The New York
Agreement is an agreement signed by the Netherlands and Indonesia regarding the
administration of the territory of Western New Guinea. The first part of the
agreement proposes that the United Nations assume administration of the
territory, and a second part proposes a set of social conditions that will be
provided if the United Nations exercises a discretion proposed in article 12 of
the agreement to allow Indonesian occupation and administration of the
territory. Negotiated during meetings hosted by the United States, the
agreement was signed on 15 August 1962 at the United Nations Headquarters in
New York City, United States.
The agreement
was added to the agenda of the 1962 United Nations General Assembly and
precipitated General Assembly Resolution 1752 (XVII) granting the United
Nations authority to occupy and administer West New Guinea. Although agreements
are not able to negate obligations defined in the Charter of the United
Nations, and the agreement asserted that it was for the benefit of the people
of the territory, some people believed that the agreement was sacrificing the
people of the territory for the benefit of the foreign powers.
A United States
Department of State summary from 1962 asserts the "agreement was almost a
total victory for Indonesia and a defeat for the Netherlands", that the
United States "Bureau of European Affairs was sympathetic to the Dutch
view that annexation by Indonesia would simply trade white for brown
colonialism", and that "The underlying reason that the Kennedy
administration pressed the Netherlands to accept this agreement was that it
believed that Cold War considerations of preventing Indonesia from going
Communist overrode the Dutch case."
Background
The origins of
the dispute over Dutch New Guinea are agreed to have originated in the
pre-World War II need to find a homeland for the Eurasian Indo people.
According to C.L.M. Penders, "None" of the other reasons, including
to develop the island, "advanced by the Netherlands for the continuation
of their rule of West New Guinea" rationally served the Dutch national
interest enough to hold a territory that would lead it to lose so much business
and international goodwill. Beginning in the 1920s, large numbers of unemployed
Indo people in Java persuaded the Dutch government to set up colonies in
northern West New Guinea, which eventually failed to give the colonists the
prosperity they expected. However, New Guinea was conceived of as a
"promised land" in the imagination of groups such as the
Vaderlandsche Club and the Dutch Nazi Party who lobbied for a "white Dutch
province in the Indies". Although this province was never achieved, the
Indos maintained a privileged and resented position in Indonesia, such that
they were the strongest advocates for an autonomous New Guinea. From 1945
during the Indonesian National Revolution, the Netherlands tried to negotiate
for a special place for New Guinea in various conferences with Indonesian
nationalists, with the Linggadjati Agreement among other things reserving New
Guinea as a place of settlement for Indos.
However, during
the Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference of 1949, both Indonesia and the
Netherlands could not agree on the status of New Guinea, with the Netherlands
arguing that it should keep West New Guinea for the eventual self-determination
of the natives, once those inhabitants had become sufficiently
"mature". The resulting accord was unclear on the final status of New
Guinea, although the Dutch Labor Party defeated an amendment that would have
explicitly excluded New Guinea from Indonesian independence. From 1951, the
Indonesian government interpreted the results of the Round Table Conference as
giving it sovereignty over all of the former Dutch East Indies, including New
Guinea. Throughout negotiations with the Indonesians, the Netherlands
maintained it could give up sovereignty over Dutch New Guinea, because the
conservative parties in the Dutch parliament, deeply humiliated by Indonesian
independence and wanting to maintain a colonial stronghold in the area, would
not vote to ratify any such agreement. When the Indonesian government withdrew
from the Netherlands-Indonesia Union due to frustration at the slow pace of
talks over New Guinea, the Netherlands felt relieved from any obligation to
continue negotiations on the issue. Indonesia, supported by all of the African
and Asian nations except nationalist China, tried to pass a United Nations
General Assembly resolution urging the Netherlands to negotiate with it on the
status of West New Guinea. However, the resolutions were blocked by the
opposition of all of the Western nations except Greece.
Indonesia gained
more international support for negotiations with the Netherlands during the
Geneva Summit and the Asian–African Conference in 1955, after which Dutch
newspapers and churches, previously stalwartly in favour of keeping New Guinea,
advocated bringing New Guinea "into a quieter sphere" of United
Nations Trusteeship. Nevertheless, in 1956, the Netherlands amended its
constitution to include West New Guinea as a constituent country of the Kingdom
of the Netherlands, although the government excluded an amendment that would
have specified self-determination as the goal of Dutch sovereignty over the
territory.[5] Inside West New Guinea, the Netherlands liberalized political
parties but banned pro-Indonesia parties as subversive. In response to the
Netherlands' hardening, Indonesia's position on New Guinea gradually shifted to
say that the people of New Guinea already exercised their right to
self-determination with the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence in 1945.
