HENRY FRENDO

THE U.N. AND THE REFUGEES Should Irian Jayan refugees be forcibly repatriated?

I RESIGNED FROM THE SERVICE of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the (Southern) Summer of 1985, after having

served six years with it in Switzerland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Papua New Guinea. It had been a disillusioning experience.

Before entering the service of an organisation such as the United Nations one is taken in by the aura of earnestness, even of grandeur which this august body seemed to suffuse. One acts in the belief that the ideals of the UN Charter are what draw people to the organi­sation, in much the same way as love of Christ and one's neighbour motivates someone to join the priest­hood. There is, additionally, the highly attractive notion of the peoples of this earth acting together as an international community.

But the truth is that most people join the UN for the money and the perks that it provides; in my experience at least, few indeed were heartily dedicated to the ideals that it is held to represent. These tend to be the ones who work hardest, who have ideas and are not afraid to express them, who volunteer to do things without pay if necessary. They are also the ones who tend to miss out on promotions, get the harshest field assignments, and who, refusing to be dismayed, leave the organisation, before fear and complacency rob them of strength and courage.

Within the set-up itself, status and preferment tend to operate on a system of lobbying that is in turn divided into amorphous racial and linguistic groupings. In UNHCR, for instance, there would be the Scandinavian lobby, the American lobby, the Francophone lobby dominated by Frenchmen, the black African lobby which· tended to keep close ties with the Arab (but not the Asian) cliques, the English and so on. Audibly to converse in a certain language - that of the boss - across the corridor could indicate superiorLy, if not untouchability. But to come from a small and poor country that was not a main

Dr .. He~ry Frendo is in the Depanment of Politics, La TTobe Uruversny. He has published " Messages from Mintoff"s Malta" in Quadrant in December 1986 and " The Pretoria Complex" in January-February 1988.

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donor of funds to an agency, or to speak some little known native tongue, was to be shorn at the outset of two useful supports: the political support measured in money donated by the bureaucrat's State, and the cabal support from an ethnic grouping. The advantage to the agency was that such 'neutralized' nationals could be deployed in delicate political environments where officers from the agency's main donors could be objected to by the host governments. (A lone Maltese, I had no lobby: 'Vous ~es ni Arab ni Europien, ' a UNHCR director in Geneva once told me!)

The so-called United Nations are disunited at the core: the very staffs were largely motley collections of drop-outs from the countries of origin, tourist serv­icemen and would-be fixers, stones rolling on the wheel of fortune, people like myself who had left their natural environment for political reasons, others who had left for less obvious reasons. Allegations and counter-allegations of espionage were not uncommon.' With years of seniority, porters and policemen could become directors . . . service was the key. Service, however, to what?

In the UN it becomes easier to understand what Jawaharlal Nehru meant when he said that the convic­tions of mankind run hand in hand with their interests or class feeling~. 'and they take good care, when they have the power to do so, to make laws to protect their own interests.' 'Of course', Nehru added, 'all this is done with every appearance of virtue and with every assurance that the good of mankind is the only motive at the back of the law .... It is amazing how people deceive themselves, and others, when it is in their own interests to do so.'z

Most fonctionnaires would agree that field service is much closer to the real thing than pushing papers at H.Q.: it is here that the action really takes place; there is no earthly reason why so many officers should be stationed in Geneva, Paris or New York, where UN tenure becomes their libido. 1

A TYPICAL WIDELY-PROPOUNDED UNHCR myth is that the agency is simply and solely humanitarian

and it is not in any way political. What humbug. The more one stays in this environment the more one is

convinced that political considerations constantly intertwine and frequently over-ride humanitarian considerations. However, elderly UN bureaucrats, several of whom never set foot in a university, resent this sort of intellectual analysis; with few excc:ptions, they fear intellectuals in their midst , regarding them as potential 'Trojan horses ', believing they would be connoisseurs who could tell on them. Many have observed and commented on this, among them Conor Cruise O' Brien:

For intellectuals, the United Nations is merely the fading repository of the hopes of the well­meaning and weak-minded. In intellectual circles, if you show an interest in the United Nations you are heard as revealing that you may not be quite up to the general level of the conver­sation . ... What will be disputed is the claim that the United Nations is important to our survival. The United Nations, after all, is powerless. Real power remains firmly in the hands of sovereign States, big and small. If even some powers, like Iraq and Iran, decide to go to war there is nothing the United Nations can do about it. And if the super-powers go to war, the United Nations will · simply disappear together with much of the planet it now vaguely represents.

