A Papua New Guinea National Court ruling to overturn a ban on Starlink has been widely welcomed, fresh off the back of a natural disaster which highlighted the need for low-orbit satellite services in the country.

Last December, the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (NICTA) announced that the Starlink network’s parent company, SpaceX, had been instructed to cease all services in PNG due to a directive from the Ombudsman Commission.

But a court ruling on Friday quashed this, paving the way for NICTA to liaise with Starlink to approve its licence to operate in PNG.

• READ MORE: Other Starlink reports

This is good news for many Papua New Guineans in remote and rural parts of the country who struggle for reliable telecommunication services.

Earlier this month, Tropical Cyclone Maila caused major damage to various provinces in PNG. During the Category 5 storm, when VHF radio services were down, broadband internet services provided a vital communication link for some affected communities.

Disaster experience
Prime Minister James Marape said the court decision provided clarity and allows the country to move ahead with practical solutions to improve telecommunications services.

“Our recent disaster experience has shown us clearly that communication is no longer a luxury — it is a necessity,” Marape said in a statement.

“When communities are cut off during cyclones, floods, earthquakes, or other emergencies, lives can depend on real-time communication. We must ensure our people are never isolated in times of crisis.”

Jelta Wong, the MP for Gazelle Open in East New Britain, one of the parts of PNG badly affected by Cyclone Maila, said Starlink should be allowed to operate since not all of PNG can get service.

“As we have seen in the past month with Cyclone Malia causing havoc on all coastal hamlets, if we had Starlink in strategic areas in the remote parts of Papua New Guinea we could have planned a much quicker and better response,” Wong said.

Game changer
The Governor of East Sepik Province, Allan Bird, said an easily accessible and affordable service like that which Starlink provided was “absolutely indispensable” in most parts of PNG outside of the capital.

“You see, my province is bigger than Fiji. So getting access to rural communities is extremely expensive, extremely difficult. With something like Starlink, we can have things like tele medicals,” Byrd said.

He said the ratio of doctors to people in East Sepik was around 22,000 people to one doctor.

“So having things like Starlink changes the game, because you can have a doctor sitting in our provincial capital, talking to someone trying to do a delivery in a location that’s 50 minutes away by plane. So it’s absolutely critical.”

Wong also pointed out that Starlink’s services would make service delivery more accessible, helping people trade and do banking from remote locations, creating opportunities for rural people to achieve goals.

‘Coordinated rollout’
In early 2024, the commission blocked licensing efforts for Starlink, arguing that existing regulations may not be adequate to manage potential risks to public interest and safety.

But in her National Court ruling last week, Judge Susan Purdon-Sully strongly criticised the Ombudsman Commission for its move to halt Starlink’s licence process.

Finding no breach of PNG’s leadership code, nor evidence of corruption, the judge said the Ombudsman’s concerns were more administrative, meaning its directive to NICTA had been “an unconstitutional exercise of power”.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister again urged Starlink to work collaboratively with state-owned Telikom PNG to “ensure a coordinated rollout that complements national infrastructure priorities”.

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

The legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific is unfinished business. From the 1997 disappearance of journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud to the 2025 return of the Rainbow Warrior, these stories are part of a continuous struggle for justice.

In the Pacific, the “Atomic Age” and the climate crisis are not competing issues, they are the same fight for habitability and truth. To face our future, we must first address the lingering shadows of the past.

In “French” Polynesia, there are concerns about the mysterious fate of former anti-nuclear investigative journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud, known as “JPK” (his byline),  who was editor of the now closed Les Nouvelles de Tahiti newspaper.

Early in 2015, a judge upheld prosecution against three men accused of a kidnapping that led his death in Tahiti in 1997.

More than a decade earlier, JK’s family lodged an allegation of murder with the police following claims that he had been assassinated by a (now disbanded) local presidential militia. An investigating commission had alleged that three men, Rere Puputauki, Tino Mara and Tutu Manate, had abducted JK and dumped his body at sea.

• READ MORE: Other Eyes of Fire reports
• The Rainbow Warrior bombing 40 years on: re-energising for global peace
• Eyes of Fire website (Little Island Press)

Twenty two years later, the family are still waiting for justice, and fed up with France’s “investigation”. When the Rainbow Warrior bombing on 10 July 1985 is set against its broader political context in the Pacific, it can be seen that this event was much more than the dramatic, isolated episode against the Greenpeace flagship as portrayed by most New Zealand media.

An “Eyes of Fire” video project in 2015, which included more than 40 student journalists, also demonstrated the importance of a continuing interpretation of these events for the future of Aotearoa New Zealand and its citizens. The students looked back at the past, but were asking questions relevant to the present and future when they interrogated me and my Greenpeace colleagues involved in the Rongelap voyage.

My own baptism in French nuclear arrogance and perfidy was thanks to the late Swedish activist, researcher, and writer Bengt Danielsson, who was awarded the 1991 Right Livelihood Award for “exposing the tragic results… of French colonialism”. He and his wife Marie-Thérèse Danielsson wrote the classic and chilling books Moruroa, Mon Amour and Poisoned Reign.

In 2021, a French investigation team published a book and website that introduced new revelations about the nuclear testing programme and its health and environmental harm inflicted on Tahitians. The book, Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie, by Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, and the associated website Moruroa Files, were a forensic analysis of about 2,000 French government documents declassified in 2013.

Consistently lied about the tests
According to former Auckland University of Technology scholar Ena Manuireva, who was born in Mangareva (an atoll near the French nuclear testing sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa), these publications confirmed what Tahitian people already knew: “That since 1966, the French government has consistently lied about and concealed the deadly consequences of their nuclear tests, which they now seem to acknowledge, to the health of the populations and their environment.”

Following the third test after French nuclear bombs began in the Pacific, on 7 September 1966, local Tahitian lawmaker John Teariki challenged then French president Charles de Gaulle by saying: “No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenseless ones — bear the burden.”

“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.”

De Gaulle ignored the advice. And it took another 30 years and 190 further tests before France stopped its ruthless nuclear pollution in the Pacific.

France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) was reported in early 2025 to have spent 90,000 euros in a big public relations campaign in a vain attempt to discredit the research in Toxique and the Moruroa Files, according to documents obtained by the investigative outlet Disclose.

The CEA published 5000 copies of its booklet, titled ‘Nuclear tests in French Polynesia: why, how and with what consequences’ and distributed them across Oceania.

The Rainbow Warrior bombing, with the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, was a terrible tragedy. But a greater tragedy remains in the horrendous legacy of Pacific nuclear testing for the people of Rongelap, the Marshall Islands and “French” Polynesia; associated military oppression in Kanaky New Caledonia; and lingering secrecy.

New Zealand and the PIF states should now require full investigation of nuclear testing in French Polynesia and seek a more robust compensation programme than currently exists. New Zealand and the PIF states also need to take a less ambiguous position on decolonisation in the Pacific, give greater priority to that issue and seek a “re-energising” of the activities of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation.

This is especially important in relation to “French” Polynesia, Kanaky New Caledonia and the end of the Bougainville transitional political autonomy period with a unilateral declaration of independence slated for 1 September 2027.

Decolonisation is also a critical issue that has a bearing on New Zealand’s relations with Indonesia, particularly over the six Melanesian provinces that make up the region known in the Pacific as “West Papua” and Indonesia’s growing politically motivated role in the region over climate change aid.

A massive new transmigration programme under current President Prabowo Subianto is taking place at the same time as Jakarta’s “ecocidal” deforestation regime intensifies in the Melanesian region with the destruction of millions of hectares of tropical rainforest.

“The wealth of West Papua — gas from Bintuni Bay, copper and gold from the Grasberg mine. Palm oil from Merauke — has been sucked out of our land for six decades, while our people are replaced with Javanese settlers loyal to Jakarta,” says a West Papuan leader, Benny Wenda.

Taking the lead
It is critically important that New Zealand and the PIF states take a lead from the Melanesian Spearhead Group — at least those states other than Fiji and Papua New Guinea, which have both been co-opted by Indonesian bribery through economic aid.

They should take a more pro-active stance on West Papuan human rights and socio-political development, with a view to encouraging a process of political self-determination and a new, more credible United Nations supervised vote replacing the 1968 “Act of No Choice”.

With regard to climate change issues, it is essential to address the lack of an officially recognised category for “climate refugee” under international law. It is also important to seek an international framework, convention, protocol and specific guidelines that can provide protection and assistance for people crossing international borders because of climate change.

The existing rights guaranteed refugees — specifically the right to international humanitarian assistance and the right of return — must be extended to “climate refugees” or climate migrants.

This issue should be acted on systematically and with a practical vision by the PIF with the Australian and New Zealand governments. Australia and New Zealand need to respond to Pacific Island States’ (PIS) concerns over climate change and global warming with a greater sense of urgency and resolve.

Regional and country specific climate change plans and policies are needed to deal with large numbers of Pacific refugees or climate-forced migrants, in the event of worsening climate-change scenarios in the future.

This is especially important for New Zealand, as a country with a significant Pacific population (442,632 — 8.9 percent, 2023 NZ Census) with island communities well integrated into the national infrastructure and as a country that is well placed to welcome more Pacific Islanders.

In April 2025, the New Zealand government announced plans to double defence spending as a share of GDP over the next eight years under its long-awaited Defence Capability Plan.

Trump-inspired global arms race
However, the priority appeared to be New Zealand joining a new Donald Trump-inspired global arms race while the country faced no threat, at the expense of the climate crisis, nuclear free and Pacific peace-making capacity that have forged the country’s global reputation.

Speculation was also rife about the possibility of New Zealand joining a second tier of the controversial AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the US, which would raise geopolitical tensions with little benefit for the Pacific region.

As Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson has remarked, the people of Rongelap changed the course of history for Pacific nuclear justice by taking control of their destiny with the help of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior.

However, the relocation of the islanders four decades ago has revealed that the legacy of nuclear tests remains unfinished business.

“In the current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament,” says former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark.

“New Zealanders were clear — we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”

“On the fateful last voyage,” reflects Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman, “the crew of the Rainbow Warrior, look at us in black and white through the lens of time, and lay down the wero — the challenge. They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific.

“Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?’

To Ngāti Kura kaumatua Dover Samuels, the Rainbow Warrior was “probably the biggest battleship that ever traversed the oceans of the world. But she wasn’t armed with guns, she was armed with peace”.

An edited extract from the final chapter of New Zealand journalist Dr David Robie’s recent book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior marking the 40th anniversary of the bombing. He sailed with the Greenpeace crew to Rongelap Atoll for the evacuation of the nuclear health-damaged community and remained on board for 11 weeks. This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa.

• David is speaking about the Rainbow Warrior and nuclear justice tomorrow, 24 March 2026, at Grey Lynn Library, 6-8pm, as part of EcoFest.

Declining population in West Papua, and critical loss of life through clashes with the Indonesia military raise the question of genocide in a new book by Brisbane writer Dr Greg Poulgrain.

This work, Curse of Gold, published in English by Kompas, as the title indicates traces the roots of subjugation going on in West New Guinea (West Papua) to a cynical grabbing for resources.

The book is a history beginning with the discovery of huge deposits of gold in 1936, deposits more than twice the gold being mined at Witwatersrand, together with discovery of oil just off-shore.

• READ MORE: Grifting Grasberg. The great Indonesian gold-mining ‘mismatch’

The principal mine now, with an Indonesian billionaire as main owner, has 560 km of tunnels and produces 50 tonnes of gold annually.

The existence of the gold was kept secret, awaiting investment and development opportunities, held up by war with the Japanese, known just to Dutch interests, the Japanese, and significant for the future, the Rockefeller petroleum company Standard Oil in the United States.

The writer details the operation of a “Third Force” in a chain of political intrigues and manipulation over a half century: the US company, sometimes officers of the US government, and at all times an early player since the first discovery, Allen Dulles, who came to head-up the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Dulles as the lawyer for Standard Oil had already got a petroleum concession in Netherlands New Guinea before 1936, through forming a joint US-Dutch company with majority US interest.

Heyday of CIA operations
In the 1950s heyday of CIA undercover operations across the “Third World”, Dulles is depicted here manipulating political events in Indonesia, whether spreading disinformation, concealing information from governments, even setting up mysterious, destabilising armed skirmishes.

The objective given is always the same, to secure ownership of resources and a free hand for American commercial interests. At one point covert government help would be provided through some disingenuous work by Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State to Richard Nixon, and the always interventionist US Ambassador Marshall Green.

For people of West New Guinea the intriguing saga has been a catastrophe, seeing their rights, interests, existence and even human identity denied and ignored in the struggles over wealth and power.

The story is in two phases:

In wartime the occupying Japanese encouraged the Indonesian independence movement, as a block against any return to influence by European colonial powers, and naturally wanted Papuan resources themselves.

A Japanese intelligence operative, Nishijima Shigetada, familiar with the region, is given a key role. He had found out about the gold, and persuaded the Indonesian nationalists to include West New Guinea in their demands for a republic — the better to get the trove out of the hands of “colonial monopolies”.

The second phase of developments saw an ugly turn of events with the 1965 military coup in Indonesia, marked by large scale massacre across the country and coming to power of Suharto as President in 1967.

The new regime determined to build on the campaign by its predecessor, President Sukarno, to take over West New Guinea. In the calculus of Cold War rivalries, President John Kennedy had sought to keep him “on side” and the Russians provided guns and aid, in part to best their Chinese rivals.

Dutch gave in
The outcome was that the Dutch who had stayed on in the territory gave in to pressure and pulled out by the end of 1963. It was nominally then put under United Nations trusteeship until an “act of free choice” on independence.

