by Tim Flannery
Barely a week later, I was on a plane, once again bound for Timika before being whisked to Tembagapura. And there, in an enclosed balcony of a company house, I found that a miniature rainforest had been re-created.
As I opened the screen door to peer in, Ding, as I came to know the half-grown Dingiso which had brought me back to Irian once again, hopped out of the foliage and came towards me.
Ding had been cared for by the Owen family, and was in excellent condition.
The discovery of this animal was an unprecedented event. For years the people of Tembagapura had lived in ignorance of this wonderful creature, even though it inhabits the forests surrounding their town. Now, a living one had hopped into their midst. It was found in a disused machinery shed at the mine site. An Indonesian worker had entered the building so that he could relieve himself out of the rain. His micturition was cut short, however, when he noticed a black bundle of fur huddled in the corner. He ran to tell his American boss there was a bear on the premises.
Although no biologist, the American engineer knew there were no bears in Irian Jaya. Sceptical of the tale, he asked the man to retrieve the creature from the shed. A few minutes later the worker returned with a very cute, black and white animal in his arms. News of the discovery reached Terry, and soon thereafter myself.
Having handled a number of wild tree-kangaroos, I was surprised to hear that Ding had allowed himself to be picked up at his first meeting with a human. But it was further confirmation, if any was needed, of the stories told by Lani hunters about just how tame Dingiso is.
One can only guess at what Ding was doing in the shed. His coat was besmirched with oil, which is hardly surprising given that he had to cross a large industrial site to get to the disused shed. Perhaps he was moving out of his mother's territory. This is always a difficult period for young tree-kangaroos, and Ding was doubtless being given a hard time by adult males whose territories he was passing through. The forest surrounding the mine site seems to possess a particularly high density of tree-kangaroos. This is because hunters are excluded from the area. Ding had probably been chased from one territory to another, until he finally found refuge in a dark corner of the shed. The sheds and their heavy machinery may well be the only places in the vicinity of the mine which do not form part of the territory of an adult male Dingiso.
I spent several days photographing and observing this gentle animal. Ding, I found, was most happy when he was munching on a fistful of young fern leaves. He was not a particularly fussy eater, and would take new leaves from a variety of plants. He appeared to have no clear activity pattern, but instead seemed to become animated whenever anyone entered his enclosure carrying fresh food.
After a few days I had done all I could, and the time came to release Ding. Terry arranged for a helicopter to take us to a high valley about three kilometres east of the mine site. It seemed to be equally distant from both mines and hunters, and Ding stood a good chance of surviving if he were released there. We carried him in a hessian bag, which he liked, feeling perhaps that it was akin to his mother's pouch. I had put a tag in his ear, just in case he should encounter a human again.
When we released him into the alpine herbage, Ding hopped away very slowly, sampling leaves as he went. He was in no hurry to leave us, and it was only after several minutes that he disappeared into a dense tangle of bushes.
Even though only six months had passed since my last visit, noticeable changes had occurred at Tembagapura by late 1994. For one thing, tension between the local people and both Freeport and the Indonesian Government had risen markedly. I was fortunate in being in a privileged position to hear both sides of the story, for by now I had excellent connections with the Freeport management and the community leaders.
Six months earlier, the local people had only spoken openly in the forest, away from others who might hear them. Now, they spoke out everywhere of their hostility. One village leader said to me, ‘Everyone here, from the smallest child to the oldest man, knows that war [with Freeport and the Government of Indonesia] is inevitable.’
Every day in Tembagapura brought new alarums and rumours of hostile actions by the OPM. This was the week the war would begin, said my Dani, Moni and Amungme friends. The recent murders of respected men at Singa (by the Indonesian military), and all the deaths of the past for which compensation had not yet been paid, would be avenged. There were eighty armed OPM rebels hidden in the hills surrounding the town, they said. The water or electricity supply would be cut, or the town attacked. Maybe some Europeans would be shot.