Citing the face-saving formulae devised by the UN for Eden in Suez and Eisenhower in Hungary in 19S6 and then for Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, however, he concluded: 'Survival, personal or collective, is liable to depend, at critical moments, on dodges and camouflJ~.ge. ••

Notwithstanding its many faults, the UN still bas certain remarkable advantages. First, it bas money, which various governments, especially the USA, give to it; second, it has a certain standing as the only somewhat functioning world body; third, it can sometimes stand in as an intermediary, a stop-gap between the asylum-seekers and the asylum-givers (or between 'North' and 'South'; or in a civil war, a famine or an earthquake). Once in a blue moon it is a pathfinder, as in its 'Law of the Sea' initiative. Its various agencies can deploy staff, even expertS, "who . are on stand-by, in case of an emergency. (Today some . might hold that such services could even be 'privatized'.)

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is probably the most politically sensitive and the most politically influenced of all UN agencies because it deals with asylum-seekers or refugees - the products of political repression, 'maladministration and doctrinaire ideology. People flee when they cannot endure life in their own homeland. It is a difficult step to take, and few would take it unless they were genuinely afraid of something. That might not be overtly political at all - they could be afraid of bad wages or long hours of work, or afraid of a miserable exi~tence in a mismanaged or corrupt government. Stnctly speaking, these asylum-seekers are not refugees at all , according to the 19Sl Refugee Conven-

THE U.N. AND THE REFUGEES

tion. But people flee from foreign occupation if they . feel this occupation is likely to disadvantage them -or even perhaps to eliminate them in due course.

Tlte Irian Jayaas in Papua New Guinea

All these questions bear on the status of West Papuan (Irian Jayan) asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea. The main players here have been Indonesia, which came to 'possess' Irian Jaya by 1962; Papua New Guinea, which shares a border and a racial affinity with Irian Jaya's Melanesian inhabitants; Australia, which until 197S was responsible for PNG and is its chief foreign aid grantor; and last (and increasingly) the USA, the dominant super-power in the area.

What in principle do these countries have in common with regard to the Irian Jayan question? Probably nothing, other than pleasing or placating Indonesia as a strategic ally and trading partner. What are their interests? · These are not always easy to comprehend or to get

at, as duplicity here is of the essence. Let us take Indonesia. I can say that, in my experience, the Indonesian Ambassador in PNG was the most accom­plished and courteous senior diplomat that met and entertained me while I ser-Ved there. He assured me that Indonesia wished to have good relations with UNHCR. But of course, with the United Nations! Indonesia was (back as) a member of the club, like Cuba, Fiji, Zaire, etc. Furthermore, Indonesia was not averse to PNG granting the Irian Jayans asylum. That was their problem. But on the other hand, the Irian Jayans would be welcome to return home (i.e. to Indonesia-held Irian Jaya). Indonesia, you see, wishes to develop Irian Jaya.

Now IN SUCH ENCOUNTERS UN Officials cannot question motives; they might perhaps, with great trepi­dation, ask for further information. For example: is the policy to populate Irian Jaya with Javanese, then, to permit modernisation? Or perhaps to share out more evenly the population of Indonesia? Is it therefore plainly for the benefit of the people of Irian Jaya? So why could UNHCR not go to Irian Jaya to fmd out exactly what was going on? Was the PNG government misrepresenting the position, or scared stiff of Indonesia for no reason? All these standing questions could not be asked and I never asked them. Even less did I get hints of a reply to theni from the charming Indonesian Ambassador.

Next comes Papua New Guinea. So far as asylum­seeking and asylum-giving wa) concerned, PNG was really the prime actor as it wa5 here that the refugees were corning to. Not refugees, said Papua New Guinea. Not even asylum-seekers. Border-crossers. Now every asylum-seeker has to cross a border before being able to request asylum, unless he or she sneaks into a well-protected Embassy in his or her own home

2S

country. Use of the term 'border~osser' was meant to divert attention from the second phase in this process - the request · for asylum - the presumption being that traditionally Melanesians had crossed to and fro, from one side of that mountainous jungle border to the other, to stay with their relatives for a while, to harvest sago, and then to return whence they had come. If this happened there was no problem - no problem at all. They would cross back. '

