The highest mountains between the Himalayas and the Andes are the snow-topped crags of West Papua (4884m). A shinning, tropical glacier pokes out of the sweltering green of Asia’s largest rain forests. This is the second largest island on earth, with 15% of all the world’s languages, an encyclopedic biodiversity and a new Elderado for our resource hungry world; welcome to paradise, lock the door!

The last few years has seen a slow burn of resource extraction, violence and colonialism in West Papua. But a constant trickle of murders, disappearances, arrests, torture and a wave of mass civil actions have raised the international volume of this previously silent war. 

Most of us know little about the shady goings-on inside the giant forested island just to our north. However, in 1999 we caught a glimpse of the murderous behavior of the Indonesian military (TNI) as they butchered, raped and burnt the civilian population of East Timor and it these same forces that now run West Papua.
Despite great changes in Jakarta for democracy, human rights and civilian rule, the TNI are still a law unto themselves in Indonesia’s far-flung provinces. Only 40% of the TNI’s military budget is supplied by Jakarta, the rest is grafted from the locals and their land in these remote, resource rich locations and West Papua is their holy cash cow.

Although President Yudhoyono, and Prime minister Gillard consistently defend the motives and actions of the Indonesian security forces, a stream of incriminating leaks portrays their real form. Here’s a tiny snap-shot:

In Aug 2009 You Tube screened the torture and murder of potato farmer Yawen Wayeni at Matembu village. This showed the worst elements of the Indonesian military with unequivocal clarity as TNI soldiers taunt Yawen after disemboweling him and sitting around as he slowly dies. In 2010 You Tube again showed TNI soldiers torturing detainees, burning their genitals with burning sticks.
In 2011, a surveillance report from Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus) ‘Anatomy of Papuan Separatists’, was leaked. The report laid open the repressive strategies of the TNI and the pervasiveness of their spying on and threatening every echelon of West Papuan society at home and abroad. Jacob Rumbiak, a West Papuan exile, now Australian citizen living in Melbourne; is a major character in my documentary, ‘Strangebirds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story’ and one of the ‘targets’ detailed in the Kopassus report.
Things really heated up in September 2011 when thousands of mine workers at McMoran/RioTinto owned Freeport/Grasberg Mine, went on a lengthy strike, closing the world’s largest gold/copper mine and Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer. The stop-work cost McMoran/RioTinto 30 million dollars production per day. So when the miners downed tools to demand pay increases from a poultry $US1.50 per hour up to a lavish $3.00 per hour, a lot of rich and powerful people took notice.  

2011 culminated in the October 19th ‘Third Papuan People’s Congress’. Two hundred language groups from all over West Papua met in the capital Jayapura and elected a President, a Prime minister and declared their independence from Indonesia; demanding that United Nations monitors be deployed. As the congress wrapped up the security forces moved in, opened fire and arrested hundreds of peaceful delegates. Indonesia’s elite anti-terror squad, Densus 88, trained and supplied by Australia, was pivotal in the violence. Six bodies have since turned up in sewers and ditches around town. Theys Elluay was the last President elected by the Congress back in 2000, he was subsequently strangled to death by Kopassus Special Forces.
Then on December 13th 2011, four, full strength TNI combat battalions began a security ‘sweeping operation’ in the Paniai district of West Papua. Reports from local human rights groups say that 27 villages have been attacked, 75 houses burnt down, 6 schools destroyed and at least 18 people murdered. Unconfirmed reports state that helicopters machine-gunned and threw gas grenades into the village of Markas Eduda. It is reported that 10,800 people have fled their villages and are hiding in the jungle; bringing back memories of the 1989 – 93 TNI operations, where the TNI was accused of torturing thousands of innocent people with water boarding, burning off fingers, systemic rape and extra judicial killings.
What part of ‘psychotic, neocolonial ubber-mafia’ doesn’t the Australian government understand? This is not a well-groomed fighting force, the quashers of the Dutch, the saviors of the Indonesian people. This is a self-serving, corporate/pirate mafia with very big guns. It is under financed and looking to make a buck from what ever or who ever can pay. In Jakarta the TNI have been dragged into the 21st century by dedicated democrats, but West Papua is a long way from home and a long way from where anyone can hear you scream. To make matters worse, the long suffering Australian Defense Forces have been forced to train these nasty bastards by successive Australian governments.

It took shocking video pictures of the infamous Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor for the world to take note and support the East Timorese against the barbarity of the Indonesian military. The TNI’s modus operandi is now well known, the evidence is in and it is time for Australia to wake up and realize this human rights disaster is not going away and we are in it up to our necks.

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Strange Birds in Paradise: A West Papuan Story, feature documentary directed by Charlie Hill-Smith. Melbourne: The House of Red Monkey, 2010. 75min. www.strangebirds.com. au Soundtrack: www.wantokmusik.org/ artists_strangebirds.htm

As the songman of freedom lies dying from an Indonesian bullet, his spirit spawns a great tree of life, feeding the irrepressible spirit of West Papuan liberation. The Birds of Paradise, for so long held prisoner by the Java warlord demons of destruction, pillage and brutality—sing for life, and fly to freedom.
THIS beautifully illustrated animation sequence epitomises the West Papuan desire for simple survival, an assertion that West Papuan people are the custodians of a true paradise that the Indonesian military mafia has turned into a hell on earth.
Combining one of the oldest musical traditions of Earth, and inspired by the liberation music of West Papua’s executed poet laureate Arnold Ap, the groundbreaking film Strange Birds in Paradise shows the spirit of West Papuan resistance is alive and building, and refusing to accept more than 45 years of brutal occupation by Indonesia. Rarely does a film tell a hidden story of a truly miserable situation with such beauty, and with great sensitivity in attempting to understand all players’ perspectives in this ongoing tragedy.