Curiously, neither the Freeport administration nor the Indonesian armed forces seemed to be aware of the changes which were taking place in the local community. Indeed, they remained remarkably unconcerned, and life went on as always in the mining community. Whenever I raised the issue with people in authority I got a polite hearing, but also the distinct impression that they thought I was crying wolf.
One evening at dusk I was sitting in my room in Tembagapura, when I heard the strident notes of trumpet and snare drum approaching. A military detachment marched briskly by, and wailing fire engines and ambulances screamed behind them. These were followed by a long line of police and emergency vehicles. My heart was in my mouth. I expected to hear at any moment that the war had begun.
Then I saw a very strange thing. A fire engine drove slowly along the road, its siren wailing and all lights flashing. Something stood on top of it—it looked like Batman! This was followed by an even more bizarre sight, for behind came marching a strange collection of tiny devils, witches, lions and other creatures.
This, I suddenly realised, is how Halloween is celebrated in Tembagapura.
Watching the procession I thought incredulously of all I had heard over the past few days. How cosseted a world is this Tembagapura! Mist hangs over the forest and town like cotton-wool. The guard-posts which stand at each entrance keep Melanesia and its rumours of violence out. It is utterly cut off from the real world.
Tembagapura's lifeline is perilously thin. A single road, a pipeline, and an airfield. All are vulnerable. The flight to Timika often meets with massive turbulence. It feels like riding a bicycle over great angular blocks of concrete. One day a bicycle tyre will burst, and the steaming swamp forest might swallow a passenger jet. Maybe an earthquake will cut the road. Or a kilogram of semtex, or a few rifle bullets, will bring the flow along the lifeline to a halt.
THIRTY
Coming to a head
In January 1996 I again returned to Tembagapura. Alex had decided, based on what she had seen in 1994, that Kwiyawagi was indeed an ideal location for her studies. She intended to stay there for a year, and I decided to accompany her for six weeks or so in order to continue my research.
We had, through a great deal of effort and work (particularly on the part of my friends and colleagues in Indonesia), obtained visas which allowed us to reside in the country for twelve months, and to make multiple exits and re-entries. This seemed to be a victory over the Indonesian bureaucracy indeed. It turned out to be a perverse and short-lived one.
The day after I collected my sparkling new visa at the Indonesian consulate in Sydney, alarming news reached me. A team of young biologists working in Irian Jaya had been kidnapped by OPM rebels. Worse, they had been kidnapped from Mapnduma, a settlement just two days’ walk from Kwiyawagi.
This news threw our plans into chaos. The military would be everywhere, and travel would be severely curtailed. Nonetheless, we decided that we must at least try to continue.
After a week haggling in Jakarta with officials (which was difficult, for it was Ramadan and Jakarta was grinding to a halt), we managed to get permission to enter Irian Jaya. But once in Tembagapura we found that virtually all of Irian (except for the mine site) had been closed to outsiders.
The special visa we had obtained was to subject us to further indignity. An unusual document, it was examined minutely at each government office we were forced to visit. The most intolerable inspecti
on came in the immigration office at Tembagapura. There, a group of officials, all white-lipped and foul-breathed from their Ramadan fast, sat gathered around us, examining our strange visas. One possessed a claw-like fingernail at least six centimetres long on the pinkie of his left hand. With this, he scratched continuously at our passports, using its nail to flick over the pages. We sat there for over an hour as he contemplated his next move. All the while, I wondered about the previous use to which this extraordinary appendage had been put. The scratching sound reminded me of mice in a kitchen.
Finally, he asked us to fill out yet more forms, which resulted in our being issued with a mini Indonesian passport. In this was to be recorded every move we made in Indonesia, as well as a mass of irrelevant personal details. The final categories, complete with spaces for stamps, showed that one can never really escape the Indonesian bureaucracy. The penultimate one read Meningal negri—departed the country; the last was Meningal dunia—departed the world.