But from 1984 onwards, the border~rossers came, and stayed, in far larger numbers than ever before. In the late 1970's about three thousand bush people had crossed the border, but in 1984 over 10,000 did so, many of them from Jayapura and including intellec· tuals, public servants, police, army deserters, univer· sity students, high school students and their families.' Provoked by transmigration and the attendant conse· quences of Javanese settlement, in February 1984 OPM supporters attempted to raise the West Papua flag outside the provincial assembly in the Irian Jaya capital, as a result of which several people got killed and various skirmishes took place, leading to an unprecedented exodus of refugees. The PNG govern· ment initially fed them, with some money provided by Indonesia, but this then stopped. It was believed that stopping the feeding would lead to the border~rossers' return to Irian Jaya. PNG and Indonesia would facili· tate their return: they would be cheerfully welcomed back home. Warren Dutton, then MP for North Fly, said in a report that the government appeared to be 'attempting to allow starvation to take the place of its meaningless and unenforceable " illegal immigrant" policy. ' 7 A leading journalist, Alfred Sasako, quoted the provincial police commissioner in K.iunga: 'Worry bilong al. The OPM is causing us a lot of headaches so let these people die.' ' During our negotiations for a large·scale relief programme on behalf of these people, one PNG Foreign Affairs official twice inter· jected 'let them starve', by way of a bargaining chip. But these people, in make.shift jungle clearings, did not return. They starved and they stayed. More arrived .. .

I had not been a week in Port Moresby when Warren Dutton, who later became a Minister in Paias Wingti's administration, phoned me up at home and asked if I knew that refugees from Irian Jaya in the Western Province of PNG were dying of starvation. 12th August 1984. Fifty·one persons, Mr. Dutton told me, had already starved to death in the K.iunga area, and it was my responsibility as the local UNHCR man to see how I could stop this disaster. The world press and media took it up from now on, as indeed I did in all earnest; we had known nothing about these deaths until then.

Within a matter of days I held meetings with Dutton, various PNG Foreign Ministry officials, and even met the PNG Foreign Secretary, Paulias Matane (16th August). Matane granted me permission to visit the PNG/ Indonesia border in the large Western Province - the first UN official to be allowed to do so. " Put on your bush boots, this is not Geneva here,"

26

he said. UNHCR. money was advanc:ed to a new Kiunp account so as to facilitate whatever assistance was possible and I set out to visit the camps by plane and chopper. There was still no accreditation and immunity, but plainly, UNHCR relations with the PNG Government were improving.

SO FAR AS I COULD SURMISE, the Matane position was, briefly, that UNHCR should be used only in

so far as it could make money available to the PNG government for it (the government) to spend; and that UNHCR should not get involved directly in the Irian Jayan issue but should deal only through the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) represen· tative, who was a 'friend' of Matane. The main reason probably was that the problem should not be interna~ tionalised (but the world media were now on to it, anyway). Papua New Guinea, a new State, was under· standably jealous of its sovereignty, and fearful that if the UNHCR brigade swept in that would complicate matters. Indonesia's position on this issue was, to say the least, unclear. The Somare government may also have feared - as many governments indeed do fear -that UNHCR assistance would have attracted more

. ' crossers' and 'institutionalised' the inflow, then forced PNG to be saddled with all the Irian Jayans in PNG. This fear may be deduced from the rather fierce reactions of Matane urging immediate resettlement of · ' undesirables' in third countries - as far away as possible from PNG, preferably.

The only possible, occasional and exceedingly limited third country permanent resettlement prospects were in the Netherlands then, although Sweden too had cooperated somewhat earlier on. This pressure on UNHCR was meant to show bow, if UNHCR wanted to get involved, then it would have to strive to resettle in third countries possibly hundreds if not thousands of these Irian Jayans. A difficult option, and one which the Dutch, South African and New Zealand desk officers at Headquarters preferred not even to consider, let alone discuss. In other words, this insistence on quick third country resettlement by PNG was a message to UNHCR to stand off: it was meant to undermine the agency's standing in the country, to emphasise how dependent that presence was on the government's own goodwill. UNHCR was correctly perceived as weak, easily bullied by the host government.

The underlying premise was that UNCHR. did not exist in PNG, that it should not make its presence known even if this was to thank, to grovel, and to offer its assistance to the government, whatever the circumstances. Mass starvation was not a concern. On the surface, a reason that was repeatedly mentioned by the PNG government in playing down the Irian Jayan problem, while Somare was prime minister, was that it did not want to offend Indonesia, with whom on the contrary it wished to have the best relations.

