We don’t want another Colombia
“The take over by Indonesia, with control of every aspect of economic and political life, has left its people a minority in their own country, repressed and subjugated,” said Lord Harries.
“Papuans are becoming foreigners and foreigners are becoming Papuans – and it is supported by the World Bank,” said Wenda, who lives in Oxford, where the local council is considering awarding him a ‘freedom of the city’ honour alongside Nelson Mandela. Back in Jakarta, he is considered a terrorist and someone BP has conspicuously avoided.
Critics argue that a truly ethical energy company would never have gone into West Papua. But BP claimed it would operate to the highest corporate social responsibility standards.
It did not want to repeat the public relations disaster of its involvement in Colombia in the late 1990s.
Back then, this reporter exposed how BP, working with ex-SAS private contractors, funded and shared intelligence with the Colombian security forces, who were responsible for ‘cleansing’ any hint of peaceful opposition around the oil fields of Casanare.
Unlike Colombia, West Papua has no foreign-backed and well-armed insurgency but a rag tag group of around 300 poorly trained men from the central highlands whose arsenal includes stolen guns and homemade spears.
BP accepts that the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM) or Free Papua Movement does not operate in the Bintuni Bay region.
The greater threat comes from government security forces, says Yan Christian Warinussy, director of LP3BH, a local human rights organisation who BP asked to train its security guards between 2006 and 2008 as part of its ‘community based’ approach for Tangguh.
Since BP’s arrival, Warinussy said his organisation has logged a marked increase in reported incidents of violence in the Bintuni Bay area associated with disputes between BP security guards, other employees and contractors. The disputes are over land, the environment and domestic violence. “We have data. The increase is 30% to 40%,” he said. By contrast, BP says it has not self-reported any human rights abuse allegations.
There are also labour rights problems inside the BP base, including racism by Indonesian contractors towards Melanesians. Contractors are expected to hire only indigenous people for unskilled labour, 93% for semi-skilled and 12% for skilled jobs.
When it started constructing its base, BP set up what it called the Tangguh Independent Advisory Panel, drawn from former US congressmen and a retired British diplomat. A Melanesian businessman, who ended up working for BP, was added to the mix.
The men – former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle, retired diplomat Gary Klein, and Augustinus Rumansara, a Papuan who chaired the Asian Development Bank – receive a salary for their time advising BP on a range of issues including recruitment. They fly to West Papua for just over a week to meet local power brokers, visit the base camp and model villagers before writing an annual report based on statistics supplied by BP that is published online.
The panel’s latest report and BP’s response to it accepts that the oil company is nowhere near meeting its target of a skilled Papuan workforce by 2029. The current level is just over 50% and the term ‘Papuan’ is not confined to Melanesians but migrants who have been living in the colony for 10 years. Recruitment programmes have all failed, the panel revealed, and after 15 years Melanesians are almost totally absent from higher skilled or supervisory roles.
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