Australian director Charlie Hill-Smith has woven together many complex threads to create this rich and evocative tapestry clearly showing the ‘mystery of life’ in Papua today.
With innovative storytelling methods unseen in documentaries, Hill-Smith explores differing ex- periences and perspectives of Indonesia’s colonial occupation of Papua, from everyday people, musicians, artists, academics, freedom fighters, refugees, activists; telling the stories of those who resist and have martyred themselves to protect the survival of one of the oldest, most linguistically diverse cultures, custodians of an earthly paradise.

Strange Birds accurately portrays the hope and occasional disconnectedness of those forgotten in the jungle, and the energy of the new generation. Particularly poignant today, it accurately depicts the losses of that new generation of civil resistance from Papua’s new generation of elite forced to hide in insecure border camps after being hunted like ani- mals. One failing is probably the lack of focus on the rise and transforma- tion of the civil resistance movement inside, but one can read between the lines in the value that is given to the power of songs for freedom.

West Papua is a place that is still off limits to foreign journalists and human rights observers, with Jakarta sharing a dubious honour with Syria and other dictatorships as among a few countries that ban independent verification of abuse. The film was shot undercover in West Papua and Papua New Guinea, with the film crew posing as tourists. Strange Birds shines a bright light on the otherwise ignored experience of West Papuans living a daily death. Capturing the intrinsic language of singing for life that is at the heart of Papuan culture, daily life, resistance and survival, Strange Birds advocates clearly the core message that music can rise above tyranny. An evocative soundtrack written by Arnold Ap, and arranged by Australian music legend David Bridie, with West Papuan singer-activists providing the beautiful Melanesian harmonies, bring to life some of the most important songs Arnold Ap wrote to rally his people to fight for their liberation.
Ap, a pioneering Papuan ethno- musicologist at Cenderawasih Uni- versity, was arrested in 1983 by the Indonesian military for recording traditional West Papuan songs. Together with nonviolent movement founders Jacob Rumbiak and Thomas Waing- gai, Ap helped pioneer a sense of ethnic pride for West Papuan culture that Jakarta wanted destroyed forever. Ap was executed extra judicially in 1984, shortly after he recorded the song ‘Mystery of Life’, which was smuggled out via a prison guard to his wife. According to Ap: ‘I sing to live, singing is a sign of life. If I am not singing it means I am already dead.

‘Strange Birds powerfully documents the power and reverence in which Ap’s music is still held by West Papuan people, as the soundtrack to self-determination. Hill-Smith ex- plains: ‘I believe art is a weapon and culture is life. As long as the West Papuans can sing they will prevail and Arnold Ap will never die.’

Faced with the dilemma of how to counter more than 45 years of wilful ignorance of the West Papua issue by the international community, Strange Birds manages to highlight a power- ful undercurrent that has maintained people’s identity, and hope, through a genocide that has claimed over 526,000 West Papuan lives since 1962.

Jacob Rumbiak, an exiled West Papuan political diplomat and academic, describes Strange Birds as ‘a diploma for somebody who knows nothing about West Papua’’. Certainly, audiences in Europe, Asia and Australasia have been deeply moved by the film, with many asking the question: ‘Why do the international media ignore this issue?’ Why indeed? One theory is the majority of international media is so embarrassed by its craven, complicit behaviour that to suddenly report it would highlight media weakness. Tyranny must be documented; resistance must be documented too.

West Papua’s history means that any truthful analysis will necessarily examine the crimes of Indonesia’s military and their multinational corporate enablers like Freeport and the timber industry, and also why the West turns a blind eye as a modern day Eldorado is plundered into a wasteland. The vast forests of Papua, protected for millennia by a deep and reverential connection with its inhabitants, are being felled illegally by the military to feed Australia’s obsession for merbau outdoor furniture and flooring, and our insatiable need for palm oil. Wherever the Indonesian military kleptocracy decides to pillage next, the raiders attempt to eliminate any organised resistance by engaging punitive sweeps against civilians.

Hill-Smith, together with producers Jamie Nicolai and John Cherry, has used visually rich animation sequences by Colin Moore, and contem- porary wayang kulit shadow puppetry to perfectly illustrate the mercenary dynamics of Indonesian occupation, and the deep motivations from Papuan traditional beliefs to maintain hope and transform survival into freedom.

Interweaving his own personal journey of discovery, Hill-Smith takes the viewer on an epic journey through West Papua’s history, sharing the journey he had as his eyes were opened after blundering into a forgotten warzone. Adopting the persona of Javanese wayang kulit hero Samar, he shares his shock of hearing ‘the guarded whispers of sons, fathers, and brothers murdered’. The fact- checked evidence presented is confronting and sobering, which makes for uncomfortable viewing for those who have enjoyed the fruits of genocide occurring in Papua.

This film particularly juxtaposes the experience of non-political West Papuan farmers, activists, exiles, and refugees, as well as the lives of those who through their beliefs were forced to flee.

Traveling through the Baliem Valley, the film highlights the neglect of Papuan people’s welfare by Indonesia, and the shocking lack of educational resources or medical care. Hill-Smith meets an eight-year-old boy Ruben, deaf, in great pain from an easily preventable ear infection curable by access to simple drugs. With the nearest hospital in Wamena, the Indonesian government refuses to supply basic medical services where they are needed most. It is evident that ordinary people in the Baliem Valley are now too terrified to talk. In the Baliem Valley the brutality of the Indonesian military climaxed in 1981 during an operation known by local Dani tribespeople as ‘Wamena Bleeds’. Almost 14,000 people were killed during and air and ground assault on civilians in the Highlands area.

Strange Birds is a travelogue in some ways, but also an examination of the human and historical landscape of West Papua, as vast and undiscovered as the forests daily being destroyed by the bulldozers of the military logging companies. It deftly illustrates Indonesian nationalism as being a political construct to unify all the disparate peoples of a new Javanese empire, a land of impunity for the plunderers, as West Papua is a very long way from Java.

Strange Birds provides a timely reminder that people do not leave their homes, unless they have no other choice; that refugees only flee to survive heinous abuse. The students fleeing from the March 12, 2006 riots conveyed a cri de coeur for the future of the homeland that people must respond to.

