Merdeka Hostages Freedom and Flying Pigs in West Papua eBook Stephen Hill Chris Gilbey
Download As PDF : Merdeka Hostages Freedom and Flying Pigs in West Papua eBook Stephen Hill Chris Gilbey 
A pregnant woman who works for the UN is taken hostage by a group of tribal Papuan freedom fighters along with other foreigners and Indonesians. The tribesmen find out that she is pregnant and decide that the baby is a “gift from God” and must be their new Messiah. They plan to keep Martha hostage until the baby is born, and then carry the baby into battle as their mascot. They believe this will make their bows and arrows as powerful as guns and bullets. This takes place in the most remote and dense tropical jungles in the world, in West Papua. The freedom fighters are part of a liberation movement called the OPM.
It's the stuff of fiction but its all true.
Martha was the pregnant United Nations official. Her captors, the OPM, said she would not be released until the UN delivered ‘Merdeka’ or ‘Freedom’ for the West Papuan people. The OPM rebel movement was motivated by the murder, repression, exploitation, and massive human rights abuses perpetrated by the Indonesian military. Hostage negotiations spanned an enormous cultural divide between indigenous jungle people who'd never seen the outside world and the international community. The negotiations involved the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Pope. It became a balancing act to keep the Indonesian military from attacking the OPM, an action that would have led to the deaths of innocent people. Extraordinary intrigues became the hallmark of the negotiations at the highest level of politics in Indonesia. Covert foreign troops were deployed and attackers even pretended to be part of the International Red Cross. The crisis balanced precariously on a knife edge every day.
Stephen Hill was the senior UN official and ambassador to Indonesia at the time. He was responsible for the UN’s role in negotiating release of the hostages and the subsequent aid initiatives.
This book reveals the growing tensions, uncertainty, and life and death struggle experienced by the hostages each day through the lens of the contemporary daily reports that Stephen Hill wrote and transmitted to the UN Security Council never before released.
The hostage drama - iincluding the murder of two Indonesian hostages – is a prism for what happened next in West Papua. After the resolution of the crisis, Stephen Hill conceived and implemented a ‘Flying Pigs Operation’ to replace the livestock the highland villagers’ killed by the military during the crisis – a visionary solution to deliver cultural and physical support for a ravaged community.
Its rare that you read a true story told so lucidly and imperatively, and backed up by scrupulous footnotes and references. Merdeka takes the reader on a journey through to the present – to the 2014 Indonesian Presidential election - and explores what future for indigenous Papuans might hold, given the roiling politics of Indonesia.
Stephen Hill’s credentials are outstanding, but he writes like a novelist, not an academic. The extraordinary personal stories that are recounted demonstrate the integrity and strength of values and culture of the native Papuan tribal people in the face of the worst excesses of globalisation. Martha, the central character of the narrative, says “For anyone wanting to understand why our hostage drama occurred in the first place, and the current political and human rights situation in West Papua, this book is a must read”.
Martha, the central character of the narrative says “For anyone wanting to understand why our hostage drama occurred in the first place, and the current political and human rights situation in West Papua, this book is a must read”. Another reviewer says, ‘This exciting and compelling book is especially valuable and relevant to Australia and its place in SE Asia.”
There are important social lessons to be learnt for dealing with humanity’s global future from the fast disappearing cultu
Merdeka Hostages Freedom and Flying Pigs in West Papua eBook Stephen Hill Chris Gilbey
Excellent, well-researched insight into an important chapter in West Papua's history.Product details
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Merdeka Hostages Freedom and Flying Pigs in West Papua eBook Stephen Hill Chris Gilbey Reviews
This book is an excellent combination of a thriller and a picture of UNESCO’s exemplary role in times and places of need. The complexities of the work to rescue hostages in West Papua included, at times, problematic international cooperation, a harsh historical and geographical context and considerable knowledge of, and sensitivity to, diverse cultural practices. People and places come alive in the text as the difficulties of the rescue of most hostages are described. I especially commend the author for his leadership in a challenging and fearful time and for this reader-friendly account of the crisis, its resolution, the positive support for West Papua that followed and for his analysis of the current challenging future for the West Papuans.
The development work
This book gives a dramatic account of an incident in which 14 people were abducted and held hostage in the jungle of West Papua by the Free Papua Movement (OPM). Much of the day-by-day account of the four months of complicated negotiations, on and then off-again agreements and the final violent denouement could have been written by a John Le Carré - but this was not fiction but reality. The author, Stephen Hill, is an Australian sociology professor, who had just been appointed to the post of Director of the Jakarta office of UNESCO in 1996 when the abduction took place. Hill was responsible for resolving the crisis, and in his account he helps readers understand the complex cultural and political dimensions of negotiating with the many players involved the Indonesian government, various factions of the Indonesian military, international organizations, competing groups within the OPM, and the many tribes in the area where the hostages were held. Perhaps less dramatic than the hostage drama, which takes up nearly three-quarters of the book, is the examination of the lessons learned and their meaning for UNESCO's work with the people of West Papua. That is where the 'flying pigs' come in - but I won't spoil it for readers by explaining how the pigs came to fly.
‘Merdeka’ is the Indonesian word for ‘freedom’ or ‘independence’. Merdeka, the book, is a clearly written, vivid, at times gripping, and insightful account of an incident in 1996 in which armed fighters in the Highlands of Indonesian Papua captured a number of United Nations officials, members of a British scientific expedition, and Indonesian citizens, and deprived them of their freedom by holding them hostage for more than four months as part of their campaign for Papua’s independence.
In explaining the background, response and aftermath to the hostage-taking, the author, Professor Stephen Hill, who was the senior United Nations official responsible for managing the way forward to the hostages’ eventual release, draws extensively on reports he wrote at the time as well as other first-hand accounts (including a short memoir of mine) of the situation in and of Papua before, during and following the crisis. Thus, the book casts important, fresh light on the history of Papua (the former Netherlands New Guinea, then Irian Jaya), as well as the contemporary situation there.
The author’s personal experiences, reflections and research provide valuable, thought-provoking insights into issues likely to be involved in managing similarly complex, confronting and uncertain situations more generally.
Excellent, well-researched insight into an important chapter in West Papua's history.
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