There are signs Fiji’s deportation of the University of the South Pacific (USP) vice-chancellor was engineered to avoid his contract being given better security.

Professor Pal Ahluwalia told RNZ Dateline Pacific that on Wednesday last week the USP chancellor, Nauru President Lionel Aingimea, had alerted the university’s governing body, the USP Council, to veiled threats in Fiji news media.

Professor Ahluwalia said this resulted in Aingimea advising council members, including Fijian representatives, that in their next meeting they would amend the vice-chancellor’s contract to afford better security.

However, the vice-chancellor said his work permit was rescinded on the same day (Wednesday) and he was deported on Thursday before the council could meet on Friday, following the notice in the media.

“What had appeared in the Fiji Sun in the Whispers column to say that ‘Watch this space: A school where big students study, its leader will be removed from the country.’ So he took the step to say to council we need to amend the vice-chancellor’s contract.”

An ‘illegal act’ by Fiji
Professor Ahluwalia said the way in which his contract was frustrated was an illegal act.

The USP is a regional institution, said Professor Ahluwalia, owned by 12 Pacific countries and “the decisions of the University Council, which has representatives from all the countries, needs to be respected” which is inconsistent with the way Fiji acted in his arrest and deportation, he added.

The council said in a statement that it was not consulted.

Professor Ahluwalia said he had received a lot of support from the entire region and that he would welcome any action from the USP Council that would allow the university to move forward, including a rumoured move of headquarters to another country.

“I believe I was selected to do the job and it’s obvious that the community – staff and students – strongly endorse what I am doing. So it’s my belief that if I need to move to Samoa to run this university, we’ll make it work,” he said.

“I will abide by whatever decision the University Council makes.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Indonesia’s Statistics Office has produced an ethnic breakdown of the Papua region, based on the last census in 2010 which established an overall population of 3.6 million.

While the proportion of Papuan people as a percentage of the population continues to decline, this process varies widey between different regencies, reports Dateline Pacific.

The percentage of Papuans has fallen catastrophically in some regions, particularly in urban centres, but Papuans still make up the vast majority in the Highlands.

Using the new data, Dr Jim Elmslie of Sydney University’s West Papua Project has produced a new paper at Global Research updating his previous work on Papua’s demographic transition.

He talks to Johnny Blades of Dateline Pacific:

Transcript:
JIM ELMSLIE: You’ve got to handle the figures with some degree of care and you’ve got to sort of doubt the accuracy to some extent because the large area that’s there, the terrain, the fact that large areas of the Highlands, I don’t know if you’d call it a revolt, but there are certain areas that are conflicts between certain areas of the island and the state are fairly entrenched. So the figures – what you can get clearly from them is the trend and the change over time and that’s clearly continuing because of the large-scale inward migration of non-Papuan settlers drawn into the region mostly for economic opportunity, and most of that economic opportunities are on the plains.

JOHNNY BLADES: You’ve established that the Melanesians – the Papuans – their growth rate is quite a bit less than the non-Papuans.

JE: That’s what the research shows and that’s even given that the numbers are a bit rubbery. Because for [Indonesia] to conduct an accurate census would be damn-near impossible and the figures that we have to use, so we use them. But anecdotally as well – from talking to health experts and looking at what’s going on on the ground compared to say PNG – then yeah the birth rate clearly is lower. There’s a whole range of reasons for that. One is the infant mortality and the maternal mortality rate is very high, there are untreated diseases that cause infertility. But that’s fairly clear and it’s also clear that large numbers of migrants are coming in, the government is building new ports, there are ships that come in on a weekly basis, there’s many flights every day from other parts of Indonesia. There’s clearly the demand, and as we’re talking, they are clearing tens of thousands of acres of rainforest and putting in labour-intensive things like oil palm plantations, where the workers are being brought in from Java rather than being recruited locally.

JB: Back in 2010 you had estimated that the total population of West Papuans in West Papua, that whole Papua region, was some 48 percent. And now with these new BPS [Indonesian Statistics Office] figures it’s indicating that their percentage is something like 66 percent. Isn’t that in some ways a positive, given that in the last couple of years a lot of the discourse around the West Papuan diplomatic wrangle has been around them having become a minority in their own land?

