When Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor defended the Papuans

“As for informing the Indonesians about the activities of the Papuans in Senegal, it is better to let the Dutch or the Australians do it…” This American diplomatic communication from 1978 is surprising. What were Papuans doing in Dakar in the mid-1970s and why should Indonesians care?

At this time, several Melanesian peoples rejected Indonesian authority over island regions of Oceania, such as the eastern part of Timor or the western part of Papua New Guinea. The action of the Indonesian army and the resistance it encountered left tens of thousands dead and displaced. The independence movements do not receive support from any leader in the world. None, except one: the Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor. “So far, only the Republic of Senegal has granted us help”stated Ben Tanggahma, representative of Papua in Dakar, in 1976, in an interview with the American magazine Black Book Bulletin.

Indonesia’s prestige was great then. Under President Sukarno (1945-1965), the country was the champion of political Third Worldism by hosting the Bandung conference in 1955. When the archipelago changed with Suharto’s takeover, it became an ally of Western powers.

The Nigerian intellectual Wole Soyinka is known for having criticized Senghor’s thought and “blackness”, a central concept for the Senegalese leader. But in 2002, shortly after the independence of East Timor, he took up the pen to defend the role of poet-president, in solidarity with the struggle of the Melanesian peoples. “He was the only African leader who cared about the fate of these people and helped them in their struggle for self-determination. His position defied even American policy…” A portrait that contrasts with the widespread memory of a leader who was timid in the face of opposition to Western capitals.

“Melanesian nationalism”

In 1976, Léopold Sédar Senghor decided to offer struggling Papuans representation in Dakar. The Provisional Revolutionary Government of West Papua New Guinea (GRP), established in 1971, sent Ben Tanggahma to Senegal. He shares Senghor’s Catholicism. In addition to an office, a car is made available. Following this, Senegal also received representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the African National Congress (ANC). From Dakar, Ben Tanggahma, who seeks to get closer to both these liberation movements and African leaders, travels to countries in the region.

Léopold Sédar Senghor’s attachment to the destiny of the Melanesian peoples arises from logic. Wole Soyinka describes the president’s intellectual rigor on this issue. In the vision of the Senegalese leader, certain peoples of Oceania, such as the Papuans, are included in what he considers the universe of blackness. The black world, for him, goes beyond the African continent and encompasses the Caribbean, but also parts of Asia and Oceania. Papuan leadership, which promotes a “Melanesian nationalism”, Share this idea.

“We have been linked to Africa in the past, we are linked to Africa in the future”declares Ben Tanggahma, who denounces the Indonesian presence as colonialism. “The GRP insists on its belonging to the “black world””note the world in an article published in 1976, emphasizing that it was in Dakar where the movement “received the support of black intellectuals and researchers from the Caribbean, North and South America and Africa gathered in a seminar dedicated to the search for African alternatives”.

The American Quito Swan, professor of history and African studies at George Washington University, lists the names of the people who met Ben Tanggahma in Dakar: we find Cheikh Anta Diop, the best-known Senegalese intellectual, and the famous Trinidadian thinker. Cyril Lionel Robert James.

A Cuban in the jungle of Timor

When he received the new Australian ambassador in Dakar in 1978, Léopold Sédar Senghor reminded him that Senegal had welcomed Canberra’s decision to grant independence to Papua New Guinea, in the eastern half of the island, a few years earlier. and this “while the UN made a mistake by remaining deaf to the demands of the Papuans of West New Guinea, who, recognizing their blackness, demand their independence” regarding Indonesia, adds the Senegalese president.

Senghor is rigorous, he educates himself. He sends a mysterious, black-skinned Cuban, introduced by Wole Soyinka as a deserter from the Castro regime, to the Timor jungle to meet the militants of the Revolutionary Front for the Independence of East Timor (Fretilin), a movement inspired by Mozambique. . Frelimo, who are facing the powerful Indonesian State. Describing East Timor’s independence ceremonies in 2002, Wole Soyinka writes: “There was a missing head of state who, obviously, should have had a place of honor: Léopold Sédar Senghor. »

Over time, this position has faded within the Senegalese state. A guerrilla war and several civil movements demanding autonomy still agitate the Indonesian region of Papua New Guinea. “To date there is no support, neither open nor discreet, from Dakar for these movementscomments a Senegalese diplomat on condition of anonymity. This position of Senghor did not prosper after his departure from power. »