Papua Governor Lukas Enembe has pledged to embrace Free Papua Movement (OPM) separatists, expressing his will to build a bridge between the group and the government by involving them in the provincial development.
Enembe said that he would continue to hold discussions with OPM members to find out their demands.
“I
have yet to meet them in person, but I keep in contact with the group.
They are our brothers,” Enembe said, adding that they wanted to be
listened to and understood.
“If
some of the members want to go to school, we will send them to school.
If they want to run a business, we can provide training and loans so
they can start their business,” he continued.
Enembe
said that the Papua Liberation Army Front (TPN)/OPM leader Goliat
Tabuni had given him a call and asked him to develop Tabuni’s village.
Good
communication between the parties, Enembe said, would build mutual
understanding and therefore it would be easier for the separatists to
accept the government’s development programs.
Enembe
called on all regents in the province to take a peaceful approach by
holding dialogue with the separatists. He also urged the central
government to disburse more funds for the province’s development since
Papua could not rely only on the provincial budget.
Civil
and separatist conflicts, combined with intense corruption and extreme
isolation, have severely retarded development in Papua despite the
province’s rich natural resources of gold, copper, coal and timber.
Papua
was ranked the nation’s poorest province by the National Development
Planning Agency (Bappenas), with 32 percent of its residents considered
“poor”, far above the national poverty rate of 12.5 percent.
Despite
an annual budget of more than Rp 40 trillion (US$4.16 billion), the
seventh-largest budget in the country, Papua’s development indicators
remain stubbornly at the bottom of the list. Papuans have repeatedly
urged the government to sit down for dialogue to propose solutions.
The
Jaringan Damai Papua (Papua Peace Network), led by Catholic priest
Neles Tebay who won the 2013 Tji Haksoon Justice and Peace award, is
currently struggling to make such Jakarta-Papua dialogue happen. The
globally-recognized Papua Peace Network has organized several rounds of
negotiations between the separatists and the government.
“The
Papua Peace Network has submitted a draft scheme of the dialogue. It is
now up to Jakarta to synchronize the concept,” said Papua lawmaker
Ruben Magai on Tuesday.
“Papuans are hoping for dialogue. The government might not care for this, but we will keep on asking them about it,” he added.