After the third and final vote in the United Nations General Assembly in 1957,
in which a resolution urging Dutch–Indonesian dialogue, with the support of a
majority of nations representing the majority of the world's people, was
blocked by the colonial powers, the Indonesian Foreign Minister Subandrio said
that it would no longer seek to resolve the "West Irian" (West New
Guinea) issue at the United Nations. Mass strikes and illegal seizures broke
out in Indonesia against Dutch businesses in 1958, organized by the Communist
Party, youths and veterans' groups which led to Dutch nationals fleeing the country.
Diplomatic ties were severed with the Netherlands in 1960.
Negotiations
During the
1950s, the United States had poor relations with Indonesia, because of its
secret support of anti-government rebels in Sumatra and its unwillingness to
support the Indonesian claim to West New Guinea. Indonesia was also displeased
with the "virtually unanimous hostility of the American press" in its
international campaign for West New Guinea. In early 1959, a counsellor wrote a
memo on behalf of the US Ambassador suggesting a plan for "special United
Nations trusteeship over the territory for a limited number of years, at the
end of which time sovereignty would be turned over to Indonesia".
At the
inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the United States Ambassador
to Indonesia, supported by the White House National Security Council, proposed
a seven-point plan "to prevent Indonesia from falling under communist
control and to win it over to the west", which included promising
Indonesia reunion with West New Guinea. The Government's Bureau of European
Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk
opposed the plan, both because of hostility towards the Indonesian President
Sukarno, who had collaborated with the Japanese, and support for the
Netherlands, a NATO ally. The Dutch position argued that the native Papuan
people were racially different from Indonesia, that incorporation into
Indonesia would be "substitution of brown colonialism for white
colonialism", and that the "backward" Papuans were not ready for
independence; while the Indonesian position argued that Indonesia was already
ethnically diverse, that Indonesia wanted to reunite territories separated by
colonialism, and that Dutch arguments about democracy were "a trick"
to create "at the doorstep of Indonesia a puppet state... under Dutch
tutelage".
By March 1961,
Indonesia had indicated agreement for United Nations trusteeship on condition
that it would not be called a trusteeship. Both supporters of Indonesia and
supporters of the Netherlands in the administration cast their positions as
favourable to anticolonialism. Although the idea of Papuan independence
appealed to senior advisers in the U.S. government, few thought it realistic.
US officials were also concerned about world opinion in favour of Indonesia;
diplomatic displays of Third World solidarity were increasing, and in January
1962, Egypt closed its Suez Canal to Dutch ships as a protest against the
Netherlands' New Guinea policy. In mid-January, Robert F. Kennedy, President
Kennedy's brother, travelled to Jakarta and announced that the United States,
"as a former colony, is committed to anti-colonialism".
President
Kennedy later met with both the Dutch Foreign Minister Joseph Luns and Sukarno,
with both agreeing to a United Nations Trusteeship but disagreeing on the
details. When the United States sponsored a "compromise" resolution
in the United Nations which Indonesia opposed, relations with Indonesia soured.
In December, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy decisively advised
Kennedy towards a more pro-Indonesian position, lest the "Soviet bloc...
draw Indonesia even closer to it". American-mediated secret Ambassadorial
level talks began in March 1962, without preconditions, but Sukarno was
sceptical of American intentions. The talks were held at the Huntland estate at
Middleburg, Virginia. An outline of the plan by American diplomat Ellsworth
Bunker in 1962 proposed that the Netherlands transfer control over New Guinea
to neutral United Nations administrators, who would be gradually replaced by
Indonesian administrators, and then entirely to Indonesia, which would then be
required to organize a referendum "to give the Papuans freedom" with
the United Nations Secretary-General and other United Nations personnel.[4] The
Netherlands responded that the proposal was a "shocking betrayal by the
United States",[2] initially wanting the referendum to take place under UN
administration. Although after the United States threatened to make the
negotiations public, it acceded with the addition of a "right to
self-determination" into the agreement. Foreign Minister Subandrio, who
regarded UN supervision and organization of the referendum as a
"humiliation for Indonesia", only agreed to a set of pared-down guidelines
for the plebiscite[4] when the United States threatened to "switch sides
and support the Dutch". Article XVIII of the final version of the
Agreement provided the following parameters for the "act of free
choice":
Musyawarah
(consultative councils) would be instructed on procedures to assess the will of
the population
The actual date
of the act would be completed before 1969
The question in
the act would allow the inhabitants to decide whether to stay or to separate
from Indonesia
All adults would
be allowed to participate in the act of free choice
On 15 August
1962, representatives from Indonesia and the Netherlands signed the
"Agreement between the Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the
Netherlands Concerning West New Guinea (West Irian)" at the United Nations
Headquarters in New York City.