But Indonesian forces moved in, violently put down any Papuan resistance, promulgated theories of an Indonesia Raya, a lost island empire to which all of New Guinea had belonged, and declared the decision on independence would be an issue of “staying” with Indonesia. Neither Kennedy nor Sukarno, who had planned to meet in 1964, is believed to have known about the gold in Papua.

Dr Poulgrain recounts the narrative of bullying and deception, including the sidelining of senior UN representatives, whereby the “act of free choice” became notoriously a series of managed gatherings, no plebiscite of the people ever countenanced. He argues that the “Third Party”, having helped to remove the Dutch, then moved in favour of its own preferred candidate, Suharto, no nationalist from the independence movement, a self-declared friend of US commerce and advocate for untrammelled investment:

“It could be argued that the fiery nationalism so characteristic of Sukarno, the tool that won him the right to enter the harbour of Soekarnopura (Jayapura) on board the Soviet warship renamed Irian, proved to be his own undoing. Under the mantle of Sukarno’s presidency, Indonesia ousted the Dutch from New Guinea, the goal of both Nishijima and the ‘Third Party’, finally bringing an end to the European colonial presence there.

“Only 30 months later, Sukarno was facing his own political demise …”

In case the reader considers this might all be a well-worn path, it should be emphasised there is new material and insight into the origins and enactment of cruelty, appropriation and dishonesty that became the pattern in Suharto’s New Order Indonesia and its captive provinces in West New Guinea.

It is a work of thoroughness and industry, especially where covert activity and actual conspiracy appears; extensive documentation has been provided making the case strong. Much of it is original material, such as diplomatic messaging obtained through libraries, and records of interviews or correspondence with leading figures, viz Nishijima or the former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Well defended
The thesis of the book is consistently propounded and well defended:

“This book is about the ownership of the immense wealth of natural resources in Western New Guinea”.

The colonised inhabitants did not get that ownership or any just share of it, with bad consequences for their culture and welfare. It was a bad beginning in 1963 with Indonesia in a dominating frame of mind:

“Papuan culture is the antithesis of life in Java.”

Where the Dutch colonisers are characterised as a very small population hardly penetrating the hinterland, the Indonesians who took over from them have been aggressive with their industry building, immigration and military occupation.

Papuans today make up barely half the population of 5.4-million, steadily outstripped by arrivals. Population growth in the comparable country, Papua New Guinea, since independence in 1975 has been much stronger, now pushing towards 11-million.

• Curse of Gold, by Greg Poulgrain (Jakarta, Kompas, 2026). ISBN 978, ISBN 978 (PDF)

A West Papuan advocacy group has condemned Indonesia over taking up the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council, saying it was “totally unfit” and the choice  “makes a mockery” of the office.

Indonesia was the sole candidate for the Asia-Pacific bloc at the council (HRC), which also includes China, Japan and South Korea. It was the group’s turn to propose a leader.

Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro succeeds Switzerland and will now lead proceedings at the UN forum for a year after his nomination last week.

• READ MORE: Human Rights Council elects Indonesian candidate President for 2026
• Other West Papua reports

However, a statement by a senior official of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), interim president Benny Wenda, has challenged the nomination, asking: “How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when they are hiding from the world their 66-year occupation of West Papua, with 500,000 men, women, and children dead?”

“How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when their President is a war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua?

President Prabowo Subianto “personally tortured East Timorese men, and presided over indiscriminate massacres of Indigenous people from Kraras to Mapenduma”, claimed Wenda whose allegations have been documented in various human rights reports.

‘No apology’
“He has never apologised or been held accountable for his crimes,” said Wenda.

He said Indonesia had not won the presidency due to its human rights record.

“The position rotates around the world, and Indonesia was the only candidate from the Asia Pacific region to put themselves forward,” Wenda said.

“Nonetheless, this appointment makes a mockery of the UN and its claim to uphold international law and human rights.”

Wenda said 105,000 West Papuans were currently displaced due to Indonesian military operations.

“Indonesia holding the presidency of the HRC in 2026 is akin to apartheid South Africa leading it in 1980.”

Instead of leading the HRC, “Indonesia should be a global pariah,” said Wenda.

Refused to admit UN
“For seven years, they have refused to admit the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [to the Papuan provinces], ignoring the repeated demand of over 110 countries, including all members of the EU commission, the United States, the Netherlands, and the UK.

“In that time, with West Papua closed to the world, they have launched countless military operations in Papua, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people.”

Indonesia’s Minister for Human Rights is a West Papuan, Natalius Pigai.

Wenda said Pigai had stated that Indonesia would use the HRC position to “counter breaches of international law in Venezuela and elsewhere”.

“What about your own people, Mr Pigai? What about Indonesia’s own back yard?” asked Wenda.

Until the world intervened to stop such “egregious hypocrisy” and recognised the “ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide”, there would “be no peace or justice in the Pacific.”

Principal defender
The UN Human Rights Council is the world’s principal defender of vulnerable people worldwide. This is the first time that an Indonesian diplomat has been elected president of the forum.

After his confirmation last Thursday, Ambassador Suryodipuro said Indonesia had been a strong supporter of the council since it began its work 20 years ago, and of the Geneva forum’s predecessor, the Human Rights Commission.

“Our decision to step forward is rooted in our 1945 constitution and that aligns with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter which mandates Indonesia to contribute to world peace based on independence, peace and social justice,” he told delegates.

At the same meeting, delegates also agreed to the appointment of Ecuadorian candidate Ambassador Marcelo Vázquez Bermúdez as vice-president of the council for 2026.

COMMENTARY: By Laurens Ikinia in Jakarta

The island of Papua is a land of profound paradox. Beneath its ancient, cathedral-like forests and within its mineral-rich mountains lies a narrative of staggering contrast.

It is a place where immense natural wealth exists alongside some of Indonesia’s most acute human development challenges.

This dissonance poses a central riddle: why does a land of such abundance host populations grappling with persistent poverty, gaps in education and healthcare, and a deep sense of political marginalisation?

• READ MORE: Other West Papua articles at Asia Pacific Report

A principle found in Papuan wisdom offers a starting point: the past is a mirror for gazing upon tomorrow.

To understand Papua’s present and navigate its future, we must look honestly into that mirror. Yet, when the reflection shows recurring patterns of inequality and unfulfilled promises, we are compelled to ask what kind of future is being built.

The story of Papua is not merely one of resources; it is fundamentally about people, their rights, and their place within the Indonesian nation.

This reflection need not occur in isolation. Looking east across the Pacific, two nations — Australia and New Zealand — have embarked on their own complex, painful, and unfinished journeys of reconciling with their Indigenous peoples.

Their experiences are not blueprints, but they offer invaluable mirrors in which Indonesia might glimpse reflections of its own challenges and potential pathways forward.

The central, reflective question is this: Amidst Indonesia’s unique historical and political complexity, is there room to learn from these Pacific neighbours? Can Jakarta find a distinctive, yet equally courageous, path to reconciliation with Papua?

Unsettled foundation: A history demanding to be heard
Any discussion of Papua must begin by acknowledging the fractured foundation upon which its relationship with Jakarta is built. Unlike New Zealand, where the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) provides a contested but acknowledged founding document for Crown-Māori relations, Indonesia and Papua have no mutually agreed foundational treaty.

Papua’s integration was solidified through the Act of Free Choice (Pepera) in 1969, a process whose legitimacy remains internationally debated and is remembered with bitterness by many Papuans.

This unresolved historical grievance is the DNA of the conflict. It infects every policy, fuels distrust, and allows security-centric approaches to dominate.

Jakarta’s apparent reluctance to engage in open, high-level dialogue about this history keeps the wound open. New Zealand’s experience, though painful and expensive, demonstrates that confronting a dark past is not a threat to national unity, but a prerequisite for building a common future on a clearer moral and legal foundation.

The first lesson from the Pacific is that sustainable solutions cannot be built on unacknowledged history.

The Australian mirror: Pillars of incremental recognition
Australia’s relationship with its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples represents a protracted and painful journey from the brutal realities of colonisation toward a fragile, imperfect process of recognition and repair.

The historical backdrop is one of profound trauma, marked by dispossession, assimilation policies, and the devastating legacy of the Stolen Generations. Yet, in recent decades, a discernible — though inconsistent — policy shift has emerged, built upon several key pillars that provide a structured, if unfinished, framework for addressing historical wrongs.

These pillars offer critical points of comparison for other contexts, such as that of West Papua under Indonesian administration, illuminating stark contrasts in both philosophy and outcome.

Political recognition: From absence to acknowledgment
The 1967 Referendum, which allowed Aboriginal people to be counted in the census and gave the federal government power to make laws for them, stands as a symbolic turning point in Australian political consciousness. Today, the lexicon of recognition is embedded in official discourse, with terms like “First Nations People” and “Traditional Custodians” routinely used in parliamentary speeches and public ceremonies.

The establishment of the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) represents a systematic, though often criticised, effort to coordinate policy across government. This reflects a tangible, if uneven, move toward recognising Aboriginal peoples not merely as citizens, but as original inhabitants with a unique historical and cultural status deserving of specific acknowledgment.

Papuan Special Autonomy: Otsus in stark contrast
In stark contrast, Jakarta’s primary instrument for Papua is Special Autonomy (Otsus), a policy centered on fiscal transfers and nominal political affirmation. While Otsus mandates native Papuan leadership in provincial governments, its essence is consistently stifled by centralised security policies, the dominance of national political parties, and the imposition of territorial divisions with minimal deep consultation.

Consequently, Otsus feels less like a partnership born of genuine historical recognition and more like a technical administrative concession granted — and tightly controlled — from the centre. The core Papuan struggle remains one for existential recognition: an acknowledgment of their distinct identity as Indigenous peoples with inherent political rights, rather than merely as beneficiaries of state-administered policy.

Economic rights: Land and resource sovereignty
Australia’s Native Title Act of 1993 was a revolutionary legal development, overturning the doctrine of terra nullius and recognising the persistence of Aboriginal traditional ownership and connection to land. Although the claims process is notoriously arduous and contested, it has resulted in the return of millions of hectares of land.

Complementing this are land handback programmes and innovative co-management models for national parks and cultural sites, such as Uluru-Kata Tjuta.

Furthermore, nascent royalty-sharing schemes from mining on Indigenous-held land aim to provide an independent economic base, positioning communities not as passive recipients but as stakeholders with property rights.

The contrast with Papua is profound. The region functions as Indonesia’s primary economic engine, with megaprojects like the Freeport copper and gold mine and the Tangguh LNG facility driving national exports. Yet, this extractive model is intensely centralised, with profits flowing to Jakarta and global corporate headquarters while Indigenous communities near these operations often live in stark deprivation.

Otsus funds, while substantial, are funneled through government mechanisms and do not alter this fundamental, exploitative structure. Critically, Papuan customary land rights (hak ulayat) are routinely overridden by state-issued business permits. There exists no large-scale, legally empowered mechanism for reparations or asset restitution to Papuan tribes, leaving them economically marginalised on their own land.

Social policy: Closing the gap
Since 2008, Australia has formally adopted the Closing the Gap Strategy, a framework establishing specific, measurable targets for improving Indigenous life outcomes in health, education, and employment.

This strategy represents an explicit, if imperfect, admission that historical marginalization requires targeted, accountable, and data-driven intervention by the state. It acknowledges a collective responsibility to address disparities directly, even as critiques of its implementation and pace persist.

Indonesia lacks an equivalent national policy framework specifically tailored to address Papua’s acute and unique disparities. Development indicators and programs are largely standardized, failing to account for Papua’s distinct geography, history, and cultural context. As a result, health and education systems suffer from severe infrastructure deficits, critical staffing shortages, and a curriculum that ignores local knowledge.

Maternal mortality and malnutrition rates remain among the highest in Southeast Asia. The fundamental gap lies in agency: for meaningful progress, Papuans must be transformed from objects of development into its active, designing subjects.

Cultural recognition: Beyond symbolism
In Australia, Aboriginal cultural expression has increasingly moved beyond tokenism toward a more integrated, though still contested, national presence. Indigenous languages are being documented and revitalised, customary law receives limited recognition within the justice system, and Aboriginal art is celebrated as central to the nation’s identity.

The practice of acknowledging Traditional Custodians at the outset of official events, while symbolic, performs a daily act of cognitive recognition.

In Papua, the situation is different. The region’s stunning cultural diversity, encompassing over 250 distinct languages, is often treated as an intangible treasure or tourist asset rather than a living foundation for governance.

Local languages are not mediums of formal instruction, and customary norms are easily overridden by narratives of national unity and acculturation. While Papuan art and ritual are occasionally showcased, they are seldom integrated into substantive policymaking for cultural preservation and transmission, leaving this profound heritage vulnerable to erosion.

New Zealand mirror: A framework for courageous reconciliation
If Australia demonstrates a fitful journey toward recognition, New Zealand presents a more advanced, treaty-based model of reconciliation. The 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, despite its contested translations and history of breaches, is the accepted foundational document of the modern state. This has provided a crucial platform for building concrete mechanisms to address historical grievances and partnership.

The Waitangi Tribunal and reparations
Established in 1975, the Waitangi Tribunal is a permanent commission of inquiry that investigates Crown actions alleged to breach the Treaty’s principles. Its recommendations have fueled a massive, ongoing process of historical settlement involving land restitution, financial compensation, and formal Crown apologies.

This process, while not without controversy, provides a formal channel for redressing historical wrongs and transferring resources back to Māori iwi (tribes).

Guaranteed political voice
Māori have had dedicated parliamentary seats since 1867, ensuring a direct voice in the national legislature. This has been complemented by the rise of a dedicated Te Pati Māori political party and the establishment of the Ministry for Māori Development (Te Puni Kōkiri), which advocates for Māori interests within the government apparatus.

This structural presence ensures that Indigenous perspectives are embedded in political discourse.