During filming, feeling completely helpless in an environment like Skotchiou village on the PNG/West Papua border. we were all so thoroughly moved at the core of our beings by what we witnessed that there were no question of staying silent.

Is this film an honest examination of the situation in Papua? Yes and No. Uncovering a hidden history is never an easy task, but Hill-Smith, through his own experience as an exchange student in Indonesia, has set about understanding Indonesian peoples’ perceptions of the occupation as West Papua. Far more than just talking heads, the story is told with sensitivity and truth.

Hill-Smith cannot be accused of showing one-sidedness, the insistence on showing the Indonesian side of the story with a trait that admittedly was a trifle annoying during production. But the finished product is testament to the wisdom of this approach, in that the extremely honest and candid Indonesian perspective demonstrates clearly that the military is not loved by the people of Indonesia either. As the film demonstrates clearly, no observer can see the reality of Indonesia’s military occupation and condone their behavior.

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REVIEW: (Pacific Media Watch):

As the Libyan revolution hit its peak last night with news of the death of tyrant Muammar Gaddafi, it was no wonder that events in West Papua couldn’t make it into the papers – even Gaddafi’s death lost out to endless pages of rugby mania.

But another event occurred in downtown Auckland last night that attempted to draw Kiwis’ attention back to what really is news – tyrannical violence on our doorstep.

In the Academy cinema in the basement of Auckland City Library, Charlie Hill-Smith’s film Strange Birds in Paradise was screened at an event co-hosted by Amnesty International, the Indonesia Human Rights Committee and the Pacific Media Centre.

In the film, writer, director and documentary-maker Hill-Smith starts narrating with breathtaking shots of the unspoilt parts of West Papua, or as the Indonesians call it, Irian Jaya.

“In 1999 with a small band of hiking companions, I blithely stumbled into West Papua from New Guinea the old Australian colony just to our north. I had traveled the islands of Indonesia for over 15 years and yet strangely had never heard traveler’s tales, media news stories, nor any accounts from this giant, forested province.”

His adventures with friends while on holiday quickly became a cultural and political denouement for the Australian, who had grown up on Indonesia’s main island of Java and speaks fluent Bahasa Indonesia.

“By the time my friends and I shipped out of West Papua the penny had finally dropped and we realised we had not been hiking in a Neolithic cultural paradise but an undeclared war zone.”
On his journey into the province, he explains that when word passed around the villages that they could confidently speak to him, they “opened up with stories”.

“Guarded whispers of missing sons, murdered husbands and villages burnt to the ground.”

Hill-Smith’s personal journey into West Papua and his historical account of Indonesia’s stranglehold on the province is aided by the poignant story of three brothers, led by Donny, who set sail for the Australian coast in 2006 and caused a political maelstrom between Indonesia and Australia.

Those who can remember the cartoon war at the time are pleasantly entertained by the back-story to the event, and of course, Hill-Smith’s own artistic cartoons that help tell the story throughout the documentary.

Donny and former child soldier of the West Papuan Resistance Movement, Jacob, gained refugee status and tell their story through song.

Hill-Smith says early in the film that the West Papua story is “a wonderful musical tradition, an ancient culture and a nightmare in the modern world.”

Towards the end of the film, accounts of the brutal killing of Arnold Ap are told. The man was a musician and a poet, the writer of inspirational songs that are still played and form part of the repertoire of the Australian-based group.

Australian rock musicologist David Bridie, who teamed up with the Donny, Jacob and others to record and promote their music, says it is telling that a peaceful man who writes songs was arrested and taken to the forest and told to walk away before he was shot in the back.

“You are not going to suppress a popular resistance movement by banning singing,” he says.

But Hill-Smith offers some hope that the aspirations of the people of West Papua are being communicated to the outside world.
“We are reaching back in time to one of West Papua’s most important cultural practitioners and reintroducing him to a new generation of Papuans and the world,” he says of Ap.

“His beautiful and gentle Melanesian songs are steeped in the imagery of nature, culture and resistance.”
Maire Leadbeater of the Indonesian Human Rights Committee spoke before the film and mentioned the timeliness of the event, with reports yesterday that people had been killed by the Indonesian military’s violent reaction to the Third Papuan Peoples’ Congress.
Today’s Pacific Scoop report has the body count at six.

Hundreds of people were reportedly arrested from among the 5000-strong gathering in Padang Bulan, Abepura.

Dr David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, which co-hosted the film screening said about the crisis in West Papua that the public “is not very well served by the media” on international affairs in NZ.

 He added that while the crisis was news in leading Australian media it did not rate a mention in the local press.
Dr Robie also launched the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review, which includes an in-depth report on Pacific media freedom, and West Papua features as the worst situation in the Pacific.
Margaret Taylor from Amnesty International said prisoners of conscience, such as Filep Karma, were still held after previous peaceful rallies and Amnesty is making a concerted push to have him released.

She said Karma was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment in 2005 for rebellion and expressing hostility and hated towards the state under the Indonesia Criminal Code.

In July 2010 Karma was offered a remission of his sentence, but he rejected it, maintaining that he should never have been imprisoned in the first place.

http://www.pmc.aut.ac.nz/pacific-media-watch/nz-screening-west-papua-film-protesters-are-shot-7676

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FILMINK sat down for an interesting chat with Australian director Charlie Hill-Smith about his documentary which recently screened at Sydney Film Festival…

Director Charlie Hill-Smith’s Strange Birds of Paradise: A West Papuan Story recently screened in the documentary competition at the Sydney Film Festival, providing audiences with insight into the Indonesian military’s oppression of the native inhabitants of West Papua. The poignant and often challenging documentary blends the story of three Papuan exiles, their stories and culture, with Hill-Smith’s quest for greater worldwide acknowledgement of this troubled area.
 
I had no idea these issues were going on. Does the rest of the world know?
You’re not alone there. Even when I was living in Indonesia, on and off, for nearly 25 years – there were no traveller’s stories about West Papua; there were no news stories about West Papua. It was completely off the map.
 
