West Papua

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, on introducing this important debate tonight. There were many reasons for wanting to intervene; perhaps the whole issue of human rights, to which the noble Lord referred, would be sufficient in itself. We have a Government who claim that they want to see a world based on human rights, accountable government and democracy. They want to play a full part in working towards that world. It logically follows, therefore, that we have an interest in the injustice of the situation in West Papua. I am afraid that I see in the situation too many sinister and ominous parallels with East Timor. I have visited Indonesia on a number of occasions, and I visited East Timor in the final stage, just before the terrible conflict that led to independence. The people of that part of the world are wonderful; they deserve more than they are enjoying. Sometimes in debates of this kind we become a bit theoretical and remote in our analysis, and I therefore am not ashamed to bring to the attention of the House a letter that was brought to my attention fairly recently. It is an open letter written by Benny Wenda, the chairman of the Koteka Tribal Assembly and the leader of the West Papua Independence Movement, to the Indonesian ambassador in Britain, who had apparently expressed surprise that West Papua was seeking independence. This letter, written with some passion, was to tell him why. In the letter, Benny Wenda referred first to what we have already heard about the invasion of their land. He then referred to the referendum that was offered as a so-called act of free choice, which in fact was in the context of the ruthless intimidation of those who were likely to vote for independence. Then there was the removal of people to make way for the exploitation of gold, copper, oil and timber reserves. Again, ruthless techniques were employed, such as bombing from helicopters. People were rendered homeless, raped and murdered; all this was part of what happened. Perhaps I can quote directly from the letter, which is passionate and written with real feeling: "““Then you started to rip open and destroy our Land. We call our Land our Mother because she gives us everything we need to live. You sold our Mother to British, American & Australian companies like Rio Tinto & BP. You got rich whilst we West Papuans got poorer, not because we want your kind of riches, but because without our Mother we die””." He concluded: "““Now you say that we are ‘free and equal citizens of the new Indonesian democracy’. But when we tell you we want to use this ‘new free democracy’ to campaign democratically and peacefully for independence and when we just want to see our own flag flying in our own Sky, you cover our Land with soldiers, you put us in prison, you torture us and you kill us””." I have no first-hand experience by which I can assess these accusations, but I have the experience of visits to Indonesia and to East Timor and I am afraid that the accusations ring all too true to me. Obviously, it is not convincing to contemplate a world in which every ethnic group has a national identity of its own. That would make neither political nor economic sense. But consent is essential if countries are to stand together in meaningful democracy and freedom, and consent depends on trust. Where trust is absent—and it seems to be totally absent in this case—consent can hardly be expected. The genie is out of the bottle. I have often wrestled with this conundrum. Should one come down on the side of every possible move to try to hold the situation together, or are there some situations in the world in which that task is so impossible because of the realities on the ground—as I say, the genie is out of the bottle—that to try to do so would only make a bad situation worse and the time may have come to recognise and come to terms with the inevitable? Look at what happened in East Timor before, eventually, the natural conclusion was reached. I refer to our responsibility and I put it in the context of our Government’s commitment, of which I am very proud, to democracy and human rights, and in the context of the logical follow-through from such declarations of intention of what is necessary when faced with such situations. Of course there are also more tangible reasons for our responsibility, including the importance of the economic relationship between Britain and Indonesia, not least through arms sales, which indirectly compound the situation that we are describing. I hope that the Government will take the noble Lord’s entreaties seriously and can come to a candid relationship with Indonesia in which realistic talk takes place about the way forward.