Biculturalism as national policy
Biculturalism is woven into New Zealand’s institutional fabric. Te reo Māori is an official language, supported by Māori-language immersion schools (Kura Kaupapa Māori), a dedicated television channel (Māori Television), and prominent university faculties.

The national curriculum incorporates Māori history, knowledge, and perspectives, fostering a broader public understanding.

Comparison with Papua
For Papua, the absence of any such foundational agreement or framework leaves a profound vacuum. There is no equivalent to the Waitangi Tribunal to investigate historical grievances or restore resources.

Politically, there are no guaranteed mechanisms for Papuan representation at the national level in Indonesia. Socio-culturally, while Papua’s languages are celebrated in folkloric terms, there is no nationally broadcast, Papuan-led television channel or a system of dedicated higher education institutes focused on Melanesian studies and leadership.

New Zealand’s lesson is the transformative power of a framework — however contested — that creates institutional channels for grievance, voice, and cultural revitalization.

Deep Pacific connection: Why New Zealand cares
New Zealand’s sustained attention on Papua transcends standard diplomatic concern; it is rooted in profound connections that resonate deeply with the New Zealand public and polity, creating a unique sense of obligation.

First, a demographic kinship creates relatability: New Zealand’s population of approximately 5.1 million is nearly equivalent to the population of Indonesia’s six Papuan provinces (around 5.6 million). This similar scale makes the challenges faced by Papuans feel immediate and comprehensible.

More profoundly, there are undeniable historical and anthropological links. Scientific research in population genetics traces Polynesian ancestry, including that of Māori, back through Melanesia.

Culturally, the social structures of Papuan highlands tribes, with their complex clan and confederation systems, closely mirror the traditional Māori hapu (clan) and iwi (tribe) organisations. Similarities extend to concepts of customary governance, spirituality, and reciprocal exchange, suggesting shared ancestral roots.

This connection is cemented by modern history. Papuan people provided crucial aid to Australian and New Zealand troops during the Pacific War in thd Second World War. Furthermore, as documented by historians like Maire Leadbeater, New Zealand was indirectly involved in the territory’s mid-century fate, initially supporting Dutch efforts to prepare Papua for independence before acquiescing to the controversial Act of Free Choice that facilitated Indonesian integration.

For many New Zealanders, particularly Māori, advocating for Papuans is viewed as a Tangata Moana (People of the Ocean) responsibility — a moral, cultural, and spiritual call to support fellow Pacific indigenes facing adversity.

This deeply felt public and civic sentiment ensures the issue remains persistently alive in New Zealand’s parliament, churches, universities, and civil society, constantly applying pressure and challenging any government inclination toward a “business as usual” foreign policy approach toward Indonesia regarding Papua.

This unique solidarity, born of shared identity and history, makes New Zealand a distinct and vocal stakeholder in Papua’s ongoing struggle.

Forging a distinctive path: Strategic recommendations for Indonesia
Indonesia’s engagement with the Pacific region offers a reservoir of wisdom, yet the fundamental lesson is that adaptation, not adoption, is key. The nation’s immense diversity, complex history, and unique political architecture mean that solutions cannot be copy-pasted.

However, the perennial fear of national disintegration must not become a paralysing force that stifles the bold policy innovation required to address the root causes of discord, particularly in Papua. Moving beyond rhetorical commitments to tangible action demands significant political will and courage.

The following recommendations outline a potential pathway for transformative change, aiming to forge a new social contract built on justice, partnership, and genuine autonomy:

The journey must begin with a profound act of historical reckoning and political courage. The President should personally initiate a high-level National Reconciliation Framework for Papua.

This would be a landmark political initiative, potentially involving the establishment of an independent Papuan Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Its mandate must be coupled with an official, unambiguous state acknowledgment of past human rights violations.

This process would create a structured and equal dialogue platform, moving past cycles of recrimination. Addressing this historical wound is not an end in itself but a necessary precondition to cleanse the poisoned well of present-day interactions and build a foundation of trust for all subsequent reforms.

Concurrently, the policy of Special Autonomy must be radically reimagined. The concept of “Otsus Plus” should evolve from a mechanism of fiscal devolution into a genuine political and economic partnership. This entails granting local governments conditional veto rights over major investments affecting customary land (ulayat), ensuring development is not imposed but negotiated.

Furthermore, the legislative and cultural authority of the Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP) as the authentic voice of indigenous institutions must be constitutionally strengthened.

Finally, granting full autonomy over education and cultural policy, including locally relevant curricula and language instruction, is essential for preserving Papuan identity and fostering endogenous development.

True partnership is impossible without a fundamental restructuring of the economic model in Papua. The economy must shift from a centralised, extractive paradigm to one based on community sovereignty and benefit.

This requires legalising and strengthening customary land rights (hak ulayat) as a supreme legal principle, not a secondary consideration. Building on this, transparent and direct royalty-sharing mechanisms from natural resource projects must be established, ensuring proceeds flow to indigenous land-owning communities.

Complementing this, a Papuan-led “Closing the Gap” strategy with clear, measurable targets for health, education, and employment should be developed, with progress annually reported to the national parliament to ensure accountability.

Security and political representation form the twin pillars of stability and dignity. The prevailing security approach must be recalibrated to prioritise dialogue, community engagement, and human security over militarized confrontation. In parallel, to ensure Papuan voices are substantively embedded in national lawmaking, permanent seats for indigenous Papuan representatives should be constitutionally created in the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI).

Following the precedent set for Aceh, this guaranteed political representation would ensure Papuan perspectives directly influence national legislation that affects their lives, transforming them from subjects of policy to active architects of their future within the Republic.

Finally, Indonesia should strategically reframe its external engagement regarding Papua. Rather than viewing the Pacific’s cultural and political solidarity with Melanesian Papuans as a point of friction, Indonesia should embrace it as an opportunity for cultural diplomacy.

By proactively encouraging and funding robust academic, cultural, and civil society exchanges between Papuan and Māori/Pacific Island communities, Indonesia can build powerful bridges of people-to-people understanding. This initiative would acknowledge shared heritage while showcasing Indonesia’s commitment to inclusive development, thereby transforming a diplomatic challenge into a channel for soft-power connection and regional leadership.

In conclusion, this pathway is neither simple nor quick, but it is necessary. It calls for a series of courageous, interconnected leaps from the status quo toward a system predicated on acknowledgment, partnership, and substantive self-determination.

By addressing historical grievances, redesigning autonomy, restructuring the economy, reforming security, guaranteeing political voice, and leveraging cultural diplomacy, Indonesia has the potential to resolve its most persistent internal conflict. The result would be a stronger, more unified nation, where stability is built not on force but on justice and the full recognition of its diverse peoples’ aspirations.

Hope for the Land of Papua
The fate of Papua is the ultimate test of Indonesia’s inclusive nationhood. It can no longer be managed through a narrow security lens or obscured by macroeconomic statistics. This is about people, identity, history, and a shared future.

Hope endures. It shines in the eyes of Papuan children, the dedication of local health workers and teachers, and the voices of community and religious leaders calling for peace. It is also present among those in Jakarta who recognise the need for a new approach.

Australia and New Zealand, with their colonial burdens, have begun their imperfect journeys. Indonesia, with its experience of resolving the Aceh conflict through dialogue, can do the same. The condition is a fundamental shift in perspective: seeing Papuans not as a problem to be managed, but as equal partners and full subjects of their own destiny within the Republic.

A just and prosperous Papua is not a threat to Indonesia. It would be the fulfilment of the nation’s founding ideals of unity in diversity, and the pinnacle of a truly inclusive national project.

The mirror from the Pacific shows both the depth of the challenge and the possibility of a different reflection. It is now a matter of choosing to look and having the courage to act.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta. He is also an honorary member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) in Aotearoa New Zealand and an occasional contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Papua New Guinea’s population has passed the 10 million mark, according to the final figures from the 2024 Population Census released by the country’s statistics office.

The PNG census began on 16 June 2024 and concluded in late October, more than three months after its original deadline. The process was marred by a host of administrative and logistical issues.

A PNG academic said in October 2024 that the 2024 Census, which included only six questions, failed to meet the United Nations benchmark standards for reliable census data.

• READ MORE: Other PNG census reports

“Without timely and accurate census data, it will be impossible to create a reliable common roll or implement the planned biometric voting system by 2027 for the national election, which will require even greater coordination and efficiency,” wrote Michael Kabuni, a PhD student at the Australian National University and a former lecturer at the University of PNG.

The PNG National Statistical Office reported that there were 10,185,363 people in the country on census night.

According to the 2024 National Population Census Final Figures booklet, this represents a 40 percent increase compared with the previous population count in 2011, when the population was 7,275,324.

The report stated the average population annual growth rate since the 2011 Census was 2.6 percent.

“Annual growth rate since the 2011 Census is higher (3.1 percent) but is likely to be artificially inflated because of non-demographic factors such as higher undercounting in 2000 and improvements to the 2011 and 2024 Census coverage methods.”

The census figures also reveal that there are more males (5,336,546) than females (4,848,546), representing approximately 110 males for every 100 females.

The average household in PNG was five people.

“Since the first official census in 1980, five years after independence, there have been an additional 7.2 million people added from 3.0 million in the last 44 years.”

The census found that, of the 22 provinces that make up PNG, Morobe recorded the highest population with almost a million people, followed by the Eastern Highlands province with 800,072 people.

Of PNG’s four regions, Highlands account for 35.7 percent of the total population, followed by Momase (27 percent), then the Southern and Islands regions.

Exiled West Papuan media are calling for Fiji — in a reflection of Melanesian solidarity — to hold the greater Pacific region to account and stand against Indonesia’s ongoing media blackout in addition to its human rights abuses.

The leaders in their field which include two Papuans from Indonesia’s occupied provinces have visited the Pacific country to forge media partnerships, university collaboration and joint advocacy for West Papua self-determination.

They were speaking after the screening of a new documentary film, Pepera 1969: A Democratic Integration, was screened at The University of the South Pacific in Fiji.

• READ MORE: Papuan journalist award-winner Victor Mambor targeted for his reports
• West Papua media at Pacific Journalism Review
• Other West Papua media reports

The documentary is based on the controversial plebiscite 56 years ago when 1025 handpicked Papuan electors, which were directly chosen by the Indonesian military out of its 800,000 citizens, were claimed to have voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control of Western New Guinea.

Victor Mambor — a co-founder of Jubi Media Papua — in West Papua; Yuliana Lantipo, one of its senior journalists and editor; and Dandhy Laksono, a Jakarta-based investigative filmmaker; shared their personal experiences of reporting from inside arguably the most heavily militarised and censored region in the Pacific.

“We are here to build bridges with our brothers and sisters in the Pacific,” Mambor told the USP media audience.

Their story of the Papuan territory comes after Dutch colonialists who had seized Western New Guinea, handed control of the East Indies back to the Indonesians in 1949 before The Netherlands eventually withdrew from Papuan territory in 1963.

‘Fraudulent’ UN vote
The unrepresentative plebiscite which followed a fraudulent United Nations-supervised “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 allowed the Indonesian Parliament to grant its legitimacy to reign sovereignty over the West Papuans.

That Indonesian authority has been heavily questioned and criticised over extinguishing independence movements and possible negotiations between both sides.

Indonesia has silenced Papuan voices in the formerly-named Irian Jaya province through control and restrictions of the media.

Mambor described the continued targeting of his Jubi Media staff, including attacks on its office and vehicles, as part of an escalating crackdown under Indonesia’s current President Prabowo Subianto, who took office less than 12 months ago.

“If you report on deforestation [of West Papua] or our culture, maybe it’s allowed,” he said.

“But if you report on human rights or the [Indonesian] military, there is no tolerance.”

An Indonesian MP, Oleh Soleh, warned publicly this month that the state would push for a “new wave of repression” targeting West Papuan activists while also calling the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) – the West Papuan territory’s peak independence movement – as a “political criminal group”.

‘Don’t just listen to Jakarta’
“Don’t just listen to what Jakarta says,” Mambor said.

“Speak to Papuans, listen to our stories, raise our voices.

“We want to bring West Papua back to the Pacific — not just geographically, but politically, culturally, and emotionally.”

Press freedom in West Papua has become most dire more over the past 25 years, West Papuan journalists have said.

Foreign journalists are barred entry into the territory and internet access for locals is often restricted, especially during periods of civil unrest.

Indigenous reporters also risk arrest and/or violence for filing politically sensitive stories.

Most trusted media
Founded in 2001 by West Papuan civil society, Jubi Media Papua’s English-language publication, the West Papua Daily, has become arguably the most trusted, independent source of news in the territory that has survived over its fearless approach to journalism.

“Our journalists are constantly intimidated,” Mambor said, “yet we continue to report the truth”.

The word Jubi in one of the most popular Indigenous Papuan languages means to speak the truth.

Mambor explained that the West Papua Daily remained a pillar of a vocal media movement to represent the wishes of the West Papuan people.

The stories published are without journalists’ bylines (names on articles) out of fear against retribution from the Indonesian military.

“We created a special section just to tell Pacific stories — to remind our people that we are not alone, and to reconnect West Papua with our Pacific identity,” Mambor said.

Lantipo spoke about the daily trauma faced by the Papuan communities which are caught in between the Indonesian military and the West Papua national liberation army who act on behalf of the ULMWP to defend its ancestral homeland.

‘Reports of killings, displacement’
“Every day, we receive reports: killings, displacement, families fleeing villages, children out of school, no access to healthcare,” Lantipo said.

“Women and children are the most affected.”

The journalists attending the seminar urged the Fijian, Melanesian and Pacific people to push for a greater awareness of the West Papuan conflict and its current situation, and to challenge dominant narratives propagated by the Indonesian government.

Laksono, who is ethnically Indonesian but entrenched in ongoing Papuan independence struggles, has long worked to expose injustices in the region.