East Timor was the window that opened and allowed people to glimpse inside that region. The similarities between East Timor and West Papua are very strong – in as far as the Indonesia military are there in force, running the land as their own private fiefdom; you have a small native population that’s being outmanned and outgunned by this massive colonial power, you have mass transmigration of hundreds of thousands of Javanese and Indonesia settlers, the complete domination of the economy by the Indonesians, local languages are banned from being taught in school, and mass resource extraction.
 
It’s the vein that no one’s tapped into yet?
West Papua had everything – gold, gas, timber, oil. Papua is the third largest island in the world, which is a big ass island. It’s a very young island too, so the dirt is young. Papua has 900 human languages, which is one sixth of all human languages. That’s an example of the biodiversity of the place. And we haven’t even gotten into the new animals and plants. It is a Garden of Eden.
 
That richness is the key factor. All the western mining companies have been up there for 30/40 years now. The wealth of the place has secured the silence and the international collusion between the Indonesia military and these western resource companies to keep things nicely tied down and quiet.
 
I assume that it’s the case of the few holding the most, and the many barely having anything?
Exactly. And here we are in Australia, a modern country – although we still have our demons we need to deal with – and we have neighbours who have saved our arses in World War II…
 
The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels?
Yes, and we’ve just forgotten them! I think that Australians need to be aware that there are 50,000 Indonesian troops in West Papua, who are not there for peace keeping. They need to know that nearly 400,000 people have died there since 1967.
 
With such a political and military stronghold over the land, how did you go about filming?
As soon as we reached the capital in the highlands, we were immediately taken to the office of the Chief of Police. I had to sit with him, and he basically interrogated me for an hour and a half, in Indonesian, about my true reasons for being there.
 
He kept asking me, ‘Was I interested in politics?’ ‘Was I a journalist?’ ‘Was I there to do politics?’ He asked again and again, ‘Was I filming? Was I filming?’ And again and again I just said: ‘Look I’ve heard great things about the hiking up here, and about the quaint fascinating cultures.’
 
They’re very protective of it – a French journalist was arrested there last week – and it’s an ongoing thing. If you wanted to set out and make a film about West Papua, in West Papua – you couldn’t do it. My attitude is: These stories need to be told. And so I guess I had to bend the law a little bit in terms of doing it.
 
Did you have a specific audience in mind?
Our specific audience is people who know nothing about West Papua – so the majority of planet Earth. We wanted to make a film that was universal, which could speak to not just Australians but to everybody. That’s one reason we used music as one of the strongest features in the film, because it’s a universal language.
 
You use animation for certain section – why choose this medium?
The great thing with animation is that not only are you allowed to tell the difficult stuff, because it’s so iconic you can layer it with all these subtle meanings.
 
There is other interesting footage from the film, concerning the asylum seekers – how to you get a hold of this?
All that footage was shot by them when they were escaping to Australia years ago. It’s the same footage shot directly from their cameras whilst they were on their voyage. It’s absolutely unheard of. They made their own 42 foot catamaran canoe out of a tree and sailed it nearly 3000 km, at night, whilst being chased by Indonesian authorities – until they got to Queensland. It’s such intimate footage, and where else could you get it?
 
Did it find it intimidating talking to the Guerrilla fighters?
I was way out of my depth! These guys are the real deal, real killers. But they were lovely chaps, as long as you were on the right side of the bayonet.
 
So how can people get involved in helping the situation in West Papua?
There are two major groups in Australia. The Australian West Papuan Action Network and the West Papuan Association. You can get in contact with them via the net. It can’t go on forever, and I feel so positive about helping make some changes. After the festivals we plan to do a limited cinema release, and then the DVD comes out. We’re excited!
 
For more information on Strange Birds of Paradise: A West Papuan Story, visit the film’s website.

The post Untold Story appeared first on Strange Birds in Paradise.

The Hill-Smith name is synonymous in the Barossa valley and around the world with excellent wine, but at the inaugural Barossa Film Festival 2011; it’s film, not wine on offer.

Charlie Hill-Smith is the great, great grandson of Yalumba Wines founder Sidney Smith (1849), and he’s heading back to the Barossa to screen his award winning documentary, Strangebirds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story.

In 1999 with a small band of hiking companions Hill-Smith blithely stumbled into West Papua from Papua New Guinea. Hill-Smith says, ‘I had lived and traveled around Indonesia for over 15 years at that stage and had never heard traveler’s tales, media stories, nor any accounts from this giant, forested province. The place was secret and for good reason.’

With a long held, deep affection for Indonesia, its culture and people, director Charlie Hill-Smith, was deeply disturbed by the tales of exile that he heard from West Papuan refugees in Australia and decided to return to West Papua to find out more about this hidden land.

What he discovered was an extraordinary story of an imaginative, adaptable culture confronting tyranny with the joyful power of art, music and self-expression. Charlie records the fate of West Papuans trying to maintain village life whilst adapting to the Indonesian economy. He visits the battered, pitiful resistance and the refugee camps along the Papua New Guinean border. Journalists and filmmakers have been banned from West Papua for many years. Strange Birds In Paradise offers a rare view into this beautiful but tragic place.

“The Indonesian army and ‘old-power’ in Jakarta don’t want this story to be told. They run West Papua as a personal fiefdom, stripping the forests and the gold and the oil. The powers-that-be want to keep this window closed to the outside world,” observed Hill-Smith.

Ultimately, Charlie is inspired to blend his own journey of discovery and adventure to film an inspiring concert at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall (included in the documentary). A moving tribute that brings together the exiled community in Australia for a moment of defiant celebration and joy through their unique blend of music, dance and enormous courage.

For anyone who wants to learn the truth about West Papua and its oppressed people, Strangebirds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story, is an absolute, must see.