JE: Well, when you extrapolate these figures forward, and there’s two different population growth rates, you come up with these figures of the minoritisation of the Papuan population. And that was a projection, I guess, if all else remained the same. And I think the exact figures may vary but the trend is still there. So in terms of whether that’s positive or not… I think it certainly is positive that large areas of the Highlands of West Papua are still populated very strongly by groups of indigenous Melanesian people, even if that’s not the case in the lowlands. But it means that the Papuans, certainly in the Highlands, are not on the verge of disappearing under the weight of inward migration. So yes, I think that’s a positive thing. Some people seem to feel that the general conflict in West Papua would disappear over time as the Papuan population became a minority. Well that’s obviously not going to happen. That is happening in the lowlands, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon in the Highlands, even though – I must stress again – that there’s a lot of development going on there which will bring in outsiders, bring in more military, which will always be a threat to them [Papuans].

JB: Transmigrasi is no longer an official programme, is that right? But these people are still coming in?

JE: Yeah so there’s no official transmigration, but it’s the policy, I think, of the Indonesian government because looking at the bigger picture of Indonesia and the Indonesian  economy – and people talk about it growing – West Papua makes up something like 23 or 24 percent of the land mass of Indonesia and it’s got huge resources: obviously the forestry, when most of the rest of the trees of Indonesia have been cut down, so Papua is really the last place where there’s huge stands of rainforest; there’s also the mineral wealth which is possibly the richest part of the entire world – the Freeport mine is probably the biggest gold mine in the world, the biggest copper mine, it’s also the biggest economic entity in Indonesia and also the biggest taxpayer. So looking into the future, the Indonesians’ capacity to exploit the natural resources of West Papua, and with all that brings, that will be one of the factors that allow Indonesia to grow as people are predicting it to grow, and become one of the main economies in southeast Asia, and certainly bigger than Australia. Which is one of the fears, I guess, which is underlying Australian policy, that in some future when the Indonesian economy overtakes the Australian economy in size, and Indonesia becomes a more important country internationally, then that’s going to be quite a different situation than has been the case in this part of the world up until now, where the Australian economy and therefore its military resources and the rest of it were superior to the Indonesians. So a lot of that long-term growth will come out of West Papua. And if that continues, it will involve shifting more and more people down to that region.

• West Papuan demographics revisited

The director of the recently created New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research says New Zealand support for French Polynesia and New Caledonia joining the Pacific Islands Forum is a major step.

The New Zealand Prime Minister John Key made the announcement during Monday’s visit to New Zealand by the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

He says the New Zealand Foreign Minister will now work with the other 15 Forum members to see if there is a pathway forward for the French territories.

France and its Pacific territories have been pushing for membership for more than 10 years and in 2006 became associate members.

Associate Professor Damon Salesa told Don Wiseman of Radio New Zealand International’s Dateline Pacific programme the endorsement from Key was a major step.

DAMON SALESA: It’s a significant development and it’s a sign of what has been developing quite recently as a pattern of a growing closeness between the French Pacific and the English speaking – let’s call it that – the rest of the Pacific. And you know New Caledonia and French Polynesia were in an unusual relationship already within the Forum. They were the only two who were associate members. And so, in some ways this is a predictable progression. Wallis and Fortuna is an observer and there is a much larger group of observer nations, some of whose status as observers is more controversial. It is a big step, a significant step but it is not an unpredicted step. And I think it also shows that one of the key ways that New Zealand engages with the rest of the world, and particularly in this case, with Europe, is through its relationships in the Pacific. And it seems what came out from the French Prime Minister’s visit yesterday was that one of the primary reasons he came to New Zealand was to talk about exactly these issues with the New Zealand government.

DON WISEMAN: If the French territories did become full members clearly there would be increased pressure from the United States for their various territories to also be admitted because this is something they have been talking about, so the whole nature of the Pacific Islands Forum would change wouldn’t it?

DS: I think there is a great chance that it would signal a larger shift particularly with the question of Fiji’s participation in the Forum not [being] resolved. And of course these two nations have a different kind of profile to many of the core nations of the Pacific Islands Forum. So excluding Australia and New Zealand the rest of the nations don’t tend to have these large European descent populations or foreign populations that we see in New Caledonia, which is by far the largest one, but also a substantial one in French Polynesia. So what one might read from that is that on many key questions they might be closely aligned with others who share their interests, like Australia and New Zealand – perhaps , I mean this is all a bit of a prediction.

DW: There had been a distinction made with the set up of the Forum in the 1970s, with the set up of the Pacific Community, and that incorporated far more nations and part of it was that it would only be the independent countries that would be members but this clearly is something that is going to go by the boards.

DS: I think so and part of it is searching for the future of the Forum. You know we have got a new kind of leadership coming from the head of the Forum and what is needed is a clear purpose for all of the regional institutions in what is now a very different era where Australia, China, the US and New Zealand are all equally active in the Pacific and so this could be seen as a response to the new normal in the Pacific and it is, as you say, a substantial shift.