“There is no hope from the Asian side,” Laksono said.

“That’s why we are here, to reach out to the Pacific.

“We need new audiences, new support, and new understanding.”

Arrested over tweets
Laksono was once arrested in September 2019 for publishing tweets about the violence from government forces against West Papua pro-independence activists.

Despite the personal risks, the “enemy of the state” remains committed to highlighting the stories of the West Papuan people.

“Much of Indonesia has been indoctrinated through school textbooks and [its] media into believing a false history,” he said.

“Our film tries to change that by offering the truth, especially about the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969, which was neither free nor a genuine act of self-determination.”

Andrew Mathieson writes for the National Indigenous Times.

A West Papuan independence movement leader has warned the Melanesian Spearhead Group after its 23rd leaders summit in Suva, Fiji, to not give in to a “neocolonial trade in betrayal and abandonment” over West Papua.

While endorsing and acknowledging the “unconditional support” of Melanesian people to the West Papuan cause for decolonisation, OPM chair and commander Jeffrey P Bomanak
spoke against “surrendering” to Indonesia which was carrying out a policy of “bank cheque diplomacy” in a bid to destroy solidarity.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka took over the chairmanship of the MSG this week from his Vanuatu counterpart Jotham Napat and vowed to build on the hard work and success that had been laid before it.

• READ MORE: Marape says it is culturally ‘un-Melanesian’ not to give West Papua a seat at the table
• Fiji advocacy group slams Indonesian role in MSG as a ‘disgrace’
• Other West Papua reports

He said he would not take the responsibility of chairmanship lightly, especially as they were confronted with an increasingly fragmented global landscape that demanded more from them.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape called on MSG member states to put West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia back on the agenda for full MSG membership.

Marape said that while high-level dialogue with Indonesia over West Papua and France about New Caledonia must continue, it was culturally “un-Melanesian” not to give them a seat at the table.

West Papua currently holds observer status in the MSG, which includes Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji — and Indonesia as an associate member.

PNG ‘subtle shift’
PNG recognises the West Papuan region as five provinces of Indonesia, making Marape’s remarks in Suva a “subtle shift that may unsettle Jakarta”, reports Gorethy Kenneth in the PNG Post-Courier.

West Papuans have waged a long-standing Melanesian struggle for independence from Indonesia since 1969.

The MSG resolved to send separate letters of concern to the French and Indonesian presidents.

In a statement, Bomanak thanked the Melanesians of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of Kanaky New Caledonia for “unconditionally support[ing] your West Papuan brothers and sisters, subjected to dispossession, enslavement, genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and ethnic cleansing, [as] the noblest of acts.”

“We will never forget these Melanesian brothers and sisters who remain faithfully loyal to our cultural identity no matter how many decades is our war of liberation and no matter how many bags of gold and silver Indonesia offers for the betrayal of ancestral kinship.

“When the late [Vanuatu Prime Minister] Father Walter Lini declared, ‘Melanesia is not free unless West Papua is free,”’ he was setting the benchmark for leadership and loyalty across the entire group of Melanesian nations.

“Father Lini was not talking about a timeframe of five months, or five years, or five decades.

“Father Lini was talking about an illegal invasion and military occupation of West Papua by a barbaric nation wanting West Papua’s gold and forests and willing to exterminate all of us for this wealth.

‘Noble declaration’
“That this noble declaration of kinship and loyalty now has a commercial value that can be bought and sold like a commodity by those without Father Lini’s courage and leadership, and betrayed for cheap materialism, is an act of historic infamy that will be recorded by Melanesian historians and taught in all our nations’ universities long after West Papua is liberated.”

Bomanak was condemning the decision of the MSG to regard the “West Papua problem” as an internal issue for Indonesia.

“The illegal occupation of West Papua and the genocide of West Papuans is not an internal issue to be solved by the barbaric occupier.

“Indonesia’s position as an associate member of MSG is a form of colonial corruption of the Melanesian people.

“We will continue to fight without MSG because the struggle for independence and sovereignty is our fundamental right of the Papuan people’s granted by God.

“Every member of MSG can recommend to the United Nations that West Papua deserves the same right of liberation and nation-state sovereignty that was achieved without compromise by Timor-Leste — the other nation illegally invaded by Indonesia and also subjected to genocide.”

Bomanak said the MSG’s remarks stood in stark contrast to Father Lini’s solidarity with West Papua and were “tantamount to sharing in the destruction of West Papua”.

‘Blood money’
It was also collaborating in the “extermination of West Papuans for economic benefit, for Batik Largesse. Blood money!”

The Papua ‘problem’ was not a human rights problem but a problem of the Papuan people’s political right for independence and sovereignty based on international law and the right to self-determination.

It was an international problem that had not been resolved.

“In fact, to say it is simply a ‘problem’ ignores the fate of the genocide of 500,000 victims.”

Bomanak said MSG leaders should make clear recommendations to the Indonesian government to resolve the “Papua problem” at the international level based on UN procedures and involving the demilitarisation of West Papua with all Indonesian defence and security forces “leaving the land they invaded and unlawfully occupied.”

Indonesia’s position as an associate member in the MSG was a systematic new colonialisation by Indonesia in the home of the Melanesian people.

Indonesia well understood the weaknesses of each Melanesian leader and “carries out bank cheque diplomacy accordingly to destroy the solidarity so profoundly declared by the late Father Walter Lini.”

“No surrender!”

Police in Papua New Guinea say the country’s overrun courts and prisons are behind mass breakouts from police custody.

Chief Superintendent Clement Dala made the comment after 13 detainees escaped on Tuesday in Simbu Province, including eight who were facing murder charges.

Dala said an auxiliary policeman who had the keys to a holding cell at Kundiawa Police Station is also on the run.

• READ MORE: Other PNG prison reports

Police are investigating a claim by local media that he is the partner of a female escapee who was facing trial for murder.

Six police officers on duty at the time have been suspended for 21 days while investigations continue.

“The auxiliary officer is not a recognised police officer and should not have had the key, but it appears he was helping the sole police officer on cell duties,” said Dala, who is the acting assistant commissioner for three Highlands provinces.

Dala said it appeared the auxiliary officer wandered off for a meal and left the cell door open at the entrance to the police station.

“He may have played a role in assisting the escapees, but we are still trying to find out exactly what happened.”

‘Probably hiding somewhere’
“If we find it was deliberate then he will definitely be arrested. He is probably hiding somewhere nearby and we’ll get to him as soon as we can,” he said.

As of yesterday, none of the escapees had been caught. Police are relying on community leaders to encourage them to surrender.

But this could take a month or longer and police fear some could reoffend.

He said the police have previously been told not to use auxiliary officers in any official capacity as they were community liaison officers.

“This is a symptom of our severe staff shortages, but I have reissued an instruction banning them from frontline duties,” he said.

Dala said PNG’s courts and prisons were completely overrun, and this was the main reason detainees in police custody escape.

Up to 200 people on remand
He said on any given day there could be up to 200 people on remand in police cells under his command and many brought in weapons and drugs.

“We have different cells for different remandees, but if we are overcrowded we have to keep prisoners in the main corridor, especially those who have committed minor crimes,” he said.

Dala said some remand prisoners were being kept in police holding cells for more than a month.

He said the police had faced a lack of political will to deal with severe staff shortages, a lack of training across the force and outdated infrastructure.

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

Reports in Papua New Guinea say the governments of Bougainville and PNG have agreed to table the 2019 independence referendum results in Parliament.

While discussions are ongoing, some degree of consensus has been reached during the talks, being held at Burnham Military Camp, just outside of Christchurch in New Zealand’s South Island.

The talks are not open to the media.

• READ MORE:  Bougainville wants independence. China’s support for a controversial mine could pave the way
• Other Bougainville reports

A massive 97.7 percent of Bougainvillians voted for independence in 2019.

Former Bougainville president John Momis told delegates in Burnham to “take the bull by the horn” and confront the independence issue without further delay.

Both governments have agreed to present three highly pivotal documents to the PNG National Parliament.

The commitment was formally conveyed by PNG’s Minister of Bougainville Affairs, Manaseh Makiba.

Only sovereignty acceptable
Meanwhile, the ABG President, Ishmael Toroama, said Bougainville would not accept a governance model that did not grant sovereignty.

This comes amid talk of other options, such as self-government in free association.

To achieve membership of the United Nations sovereignty is needed.

Writing in the Post-Courier, journalist Gorethy Kenneth said the Bougainville national leaders, for the “first time have come out in aligning with the Bougainville team in New Zealand”.

She reported that Police Minister and Bougainville regional MP Peter Tsiamalili Jr said he was in a peculiar position but he represented the 97.7 percent who voted for independence and he would go with the wishes of his people.

The ICT Minister, and South Bougainville MP Timothy Masiu also said his one vote in Parliament would be for independence as far as his people were concerned.

The PNG government has spoken previously of fears that independence for Bougainville would encourage other provinces to seek autonomy.

Provinces, such as New Ireland, have made no secret of their dissatisfaction with Port Moresby and desire to control more of their own affairs.

But the Bougainville Minister of Independence Implementation, Ezekiel Massat, said Bougainville’s status was constitutionally “ring-fenced” and could not set a precedent for other provinces.

He said “under the Bougainville Peace Agreement, independence is a compulsory option”.

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

America’s retreat from foreign aid is being felt deeply in Pacific media, where pivotal outlets are being shuttered and journalists work unpaid.

The result is fewer investigations into dubiously motivated politicians, glimpses into conflicts otherwise unseen and a less diverse media in a region which desperately needs it.

“It is a huge disappointment … a senseless waste,” Benar News’ Australian former head of Pacific news Stefan Armbruster said after seeing his outlet go under.

• READ MORE: Political pressure, bribes, self-censorship ‘greatest threats’ to Pacific media freedom
• NZ fares well in latest RSF press freedom index as authoritarian regimes stifle Asia-Pacific media
• Fiji coup culture and political meddling in media education given airing

Benar News, In-depth Solomons and Inside PNG are three digital outlets which enjoyed US support but have been hit by President Donald Trump’s about-face on aid.

Benar closed its doors in April after an executive order disestablishing Voice of America, which the United States created during World War II to combat Nazi propaganda.

An offshoot of Radio Free Asia (RFA) focused on Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Benar kept a close eye on abuses in West Papua, massacres and gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea and more.

The Pacific arm quickly became indispensable to many, with a team of reporters and freelancers working in 15 countries on a budget under A$A million.

Coverage of decolonisation
“Our coverage of decolonisation in the Pacific received huge interest, as did our coverage of the lack of women’s representation in parliaments, human rights, media freedom, deep sea mining and more,” Armbruster said.

In-depth Solomons, a Honiara-based digital outlet, is another facing an existential threat despite a proud record of investigative and award-winning reporting.

Last week, it was honoured with a peer-nominated award from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan for a year-long probe into former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare’s property holdings.

“We’re just holding on,” editor and co-founder Ofani Eremae said.

A US-centred think tank continues to pay the wage of one journalist, while others have not drawn a salary since January.

“It has had an impact on our operations. We used to travel out to do stories across the provinces. That has not been done since early this year,” Eremae said.

A private donor came forward after learning of the cuts with a one-off grant that was used for rent to secure the office, he said.

USAID budget axed
Its funding shortfall — like Port Moresby-based outlet Inside PNG — is linked to USAID, the world’s biggest single funder of development assistance, until Trump axed its multi-billion dollar budget.

Much of USAID’s funding was spent on humanitarian causes — such as vaccines, clean water supplies and food security — but some was also earmarked for media in developing nations, with the aim of bolstering fragile democracies.

Inside PNG used its support to build an audience of tens of thousands with incisive reports on PNG politics: not just Port Moresby, but in the regions including independence-seeking province Bougainville that has a long history of conflict.

“The current lack of funding has unfortunately had a dual impact, affecting both our dedicated staff, whom we’re currently unable to pay, and our day-to-day operations,” Inside PNG managing director Kila Wani said.

“We’ve had to let off 80 percent of staff from payroll which is a big hit because we’re not a very big team.

“Logistically, it’s become challenging to carry out our work as we normally would.”

Other media entities in the region have suffered hits, but declined to share their stories.

Funding hits damaging
The funding hits are all the more damaging given the challenges faced by the Pacific, as outlined in the Pacific Islands Media Freedom Index and RSF World Press Freedom Index.

The latest PFF report listed a string of challenges, notably weak legal protections for free speech, political interference on editorial independence, and a lack of funding underpinning high-quality media, in the region.

The burning question for these outlets — and their audiences — is do other sources of funding exist to fill the gap?

Inside PNG is refocusing energy on attracting new donors, as is In-depth Solomons, which has also turned to crowdfunding.

The Australian and New Zealand governments have also provided targeted support for the media sector across the region, including ABC International Development (ABCID), which has enjoyed a budget increase from Anthony Albanese’s government.

Inside PNG and In-depth Solomons both receive training and content-focused grants from ABCID, which helps, but this does not fund the underpinning costs for a media business or keep on the lights.

Both Eremae, who edited two major newspapers before founding the investigative outlet, and Armbruster, a long-time SBS correspondent, expressed their dismay at the US pivot away from the Pacific.

‘Huge mistake’ by US
“It’s a huge mistake on the part of the US … the world’s leading democracy. The media is one of the pillars of democracy,” Eremae said.

“It is, I believe, in the interests of the US and other democratic countries to give funding to media in countries like the Solomon Islands where we cannot survive due to lack of advertising (budgets).

As a veteran of Pacific reporting, Armbruster said he had witnessed US disinterest in the region contribute to the wider geopolitical struggle for influence.

“The US government was trying to re-establish its presence after vacating the space decades ago. It had promised to re-engage, dedicating funding largely driven by its efforts to counter China, only to now betray those expectations,” he said.