While the Indonesian army continues to dominate the indigenous inhabitants of West Papua, Australian and Papuan friends gather in Melbourne to record outlawed folk songs with renowned rock musicologist David Bridie. This compelling Australian documentary Strange Birds in Paradise, premiered at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) 2009, was nominated for 4 Australian Film Industry awards and won the SBS Inside Film Award for best documentary 2010.

A concise and moving portrait that fills in the complex history and modern story of West Papua and puts this human rights disaster on the world map.

The amazing soundtrack to Strangebirds in Paradise has been nominated for an Australian Record Industry award 2011. To sample the glorious Melanesian music visit – HYPERLINK “http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm” http://www.wantokmusik.org/albums_strangebirds.htm

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Strange Birds in Paradise: A West Papuan Story (Charlie Hill Smith, 75 minutes Australia, 2009) has recently been released on DVD, with useful and entertaining extras. There are now a number of films available that help in challenging the silence that has characterised Australian politicians public dissimulation in relation to the suffering of the Papuans to our north. Youtube and other video sources on the net provide occasional stories from Mark Davis and others at SBS, and Al Jazerra has the recent Pride of Warriors (Jono van Hest, Jeni McMahon, David Batty, 22 minutes, Australia, 2009).

This intriguing short film, narrated by Hein Arumisore, overcame censorship out of West Papua by smuggling in half a dozen digital cameras and gathering four personal stories of persecution and resistance. The particular feature of Pride of Warriors is the first person address of its protagonists. This is ‘citizen journalism’ in which we meet Eddie Waromi, now President of the West Papuan Authority, part of an alliance of West Papuan resistance groups, who had been imprisoned for 12 years for raising the flag, and his 19 year old daughter Yane, who tells of being drugged and kidnapped on her way home from university. It is said her ten persecutors included Indonesians and Papuans, who tortured and terrorised her, taunting her about her father’s activism. Matias Bunai of the highlander country reports on the violence experienced by the tribes, and the determination of local people to maintain cultural tradition. Tadius Yogi, a veteran of the guerrilla war is now advocating against armed resistance in favour of peaceful methods and seeking international support. We meet Lovina Bisay, a dancer interrogated following her performance in a play in the West Papuan capital Jarapura. The Sampari dance group performance recalled the Biak Island massacre that occurred in 1998, when the local community raised the Morning Star flag. As a result dozens were killed, including children, in reprisals by Indonesian forces. We see excerpts from the dance performance, with the women dancers dressed in the Morning Star, and the climax when the Morning Star flag is taken from beneath the figure of a ‘lost’ father and displayed to Papuans and Indonesian officials at the conference. We see the tears and pride of West Papuans present. It is a very moving scene. Controversy was generated when the dance performance was reported widely in the Indonesian press as it evidenced continuing resistance to Indonesian occupation.

One of the distinctions of this film is that it does not shy away from the violence of the separatist movement in its period of armed resistance, while, like the other films, joining the West Papuans in advocating non-violence as a preferred long term strategy: “Non-violence is the weapon of the strong”. No Australian broadcaster would touch Pride of Warriors, but Al Jazzera did, financing its completion. The film was scheduled to go to air on Al Jazeera English in mid 2009, but following publicity about the forthcoming film in the Jakarta Post, it was pulled, until much later, after the Indonesian elections, it went to air with little promotion. (‘West Papua Off the Air’, New Matilda, July 15, 2009)

Another new half-hour film West Papua: A Journey to Freedom (Erin Morris, 30 minutes, Australia, 2011), is narrated by Herman Wainggai, one of the 43 West Papuan refugees who managed to escape to Australia in January 2006. He had spent two and a half years in prison for his involvement in organising peaceful demonstrations. This film follows Herman Wainggai to Wewak, PNG where he meets with a number of student activists who have travelled by boat from the west through waters patrolled by Indonesians for a week-long workshop in non-violent resistance. Refugees from the occupation of West Papua feel their exile deeply. In this case Herman’s father is among the smuggled-in visitors and we witness their emotional reunion. There are now at least 15,000 West Papuan refugees in camps in PNG along the border with West Papua. They are not necessarily welcomed by PNG landowners. In this film we see encouraging scenes with PNG human rights NGOs meeting with the workshop and expressing their solidarity with the refugees plight.

Many of the student activists provide testimony to the camera: “Even though we only organise peaceful demonstrations, people get arrested and tortured by Indonesian authorities like the police and the army. Terror still continues. Family members of activists experience terror by Indonesian intelligence.” There are a number of testimonials reporting savage oppression of West Papuan citizens at the hands of Indonesian police and military. Marthen Manggaprouw is critical of the so-called Special Autonomy (2001) status of West Papua. He says the budget for Special Autonomy actually goes to police actions, not for the benefit of West Papua. There is footage showing Indonesian military man-handling demonstrators in Manokwari in 2010, and shocking ‘Indonesian paramilitary police video’ from 2009 documenting Indonesian atrocities.

Late last year when I met with Charlie Hill Smith to talk about his film on West Papua, Tom Allard was reporting from Indonesia in the Age on the controversy around leaked footage proving human rights atrocities committed by Indonesian forces in the cause of terrorising West Papuans. These terror tactics are effective in discouraging those who might wish to say something about their long suffering resistance to the fraudulent incorporation of their land with the infamous ‘Act of Free Choice’ of 1969 and subsequent invasion. Allard’s stories too often conclude with words to the effect that the Prime Minster’s office and the Department of Foreign Affairs decline to comment (‘The Age’ November 8, 2010 ‘Papuan torture trial ‘red herring’). The ‘Lombok agreement’ (2006) between Australia and Indonesia appears to constrain critical public comment by Australian governments on Indonesian ‘internal affairs’, such as the contested future of West Papua. Perhaps this is convenient to both countries, but certainly not for the West Papuans.