The atmosphere in the villages surrounding Tembagapura was now electric. My old friends welcomed us, but told me in no uncertain terms that this was not a good time to be a foreigner in Irian Jaya, and that, should anything happen to us, they would be helpless to intervene.
Through numerous conversations, I gradually pieced together the events which had led to the kidnapping. I cannot say that the story I reconstruct here is the only one, or even correct. It is, though, one which most of the Irianese people living around Tembagapura would believe to be true. Anger has simmered in their hearts for decades. This lies at the centre of the problem, and must be explained in some detail.
The Amungme and many other Irianese are angry both at the Government of Indonesia and at Freeport. The Indonesian military has admitted to having killed tens of people in the province. The true number killed since 1969 is almost certainly in the thousands. One estimate by a Dutch demographer puts the figure at 100,000.
Newspapers have reported that the Indonesian military has bombed villages, invaded and killed indiscriminately in remote areas, and has, in general, treated Irian Jaya as an occupied territory rather than a province of Indonesia. It has also tried to destroy Irianese traditions and culture.
Moreover, there are reports that individuals acting alone have perpetrated atrocities. Many members of the Indonesian military, particularly those holding lower ranks, see the Irianese as barely human. To a brutalised Javanese or Buginese private on duty at a guard-post, the wizened old black man in a penis gourd driving a pig before him is a demonic and deeply abhorrent being. He is a caricature of humanity, from whom the soldier withholds all contact except violence.
Yet I know that old man. He has an indomitable sense of valour, a sense of humour and a deep sense of humanity. He is the leader of a community who is respected for his wisdom, oratory and traditional wealth. He is a great man. The soldier is his inferior in every way. And yet the Government places a high-powered semi-automatic weapon in the hands of the nobody. He is now free to treat his fellow citizens with a barbarism and lack of respect that have led to an intense hatred in many Irianese of what they see as an occupying army.
The Indonesian Government has encouraged a flood of transmigrants into Irian. These people have generally settled in the lowlands, where land issues are not as keenly felt as in the highlands. By 1996, however, there was a growing awareness, at least among the better educated Irianese, that their very existence was being threatened by an ever increasing flow of migrants.
Irianese feelings towards Freeport differ somewhat. This is because the mine directly affects only the land of the Amungme and lowland Kamoro. Because of their opposition to the mine, the Amungme, who are a small group, have suffered horribly at the hands of the Indonesian armed forces. Among the survivors, many have been bowed into hopelessness by the events of the past twenty years. But a new generation burns with an anger which will not be easily placated.
When the geologist Forbes Wilson began exploration on the great Copper Mountain in the 1960s, Amungme tried to prevent the company from working there. The site, known to them as Tenggogoma, was considered sacred, the residing place of dead ancestors, as well as the now endangered Long-beaked Echidna—an important food item to the Amungme. Believing that violation of the site could have serious consequences, the Amungme erected saleps or hex sticks around it in an attempt to deter the company. They understood the implications of Wilson's work. But he told the Amungme, ‘that the white men were not trying to appropriate the villagers’ land. They just wanted to test the rocks. As evidence of their good faith...the white men would give the villages [sic] gifts of food and other items.’*
In reality, Freeport was given free rein by the Government of Indonesia forcibly to remove any people it needed to in order to get its operation going, and was in no way obliged to compensate them.
Soon, a great hole in the ground occupied Tenggogoma. A road and pipeline led from the mountain to the sea, and a city of foreigners was established on Amungme land. In the early 1980s the Amungme hit back by cutting the all-important pipeline which carried copper concentrate to the sea. Soon, bombs were falling onto their villages.
The Amungme have not forgotten the representations made to them when mine development began. They remember that Freeport helicopters and aircraft have carried Indonesian soldiers and equipment in raids against them. They know that Freeport workshops fuel and maintain army vehicles, which are in any case bought by the company for the use of the armed forces, and that Freeport engineers construct army posts and living quarters, and Freeport staff benefit, at least psychologically, from the exclusion of Irianese from their lives. There are also rumours that large sums of money have passed from the company to military commanders living in the area.
