Ministry in Australia

Protestant. They were also told that the reports of suffering were not exaggerated. Their own relatives had been killed, young women raped by the soldiers, there was widespread looting and land was being confiscated or crops burnt. They felt second class citizens in their own land. Indonesians dominated all political and economic life and looked down on everything Melanesian. They estimated that since 1969 (the year Indonesia took possession of Irian Jaya) between 150,000 to 200,000 people had been killed.

This visit led to the decision to hold a Tripartite Meeting between the ACC, the DGI and the MCC, as the tense relationship between PNG and Indonesia had also spilled over to the churches.

In June 1985 Phil Erari, then secretary of the GKI, sent a paper to the church councils with the views of his church on programmes to be implemented. It took the position that all its programmes should be based on the three principles of self-dependence, self-esteem, and social justice. Erari describes that development in Irian Jaya was being perceived increasingly as being done to the people, not by the people, a 'kind of Indonesian colonialism', he wrote. Because of wide-spread social injustice in Irian Jaya, human rights had been violated, and their self-esteem had suffered badly. The churches and council of churches would need to address this problem urgently, he wrote.

A meeting between the DGI, the MCC, and the ACC was arranged for November 1985 in Bali. I attended this with 38 other delegates, 23 from Indonesia (including 4 from Irian Jaya and one from Timor), 8 from PNG, 7 from Australia and one from the Pacific Conference of Churches. The theme was MOVING FORWARD TOGETHER INTO THE FUTURE, with three topics: Church and Society, Hopes and Expectations of a modern society, and Relationships with people of other faiths.

Between the first meeting in August 1984 (which I didn't attend) and this meeting, a total of nine separate meetings had been held between representatives of all three councils, either together or separately, due to the large number of refugees (or border crossers, as the Indonesians preferred to call them). The meeting I attended set up a standing committee to deal with urgent matters between regular Tripartite meetings. Its main positive result was an open sharing of the differences of approach and attitude towards church/state relationships, problems associated with development and relationships with people of other faiths. The meeting also agreed to send an Indonesian minister from Irian Jaya to Papua New Guinea to minister there to Indonesian speaking Christians, particularly in the border region.

We were told that 12 refugees had been returned to Irian Jaya by the PNG government against their will. This had created such international protest, that Prime Minister Somare eventually lost his leadership over this issue. The meeting was assured by the Indonesian delegates, that these twelve people were now being looked after by the GKI.

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