This is nothing new in our relations with Indonesia. Australian governments and media were complicit with the silence that attended the events of 1965-6 when Indonesia’s President Sukarno was deposed, and some 800,000 “communists” were murdered while the dictator Suharto established the 30 years of his despotic rule. (In an interview included with the Strange Birds… DVD Damien Kingsbury says “anywhere up to two million” may have been murdered between 1965-7). The relations between Indonesia and Australia have been turbulent and complex throughout. The attempted, armed destabilisation of the Indonesian archipelago supported by US and Australian covert action in the years preceding the 1965 coup remain a shameful betrayal of Australia’s early collaboration with Indonesia’s birth. Australian covert action collaborated with Dutch intelligence in destabilisation programs in West Papua (Irian Jaya) in the late 1950s and again in the mid 1960s, according to Toohey and Pinwill in their book on ASIS, Oyster (1989). Indeed, they say ASIS supported the West Papuan independence organisation the OPM with training and finance in the early 1960s for the purpose of destabilising Sukarno’s claims on the island’s western region, formally part of the Dutch colonies. It is not surprising therefore when suspicions of ulterior motives are raised when Australia is seen to be protecting West Papuan refuges fleeing persecution.

The other companion film to Strange Birds in Paradise for those interested in West Papua is Mark Worth’s Land of the Morning Star (Mark Worth, Janet Bell, Anna Grieve, 55 minutes, Australia 2003), with its subtly nuanced narration by Rachel Griffiths. This is a formally conventional Film Australia film, and the fact that the filmmakers could not get into West Papua led them to gather the most extraordinary archive footage, much of it from Holland. The film spells out the political history as a series of careless betrayals. It chronicles the fate of West Papua through its colonial eras, noting the role of the Kennedy administration in persuading the Dutch to give the country up to the Indonesians in 1962 (the New York Agreement), and Suharto’s role as the Commander of ‘Operation Mandala’ occupying the country in 1963.

Land of the Morning Star opens with the raising of the Morning Star flag in 1999. We see the speech by the remarkable West Papuan activist Theys Eluay: “The truth is we have never been part of Indonesia…” The film concludes with Eluay’s strangling murder at the hands of the Indonesian Special Forces, the Kapassus, in 2001.

The film includes an number of important interviews including
Gordon Jockel, who by way of apologia (or is it irony) says the Indonesians manipulated the Act of Free Choice (1969) by methods “traditional in their own country…” The film describes the suppression of demonstrations following the “vote” and Wim Zonggonau and Clemens Runaweri describe how they fled across the border to PNG with the intention of travelling to New York and speaking before the United Nations. They recount in the film how Australian officials prevented them from leaving PNG. Sadly these Australian actions repressing West Papuan voices against Indonesian militarism might also be described as a practice “traditional in their own country…”.

Land of the Morning Star was made within the constraints of Film Australia and the ABC, but nonetheless makes an essential contribution. Sadly the filmmaker Mark Worth died before the film went to air; in many ways it was his life’s work. It remains one of Film Australia’s most worthwhile achievements.

The events of January 2006, when asylum seekers were intercepted, interned at Christmas Island and later grated asylum, despite Indonesian demands that they be repatriated to Indonesian custody, form one strand of Charlie Hill Smith’s film, as they do in the other films. In Strange Birds it is refugee exile Donny Roem who provides the harrowing boat persons’ tale. The effective work of these young people recalls to mind that other contingent repatriated to Australia from camps in West Papua during the rise of Japanese expansion in the Pacific War, when the archipelago was a Dutch colony. From the 1920s the Dutch kept Indonesian independence activists and their families concentrated as exiles in camps in Boven Digul West Papua until they were transported to Cowra in mid 1943. The Dutch wanted them moved to Australia because they feared these independence activists and intellectuals might align themselves with the Japanese. The Australian government was misled by the Dutch about the ‘crimes‘ of these prisoners. When Evatt finally realised these families were political prisoners they were released and became the very effective cadre organising support in Australia for post war Indonesian independence.

Among the informative ‘extras’ is a lovely short ‘tourist guide’ on trekking in West Papua (‘Penis Gourd’ 1999). The film follows Charlie and his friends as he crosses through the ‘back door’, the “tradesman’s entrance” to Indonesia from Papua New Guinea in the manner of a television entertainment travel show. Shortly after arriving beyond the Baliem Valley in the West Papuan highlands Charlie and his fellow trekkers are welcomed by the Jani people with generosity and high ceremony. Fascinated by the culture of the penis gourd Charlie finds declares “curiosity may have killed the cat but it had me standing naked in a highland village… half highlander and half Sydney Mardi Gras”. Charlie ends up looking lovely in his feathered headdress, neckband, breast-plate and penis gourd. The film is pitched at the widest possible audience with its naïve trekker narrator gradually realizing he is “not holidaying in a stone-age paradise but blundering around in an undeclared war zone”. The film overcomes vulnerability to the uncomfortable charge of paternalism – the white hero/ journalist appropriating the suffering of the natives – by leaping literally naked into comic complicity with the knowing Jani, and its ironic self-mockery.

Charlie finds the West Papuan capital Jarapura entirely reminiscent of Java. It is with this kind of detail that the project goes well beyond the factual entertainment genre that it at first deploys. Our trekkers visit one particular village on the Papuan border that has become a refuge for families who had to flee the highlands since the early 1960s. Around sixty families of refugees from the highlands have relocated there since Papua achieved its independence in 1975. In interviews they tell us why, “Indonesians are in every village. There is no law… we raised the new Papuan flag and had to flee.”

