corruption. The military, who occupy the effective centres of power and the civil administration are able to enter into a symbiotic relationship: the 'normal' processes of despotic exploitation as a mode of accumulation become the setting for a second order process wherein the role of the state as the agent of accumulation is in part pre-empted by private accumulation on the part of its corrupt functionaries.

A solution to the second problem, that of keeping the centrally directed state together, is sought in the enticement of migrants to West Irian, especially from those parts of the Republic which have been centres of separatist, independence movements. In West Irian, the functioning of the Indonesian state - 'corrupt', 'inefficient', "ramshackle" are adjectives frequently used to describe it - is in no way different to practice in other parts of its territory. In 1975 West Irian had its own mini-Pertamina affair and its own Ibnu Sutowo.¹⁵ Former Governor of West Irian, Brigadier-General Acub Zainal, who committed the provincial administration to a building programme costing $A20 million, to improve the 'quality of life' of corrupt officials at Jayapura, which included a new bowling alley and below-ground level bar on the sea-front promenade, with imported ladies from Indonesia, had his credentials and himself withdrawn when his activities created a public scandal.¹⁶

For West Papuans the effect of the migration is one of total exclusion from the economy; only immigrants are eligible for jobs of any sort. This I have termed a caste barrier; it is one based on racial/ethnic criteria. In its almost total exclusiveness, it is comparable to the position of Aborigines in nineteenth and twentieth century Australia, where, except for a few token roles, and marginal employment on the frontiers as stockmen and trackers, Aborigines were totally excluded from the dominant economy.

For the migrants who have come as permanent settlers in hope of a better life, life has suddenly become a little rosy. Although West Irian is specially dependent upon foreign imports, with prices ten to twelve times those in Java, the price of rice is so heavily subsidized that despite sea transport and enormous air-freight costs inside West Irian, it is much cheaper than in Java or for that matter in Papua New Guinea. Clearly the subsidy alone offers successful enticement to the people of Sulawesi and elsewhere, who will increasingly flock to West Irian in search of cheap rice and jobs.

In its own way the rice subsidy illustrates the unbelievably parlous state of the Indonesian economy. Except for the Papuans, for the Malay people of the archipelago, the traditional staple is rice. Yet between 1965 and 1974, rice imports to Indonesia as a whole increased ninefold from 0.14 million tons to 1.30 million tons.¹⁷ Here is a country which recently launched an earth satellite, a country which yearly is injected with vast amounts of military and economic aid, which is still unable to provide its population with the most minimum food requirements!

Migrants now form something like 25 per cent of the total population of West Irian. Their future in relation to the West Papuans' struggle for independence is as yet unknown. Class differentiation among the migrants combined with the official racism creates a barrier of antagonism between the two groupings (and probably among the migrants themselves). But many of the migrants come from areas in which sentiments in opposition to homogenization are developed. The finding of a common footing between West Papuans and the newcomers, which challenges the rule of the Indonesian state, clearly may become an important matter in the years ahead.

NOTES

8 Justus M. van der Kroef, "West New Guinea: The Uncertain Future", Asian Survey (August 1968) p. 694.

9 On this point, because there are no figures available which separate out West Papuans from migrants from Indonesia, one is left with relying on the impressions of visitors to West Irian. See for example, June Venier, "Irian Jaya, 1975". New Guinea (August 1975) p. 2-20. She says: "The young Irianese make up some of the exceptions to the rule which ignores localisation . . ." (p, 13). In general, she claims that "Localisation ... is not even acknowledged as an issue or a problem in Irian where 'we are all Indonesians' ..." (p. 20, fn 45). Even Garnaut and Manning, who quote the total and spurious figures issued by the Indonesian government, conclude: ". . . it is probable that a significant proportion of local appointees were^immigrants from other parts of Indonesia". (1974) opi cit. p. 37.

10 These are the figures given by Peter Hastings, New Guinea, Problems and Prospects, Melbourne, Cheshire, 1973.

11 R. M. Sundrum, "Inter-Provincial Migration", Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, vol. XII, no. 1 (March 1976) p. 72-3.

12 This is the figure given by June Verrier (1975), op. cit. She writes: "This is based on a given population of 700,000 to 800,000 at the time of the 1969 Act of Free Choice, together with the impression of a long-serving Dutch priest who observed that the local population's natural rate of increase had been negligible for years", p. 19, fn 38.

13 Garnaut & Manning, (1974) op. cit. p. 36.

14 Ibid., p. 44.

15 For a discussion of Ibnu Sutowo and the Pertamina scandal see Ernst Utrecht, "United States of Indonesia? The Pentagon and the Generals", Arena, no. 42, 1976, p. 70-84.

16 Hamish McDonald, "West Irian tries to cope after a spending spree", Canberra Times (20 August, 1976).

17 Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies,vol. XI, no. 1 (March 1975) p. 88.