But how concerned was Indonesia really about this exodus of anti·lndonesian Melanesians from Irian

Jaya, which it planned to repopulat~ with Jav~ese? True, Indonesia would not have wuhed to giVe or rather to consolidate the impression that it was a repressive country, a foreign occupier over yet another Melanesian people. But it was saying they would be welcomed back, that they were under pressure from the OPM (Orgonisasi Papua Merdeko, the Free West Papuan Movement) to leave Irian Jaya. For the OPM, that was one way of bringing the Irian Jaya issue to world attention, perhaps to force the UN's hand .... towards a redemption of past blame. Equally, however, there was not much pressure of public opinion in Indonesia itself, certainly not in favour of departing Irianese, other than to say they could return if they wished and would not be punished ... so long as they were not regarded as OPM supporters. What were the guarantees if and when Irianese did return? Who would observe the implementation of these in practice? Here was a stone wall nobody was prepared to breach. Regarded as a nuisance, the Irian Jayans were not seen by PNG as potential assets to the economy, even if they were relocated and motivated to produce in certain communal enterprises. At the popular level, there was much sympathy, even support for them. But in the Government's mind there was the fear that thousands more could come. Using Indonesia as a scare-crow, then, PNG could plead reticence, withdrawal, evasion. The argument I sometimes heard used - that after all it would be in PNG's interests to have a buffer of anti­Indonesian Melanesians settled along the PNG­Indonesia border - was unconvincing, given the facility with which Indonesia could retaliate, indeed, could even use that as a potential casus belli. Javanese were being settled on the Iran Jaya side of the border, to north and south. •

T HE INTENSE HOSTILITY felt towards Indonesia and Indonesians erupted at Vanimo in November 1984

when a team attempting to induce Blackwater camp refugees to repatriate to Irian Jaya were physically assaulted and injured. Some of the men involved in the attack told a Radio Austtalia reporter they had assaulted the Indonesians because they 'hated the sight of them' and because of 'their inhumane treatment of the Melanesian race'. 10

De facto, almost all the Irian Jayan camps were set up and aided by the UN, after the starvation stories had come out and largely because of that. The govern­ment reacted to a situation it had partly caused in the first place - by stopping relief assistance and pretending the problem would solve itself - then permitting that which it had most wanted to avoid -world concern and 'internationalisation' of the problem. Warren Dutton's internal relocation plan, which was sympathetically regarded from the start within the Provincial Affairs Department, was slowly coming to be regarded as the only sensible option, with UN assistance. At the same time those who wished to return to Irian Jaya (I never met any who would do so

THE U.N. AND THE REFUGEES

if the status quo prevailed and/or without clear assur-, ances) would be given every facility, indeed every encouragement to do so. Again here UNHCR lent its eager assistance: a quid pro quo of some kind had to be shown to be working. Some go, some stay. Agreeing with both Indonesia and PNG that voluntary return was the best solution, UNHCR said there could be no question of people being forced to go back if they had a genuine fear.

What was Australia's position? In Australia, public opinion was aroused on this issue and was important in PNG. In a developed democracy, where contacts with PNG and Dutch New Guinea were old, strong, and not exempt from guilt, with a world war fought in common with 'Fuzzy Wuzzies', many Australians were genuinely concerned about human rights and refugee questions generally - all the more so when these were on Australia's door-step. 11 Moreover, Australia was largely financing PNG's budget, so the conclusion at the public level was: why not at least influence the PNG government's policy in a more humanitarian direction? But Australia's hands were tied by the fact that it would not take Irian Jayans itself quo refugees. It would not even agree to prelimi­naries; the suggestion was dismissed, again mainly out of fear that the exodus would then grow, and presumably to avoid harbouring an irritant in relations with Indonesia. Regional 'burden sharing' resettle­ment politics (favoured by UNHCR for 'durable solutions') would come to expect Australia to meet the demand once a precedent would have been set. A few escapees did . make it to Thursday Island or tlie mainland .... and these cases dragged on endlessly. If the Australians complained to the PNG Government about the way in which the Irian Jayans were being treated, the PNG Government had an easy answer: you take them. Irian Jayans on the border felt Australia was 'the same ground', as they told me: they looked to Australia for support, if not refuge. Of all the foreign diplomatic missions represented in PNG, the Australians were always the most interested, even, I dare say, the most genuinely concerned. The Australian High Commission in Waigani always sought to be as well informed as possible and they tried, discreetly, to support UNHCR not only finan­cially - and specifically for this relief programme -but also, I believe, vis-a-vis its standing with the government.