Other extras provide informative compilations of interviews with a number of commentators – these are extensions of arguments introduced in summary form in the film proper. George Aditjondro (Gajah Mada University) says there is a psychological dimension at work in which the military having ‘lost’ East Timor and to some extent Aceh now hang on to West Papua with “trigger happy” anxiety. He explains how the TNI finances around two thirds or three quarters of its budget from business in West Papua, legal and illegal. Damien Kingsbury says the Indonesian government is today trying to separate the military from its business activities, noting progress on this front is “very, very slow”. Illegal militias are a well-established feature of the TNI’s practice, and they also support themselves with through ‘business’. Kingsbury says many of the military leaders who ran East Timor as a personal fiefdom have been relocated to West Papua where they conduct the same kind of operations. Then there are the Islamic militias like Laska Jihad, infamous for its assaults on the civilian population in Ambon some years ago. This group trained in West Java by Indonesian military officers was formally disbanded after the Bali bombings, but has established subsidiary organisations that continue. More recently Laska Tabligh, brings together into what Kingsbury ironically calls ‘home defence units’, militant Moslems who have arrived in transmigration or as business migrants to West Papua. While these militant groups are less immediately under the control of the TNI, they are supported by Indonesian military leaders to counter the local Melanesian independence movement.

Arief Budiman: “The world does not scream about the 100,000 people killed in West Papua because there is no exposure about that and the West Papuan people are not clever in dealing with the media.” Others make the point that journalists are not permitted to come to West Papua. Jacob Rumbiak cites the evaluation of Protestant and Catholic Church organisations in Papua who estimate four times this number killed since the infamous ‘Act of Free Choice’. (West Papua; Journey to Freedom affirms this 400,000 figure citing a study from Yale.) George Aditjondro suggests West Papuans should align themselves with other Indonesians seeking to establish a federal structure of Indonesian provinces (like the former Soviet Union) and in this way move gradually toward independence. West Papua can be seen as the “last frontier” of Indonesian militarism as more democratic processes are pursued in other parts of the Indonesian archipelago and if Indonesia is to develop in this way it needs to deal with the its military behaviours in West Papua. Anglican priest Peter Woods, who witnessed and bravely recorded an Indonesian assault on demonstrators in 2000, thinks there has been collusion of the Australian Government with Indonesia because West Papua is “an embarrassment on our doorstep” and conscripts the Good Samaritan to remind us of our neighbourly responsibilities.

At the time of writing, despite its festival invitations and other accolades Strange Birds in Paradise has not yet found a broadcaster in Australia. This bringsnew meaning to Charlie observation in the film that today there is a saying among Melanesians ‘Oz-tak-lihat’ (Australia doesn’t see). The film was rejected at several stages of development and production by both Australian public broadcasters. This cannot be because the film is not important, well made, imaginative or accurate, as it is all of these and more. Exquisite animation sequences by Juan Serrano and Joanne Fong create a wonderful imaginative space for both hope and despair. The film builds its narrative around West Papuan exiles preparing and performing a ‘sing sing’ concert in collaboration with David Bridie, a long time supporter of West Papua. The music becomes another vehicle for an emotional connection with the people and their aspirations.

Strange Birds… was invited into competition at the world’s most prestigious documentary film festival in Amsterdam in 2009, where it was received with enthusiasm by packed houses at several screenings. It won the IF Award for Best Documentary 2010. It was invited into competition at the Sydney Film Festival in 2010, where it was a finalist along with The Snowman, another startlingly impressive Australian documentary, also so far shamefully denied to Australian broadcast audiences by both the ABC and SBS. This continuing retreat from documentary in favour of factual entertainments and specialist factual formats has increasingly characterised public broadcasting’s timidity, conformism and complacency in its response to independent Australian documentary. When I spoke with Charlie Hill-Smith late last year about his experience in looking to the ABC for a presale on the film he told me the response was unequivocal: “Not interested, just not interested”.

Like the independent Australian film on everyday life on the West Bank, Hope in a Slingshot (Inka Stafrace, 61 minutes, Australia, 2008), Strange Birds in Paradise was rejected without any good reasons. In the case of Hope in a Slingshot the film was at first acquired and then the decision reversed; the ‘reason’ given for its rejection was that the ABC would require another film to ‘balance’ its point of view. (see Sylvia Lawson < HYPERLINK "http://inside.org.au/arguing-for-peace/" http://inside.org.au/arguing-for-peace/> and Ronin press release 24 May 2010 ) Other recent instances of important local documentary denied to Australian broadcast audiences by our public broadcasters include Steve Thomas’ very moving first person essay film Hope, on the SivX case and Australia’s asylum practices. And remember Jeff Daniel’s 10 Conditions of Love – finally purchased as an acquisition after its extraordinarily controversial release at the Melbourne Film Festival.

These works are not hard to find on DVD, but they should be on Australian television. It won’t be long before more and more new work will be available as downloads, and the long promised ‘convergence’ might finally overturn the long hegemony of ‘heritage’ broadcasters. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate that Australian public broadcasters – whose legitimacy rests with their integrity in providing a venue for minority voices, and Australian independent creative work – seem increasingly afraid to step outside the diminishing square of their own creation.

JH 11.4.11

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As YouTube evidence of Indonesian soldiers burning the genitals of West Papuan, Tunaliwor Kiwo, beams around the world; the Indonesian military (TNI) has been exposed holding a cynical mock trial in an effort to cover up systemic violence.

On command of Indonesian President Yudhoyono, Prime minister Gillard agreed not to mention West Papua during her recent visit to Indonesia on the proviso that the torturers of Tunaliwor Kiwo were brought to justice. Prime minister Gillard has been left red faced after the promised trial turned out to be a deceit. TNI soldiers from another; lesser ‘abuse case’ were paraded and given soft sentences, while Kiwo’s torturers remain on active duty.

Despite the Australian embassy in Jakarta telling Indonesian officials of Australia’s, “unhappiness with the military’s investigation”, the blatant contempt evidenced by the recent ‘show trial’, creates little confidence in Indonesia’s sincerity. So while Australia continues to train Indonesia’s disgraced Kopassus Special Forces, the Australian Prime minister and indeed the entire Australian Left seem to have lost their voices.

Where’s the outpouring of neighborly solidarity that lifted East Timor out of the geopolitical rubbish bin and into the minds of mainstream Aussies? In 1999 East Timor held a United Nations referendum, due in part to international and Australian pressure; and we all caught a disturbing glimpse of the Indonesian military as they tortured, raped and scorched their way back to Java.