“The US government has senselessly destroyed a highly valued news service in the Pacific. An own goal.”

Ben McKay is an AAP journalist. Republished from National Indigenous Times in Australia.

An escalation in fighting between Indonesian security forces and Papuan pro-independence fighters in West Papua has seriously threatened the security of the largely indigenous population, says Human Rights Watch in a new report.

The human rights watchdog warned that all parties to the conflict are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law, also called the laws of war.

The security forces’ military operations in the densely forested Central Highlands areas are accused of killing and wounding dozens of civilians with drone strikes and the indiscriminate use of explosive munitions, and displaced thousands of indigenous Papuans, said the report.

• READ MORE: Fiji rights coalition slams ‘betrayal’ of West Papua for Indonesian benefits
• Other West Papua reports

The National Liberation Army of West Papua, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, has claimed responsibility in the killing of 17 alleged miners between April 6 and April 9.

“The Indonesian military has a long history of abuses in West Papua that poses a particular risk to the Indigenous communities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

“Concerned governments need to press the Prabowo [Subianto] administration and Papuan separatist armed groups to abide by the laws of war.”

The fighting escalated after the attack on the alleged miners, which the armed group accused of being targeted soldiers or military informers.

Operation Habema
The Indonesian military escalated its ongoing operations, called Operation Habema, in West Papua’s six provinces, especially in the Central Highlands, where Papuan militant groups have been active for more than four decades.

On May 14, the military said that it had killed 18 resistance fighters in Intan Jaya regency, and that it had recovered weapons including rifles, bows and arrows, communications equipment, and Morning Star flags — the symbol of Papuan resistance.

Further military operations have allegedly resulted in burning down villages and attacks on churches. Papuan activists and pastors told Human Rights Watch that government forces treated all Papuan forest dwellers who owned and routinely used bows and arrows for hunting as “combatants”.

Information about abuses has been difficult to corroborate because the hostilities are occurring in remote areas in Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Nduga, and Pegunungan Bintang regencies.

Pastors, church workers, and local journalists interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that Indonesian forces had been using drones and helicopter gunships to drop bombs.

“Civilians from the Korowai tribe community, known for their tall treehouse dwellings, have been harmed in these attacks, and have desperately fled the fighting,” said the Human Rights Watch report.

“Displaced villagers, mostly from Intan Jaya, have sought shelter and refuge in churches in Sugapa, the capital of the regency.”

Resistance allegations
The armed resistance group has made allegations, which Human Rights Watch could not corroborate, that the Indonesian military attacks harmed civilians.

It reported that a mortar or rocket attack outside a church in Ilaga, Puncak regency, hit two young men on May 6, killing one of them, Deris Kogoya, an 18-year-old student.

The group said that the Indonesian military attack on May 14, in which the military claimed all 18 people killed were pro-independence combatants, mostly killed civilians.

Ronald Rischardt Tapilatu, pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church of the Land of Papua, said that at least 3 civilians were among the 18 bodies. Human Rights Watch has a list of the 18 killed, which includes 1 known child.

The daughter of Hetina Mirip said her mother was found dead on May 17 near her house in Sugapa, while Indonesian soldiers surrounded their village. She wrote that the soldiers tried to cremate and bury her mother’s body.

A military spokesman denied the shooting.

One evident impact of the renewed fighting is that thousands of indigenous Papuans have been forced to flee their ancestral lands.

Seven villages attacked
The Vanuatu-based United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) reported that the military had attacked seven villages in Ilaga with drones and airstrikes, forcing many women and children to flee their homes. Media reports said that it was in Gome, Puncak regency.

International humanitarian law obligates all warring parties to distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians. Civilians may never be the target of attack.

Warring parties are required to take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians and civilian objects, such as homes, shops, and schools. Attacks may target only combatants and military objectives.

Attacks that target civilians or fail to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or that would cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population compared to the anticipated military gain, are prohibited.

Parties must treat everyone in their custody humanely, not take hostages, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The Free Papua Movement has long sought self-determination and independence in West Papua, on the grounds that the Indonesian government-controlled “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 was illegitimate and did not involve indigenous Papuans.

It advocates holding a new, fair, and transparent referendum, and backs armed resistance.

Vast conflict area
Human Rights Watch reports that the conflict areas, including Intan Jaya, are on the northern side of Mt Grasberg, spanning a vast area from Sugapa to Oksibil in the Pegunungan Bintang regency, approximately 425 km long.

Sugapa is also known as the site of Wabu Block, which holds approximately 2.3 million kilos of gold, making it one of Indonesia’s five largest known gold reserves.

Wabu Block is currently under the licensing process of the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.

“Papuans have endured decades of systemic racism, heightening concerns of further atrocities,” HRW’s Asia director Ganguly said.

“Both the Indonesian military and Papuan armed groups need to comply with international standards that protect civilians.”

Republished from Human Rights Watch.

An escape of a 13-year-old girl from a hostage crisis on the border of Papua New Guinea’s Western and Hela provinces has boosted hopes for the rescue of her fellow captives.

The group of 10 people was taken captive early on Monday morning at Adujmari.

PNG Police Commissioner David Manning has called the perpetrators “domestic terrorists” and warned that officers were able to use lethal force if needed to secure the release of the hostages.

• READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

The girl Aiyo’s fellow captives are four adults — a teacher and his wife, and a health worker and his wife — along with another four school girls.

The Post-Courier reports that the kidnappers have demanded the government pay a ransom of K500,000 (NZ$207,000) for the safe release of the captives.

Aiyo has told police that the kidnappers had threatened to harm the group if no money was forthcoming.

Assistant Commissioner of Police, Commander Steven Francis, said officers were working around the clock to secure their safe release.

Locals in the Adujmari district have so far raised more than K11,000 (NZ4500) to try and negotiate the safe release of the group.

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

To mark the release of the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) partnered with the agency The Good Company to launch a new awareness campaign that puts an ironic twist on the glossy advertising of the tourism industry.

Three out of six countries featured in the exposé are from the Asia Pacific region — but none from the Pacific Islands.

The campaign shines a stark light on the press freedom violations in countries that seem perfect on postcards but are highly dangerous for journalists, says RSF.

• READ MORE: Fiji media welcomes credible news services, but not ‘pop-up propagandists’, says Simpson
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• RSF 2025 World Press Freedom rankings
• RSF World Press Freedom Index 2025: economic fragility a leading threat to press freedom

It is a striking campaign raising awareness about repression.

Fiji (44th out of 180 ranked nations) is lucky perhaps as three years ago when its draconian media law was still in place, it might have bracketed up there with the featured “chilling” tourism countries such as Indonesia (127) — which is rapped over its treatment of West Papua resistance and journalists.

Disguised as attractive travel guides, the campaign’s visuals use a cynical, impactful rhetoric to highlight the harsh realities journalists face in destinations renowned for their tourist appeal.

Along with Indonesia, Greece (89th), Cambodia (115), Egypt (170), Mexico (124) and the Philippines (116) are all visited by millions of tourists, yet they rank poorly in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, reports RSF.

‘Chilling narrative’
“The attention-grabbing visuals juxtapose polished, enticing aesthetics with a chilling narrative of intimidation, censorship, violence, and even death.

“This deliberately unsettling approach by RSF aims to shift the viewer’s perspective, showing what the dreamlike imagery conceals: journalists imprisoned, attacked, or murdered behind idyllic landscapes.”

The RSF Index 2025 teaser.     Video: RSF

Indonesia is in the Pacific spotlight because of its Melanesian Papuan provinces bordering Pacific Islands Forum member country Papua New Guinea.

Despite outgoing President Joko Widodo’s 10 years in office and a reformist programme, his era has been marked by a series of broken promises, reports RSF.

“The media oligarchy linked to political interests has grown stronger, leading to increased control over critical media and manipulation of information through online trolls, paid influencers, and partisan outlets,” says the Index report.

“This climate has intensified self-censorship within media organisations and among journalists.

“Since October 2024, Indonesia has been led by a new president, former general Prabowo Subianto — implicated in several human rights violation allegations — and by Joko Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as vice-president.

“Under this new administration, whose track record on press freedom offers little reassurance, concerns are mounting over the future of independent journalism.”

Fiji leads in Pacific
In the Pacific, Fiji has led the pack among island states by rising four places to 40th overall, making it the leading country in Oceania in 2025 in terms of press freedom.

Both Timor-Leste, which dropped 19 places to 39th after heading the region last year, and Samoa, which plunged 22 places to 44th, lost their impressive track record.

Of the only other two countries in Oceania surveyed by RSF, Tonga rose one place to 46th and Papua New Guinea jumped 13 places to 78th, a surprising result given the controversy over its plans to regulate the media.

RSF reports that the Fiji Media Association (FMA), which was often critical of the harassment of the media by the previous FijiFirst government, has since the repeal of the Media Act in 2023 “worked hard to restore independent journalism and public trust in the media”.

In March 2024, research published in Journalism Practice journal found that sexual harassment of women journalists was widespread and needed to be addressed to protect media freedom and quality journalism.

In Timor-Leste, “politicians regard the media with some mistrust, which has been evidenced in several proposed laws hostile to press freedom, including one in 2020 under which defaming representatives of the state or Catholic Church would have been punishable by up to three years in prison.

“Journalists’ associations and the Press Council often criticise politicisation of the public broadcaster and news agency.”

On the night of September 4, 2024, Timorese police arrested Antonieta Kartono Martins, a reporter for the news site Diligente Online, while covering a police operation to remove street vendors from a market in Dili, the capital. She was detained for several hours before being released.

Samoan harassment
Previously enjoying a good media freedom reputation, journalists and their families in Samoa were the target of online death threats, prompting the Samoan Alliance of Media Professionals for Development (SAMPOD) to condemn the harassment as “attacks on the fourth estate and democracy”.

In Tonga, RSF reports that journalists are not worried about being in any physical danger when on the job, and they are relatively unaffected by the possibility of prosecution.

“Nevertheless, self-censorship continues beneath the surface in a tight national community.”

In Papua New Guinea, RSF reports journalists are faced with intimidation, direct threats, censorship, lawsuits and bribery attempts, “making it a dangerous profession”.

“And direct interference often threatens the editorial freedom at leading media outlets. This was seen yet again at EMTV in February 2022, when the entire newsroom was fired after walking out” in protest over a management staffing decison.

“There has been ongoing controversy since February 2023 concerning a draft law on media development backed by Communications Minister Timothy Masiu. In January 2024, a 14-day state of emergency was declared in the capital, Port Moresby, following unprecedented protests by police forces and prison wardens.”

This impacted on government and media relations.

Australia and New Zealand
In Australia (29), the media market’s heavy concentration limits the diversity of voices represented in the news, while independent outlets struggle to find a sustainable economic model.

While New Zealand (16) leads in the Asia Pacific region, it is also facing a similar situation to Australia with a narrowing of media plurality, closure or merging of many newspaper titles, and a major retrenchment of journalists in the country raising concerns about democracy.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

In recent weeks, Bougainville has taken the initiative, boldly stating that it expects to be independent by 1 September 2027.

It also expects the PNG Parliament to quickly ratify the 2019 referendum, in which an overwhelming majority of Bougainvilleans supported independence.

In a third move, it established a Constitution Commission and included it within the region’s autonomous Parliament.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville reports

To learn more, RNZ Pacific spoke with Australian National University academic Dr Thiago Oppermann, who has spent many years in both Bougainville and PNG.

Don Wiseman: We’ve had five-and-a-half years since the Bougainville referendum, but very suddenly in the last couple of months, it would seem that Bougainville is picking up pace and trying to really make some progress with this march towards independence, as they see it.

Are they overplaying their hand?

Dr Thiago Oppermann: I do not believe that they are overplaying their hand. I think that the impression that is apparent of a sudden flurry of activity, arises partly because for the first two years after the referendum, there was a very slow pace.

One of the shortcomings of the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA) was that it did not set out a very clear post-referendum path. That part of the process was not as well designed as the parts leading to the referendum, and that left a great deal of uncertainty as to how to structure negotiations, how things should be conducted, and quite substantial differences in the views of the Papua New Guinean government and the ABG (Autonomous Bougainville Government), as to how the referendum result would be processed further.

For instance, how it would it need to be tabled in Parliament, what kind of vote would be required for it, would a negotiation between the parties lead to an agreement that then is presented to the Parliament, and how would that negotiation work? All these areas, they were not prescriptive in the BPA.

That led to a period of a good two years in which there was very slow process and then attempts to get some some movement. I would say that in that period, the views of the Bougainvilleans and the Papua New Guineans became quite entrenched in quite different camps, and something I think would have to give eventually.

Why the Bougainvilleans have moved towards this point now, I think that it bears pointing out that there has been a long process that has been unfolding, for more than two years now, of beginning the organic process of developing a Bougainvillean constitutional process with this constitutional development committees across the island doing a lot of work, and that has now borne fruit, is how I would describe it.

It happens at a point where the process has been unblocked by the appointment of Sir Jerry Mataparae, which I think sets a new vigour into the process. It looks now like it’s heading towards some form of outcome. And that being the case, the Bougainvilleans have made their position quite clear.

DW: Well, Bougainville, in fact, is saying it will be independent by 1st September 2027. How likely do you think that is?

TO: I think there’s a question that comes before that. When Bougainville says that they will be independent by such a date, what we need to first consider is that the process of mediation is still unfolding.

I think that the first thing to consider is, what would that independence look like, and what scope is there within the mediation for finding some compromise that still suits Papua New Guinea. I think that there’s a much greater range of outcomes than people realise within this sort of umbrella of independence, the Bougainvilleans themselves, have moved to a position of understanding independence in much more nuanced terms than previously.

You might imagine that in the aftermath of this fairly brutal and bitter civil conflict, the idea of independence at that time was quite a radical cut towards “full bruk loose” as they say.