Implementation
Some members of
the quasi-legislative New Guinea Council established under the Dutch were
disappointed that the Netherlands had signed the agreement without consulting
the Council. Nevertheless, the Council decided to support the agreement and to
cooperate with the United Nations and Indonesian authorities in keeping peace
and order. A small minority of Council members, including Nicolaas Jouwe,
refused to support the agreement and went into exile in the Netherlands, he
only returned to Indonesia in 2009. The period of United Nations administration
ended on 1 May 1963, as envisioned by the New York Agreement.
Fernando
Ortiz-Sanz, the United Nations Secretary-General's representative in New
Guinea, observed and approved the process of musyawarah during March and April
1969 for the final Act of Free Choice, although recommending that the councils
be enlarged to better comply with the adult eligibility provision of the New
York Agreement. In his report, he said that the majority of petitions he
received from the New Guineans were pro-Indonesian, although this assessment of
local opinion is contradicted by reports from foreign embassies. Between July
and August 1969, the Act of Free Choice overwhelmingly concluded in favour of
staying with Indonesia. Professor of International Law H.F. Van Panhuys
attributes the lopsided results to the lack of demilitarization of the
territory, the process of musyawarah ("talking until a unanimous decision
is reached... [was] not conducive to an atmosphere in which people could
secretly and therefore fearlessly express their preference"), and the lack
of an option for union with the Netherlands.
At the United
Nations General Assembly, a group of African states, led by Ghana, denounced
the Act of Free Choice as an act of "Moslem imperialism" and
"Asian racialism".[citation needed] Other states such as India
refuted the charges and celebrated Indonesian unity. In October 1969 the United
Nations General Assembly passed a resolution 84 to 0 with 30 abstentions that
noted "with appreciation the fulfilment... [of] the 1962 Agreement"
and thanked Indonesia for "its efforts to promote the economic and social
development of West Irian". The dissenting African states proposed an
amendment to direct a second referendum in 1975, but it failed because of
Indonesian and American opposition. The Dutch government accepted the results
and said that the process was compliant with the New York Agreement. Reflecting
on the vote, retired United Nations Under-Secretary-General Chakravarthy
Narasimhan said in 2001, "The mood at the United Nations was to get rid of
this problem as quickly as possible", and "[M]y heart isn't bleeding
[for the Papuans]". The United States partially achieved its goal "to
win [Indonesia] over to the West", although the Indonesia–Malaysia
confrontation and the struggling Indonesian economy cooled relations.
For Indonesia,
the implementation of the New York Agreement completed the early Indonesian
nationalist goal of what Sukarno called a "Republic of Indonesia from
Sabang to Merauke", and represented successful resistance against
partition on ethnic or religious grounds. On the other hand, the implementation
of the New York Agreement is one of the most cited grievances of the militant
Free Papua Movement (OPM), and the years immediately following its
implementation were the most violent in the emerging guerrilla conflict with
independence supporters, as OPM fighters kidnapped and attacked police,
military, and transmigrant targets while the Indonesian military strafed whole
villages in response. Although supporters of independence for West New Guinea
regard the Act of Free Choice as illegitimate and noncompliant with the New
York Agreement, the United Nations officially maintains that West New Guinea's
status as part of Indonesia is "final". In 2002, a nationalist
assembly of Papuans led by independence activist Theys Eluay declared the New
York Agreement "unlawful and morally unacceptable, because Representatives
from [West New Guinea] were not involved in it"
The agreement at
the United Nations
https://peacemaker.un.org/.../ID%20NL_620815...
Sumber:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=461186416042562&set=a.2197891023757683