No wonder, then, that the Irianese have difficulty distinguishing between the actions of the company from those of the armed forces. Among those who do make the distinction, however, there is a feeling that they could deal with the company if only the armed forces were withdrawn.
A further issue for the Amungme concerns the security forces, which are paid for and maintained by Freeport. These security forces are, in reality, controlled at least in part by the Indonesian armed forces. The Irianese community living around the mine accuse the force of thirteen murders in recent years.
The security forces add insult to injury by poorly treating mountain people who try to enter Tembagapura. They have, I am informed, publicly assaulted children, elderly men and women, and mourners who have come to the hospital to collect the body of a relative. The American wife of a senior mine manager was harassed, and finally had to leave Tembagapura, after intervening when she saw a security guard viciously kicking a ten-year-old Amungme boy in the street.
A final and more fundamental problem concerns the relationship between the local Irianese and the Americans who live in Tembagapura. There is a great cultural gulf between these two groups. Some Americans profess goodwill towards the Irianese, although a larger number look down on them. Freeport is based in America's deep south—in New Orleans. The enormous wealth derived from Irian has helped to revitalise that grand, if somewhat down-at-heel city.
I have heard the Irianese referred to as ‘niggers’ more than once at public meetings, and suspect that the term, and the contempt it implies, is used more frequently behind closed doors. But despite the feelings any individuals might have, meaningful contact between the two groups is severely inhibited by the structure of the town and the rules of the company.
It was striking, after I had worked at Ok Tedi, to see how black and white are segregated in Tembagapura. At Tabubil, Ok Tedi company workers eat in one mess, regardless of their colour. Papua New Guineans from all over the country eat side by side with Australians, Filipinos and visitors. At every level in the company, one finds Papua New Guineans working side by side with Australians. Indeed, a previous managing director of Ok Tedi was a Papua New Guinean. Social life, schooling and sports are all entirely mixed. In short, an environment exists w
hich induces mutual respect and understanding.
At Tembagapura, in contrast, the Americans live inside their hermetically sealed enclosure alongside Indonesians from elsewhere around the archipelago. The Irianese are on the outside looking in. The situation reminds me of the gold rush in mid-nineteenth-century Australia, when small groups of Aborigines camped around the outskirts of growing towns such as Ballarat and Bendigo.
One other element makes inter-racial relationships at Tembagapura difficult. Fear. Any Americans who have thought at all about what they are doing, feel, I suspect, some unease at their situation. They know that the pipeline carries away ten million dollars worth of ore every day. Part of that wealth goes to the USA. It could, instead, have stayed in Irian Jaya, where it might have helped to build a prosperous Melanesian nation. How would the miners feel, I wonder, if the wealth of California were shipped to Indonesia?
They know that the Amungme have a valid moral claim to their land. They know that Freeport is providing the beachhead which will eventually see the replacement of the Irianese with Asian people. The guilt and fear (perhaps the most corrosive and unproductive of emotions) which this foreboding brings, cuts off completely whatever small connections there are between the groups.
A few Australian expatriates, and an even smaller number of Americans and Javanese, have escaped this psychological strait-jacket. These people are usually workers on the periphery. They live in small exploration camps where there is no choice but to get to know the locals, or on community projects outside Tembagapura where they must interact daily with them. These are the people who feel comfortable in Irian. In them, perhaps, lies the only hope for meaningful change.
The rising levels of unrest between 1993 and 1996 culminated in a series of rebellious acts committed by the communities surrounding the mine. During 1994 an OPM flag was raised in the village of Singa. The military invaded the place, shooting dead both the village pastor and kepala desa. These deaths were a terrible blow to the tiny community, and will not be forgotten.