But the reality is that for many post colonial and new states since World War Two, there are many different kinds of independence and the degree to which there remains a kind of attachment with or relationship with the so called parent colonial country is variable, I should add.

I do not want to digress too much, but this concept of the parent colonial country is something that I heard quite a lot of when I was studying the referendum itself. Many people would say that the relationship that they had to Papua New Guinea was not one of enmity or of like running away, it was more a question of there being a parent and Bougainville having now grown up to the point where the child, Bougainville, is ready to go off and set up its own house.

Many people thought of it in those terms. Now I think that in concrete terms that can be articulated in many different ways when we think about international law and the status of different sovereign nations around the world.

DW: If we can just look at some of the possibilities in terms of the way in which this independence might be interpreted. My understanding is, for Bougainville it’s vital that they have a degree of sovereignty that will allow them to join organisations like the United Nations, but they’re not necessarily looking to be fully independent of PNG.

TO: Yes, I think that there would be like a process underway in Bougainville for understanding what that would look like.

There are certainly people who would have a view that is still more firmly towards full independence. And there will be others who understand some type of free association arrangements or something that still retains a closer relationship with Papua New Guinea.

I do not think many people have illusions that Bougainville could, for instance, suddenly break loose of the very deep economic connections it has with Papua New Guinea, not only those of government funding, but the commercial connections which are very, very deep. So suddenly making that disappear is not something people believe it’s possible.

But there are many other options that are on the table. I think what Bougainville is doing by having the announcement of the Independence Day is setting for Papua New Guinea saying, like, “here is the terms of the debate that we are prepared to consider”. But within that there is still a great deal of giving and taking.

DW: Now within the parliament in PNG, I think Bougainville has felt for some time that there hasn’t been a great deal of understanding of what Bougainville has been through, or what it is Bougainville is trying to achieve. There’s a very different lineup of MPs to what they were at the turn of the century when the Bougainville Peace Agreement was finalised. So what are they thinking, the MPs from other parts of the country? Are they going to be supportive, or are they just thinking about the impact on their own patch?

TO: I am not entirely sure what the MPs think, and they are a very diverse bunch of people. The sort of concern I think that many have, certainly more senior ones, is that they do not want to be the people in charge when this large chunk of the country secedes.

I think that is something that is important, and we do not want to be patronising the Papua New Guineans, who have a great deal of national pride, and it is not an event of celebration to see what is going on.

For many, it is quite a tragic chain of events. I am not entirely sure what the bulk of MPs believes about this. We have conducted some research, which is non randomised, but it is quite large scale, probing attitudes towards Bougainvillean independence in 2022, around the time of the election.

What we found, which is quite surprising, is that while, of course, Bougainville has the highest support for independence of any place in Papua New Guinea, there are substantial numbers of people outside Bougainville that are sympathetic to Bougainvillean independence or sympathetic towards implementing the referendum.

I think that would be the wording, I would choose, quite large numbers of people. So, as well as, many people who are very much undecided on the issues. From a Papua New Guinean perspective, the views are much more subtle than you might think are the case. By comparison, if you did a survey in Madrid of how many people support Catalan independence, you would not see figures similar to the ones that we find for Papua New Guinea.

DW: Bougainville is due to go to elections later this year. The ABG has stated that it wants this matter sorted, I think, at the time that the election writs are issued sometime in June. Will it be able to do this do you think?

TO: It’s always difficult to predict anything, especially the future. That goes double in Papua New Guinea and Bougainville. I think the reality is that the nature of negotiations here and in Bougainville, there’s a great deal of personal connections and toing and froing that will be taking place.

It is very hard to fit that onto a clear timeline. I would describe that as perhaps aspirational, but it would be, it would be good. Whether this is, you know, a question of electoral politics within Bougainville, I think there would be, like, a more or less unanimous view in Bougainville that this needs to move forward as soon as possible. But I don’t know that a timeline is realistic.

The concerns that I would have about this, Don, would be not just about sort of questions of capacity and what happens in the negotiations in Bougainville, but we also need to think about what is happening in Papua New Guinea, and this goes for the entire process.

But here, in this case, PNG has its hands full with many other issues as well. There is a set of like LLG [Local Level Government] elections about to happen, so there are a great deal of things for the government to attend to. I wonder how viable it is to come up with a solution in a short time, but they are certainly capable of surprising everybody.

DW: The Prime Minister, James Marape, has said on a number of occasions that Bougainville is not economically ready or it hasn’t got the security situation under control. And my understanding is that when this was raised at the last meeting, there was quite a lot of giggling going on, because people were comparing what’s happened in Bougainville with what’s happening around the rest of the country, including in Southern Highlands, the province of Mr Marape.

TO: I think you know for me when I think about this, because I have worked with Bougainvilleans for a long time, and have worked with Papua New Guineans for a long time as well. The sense that I have is really one of quite sadness and a great missed opportunity.

Because if we wind the clock back to 1975, Bougainville declared independence, trying to pre-empt [the establishment of] Papua New Guinea. And that set in train a set of events that drastically reformed the Papua New Guinean political Constitution. Many of the sort of characteristic institutions we see now in Papua New Guinea, such as provinces, came about partly because of that.

That crisis, that first independence crisis, the first secession crisis, was resolved through deep changes to Papua New Guinea and to Bougainville, in which the country was able to grow and move forward.

What we see now, though, is this sort of view that Bougainville problems must all be solved in Bougainville, but in fact, many of the problems that are said to be Bougainville problems are Papua New Guinea problems, and that would include issues such as the economic difficulties that Bougainville finds itself in.

I mean, there are many ironies with this kind of criticism that Bougainville is not economically viable. One of them being that when Papua New Guinea became independent, it was largely dependent on Bougainville at that time. So Bougainvilleans are aware of this, and don’t really welcome that kind of idea.

But I think that more deeply there were some really important lessons I believe that could have been learned from the peace process that might have been very useful in other areas of Papua New Guinea, and because Bougainville has been kind of seen as this place apart, virtually as a foreign nation, those lessons have not, unfortunately, filtered back to Papua New Guinea in a way that might have been very helpful for everybody.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

A human rights group in Aotearoa New Zealand has welcomed support from several Pacific island nations for West Papua, which has been under Indonesian military occupation since the 1960s.

West Papua is a region (with five provinces) in the far east of Indonesia, centred on the island of New Guinea. Half of the eastern side of New Guinea is Papua New Guinea.

West Papua Action Aotearoa claims the Indonesian occupation of West Papua has resulted in serious human rights violations, including a lack of press freedom.

• READ MORE: West Papua liberation group demands Indonesia releases 12 arrested activists
• Other West Papua reports

Catherine Delahunty, the group’s spokesperson, says many West Papuans have been displaced as a result of Indonesia’s military activity.

In an interview with William Terite on PMN’s Pacific Mornings, the environmentalist and former Green Party MP said most people did not know much about West Papua “because there’s virtually a media blackout around this country”.

“It’s an hour away from Darwin [Australia], and yet, most people don’t know what has been going on there since the 1960s. It’s a very serious and tragic situation, which is the responsibility of all of us as neighbours,” she said.

“They [West Papuans] regard themselves fully as members of the Pacific community but are treated by Indonesia as an extension of their empire because they have all these natural resources, which Indonesia is rapidly extracting, using violence to maintain the state.”

Delahunty said the situation was “very disturbing”, adding there was a “need for support and change alongside the West Papuan people”.

UN support
In a recent joint statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the leaders of Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Sāmoa and Vanuatu called on the global community to support the displaced people of West Papua.

Delahunty said the Pacific island nations urged the UN Council to advocate for human rights in West Papua.

She also said West Papua Action Aotearoa wanted Indonesia to allow a visit from a UN human rights commissioner, a request that Indonesia has consistently denied.

She said Sāmoa was the latest country to support West Papua, contrasting this with the “lack of action from larger neighbours like New Zealand and Australia”.

Delahunty said that while smaller island nations and some African groups supported West Papua, more powerful states provide little assistance.

“It’s great that these island nations are keeping the issue alive at the United Nations, but we particularly want to shout out to Sāmoa because it’s a new thing,” she told Terite.

“They’ve never, as a government, made public statements. There are many Sāmoan people who support West Papua, and I work with them. But it’s great to see their government step up and make the statement.”

Historically, the only public statements supporting West Papua have come from American Sāmoan congressman Eni Faleomavaega, who strongly advocated for it until he died in 2017.

Praise for Sāmoa
Delahunty praised Sāmoa’s support for the joint statement but voiced her disappointment at New Zealand and Australia.

“What’s not encouraging is the failure of Australia and New Zealand to actually support this kind of joint statement and to vigorously stand up for West Papua because they have a lot of power in the region,” she said.

“They’re the big states, and yet it’s the leadership of the smaller nations that we see today.”

In September 2024, Phillip Mehrtens, a pilot from New Zealand, was released by West Papua rebels after being held captive for 19 months.

Mehrtens, 39, was kidnapped by West Papua National Liberation Army fighters in February 2023 and was released after lengthy negotiations and “critical’ diplomatic efforts by authorities in Wellington and Jakarta.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters welcomed his release.

Why is there conflict in West Papua?
Once a Dutch colony, the region is divided into five provinces, the two largest being Papua and West Papua. It is separate from PNG, which gained independence from Australia in 1975.

Papuan rebels seeking independence from Indonesia have issued threats and attacked aircraft they believe are carrying personnel and delivering supplies for Jakarta.

The resource-rich region has sought independence since 1969, when it came under Indonesia’s control following a disputed UN-supervised vote.

Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian authorities have been common with pro-independence fighters increasing their attacks since 2018.

The Free Papua Movement has conducted a low-intensity guerrilla war against Indonesia, targeting military and police personnel, along with ordinary Indonesian civilians.

Human rights groups estimate that Indonesian security forces have killed more than 300,000 West Papuans since the conflict started.

But the Indonesian government denies any wrongdoing, claiming that West Papua is part of Indonesia and was integrated after the controversial “Act of Free Choice” in 1969.

Manipulated process
The Act of Free Choice has been widely criticised as a manipulated process, with international observers and journalists raising concerns about the fairness and legitimacy of the plebiscite.

Despite the criticism, the United States and its allies in the region, New Zealand and Australia, have supported Indonesia’s efforts to gain acceptance in the UN for the pro-integration vote.

Human rights groups, such as Delahunty’s West Papua Action Aotearoa, have raised “serious concerns” about the deteriorating human rights situation in Papua and West Papua.

They cite alarming abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture, and mass displacement.

Delahunty believes the hope for change lies with the nations of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa. She said it also came from the younger people in Indonesia today.

“This is a colonisation issue, and it’s a bit like Aotearoa, in the sense that when the people who have been part of the colonising start addressing the issue, you get change. But it’s far too slow. So we are so disappointed.”

Republished with permission from PMN News.

Last week, on 26 February 2025, President Prabowo Subianto officially launched Indonesia’s first bullion banks, marking a significant shift in the country’s approach to gold and precious metal management.

This initiative aims to strengthen Indonesia’s control over its gold reserves, improve financial stability, and reduce reliance on foreign institutions for gold transactions.

Bullion banks specialise in buying, selling, storing, and trading gold and other precious metals. They allow both the government and private sector to manage gold-related financial transactions, including hedging, lending, and investment in the global gold market.

• READ MORE:  Indonesia joins BRICS: What now for West Papuan goal of independence?
• West Papua mining reports
• Other West Papua reports

Although bullion banks focus on gold, this move signals a broader trend of Indonesia tightening control over its natural resources. This could have a significant impact on West Papua’s coal industry.

With the government already enforcing benchmark coal prices (HBA) starting this month, the success of bullion banks could pave the way for a similar centralised system for coal and other minerals.

Indonesia also may apply similar regulations to other strategic resources, including coal, nickel, and copper. This could mean tighter government control over mining in West Papua.

If Indonesia expands national control over mining, it could lead to increased exploitation in resource-rich regions like West Papua, raising concerns about land rights, deforestation, and indigenous displacement.

Indonesia joined BRICS earlier this year and is now focusing on strengthening economic ties with other BRICS countries.

In the mining sector, Indonesia is using its membership to increase exports, particularly to key markets such as China and India. These countries are large consumers of coal and mineral resources, providing an opportunity for Indonesia to expand its export market and attract foreign direct investment in resource extraction.

India eyes coal in West Papua
India has shown interest in tapping into the coal reserves of the West Papua region, aiming to diversify its energy sources and secure coal supplies for its growing energy needs.

This initiative involves potential collaboration between the Indian government and Indonesian authorities to explore and develop previously unexploited coal deposits in West Papuan Indigenous lands.

However, the details of such projects are still under negotiation, with discussions focusing on the terms of investment and operational control.

Notably, India has sought special privileges, including no-bid contracts, in exchange for financing geological surveys — a proposition that raises concerns about compliance with Indonesia’s anti-corruption laws.

The prospect of coal mining in West Papua has drawn mixed reactions. While the Indonesian government is keen to attract foreign investment to boost economic development in its easternmost provinces, local communities and environmental groups express apprehension.

The primary concerns revolve around potential environmental degradation, disruption of local ecosystems, and the displacement of indigenous populations.

Moreover, there is scepticism about whether the economic benefits from such projects would trickle down to local communities or primarily serve external interests.

Navigating ethical, legal issues
As India seeks to secure energy resources to meet its domestic demands, it must navigate the ethical and legal implications of its investments abroad. Simultaneously, Indonesia faces the challenge of balancing economic development with environmental preservation and the rights of its indigenous populations.

While foreign investment in Indonesia’s mining sector is welcome, there are strict regulations in place to protect national interests.

In particular, foreign mining companies must sell at least 51 percent of their shares to Indonesian stakeholders within 10 years of starting production. This policy is designed to ensure that Indonesia retains greater control over its natural resources, while still allowing international investors to participate in the growth of the industry.

