Word: guineas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Last week he returned to Djakarta in triumph. His trophy was a promise of $450 million in military aid and equipment, enough to double the fighting potential of Indonesia's armed forces, and a Russian pledge to support Indonesia in its efforts to free West Irian (Netherlands New Guinea) from the Dutch "colonizers...
Shrill threats to "liberate West Irian" have long been President Sukarno's favorite device to rouse Indonesian patriotic passions and divert attention from the myriad shortcomings of his floundering economy at home. Indonesia's claim to Netherlands New Guinea is based on the fact that the Dutch administered it as part of The Netherlands East Indies along with the other islands that now make up independent Indonesia...
Pigs & Women. But the fact is that Netherlands New Guinea's Papuans want to be no part of Indonesia. They are Melanesians, with no racial kinship to the Indonesians. Their skins are darker, their languages totally different. Furthermore, the Papuans have no desire to trade Dutch colonialism for Indonesian colonialism, want to join together instead with Australian New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in a union to be called the United States of Melanesia...
...malnutrition, has brought no return from the millions of dollars sunk into it. Last year the territory's total exports of crude oil, copra, spices and skins dwindled to less than $7,000,000. But the Dutch, chastened by their mistakes in Indonesia, are reluctant to abandon New Guinea until the Papuans are ready for self-government, an eventuality that some colonial officials estimate will take 40 years, perhaps considerably longer...
Nearly half of Netherlands New Guinea's 700,000 Papuans still live in primitive villages where the cowrie shell is the medium of exchange and where women often rank below pigs on the social scale. For the primitive tribesmen of the interior, the concept of government does not exist; their only political guideposts are myth and magic. Head-hunting and cannibalism are still practiced in some areas. Some Papuan natives wear no clothes save for string, have no dishes or cooking utensils. They consider death the action of a wizard, often chop off the ends of their fingers...