Escaping to Vanimo: West Papuan Refugees in Papua New Guinea

We drive a small motorboat over the Pacific Ocean from Jayapura to visit a West
Papuan refugee camp near Vanimo - the westernmost city of Papua New Guinea
(PNG) and the capital of West Sepik or Sandaun Province. Big waves hit us
throughout the passage. The biggest one nearly capsizes the boat. Suddenly,
Michael Wanggai, the boat owner, orders one of us to move a metal ball to the
bow to reduce the shaking. Michael knows how to deal with these waves: he has
been smuggling West Papuan separatist rebels and dissidents into PNG on this
tiny old boat every other day since 2000.

These days, the only possible escape route to PNG these days is by sea. For the
past four years the land borders have been heavily guarded by the Indonesian
army. And since 2001, there have been many mysterious shootings in the border
zone.

Nonetheless, people who cross the border by boat still have to deal with the
guards who monitor the coast in both countries. “But the guards don’t patrol
with their boats when the waves are big - like they are now,” says Michael.

Even when there are no guards policing the beach, those who enter PNG illegally
still face difficulties. To get from Vanimo beach to the refugee camp, we must
take a secret track. Every time a patrol jeep passes, we hide. Luckily, none of
these guards see us; if they did, they would arrest us as illegal immigrants.

“he PNG police tend to be more tolerant with political dissidents than with
commercial smugglers,” says Albert Krimadi, a West Papuan student activist who
is accompanying us. He says that the PNG police generally release the political
refugees they capture. “But they would not release a commercial smuggler.”

Albert is a student of Cendrawasih University in Jayapura, the capital of the
province of West Papua, but he has been adopted by a PNG police officer’s
family. “So, I am not worried,” he says, in regard to the possibility of being arrested for crossing the border.

It is difficult for the local police to identify West Papuans once they have
crossed the border, since they look like the people of PNG. “But, if we speak
with local people they know where we’re from, since we speak different
languages,” Albert says. The PNG people speak Fijing - an acronym for ‘Fiji
English’, while West Papuans speak Bahasa Indonesia, along with their local
languages.

We arrive at Blackwara camp, one of the places where West Papuan separatist
rebels and dissidents live. A grass pasture surrounds the camp. “We plant
cassava, nuts, and beans here,” says Stevanus Yikwa, who has led us to this
camp from Jayapura.

Inside the camp are about fifty wooden houses with roofs of pasture grass.
There is no electricity in the camp. People do not light fires at night, to
avoid being monitored by spies. “But they can still see us,” says Stevanus.

I cannot see any trace of anyone out there because the area is so dark, but
they could be hiding anywhere.

Stevanus is originally from Wamena, in the valley of the snowy Jayawijaya
mountains. He was separated from his parents when he was a child, after war
came to his village in 1976. The fighting led many to flee to PNG, and
Stevanus’ parents left him behind in Wamena. Fortunately, a rich family adopted
him and he grew up to be an educated man, attending Cendrawasih University in
Jayapura. “While I was studying at university, I heard that my family was
living at a camp near Vanimo,” Stevanus tells us. In 2001, he went by boat from
Jayapura to visit the camp. “And I found my family here,” he says. Today,
Stevanus, together with his wife and small baby, shares a house in the camp
with his father and mother. “I am very happy to be living again with my
parents,” says Stevanus, who is now also a guerrilla fighter.

Stevanus presents us to his father, a strong and venerable-looking old man. “My
name is Major-General Pontius Yikwa,” he says, introducing himself. He tells us
that he is the defense minister of the Free West Papua Organization (FPO),
which built this camp in 1976. Pontius still leads armed resistance against the
Indonesian authorities from here.

Major-General Pontius tells us the story of how he came to be at the camp. “I
fled toward the place where the sun rises, until I arrived at the border,” he
says, and then describes how his troops were defeated during a battle at Wamena
in 1976 in which they were greatly outnumbered by the Indonesian army. He says
that the PNG border guards let him and his troops cross over. The local
authorities also let his group camp at an elementary school building for a few
days.

“Then the PNG government gave us land,” Pontius continues. There they
cultivated small farms and built wooden houses. Every year more people cross
the border and come to stay in the Blackwara and Krisa camps in Vanimo. Most of
them leave West Papua for security reasons. “About eight hundred people live in
this camp now.”