India is reportedly interested in mining coal in West Papua to diversify its fuel sources.

Indonesia’s energy ministry is hoping for economic benefits and a potential boost to the local steel industry. But environmentalists and social activists are sounding the alarm about the potential negative impacts of new mining operations.

During project discussions, India has shown an interest in securing special privileges, such as no-bid contracts, which could conflict with Indonesia’s anti-corruption laws.

Implications for West Papua
Indonesia, a country with a population of nearly 300 million, aims to industrialise. By joining BRICS (primarily Brasil, Russia, India, and China), it hopes to unlock new growth opportunities.

However, this path to industrialisation comes at a significant cost. It will continue to profoundly affect people’s lives and lead to environmental degradation, destroying wildlife and natural habitats.

These challenges echo the changes that began with the Industrial Revolution in England, where coal-powered advances drastically reshaped human life and the natural world.

West Papua has experienced a significant decline in its indigenous population due to Indonesia’s transmigration policy. This policy involves relocating large numbers of Muslim Indonesians to areas where Christian Papuans are the majority.

These newcomers settle on vast tracts of indigenous Papuan land. Military operations also continue.

One of the major problems resulting from these developments is the spread of torture, abuse, disease, and death, which, if not addressed soon, will reduce the Papuans to numbers too small to fight and reclaim their land.

Mining of any kind in West Papua is closely linked to, and in fact, is the main cause of, the dire situation in West Papua.

Large-scale exploitation
Since the late 1900s, the area’s rich coal and mineral resources have attracted both foreign and local investors. Large international companies, particularly from Western countries, have partnered with the Indonesian government in large-scale mining operations.

While the exploitation of West Papua’s resources has boosted Indonesia’s economy, it has also caused significant environmental damage and disruption to indigenous Papuan communities.

Mining has damaged local ecosystems, polluted water sources and reduced biodiversity. Indigenous Papuans have been displaced from their ancestral lands, leading to economic hardship and cultural erosion.

Although the government has tried to promote sustainable mining practices, the benefits have largely bypassed local communities. Most of the revenue from mining goes to Jakarta and large corporations, with minimal reinvestment in local infrastructure, health and education.

For more than 63 years, West Papua has faced exploitation and abuse similar to that which occurred when British law considered Australia to be terra nullius — “land that belongs to no one.” This legal fiction allowed the British to disregard the existence of indigenous people as the rightful owners and custodians of the land.

Similarly, West Papua has been treated as if it were empty, with indigenous communities portrayed in degrading ways to justify taking their land and clearing it for settlers.

Indonesia’s collective view of West Papua as a wild, uninhabited frontier has allowed settlers and colonial authorities to freely exploit the region’s rich resources.

Plundering with impunity
This is why almost anyone hungry for West Papua’s riches goes there and plunders with impunity. They cut down millions of trees, mine minerals, hunt rare animals and collect precious resources such as gold.

These activities are carried out under the control of the military or by bribing and intimidating local landowners.

The Indonesian government’s decision to grant mining licences to universities and religious groups will add more headaches for Papuans. It simply means that more entities have been given licences to exploit its resources — driving West Papuans toward extinction and destroying their ancestral homeland.

An example is the PT Megapura Prima Industri, an Indonesian coal mining company operating in Sorong on the western tip of West Papua. According to the local news media Jubi, the company has already violated rules and regulations designed to protect local Papuans and the environment.

Allowing India to enter West Papua, will have unprecedented and disastrous consequences for West Papua, including environmental degradation, displacement of indigenous communities, and human rights abuses.

As the BRICS nations continue to expand their economic footprint, Indonesia’s evolving mining landscape is likely to become a focal point of international investment discourse in the coming years.

Natural resources ultimate target
This means that West Papua’s vast natural resources will be the ultimate target and will continue to be a geopolitical pawn between superpowers, while indigenous Papuans remain marginalised and excluded from decision-making processes in their own land.

Regardless of policy changes on resource extraction, human rights, education, health, or any other facet, “Indonesia cannot and will not save West Papua” because “Indonesia’s presence in the sovereign territory of West Papua is the primary cause of the genocide of Papuans and the destruction of their homeland”.

As long as West Papua remains Indonesia’s frontier settler colony, backed by an intensive military presence, the entire Indonesian enterprise in West Papua effectively condemns both the Papuan people and their fragile ecosystem to a catastrophic fate, one that can only be avoided through a process of decolonisation and self-determination.

Restoring West Papua’s sovereignty, arbitrarily taken by Indonesia, is the best solution so that indigenous Papuans can engage with their world on their own terms, using the rich resources they have, and determining their own future and development pathway.

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He lives in Australia and contributes articles to Asia Pacific Report.

United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) provisional government interim president Benny Wenda has warned that since Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto took office in October, he has been proven right in having remarked, after the politician’s last February election, that his coming marks the return of “the ghost of Suharto” — the brutal dictator who ruled over the nation for three decades.

Wenda, an exiled West Papuan leader, outlined in a December 16 statement that at that moment the Indonesian forces were carrying out ethnic cleansing in multiple regencies, as thousands of West Papuans were being forced out of their villages and into the bush by soldiers.

The entire regency of Oksop had been emptied, with more than 1200 West Papuans displaced since an escalation began in Nduga regency in 2018.

• READ MORE: Mass displacements in West Papua show Prabowo’s true face
• Other West Papua reports

Prabowo coming to top office has a particular foreboding for the West Papuans, who have been occupied by Indonesia since 1963, as over his military career — which spanned from 1970 to 1998 and saw rise him to the position of general, as well as mainly serve in Kopassus (special forces) — the current president perpetrated multiple alleged atrocities across East Timor and West Papua.

According to Wenda, the incumbent Indonesian president can “never clean the blood from his hands for his crimes as a general in West Papua and East Timor”. He further makes clear that Prabowo’s acts since taking office reveal that he is set on “creating a new regime of brutality” in the country of his birth.

Enhancing the occupation
“Foreign governments should not be fooled by Prabowo’s PR campaign,” Wenda made certain in mid-December.

“He is desperately seeking international legitimacy through his international tour, empty environmental pledges and the amnesty offered to various prisoners, including 18 West Papuans and the remaining imprisoned members of the Bali Nine.”

Former Indonesian President Suharto ruled over the Southeast Asian nation with an iron fist from 1967 until 1998.

In the years prior to his officially taking office, General Suharto oversaw the mass murder of up to 1 million local Communists, he further rigged the 1969 referendum on self-determination for West Papua, so that it failed and he invaded East Timor in 1975.

Wenda maintains that the proof Prabowo is something of an apparition of Suharto is that he has set about forging “mass displacement, increased militarisation” and “increased deforestation” in the Melanesian region of West Papua.

And he has further restarted the transmigration programme of the Suharto days, which involves Indonesians being moved to West Papua to populate the region.

As Wenda advised in 2015, the initial transmigration programme resulted in West Papuans, who made up 96 percent of the population in 1971, only comprising 49 percent of those living in their own homelands at that current time.

Wenda considers the “occupation was entering a new phase”, when former Indonesian president Joko Widodo split the region of West Papua into five provinces in mid-2022.

And the West Papuan leader advises that Prabowo is set to establish separate military commands in each province, which will provide “a new, more thorough and far-reaching system of occupation”.

West Papua was previously split into two regions, which the West Papuan people did not recognise, as these and the current five provinces are actually Indonesian administrative zones.

“By establishing new administrative divisions, Indonesia creates the pretext for new military posts and checkpoints,” Wenda underscores.

“The result is the deployment of thousands more soldiers, curfews, arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses. West Papua is under martial law.”

Ecocide on a formidable scale
Prabowo paid his first official visit to West Papua as President in November, visiting the Merauke district in South Papua province, which is the site of the world’s largest deforestation project, with clearing beginning in mid-2024, and it will eventually comprise of 2 million deforested hectares turned into giant sugarcane plantations, via the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands.

Five consortiums, including Indonesian and foreign companies, are involved in the project, with the first seedlings having been planted in July. And despite promises that the megaproject would not harm existing forests, these areas are being torn down regardless.

And part of this deforestation includes the razing of forest that had previously been declared protected by the government.

A similar programme was established in Merauke district in 2011, by Widodo’s predecessor President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who established rice and sugarcane plantations in the region, aiming to turn it into a “future breadbasket for Indonesia”.

However, the plan was a failure, and the project was rather used as a cover to establish hazardous palm oil and pulpwood plantations.

“It is not a coincidence Prabowo has announced a new transmigration programme at the same time as their ecocidal deforestation regime intensifies,” Wenda said in a November 2024 statement. “These twin agendas represent the two sides of Indonesian colonialism in West Papua: exploitation and settlement.”

Wenda added that Jakarta is only interested in West Papuan land and resources, and in exchange, Indonesia has killed at least half a million West Papuans since 1963.

And while the occupying nation is funding other projects via the profits it has been making on West Papuan palm oil, gold and natural gas, the West Papuan provinces are the poorest in the Southeast Asian nation.

Independence is still key
The 1962 New York Agreement involved the Netherlands, West Papua’s former colonial rulers, signing over the region to Indonesia. A brief United Nations administrative period was to be followed by Jakarta assuming control of the region on 1 May 1963.

And part of the agreement was that West Papuans undertake the Act of Free Choice, or a 1969 referendum on self-determination.

So, if the West Papuans did not vote to become an autonomous nation, then Indonesian administration would continue.

However, the UN brokered referendum is now referred to as the Act of “No Choice”, as it only involved 1026 West Papuans, handpicked by Indonesia. And under threat of violence, all of these men voted to stick with their colonial oppressors.

Wenda presented The People’s Petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner in January 2019, which calls for a new internationally supervised vote on self-determination for the people of West Papua, and it included the signatures of 1.8 million West Papuans, or 70 percent of the Indigenous population.

The exiled West Papuan leader further announced the formation of the West Papua provisional government on 1 December 2020, which involved the establishment of entire departments of government with heads of staff appointed on the ground in the Melanesian province, and Wenda was also named the president of the body.

Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto has recommenced transmigration into West Papua, while embarking on the world’s largest deforestation project. #sydneycriminallawyers #indonesian #westpapuahttps://t.co/gTXg19eT2R

— SydneyCriminalLawyer (@sydcrimlawyers) January 4, 2025

But with the coming of Prabowo and the recent developments in West Papua, it appears the West Papuan struggle is about to intensify at the same time as the movement for independence becomes increasingly more prominent on the global stage.

“Every element of West Papua is being systematically destroyed: our land, our people, our Melanesian culture identity,” Wenda said in November, in response to the recommencement of Indonesia’s transmigration programme and the massive environment devastation in Merauke.

“This is why it is not enough to speak about the Act of No Choice in 1969: the violation of our self-determination is continuous, renewed with every new settlement programme, police crackdown, or ecocidal development.”

Paul Gregoire is a Sydney-based journalist and writer. He is the winner of the 2021 NSW Council for Civil Liberties Award For Excellence In Civil Liberties Journalism. Prior to Sydney Criminal Lawyers®, Paul wrote for VICE and was news editor at Sydney’s City Hub. Republished with permission.

With the door now shut on 2024, many will heave a sigh of relief and hope for better things this year.

Decolonisation issues involving the future of Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua –- and also in the Middle East with controversial United Nations votes by some Pacific nations in the middle of a livestreamed genocide — figured high on the agenda in the past year along with the global climate crisis and inadequate funding rescue packages.

Asia Pacific Report looks at some of the issues and developments during the year that were regarded by critics as “betrayals”:

• READ MORE: The hopes and fears of displaced West Papuans as a Prabowo presidency looms
• At ICJ, lawyer for Palestine rips US and Fiji for defending Israel
• Fiji human rights group condemns ‘troubling’ support for Israel at ICJ
• West Papua: Once was Papuan Independence Day, now facing ‘ecocide’, transmigration
• COP29: Pacific climate advocates decry outcome as ‘a catastrophic failure’

1. Fiji and PNG ‘betrayal’ UN votes over Palestine
Just two weeks before Christmas, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to demand an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip under attack from Israel — but three of the isolated nine countries that voted against were Pacific island states, including Papua New Guinea.

The assembly passed a resolution on December 11 demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which was adopted with 158 votes in favour from the 193-member assembly and nine votes against with 13 abstentions.

Of the nine countries voting against, the three Pacific nations that sided with Israel and its relentless backer United States were Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.

The other countries that voted against were Argentina, Czech Republic, Hungary and Paraguay.

Thirteen abstentions included Fiji, which had previously controversially voted with Israel, Micronesia, and Palau. Supporters of the resolution in the Pacific region included Australia, New Zealand, and Timor-Leste.

Ironically, it was announced a day before the UNGA vote that the United States will spend more than US$864 million (3.5 billion kina) on infrastructure and military training in Papua New Guinea over 10 years under a defence deal signed between the two nations in 2023, according to PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko.

Any connection? Your guess is as good as mine. Certainly it is very revealing how realpolitik is playing out in the region with an “Indo-Pacific buffer” against China.

However, the deal actually originated almost two years earlier, in May 2023, with the size of the package reflecting a growing US security engagement with Pacific island nations as it seeks to counter China’s inroads in the vast ocean region.

Noted BenarNews, a US soft power news service in the region, the planned investment is part of a defence cooperation agreement granting the US military “unimpeded access” to develop and deploy forces from six ports and airports, including Lombrum Naval Base.

Two months before PNG’s vote, the UNGA overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that the Israeli government end its occupation of Palestinian territories within 12 months — but half of the 14 countries that voted against were from the Pacific.

Affirming an International Court of Justice (ICJ) opinion requested by the UN that deemed the decades-long occupation unlawful, the opposition from seven Pacific nations further marginalised the island region from world opinion against Israel.

