Tribute to my father

My father, like my young men of his time in the pre-Indonesian take over, was born on the Island of Yapen (Serui) more than eighty years ago. He wasn’t born to a life of luxury. He and his brothers made their way up the ladder in a land occupied for a foreign European power, the Netherlands. They carved a path for them in land with limited opportunities for indigenous West Papuans. His elder brother passed away quite suddenly, while his younger brother excelled in education and earned the trust of the colonial administration who appointed him “Headmaster” overseeing schools all over West Papua. My father didn’t wait, he married is sweetheart and the two relocated to Jayapura to be with his brother and his family. His sister also moved.

The living conditions in Jayapura at the time reflected the status of the family. Those with good jobs and well connected lived in the upper-class neighborhood in the hill side, while fishermen family, like ours, lived by the cost. Though my father didn’t achieve higher education as his brother, Thomas Wainggai, he was blessed with many talents. He was a builder, a construction worker, but more importantly a fisherman. His knowledge and talents kept our family floats in a land where money was essential. 

Before we came along, he supported his own siblings with money generated from his fishing. When his brother was selected to study law in Japan, my supported him all along while tending to his family. I was just a little boy watching him come and go and amazed by his fishing skills. With money earned from his fishing and whatever job he’d landed in Dutch West Papua, helped his brother in Japan and his growing family. 

Political Activism 

My father was one of the youngsters who’d lived under the Dutch government and later witnessed the transition of West Papua to the Indonesian government, and he developed a distaste for foreign occupation. In today’s world, my father was a ‘Nationalist’ – someone that rejected foreign occupation, or someone that viewed his culture as equally superior to all important cultures. He and his brothers became advocates for West Papuan self-rule. And thought he wasn’t frontline in pushing the idea of West Papuan independence, he was instrumental in organizing protests, oversaw the logistics of West Papuan rallies. An behind-the-scene guy who made things work, and I witnessed his hands in all our political protests. 

Most modern day fathers would push their children to be successful and get educated, but my father combined being “educated” and our “struggle” for independence. He saw the importance of both roads, and when I became a political activists after my uncle was arrested and jailed, he stood with me and walked with me. He would lay his life down to protect me and to make sure our message is head throughout the world. 

As a matter of fact, my father supported my work as a political activist all the way up to 2006 when I escaped Australia. He was my mentor, my teacher, and my leader. Above all, he was my father and someone that I would turn to in times of trouble and he was there to support me. We talked things out, protested Indonesia together, imprisoned together, and throughout all these times, he was by my side. 

Our struggle for independence is a canoe journey 

My father was blessed to have an educated brother who showed him the modern way of expressing one’s disatsfication – the peaceful way, and a brother who would sit down and talk to him about the pressing issue of West Papua. I grew up watching them and learning from them the perspectives of our indigenous people about almost every issues facing West Papua. For instance, my uncle would encourage my and his son to use “Paper and Pen” as weapons against Indoneisna imperialism. While my father used the idea of a “canoe journey” as symbolism of our struggle for self-determination. No matter far a canoe travels, or how long it takes, one day it will get to its destination. This was the theme of our 2005 escape from West Papua. 

My father was a man of a few words but behind his silence is a calculated man ready to implement any plan regardless of how impossible that maybe. In 2004, while my second incarceration as a political prisoner was coming to its ending, my father visited me. We had a few laughs, but kept our conversation focused on our family and the future for me when I left prison. Then I shared with him a secret feeling that was nagging me all these times in prison. I mentioned to him about building a canoe, and though I provided no details or an existing plan, my father smiled. I knew he got the message. Little did I know that since that visit, my father was hard at work building that canoe that I would eventually bring me to freedom and 43 other West Papuans. 

It was toward the end of 2005, and we gathered – as planned – at Yapen Island preparing for a journey I knew would either bring our statement to the world or would bring us to our demise in the vast unforgiving sea. My father was aware of the danger, but he was there to make sure that the trip was successful. 

As the plan was finalized, my father chose to travel with me on that canoe. We launched the canoe at Serui traversing the northern seas of west Papua, all the way to Merauke. We stopped on Manokwari, Sorong, Fakfak, Timika, Fredericks Islands, and Merauke. My dad was calm, calculated, and show no sign of panic even when we – the nervous youngsters – were often gripped with fear and anxiety. 

With all his experiences dealing with Indonesia, he would talk our way out with Indonesian police. That day before we left, the presence of our canoe caused quite a stare in Merauke. The design of the canoe was unique and it drew the attention of unsettling Merauke people who perhaps reported us to the police. It was my father who walked out to talk to them. He’d concocted stories that were so convincing that the cops turned and walked away instead of investigating our stay and our real intension. 

After convincing the police that we were simply visiting Merauke and that we were heading back up north without delay, my father saw us out into the darkness. I embraced him and my mom, and then slipped into the night. He was with us all the way, and now he let us go believing that we would make it out of hell and into the world of freedom where people are not being watched and followed every day; a place I would walk around without looking over my shoulders. 

Words of our arrival flashed all over the news across the Australia and eventually the world, and I thought of my father. I knew he would either be captured and executed for aiding our escape. Later on, I found out that he was on the run the day he’d arrived back in Jayapura – skipping from one safe house to another and was eventually snatched out of Jayapura by our network and spent months on the Island until things settled. 