Last, but clearly not least, came the USA. A new ambassador, James .Garner, arrived in Port Moresby in the thick of the situation. If I could summarise the impression he made on me I would put it simply in one word: geopolitics. Human rights, asylum-seekers, refugees, the UN, all of that was of minimal impor­tance, perhaps perfunctory, perhaps functional', but otherwise the overriding concern seemed to be geopo­litical - ensuring that Indonesia would feel assured of American support, and that the PNG and Australian governments would not feel let down either. One felt somewhat frustrated at the thought that when all was

27

said and done there were only two real players in this otherwise touchina game: those were Indonesia and the USA. As for UNHCR, the USA financed about so.,, of its entire budget, the agency just about owed its existence to. the unsuspecting American tax-payer, whereas the USSR had never paid a cent into its coffers. Any belief on my part that as UNHCR's largest sponsor and as a democratic c~untry concerned about human rights, the USA would mtervene or lend its support to our cause proved to be altogether ilh•sory.

After much foot-dragging and suffering, the short term conclusion was that some Irian Jayans were persuaded or forced to return, with UNHCR acting as prompter and referee; most stayed behind and were due to be more or less resettled in PNG in designated areas away from the border where hopefully they could work for a living, again with UN assistance.

In December 1984, while I had gone to Geneva, Foreign Minister Rabbie Namaliu was suddenly replaced by hardliner John Giheno in a cabinet reshuffle and on the following day 100 'border crossers' were repatriated from Blackwater camp, Vanimo, without the involvement of UNHCR. The policy of 'forced, unpredictable repatriation' - as Professor Garry Trompf, Chairman of the indepen­dent Refugees Relief Committee in PNG, called it -was also effected for smaller numbers on a few other occasions during 1985.

REPORTS OF REPATRIATION of rejou/ement cases to Irian Jaya, which took place some months after I

had resigned and left, were carried prominently in the Australian media. Twenty-nine people were repatri­ated on 13 October 1985, twelve of them in handcuffs. It was presumably these twelve who, according to the Indonesian government news agency, were jailed as soon as they arrived in Irian Jaya. Villagers and other refugees rioted in protest at this treatment, which included beatings of handcuffed Irian Jayans prior to their deportation. The Somare government said the deportees were convicted criminals who had already served their terms for offences committed in PNG, but their lawyer, Bernard Narakobi, himself a Melanesian ideologue of long standing, said the men actively opposed the Indonesian rule of Irian Jaya and would be met with death or cruelty.

What is most interesting in this episode is that two flights from Vanimo to Jayapura had been chartered, according to the report, by the PNG Department of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations High Commis­sion for Refugees. '1

All this goes to show how easily a set-up such as that of a UN agency can be conned and compromised, bypassed and blamed, how handicapped it really is vis­a-vis any member State of the organisation. When the interests of States conflict, it tends to be impotent. When the interests of States converge, it tends to be redundant. Sometimes it may occupy the periphery to good advantage, but it can also be an accomplice to

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deeds that do not become it. More often than not, the UN clears the debris rather than removes the injury. Through its timorous time-serving philosophy, its stifling, centralised, careerist bureaucracy, and its feuding multi-governmental, non-d.emocratic make­up, the UN has become a golden cage for birds that no longer sing.

One final question. Were all these borde:r crossers refugees in the strict sense of the UNHCR mandate? Did they have 'a well-founded fear of persecution'? Perhaps not. Perhaps not all of them. None of those I interviewed through interpreters on the border in the Western Province could specifically indicate to me when, where or by whom they had been harassed, shot, beaten, jailed, tortured - or why specifically they had been forced to leave and what exactly they feared if they returned. (I refer to those in the Western Province rather than those in the West Sepik, who were generally from the J ayapura area, and more articulate, many of whom would qualify as refugees even on a case by case basis.) However, all hated the Indons, the red berets; they were afraid of the shooting - of the very sight - of automatic weapons. They were afraid, too, of the OPM although never hostile to it; and several were pressurised into crossing over by certain OPM units. But they were generally, intui­tively, viscerally, afraid of the Indonesians whom they saw as aliens, Asians, occupiers, usurpers. They had a psychological and a real, well-founded fear of being swamped by disdainful Javanese. They complained of all kinds of discrimination and repression.' 1 'WE WANT INDEPENDENCE FROM OPPRESSION' , said a poster (hanging from a Melbourne-made tent in one border camp) which was duly removed in my presence; 'GIVE US THE FREEDOM FROM COLONIALISM WHICH YOU YOURSELVES ENJOY!' (Translated from Indonesian for me by Dr. Angus Mcintyre.)

