Papua AIDS crisis cause: sex, money

After years of complaints its vast mineral wealth was being sucked out by Jakarta and foreign companies, impoverished Papua is being flooded with money under a “special autonomy” deal granted in 2001 to head off local separatist demands.

Few Papuans have seen the benefits, but many of those who have are fuelling a growth industry that according to health experts has helped spur an HIV/AIDS crisis unrivalled in the region: prostitution.

With 2.4 out of every 100 people infected Papua, which sits on the western side of New Guinea island and is populated by ethnic Melanesians, is experiencing one of the worst HIV epidemics outside of Africa.

At Tanjung Elmo, a cluster of dimly lit lakeside bars outside the Papua provincial capital, Jayapura, women from Indonesia’s main island of Java have journeyed thousands of kilometers (miles) to cash in on the boom.

Ani, a curly haired 43-year-old Javanese sex worker, said the pay — at least five million rupiah (415 dollars) a month — is 10 times higher than that available in her home village.

“There is no network bringing people here. We come here on our own,” she said.

For many sex workers, this place is one of a number of stops on a rotating circuit throughout Papua.

A few months in Elmo, a few months in the highlands and a few months in a mining town — sites such as the massive Freeport gold and copper mine are long-established magnets for sex workers — can mean a small fortune in savings.

In Papua province alone — one of two territories that make up the region — more than 275 million dollars was paid out in the autonomy funds last year, much of it siphoned off at various stages along the chain, according to anti-corruption campaigners.

The pay-off comes for Elmo’s sex workers at the same time as it does for Papua’s growing class of civil servants, administrators and district heads, said Olaf Krey from the Indonesian Family Planning Association.

“When it’s time to divide up the special autonomy funds to all the villages, it gets pretty busy here,” he said, poking fun at the entry sign to Elmo which proclaims it a “100 percent condom area.”

But while the money flows, corruption means education and health services have not improved.

“If you ask me, there’s been change, but the change hasn’t been fast enough compared to all the sex going, all the people getting sick,” said Jack Morin, a population researcher at Papua’s Cendrawashi University.

The head of Papua’s AIDS commission, Constant Karma, acknowledged the scale of the challenge posed by the influx of money.

“Where there is sugar there are ants. And where there are ants, HIV can arrive,” he said.

The sex boom has trickled down from legally sanctioned prostitution areas like Elmo, which anti-AIDS condom campaigns can target easily, to the streets of Papuan towns and cities.

While the surge of migrants that have become nearly half of Papua’s population tend to frequent bars and brothels, the streets are where poorer indigenous Papuans come for sex.

In the park in front of the provincial legislature, sex workers said they have lost count of how many of their colleagues have died from HIV/AIDS. The youngest of the infected here, according to one non-governmental organization, is a 10-year-old girl.

But even here, the “special autonomy” boom can be seen. More and more, the four wheel drives favored by public servants grumble to a halt at the park’s edge, said Helena, a 16-year-old indigenous girl with a primary school education.

One of Helena’s customers, a middle-aged shopkeeper from Sulawesi island, was drawn to Papua by the money to be made by enterprising migrants and is now her “sugar daddy,” Helena said.

Smiling impishly, Helena said she dreams of marrying him one day.

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