1999 was also the year I first traveled to West Papua and discovered the best kept secret in the Asia-Pacific. Hiking with old mates amongst the highland farms of the Dani people we started hearing stories of dispossession, detention, torture and murder. Yale University suggests that 400,000 West Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian military since they invaded in 1962/63; yet few Australians know anything about these killing fields on our northern shoulder.
I had lived and traveled on and off in Indonesia for 15 years but tellingly had never heard a travelers tale, nor a whisper from West Papua. My mates and I departed West Papua shocked by the local’s stories and with a growing suspicion that we were being lied to. Obviously the Australian government has always known what’s happening in West Papua but has chosen placation over human dignity and moral leadership.

Back in Australia, no one had even heard of West Papua, as if this Indonesian province of 2.6 million people had been erased from the Papua New Guinean border. Why the silence? Where are the Churches, the students, and the humanitarian groups who fought for East Timor? Where are the unions who boycotted the Dutch in Indonesia and the racist regime in South Africa? Where are the conservatives who beat their chests after Howard ‘saved East Timor’?

A clue to this sustained silence can be gleaned from history. When General Suharto took power in Indonesia in 1965/66, he opened the floodgates to western resource companies. Every Australian government since Menzies kow-towed to this murderous bully, partially to ward off the feared disintegration of this 18,000-island republic; but mainly to gain access to Indonesia’s vast natural resources.

The first western company to do business with Suharto was the Freeport goldmine in West Papua. Partly owned by Australia’s Rio Tinto, the Freeport Mine is the largest gold/copper mine in the world and Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer; and yet West Papuans live in poverty, experiencing the worst health, education and development levels in Indonesia.

Freeport’s four billion dollar profit in 2009 didn’t come easily. Dr. Damien Kingsbury of Deakin University says of the local Amungme people, ‘These people have been kicked out, they’ve been given a token payment and if they’ve protested, they’ve been shot.’ None of this would have been possible without Freeport’s paid protection from the TNI. This neo- colonial business model, whilst wildly profitable, is internationally embarrassing and only works under a marketing umbrella of collusive denial.

But here’s the rub − the TNI is not a professional army, it only gets one-third of it’s military budget from the Indonesian government; the other two-thirds come from its own private businesses. As Dr. Kingsbury observes, ‘The TNI has been described by many commentators as a Mafia like operation, it’s like the Mafia but on a very big and very organised scale. It’s involved in illegal activities, like illegal logging, illegal mining, extortion, gambling, prostitution, gun-running and so on.’ This conflict of interest is at the heart of the TNI’s ongoing human rights abuses. How can they serve the county while serving them selves? West Papua has necessarily become a resource cash cow. A military fiefdom 3000 km from Jakarta, full of tribally divided, uneducated farmers; sitting atop a new Elderado.

Despite journalists still being banned, West Papua is no longer the secret it was in 1999. Prime minister Gillard should not be placated by Indonesia’s mock trial of torturers nor train them, in the form of Kopassus; but should work with Jakarta to reform the TNI and open up West Papua to international scrutiny. It’s time for Australia to step up for the tortured and murdered people of West Papua.

Charlie Hill-Smith – writer/director ‘Strange Birds in Paradise – A West Papuan Story’. – feature documentary nominated 4 AFI’s inc. Best Documentary 2010.

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Australians have such a fascination with the Kokoda Trail, the hardship, the comrade, the pain and the tragedy of ‘defending our shores’, but we know little about West Papua. And we know even less about the suffering of its gentle indigenous people inflicted by a genocidal regime.

Oh, “but it’s other people’s politics” is the sighed response, followed by a deep denial drink of beer. Well, put your beer down, go to the Melbourne International Film Festival and sit with filmmaker Charlie Hill-Smith for just under an hour and a half to be enlightened by the truths he reveals about how our neighbours have (are) being treated.

“This film is therefore a creative reaction to international silence and a cross-cultural response to neo-colonial tyranny.” – from Charlie Hill-Smith’s Director’s statement.

Hill-Smith’s approach to this documentary seems to have been an organic one, and obviously grown from his personal experience. The story tackles the ‘issue of West Papuan independence’ from a number of aspects, including the personal (both the director’s point of view and those of the locals) and the historical (to give you the context of the conflict, and reinforced with supporting evidence from news clips) As well as interviews and archival footage, a series of creative animations are featured, and do excellent job at providing you with emotional emphasis in parallel to giving a unique ‘West Papuan’ cultural feel to the story.

The emotional depth of the viewer’s journey is strengthened by tying in the importance of musical expression in West Papuan culture, and specifically how important musical celebration is to the healing process undergone by ‘prisoners of war’. The filmmakers did a great job in using several personal stories to enhance the impact of the pain experienced.

Hold on a minute, prisoners of war? Really? Is there a war raging in West Papua? Once you have watched Strange Birds of Paradise, you will have no doubt in your mind as to the answer to that question.
“Afloat in an extraordinary musical tradition from the West Papuan highlands, hearing stories of escape, oppression and exile from Jacob and Donny, listening to the defiant songs of murdered musician and independence hero Arnold Ap, Charlie confronts a basic question: how could these two vibrant cultures be at war and how can the rest of the world seemingly not care?”

The Production team behind this great documentary have a wealth of experience and are lead by:

Charlie Hill-Smith – Director: Charlie has been directing documentaries for over 13 years including the popular ‘Making of Ten Canoes’; a feature documentary for SBS.

Jamie Nicolai – Producer: Company Director of The House of Red Monkey Pty Ltd, Jamie has also done some acting – can you remember who he played in Bad Boy Bubby?

John Cherry – Producer: I noticed the quality of camera work in this documentary – or rather the lack of amateur mistakes – a good contribution to the production, as is evidence by his resume.

Angus Kemp – Director of Photography: This documentary was Angus’ second major stint as cinematographer, and shows real promise, with his filming style having grown since Two Minutes to Midnight and more recently, Unearthed.

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