Notes

1. E.g. Andrei Nikolaev's " La CIA en Europe Occiden­tale" , Temps Nouveaux, No. 29, 1979, p.25, included a KGB - inspired attack on two Americans in UNHCR.

2. Jawaharlal Nehru: Glimpses of World History, 1939, pp. 350-351.

3. See Myles Harris:. Breakfast in Hell. A ·Doctor's Experiences of the Ethiopian Famine (Lond<1n, 1986).

4. Conor Cruise O'Brien: "Survival - and other UN dodges" , The Observer, 2S October, 1981.

5. In a 1984 paper " Papua New Guinea and the West Irianese Border Crossers". Dr. Martin Tsamenyi then Lecturer in Law at the University of Papua New Guinea concluded that, in relation to the West Irianese border crossers, Papua New Guinea, 'despite its non-accession to the Refugee Convention, may nevertheless be said to be under some obligations to these people by virtue! of its membership of the United Nations'.

6. See "Irian Jayan Refugees in Papua New Guinea: Interview with Bishop John Etheridge, Bishop of Vanimo, 31 July, 1984", in Jesuit Refugee Service, Regional Coordinator fQr East Asia, Melbourne, 1984.

7. Papua New Guinea Times, 16 August, 1984, p. 3,

quoted after. Brian Brunton: "Refugees, Human Rights and Irian Jaya: A Critique of Policy", Conference on Papua New Guinea and Australia: PNG Perspectives, ANU, Canberra, 1984.

8. Nuigini N~ws, 21 August, 1984, p. 4 quoted after ibid. [n this Matane must have had Somare's support. Shortly after it became known that Arnold Ap, Curator of the Ethnographic Museum in Jayapura, had been killed, in April 1984, Somare had given UNHCR two weeks to persuade Indonesia to accept UN involvement in the handling of Irian Jayan refugees. This ultimatum was accompanied by the threat of rejoul~ment, starting with a group of 1300 on 29 May, 1984. On this see e.g. ACFOA Briefing (Australian Council for Overseas Aid, Canberra), June 1984, p. 12. ·

9. See map .showing the transmigration areas in southern Irian Jaya from Merauke to Mindiptinah, and on the northern coast, from Jayapura to Monokwari and Sorong, ibid., p. 3.

10. Stuart Ioder: "PNG violence darkens cloud over the border crossers", The Bulletin, 20 November, 1984, p. 136.

11. Australian Cabinet documents released in 1986 showed that as early as June 1955 the Menzies Government's policy of continued support for the Dutch occupation of Irian Jaya (then West New Guinea) was jeopardising Australia's relations with Indonesia. The then Minister for External Affairs, Richard Casey, had warned that such support in the face of Indonesian chums to the area was making it difficult for pro-Western Indonesian poli­ticians in the election due later in 1955. As a result,

THE U.N. AND THE REFUGEES

Cabinet settled for a policy urging the Dutch to partici­pate in the United Nations debate on West New Guinea if the UN voted to involve itself in the matter - as it did . See Ian Davis: "Dutch New Guinea policy hun Indonesia tie: Casey", TM Age, 3 January, 1986. Although the UN chief in Irian Jaya confessed that in the 'Act of Free Choice' in 1969 the Indonesian Administration 'at all times exercised tight political control over the population', the UN General Assembly nem con (84 for, 30 abstentions) acknowledged his report as being in fulftlment of the tasks entrusted to him by the Secretary General. See e.g. Brian May: The Indonesian Tragedy (London, 1978), esp. ch. 5: "The United Nations Fiasco", pp. 163-199. On Sukarno's manipulation of the West New Guinea question in Indonesian politics, see J .D. Lege: Sukarno. A Political Biography (Sydney, 1972, rev. ed. 1984).

12. Melissa Roberts: "Rioting as PNG deports refugees", The Australian, October 1985, p. 1. While I was away an Englishman (who had tendered his resignation but later withdrew it and went to China) was temporarily in charge of the UNHCR liaison office in Moresby; an African was subsequently appointed to the position I vacated.

13. See e.g. "OPM report on atrocities in Merauke", "Refugees die of starvation", "We fear for our lives", in T APOL , British Campaign for the Defence of Political Prisoners and Human Rights in Indonesia, No. 65 , September 1984, pp. 5-9; Claire Tedeschi: " Wingti demands UN action as more Irians flood into PNG" , The Australian, 8 September 1986.

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