Cahaya Bintang Kejora

This book is downloadable at archive.org/details/GJA01.

“BAPA, mengapa tidak ada orang Irian yang jadi pahlawan nasional?”

This quote opens the first chapter and is probably the strongest opening you can ask for. I think the original essay was written before 1993–which I later learned was when the government admitted some Papuans to be a national hero. This includes Frans Kaiseipo whose face graces our current Rp.10.000 bills.

The quote made me pause to think how little I thought about where Indonesian national heroes come from. And 1993 was not so long ago: Indonesia had almost been independent for nearly 50 years. And while the Pepera did not happen until the 1960s, several decades had passed and it could only mean nothing but neglect.

The essays in these book vary in topics (and somewhat in quality). I think the first chapter on the erasure of Papuan nationalism in Indonesian historiography posed a deep and powerful question on what it means to be a part of Indonesia but it doesn't read easily.

I find the chapter on transmigrasi the most interesting. Here the author classified four types of oppositions to the transmigrasi program, one of which was the environment group. More interestingly, he listed rebuttals/counter arguments to the allegations that transmigrasi was a Javanization, Islamization, and militerization. His rebuttals were:
- in more recent years (1980s) migrants came from Bali and NTT–not Java.
- Balinese and NTT population weren't Muslim.
- A similar program to Desa Sapta Marga program that relocated decommissioned military personnels to South Sulawesi in the 1950s to counter DI/TII insurgency was never carried out in Papua. (I had no idea such program existed!)

Nonetheless, he admitted that there is an “issue of substance” remaining: involuntary takeover of traditional lands. For this he cited a 1986 Kompas article that reported traditional chiefs in Mimika “donated 300.000 ha of lands for transmigrants”.

I find this fascinating because of how little I know about this and there is a new study out on West Papua Transmigration (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3601528).

Rating: 4/5 well worth the time.