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Irian Barat

(West Papua)

The Reluctant Colony

June 1969

Umar Suharjo raised the Soviet SVD high-powered sniper rifle and nestled the weapon against his cheek. The assassin peered through the PSO-1 scope at the scene unravelling below, where an advance patrol of KOPASSUS Special Forces paratroopers had occupied the isolated highland village. His eyes traversed the scene and then narrowed when his attention focused on a group of high-spirited soldiers gathered around something on the ground. Closer scrutiny revealed the object of their undivided attention to be a woman. A sneer curled Suharjo’s upper lip when it became apparent that the victim was white.

He concluded that she was most likely a foreign missionary and was aware of their scattered numbers and often isolated presence, throughout Indonesia’s eastern frontier.

Suharjo remained unobserved; a camouflaged backdrop high in the forest canopy, three hundred metres from where the paratroopers jostled for turns to rape their victim. He waited patiently in a dispassionate mood as he saw a child kick and flail at the attackers, only to be punched and then thrown viciously aside.

The sniper bided his time until the soldiers had finished their brutal engagement. When the last of the men rolled off the woman, rose and commenced buttoning his trousers Suharjo’s forefinger caressed the SVD’s sensitive trigger. As the barrel air-penciled a path across his targets, he paused, inhaled slowly and sent the first soldier to his death. Then, in rapid succession, he dispatched the remaining three men; their bodies crumpling under his deadly fire and their surprised expressions testament to the assassin’s lethal skill.

Moments passed until the surreal silence was suddenly pierced by shrill screams as the villagers abandoned their dwellings and fled, leaving the unconscious woman and her six-year-old son terrified at her side. Suharjo monitored the landscape for several minutes, to ensure that the entire patrol had indeed been exterminated, before climbing down from his canopy perch and descending down to his killing field.

He hesitated at the village’s perimeter, tilting his head when he detected the approach of others. Withdrawing into the jungle growth from where he could survey the developing situation, Suharjo waited impatiently, adjusting the rifle now at his hip, to automatic fire.

Angry voices signalled the arrival of a group of armed Papuans. Concluding that he was observing a band of freedom fighters and likely members of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka, the Free Papua Movement, Suharjo estimated their numbers were small and, as they were generally undisciplined and poorly-trained, there were not too many for him to confront. He crouched forward, observing the one whom he assumed to be their leader bending down to calm the wailing child. The woman moaned and struggled to a sitting position, reaching out to the light-skinned child. Suharjo frowned.

The assassin considered the opportunity. His mission was to create confusion as the interim province was dragged towards the United Nations-supervised plebiscite to determine whether Papuans would remain within the Indonesian republic or seek independence. Suharjo’s master, General Nathan Seda, acting unilaterally, had decided to influence the outcome to benefit another agenda in East Timor. Suharjo had been ordered to the former Dutch territory to disrupt the proceedings; the choice of targets left for him to determine as he crisscrossed the mountainous outposts, indiscriminately killing. His elimination of the Special Forces patrol would guarantee the severest of reprisals against the indigenous population which, in turn, would further obfuscate the security situation for the UN-sponsored plebiscite.

As it turned out, not all of Suharjo’s missions were successful. Some months earlier, he had been thwarted while attempting to execute a Jakarta-based Australian Embassy official, Stephen Coleman who, at the time, was conducting an information gathering tour of the province in anticipation of the referendum. Suharjo’s bullet had been deflected, hitting the Australian in the shoulder. Stephen Coleman had survived the assassination attempt.

Refocusing on the scene in front of him the assassin saw that the child was now cradled in his mother’s arms. Suharjo raised the SVD to his shoulder, adjusted the scope and fired rapidly until none of the Papuan soldiers were left standing. Satisfied, he then lowered his sights marginally, steadied his aim and settled the cross-hairs on the foreign woman. Suharjo could clearly see tearful eyes as she cradled her child. His bullet sent her reeling backwards, spilling the boy onto the ground. The killer considered the child and, in an out of character gesture, lowered his weapon and slunk back into the jungle leaving the boy alone, but unharmed.

Suharjo would not survive to witness the ramifications of his decision to permit the boy Julius to live. The outcome was destined to profoundly impact the course of Indonesia’s future relationships across the region.

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