That was the man I know – the man who would put everyone else ahead of his own life. In fact, he’d dedicated his life for the course. He would help political activists who were wanted in Jayapura for peaceful protests, etc. PNG is just a few hours away by boat, and he would transport activists across the water into PNG and bring them back to Jayapura when things cool down. 

One fateful day, he was captured after returning to Jayapura after dropping off wanted activists across the bother. The Indonesian police weren’t showing him any compassion. They tortured him for hours with thorny lemon branches until he and his compatriots and were belling and their body severely disfigured. That too didn’t deter him – he was dedicated to the cause and no amount of torture or pain would slow him down or change his mind. 

I remember in 1996 when my uncle was murdered in Jakarta, and violent protests in response to his death erupted all over Jayapura. My father’s first priority was my safety. After talking with my father, he urged me to leave Jayapura before the Indoensian government got to me. It was a plea from a father who just lost his beloved brother – someone he held with utter respect and regard. He saw me a someone who should live to carry on the legacy of his brother who was mercilessly killed by an increasingly paranoid government. That night, after visiting his brother’s grave, he watched as I kissed my uncle’s grave, said a pray for my safe passage out of Jayapura into the unknown. I had no doubt, it was the right thing to do, and he was there to make sure I escaped safely to nearby PNG. We left the shores not knowing when I would be back to our home again, or whether I would see my father one more time. In the cover of darkness, we arrived at the rendezvous point where our skippers were waiting. I embraced my father and he slipped into the dark across quite beautiful waters of Jayapura into the calm and love shows of Vanimo, PNG. It was his encouragement that I survived the onslaught of Indonesian imperialism military and police who were hunting down every political activist and indigenous leaders for the crime of peaceful protest. 

When I returned in 2000 to Jayapura, after the fall of Suharto, my father was there to greet me. He didn’t criticize my work nor wanted me to pursue a different career, he wanted me to do exactly as my uncle Dr. Thom did – ie. to continue to pursue justice for our people, and the realization of our right to self-determination. And when danger befell me, he was also there. 

The most humbling experience was in 2000 when we were arrest by the Indonesian police and locked up while at a police station. I didn’t know my father was also arrested, but he was held in a different location. When they brought him to us, my heart melts. He was in his 50s and I was in my early 20s, and here we were sharing a cell with no bed, no food, no water, no toilet, just a concrete floor covered with old newspaper printouts. It was humiliating, but my father never once complained at our predicament, rather he took that half a year incarceration to educate me about our life’s struggle – the teachings of his brother, which were based on ‘Nonviolent peaceful protest’, and our history going back centuries. I drew lessons from him and strength from his own courage! 

Looking back 

It’s been 12 years since I last saw my father in person, but we kept in close contact with him throughout the years. We talked often on the phone, and my family would convey his words of encouragement etc, and they were a source of strength as live on the other side of the planet. For a man who lived most of his life under Dutch occupation, only to see his nation transferred from one colonial power to another colonial power, Zadrack Wainggai had all the ambitions in the world to see his people liberated. Unfortunately, he passed away on June 3rd, 2022 at his home in Jayapura, West Papua. He didn’t live to see his people liberated, yet his dreams, as with all who went before him, live on. 

Without him,  however, most of our people who braved the angry seas between West Papua and Australia, would not have escaped and now lived comfortably in the democratic country of Australia; enjoying freedom, and everything that the Australian society gets to offer. Through his creativity – his will to design a traditional canoe with which we escaped the clutch of the imperial Indonesian government, and his tenacity and faith, we took our message to the world in a more impactful way. It was his final impactful contribution to the internationalization of our struggle, and he remained an important figure in our struggle to his dying days. 

Before we left Merauke (West Papua) in 2005, I told him about our plan, and pledged to him that I would take our struggle all the way to the United States and the United Nations and he believed me. Looking back, I had no idea how my life would be, or whether my ambitious plan would bear any fruits at all, but one was clear that my father and his tribal supporters believed me, and so did those more than 40 West Papuans who hopped on the canoe with me. They placed their faith in me though we all had little clue as to whether we would make this far. 

Today, I’m writing this tribute at my humble home in Virginia, United States of America, to a great man – a man who believed in his own little son; to a man who believed in our course, and a man who had tremendous faith in his God, his ancestral lands, and in the moral nature of our struggle for self-determination. He had was called to rest from all his miseries and struggles. He left this earth knowing that we had achieved something incredible against all odds – something that the Indonesian government thought was impossible. He left this earth knowing that he will join us in our spiritual journey to freedom. He passed on knowing that our canoe journey continues and will go on until we all achieved our goal of freedom. 

He was a fighter in his own right, and I want to share this poem in his memory. Invictus was late Nelson Mandela’s poem – one that kept him going in his two decades of incarceration on that cruel Island. 

INVICTUS 

By William Ernest Henley

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul. 

I say to him, Goodbye father! I will continue this journey without you by myside, and “the menace of the years shall find me unafraid” because I am this canoe, and I will never give up and any circumstances because “I am the captain of my soul.” I have come this far because of you were a good father to me, and a wonderful teacher, and I will continue this journey! 

I love and miss you father, I know you are with your siblings watching over us.