However, the farming they do is not enough to feed eight hundred mouths. Local
companies and, occasionally, local government offices employ a few lucky
refugees. Some of them have married local people and live ordinary lives; some
hold PNG passports.

“But we are still here, still dependent on church support,” says Andi Wakei
Kalabu, a Christian pastor who left Jayapura in 1984. Andi says that Christian
humanitarian aid agencies provide regular support to the refugees. The United
Nations High Commission on Refugees in Port Moresby distributes food and
medicines to inhabitants of the camp and sometimes helps people to seek asylum
abroad.

There is no church inside the camp, but the religious life of the people goes
on. Andi Kalabu always leads people in prayer. Although he is not a Catholic,
he has strong links with Catholic organizations in the PNG, especially Caritas.
Aside from playing a humanitarian role, these Catholic associations also
organize international campaigns for the rights of the West Papuan refugees.
They even arranged for Pope John Paul II to visit the camp in 2001, although
the plan was later cancelled for reasons that were not made clear.

Poverty is not the only problem the refugees face. Children’s education is also
a pressing issue. “We built our own school,” says Weria Yonengga, another
refugee who shares the same house as Pontius and his family. But the school is
not good enough to give children a proper education. The students don’t receive
certificates, so they are not eligible to apply for ‘normal’ jobs. They don’t
have enough teachers and they lack adequate equipment.

“Our children ought to be going to the local school, but they can’t speak
Fijing,” Weria says. All schools in PNG use Fiji English. Weria shows us two
full-color English lesson posters and explains that the children are now
learning English to prepare them to attend local schools. Understanding the
local language is also important for the adult refugees in order to live as
ordinary Papua New Guineans.

Major-General Pontius Yikwa explains that there were three waves of migration
to the Vanimo camps. He is from the first generation of refugees who fled from
Wamena in 1976. Andi Wakei Kalabu left Wamena following the declaration of the
Republic of West Melanesia by Dr. Thomas Wanggai in 1984. And Weria Yonengga
left Jayapura following the ‘Bloody Abepura’ incident in 2000. Refugees of all three waves crossed the border by land rather than by sea.

Some of these refugees have successfully integrated into the local PNG
community and no longer live inside the camps. One of them is Jerry Horota, a
former resident of the Kiung refugee camp in Western Province, who married a
local PNG woman and got a job at a government office. “Now I regularly visit my
family back in Jayapura,” says Jerry.

Others who have built new lives beyond the camp work as small traders, farmers,
or employees at local companies. Pontius says that, generally, people from the
PNG community are protective toward the refugees, and trade with them, enabling
people in the camps to exchange their farm produce for clothing and other goods.

However, according to Karel Waromi, director of the West Papua Interest
Association (a UN refugee organization partner), most of the refugees are
forced to return to West Papua because of financial problems. “They do not have
jobs, and cannot remain dependent on aid indefinitely,” he says. Karel
estimates that some three thousand refugees have gone home to West Papua since
2001.

Those who return usually face problems with the authorities because as
refugees, they are branded as FPO supporters. “But in fact, most of them are
ordinary people, just looking for a peaceful life,” says Karel.

Unfortunately, the PNG government is no longer as friendly to the refugees as
it was. On 12 November 2002 the PNG government made a deal with the Indonesian
Consul in Vanimo to return five camp residents who had been identified as
members of the FPO. On the 10th and 11th of March 2003, the PNG mobile brigade
attacked the Vanimo camp with great brutality, and sixteen refugees were
arrested.

The people who stay on in the camp despite financial difficulties say they
don’t want to return because they are traumatized by things they witnessed in
their home villages, and they have found friendly neighbors here. “We are one
and the same nation as Papua New Guinea, says Major General Pontius
Yikwa, “This place is none other than our own village.”
-- Margiyono is a journalist with the Voice of Human Rights Radio Program in
Jakarta, a regular contributor to Radio SBS Australia and a correspondent of
the USA Pacifica Network for free speech radio news.

Latitudes Magazine [Bali] (via Joyo Indonesia News)
April, 2004
Escaping to Vamino: West Papuan Refugees in Papua New Guinea
by Margiyono