Several UN experts and officials warned against Israel becoming a global “pariah” state over its 15 month genocidal war on Gaza.

The final vote tally was 124 member states in favour and 14 against, with 43 nations abstaining. The Pacific countries that voted with Israel and its main ally and arms-supplier United States against the Palestinian resolution were Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Tonga and Tuvalu.

In February, Fiji faced widespread condemnation after it joined the US as one of the only two countries — branded as the “outliers” — to support Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory in an UNGA vote over an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion over Israel’s policies in the occupied territories.

Condemning the US and Fiji, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki declared: “Ending Israel’s impunity is a moral, political and legal imperative.”

Fiji’s envoy at the UN, retired Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini, defended the country’s stance, saying the court “fails to take account of the complexity of this dispute, and misrepresents the legal, historical, and political context”.

However, Fiji NGOs condemned the Fiji vote as supporting “settler colonialism” and long-standing Fijian diplomats such as Kaliopate Tavola and Robin Nair said Fiji had crossed the line by breaking with its established foreign policy of “friends-to-all-and-enemies-to-none”.

2. West Papuan self-determination left in limbo
For the past decade, Pacific Island Forum countries have been trying to get a fact-finding human mission deployed to West Papua. But they have encountered zero progress with continuous roadblocks being placed by Jakarta.

This year was no different in spite of the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate such a visit.

Pacific leaders have asked for the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military continues its battles with West Papuan independence fighters.

A highly critical UN Human Right Committee report on Indonesia released in May highlighted “systematic reports about the use of torture” and “extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Indigenous Papuan people”.

But the situation is worse now since President Prabowo Subianto, the former general who has a cloud of human rights violations hanging over his head, took office in October.

Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group in 2023 as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president.

Prabowo taking up the top job in Jakarta has filled West Papuan advocates and activists with dread as this is seen as marking a return of “the ghost of Suharto” because of his history of alleged atrocities in West Papua, and also in Timor-Leste before independence.

Already Prabowo’s acts since becoming president with restoring the controversial transmigration policies, reinforcing and intensifying the military occupation, fuelling an aggressive “anti-environment” development strategy, have heralded a new “regime of brutality”.

And Marape and Rabuka, who pledged to exiled indigenous leader Benny Wenda in Suva in February 2023 that he would support the Papuans “because they are Melanesians”, have been accused of failing the West Papuan cause.

3. France rolls back almost four decades of decolonisation ‘progress’
When pro-independence protests erupted into violent rioting in Kanaky New Caledonia on May 13, creating havoc and destruction in the capital of Nouméa and across the French Pacific territory with 14 people dead (mostly indigenous Kanaks), intransigent French policies were blamed for having betrayed Kanak aspirations for independence.

I was quoted at the time by The New Zealand Herald and RNZ Pacific of blaming France for having “lost the plot” since 2020.

While acknowledging the goodwill and progress that had been made since the 1988 Matignon accords and the Nouméa pact a decade later following the bloody 1980s insurrection, the French government lost the self-determination trajectory after two narrowly defeated independence referendums and a third vote boycotted by Kanaks because of the covid pandemic.

This third vote with less than half the electorate taking part had no credibility, but Paris insisted on bulldozing constitutional electoral changes that would have severely disenfranchised the indigenous vote. More than 36 years of constructive progress had been wiped out.

“It’s really three decades of hard work by a lot of people to build, sort of like a future for Kanaky New Caledonia, which is part of the Pacific rather than part of France,” I was quoted as saying.

France had had three prime ministers since 2020 and none of them seemed to have any “real affinity” for indigenous issues, particularly in the South Pacific, in contrast to some previous leaders.

In the wake of a snap general election in mainland France, when President Emmanuel Macron lost his centrist mandate and is now squeezed between the polarised far right National Rally and the left coalition New Popular Front, the controversial electoral reform was quietly scrapped.

New French Overseas Minister Manual Valls has heralded a new era of negotiation over self-determination. In November, he criticised Macron’s “stubbornness’ in an interview with the French national daily Le Parisien, blaming him for “ruining 36 years of dialogue, of progress”.

But New Caledonia is not the only headache for France while pushing for its own version of an “Indo-Pacific” strategy. Pro-independence French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson and civil society leaders have called on the UN to bring Paris to negotiations over a timetable for decolonisation.

However, they were disappointed. And their own internal political divisions have not made things any easier.

On the eve of the three-day fact-finding delegation to the territory in October, Fiji’s Rabuka was already warning the local government (led by pro-independence Louis Mapou to “be reasonable” in its demands from Paris.

In other words, back off on the independence demands. Rabuka was quoted by RNZ Pacific reporter Lydia Lewis as saying, “look, don’t slap the hand that has fed you”.

Rabuka and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown and then Tongan counterpart Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni visited the French territory not to “interfere” but to “lower the temperature”.

But an Australian proposal for a peacekeeping force under the Australian-backed Pacific Policing Initiative (PPI) fell flat, and the mission was generally considered a failure for Kanak indigenous aspirations.

5. Climate crisis — the real issue and geopolitics
In spite of the geopolitical pressures from countries, such as the US, Australia and France, in the region in the face of growing Chinese influence, the real issue for the Pacific remains climate crisis and what to do about it.

Controversy marked an A$140 million aid pact signed between Australia and Nauru last month in what was being touted as a key example of the geopolitical tightrope being forced on vulnerable Pacific countries.

This agreement offers Nauru direct budgetary support, banking services and assistance with policing and security. The strings attached? Australia has been granted the right to veto any agreement with a third country such as China.

Critics have compared this power of veto to another agreement signed between Australia and Tuvalu in 2023 which provided Australian residency opportunities and support for climate mitigation. However, in return Australia was handed guarantees over security.

The previous month, November, was another disappointment for the Pacific when it was “once again ignored” at the UN COP29 climate summit in the capital Baku of oil and natural gas-rich Azerbaijan.

The Suva-based Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) condemned the outcomes as another betrayal, saying that the “richest nations turned their backs on their legal and moral obligations” at what had been billed as the “finance COP”.

The new climate finance pledge of a US$300 billion annual target by 2035 for the global fight against climate change was well short of the requested US$1 trillion in aid.

Climate campaigners and activist groups branded it as a “shameful failure of leadership” that forced Pacific nations to accept the “token pledge” to prevent the negotiations from collapsing.

Much depends on a climate justice breakthrough with Vanuatu’s landmark case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) arguing that those harming the climate are breaking international law.

The case seeks an advisory opinion from the court on the legal responsibilities of countries over the climate crisis, and many nations in support of Vanuatu made oral submissions last month and are now awaiting adjudication.

Given the primacy of climate crisis and vital need for funding for adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage faced by vulnerable Pacific countries, former Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Meg Taylor delivered a warning:

“Pacific leaders are being side-lined in major geopolitical decisions affecting their region and they need to start raising their voices for the sake of their citizens.”

Just one day after President Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration, a minister announced plans to resume the transmigration programme in eastern Indonesia, particularly in Papua, saying it was needed for enhancing unity and providing locals with welfare.

Transmigration is the process of moving people from densely populated regions to less densely populated ones in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most populous country with 285 million people.

The ministry intends to revitalise 10 zones in Papua, potentially using local relocation rather than bringing in outsiders.

• READ MORE: Prabowo’s presidency sparks fear and faint hope in Indonesia’s restive Papua
• Other West Papua reports

The programme will resume after it was officially paused in Papua 23 years ago.

“We want Papua to be fully united as part of Indonesia in terms of welfare, national unity and beyond,” Muhammad Iftitah Sulaiman Suryanagara, the Minister of Transmigration, said during a handover ceremony on October 21.

Iftitah promised strict evaluations focusing on community welfare rather than on relocation numbers. Despite the minister’s promises, the plan drew an outcry from indigenous Papuans who cited social and economic concerns.

Papua, a remote and resource-rich region, has long been a flashpoint for conflict, with its people enduring decades of military abuse and human rights violations under Indonesian rule.

Human rights abuses
Prabowo, a former army general, was accused of human rights abuses in his military career, including in East Timor (Timor-Leste) during a pro-independence insurgency against Jakarta rule.

Simon Balagaize, a young Papuan leader from Merauke, highlighted the negative impacts of transmigration efforts in Papua under dictator Suharto’s New Order during the 1960s.

“Customary land was taken, forests were cut down, and the indigenous Malind people now speak Javanese better than their native language,” he told BenarNews.

The Papuan Church Council stressed that locals desperately needed services, but could do without more transmigration.

“Papuans need education, health services and welfare – not transmigration that only further marginalises landowners,” Reverend Dorman Wandikbo, a member of the council, told BenarNews.

Transmigration into Papua has sparked protests over concerns about reduced job opportunities for indigenous people, along with broader political and economic impacts.

Apei Tarami, who joined a recent demonstration in South Sorong, Southwest Papua province, warned of consequences, stating that “this policy affects both political and economic aspects of Papua.”

We firmly reject Indonesia’s new transmigration policy to relocate Indonesians to West Papua, along with the world’s biggest deforestation project in Merauke, as it threatens the survival of West Papuans.

ULMWP International Spokesperson, Raki Ap.

Full: https://t.co/rM08vQu32C pic.twitter.com/5EVSgzbnpq

— Free West Papua Campaign (Nederland) (@FreeWestPapuaNL) November 4, 2024

Human rights ignored
Meanwhile, human rights advocate Theo Hasegem criticised the government’s plans, arguing that human rights issues are ignored and non-Papuans could be endangered because pro-independence groups often target newcomers.

“Do the president and vice-president guarantee the safety of those relocated from Java,” Hasegem told BenarNews.

The programme, which dates to 1905, has continued through various administrations under the guise of promoting development and unity.

Indonesia’s policy resumed post-independence on December 12, 1950, under President Sukarno, who sought to foster prosperity and equitable development.

It also aimed to promote social unity by relocating citizens across regions.

Transmigration involving 78,000 families occurred in Papua from 1964 to 1999, according to statistics from the Papua provincial government. That would equal between 312,000 and 390,000 people settling in Papua from other parts of the country, assuming the average Indonesian family has 4 to 5 people.

The programme paused in 2001 after a Special Autonomy Law required regional regulations to be followed.

Legality questioned
Papuan legislator John N.R. Gobay questioned the role of Papua’s six new autonomous regional governments in the transmigration process. He cited Article 61 of the law, which mandates that transmigration proceed only with gubernatorial consent and regulatory backing.

Without these clear regional regulations, he warned, transmigration lacks a strong legal foundation and could conflict with special autonomy rules.

He also pointed to a 2008 Papuan regulation stating that transmigration should proceed only after the Indigenous Papuan population reaches 20 million. In 2023, the population across six provinces of Papua was about 6.25 million, according to Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS).

Gobay suggested prioritising local transmigration to better support indigenous development in their own region.

‘Entrenched inequality’
British MP Alex Sobel, chair of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, expressed concern over the programme, noting its role in drastic demographic shifts and structural discrimination in education, land rights and employment.

“Transmigration has entrenched inequality rather than promoting prosperity,” Sobel told BenarNews, adding that it had contributed to Papua remaining Indonesia’s poorest regions.

Pramono Suharjono, a resident of Arso II in Keerom, Papua, welcomed the idea of restarting the programme, viewing it as positive for the region’s growth.

“This supports national development, not colonisation,” he told BenarNews.

A former transmigrant who has served as a local representative, Pramono said transmigration had increased local knowledge in agriculture, craftsmanship and trade.

However, research has shown that longstanding social issues, including tensions from cultural differences, have marginalised indigenous Papuans and fostered resentment toward non-locals, said La Pona, a lecturer at Cenderawasih University.

Papua also faces a humanitarian crisis because of conflicts between Indonesian forces and pro-independence groups. United Nations data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 Papuans were displaced between and 2022.

As of September 2024, human rights advocates estimate 79,000 Papuans remain displaced even as Indonesia denies UN officials access to the region.

Pizaro Gozali Idrus in Jakarta contributed to this report. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

In the lead up to the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto last Sunday, Indonesia established five “Vulnerable Area Buffer Infantry Battalions” in key regions across West Papua — a move described by Indonesian Army Chief-of-Staff Maruli Simanjuntak as a “strategic initiative” by the new leader.

The battalions are based in the Keerom, Sarmi, Boven Digoel, Merauke and Sorong regencies, and their aim is to “enhance security” in Papua, and also to strengthen Indonesia’s military presence in response to long-standing unrest and conflict, partly related to independence movements and local resistance.

According to Armed Forces chief General Agus Subiyanto, “the main goal of the new battalions is to assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people”.

• READ MORE: Indonesia to offer ‘amnesty’ for West Papuans contesting Jakarta’s rule
• Other West Papua reports

However, this raises concerns about further militarisation and repression of a region already plagued by long-running violence and human rights abuses in the context of the movement for a free and independent West Papua.

Thousands of Indonesian soldiers have been stationed in areas impacted by violence, including Star Mountain, Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak and Puncak Jaya.

As a result, the situation in West Papua is becoming increasingly difficult for indigenous people.

Extrajudicial killings in Papua go unreported or are only vaguely known about internationally. Those who are aware of these either disregard them or accept them as an “unavoidable consequence” of civil unrest in what Indonesia refers to as its most eastern provinces — the “troubled regions”.

Why do the United Nations, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the international community stay silent?

While the Indonesian government frames this move as a strategy to enhance security and promote development, it risks exacerbating long-standing tensions in a region with deep-seated conflicts over autonomy and independence and the impacts of extractive industries and agribusiness on West Papuan people and their environment.

Exploitative land theft
The Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, in collaboration with various international and Indonesian human and environmental rights organisations, presented testimony at the public hearings of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) at Queen Mary University of London, in June.

The tribunal heard testimonies relating to a range of violations by Indonesia. A key issue, highlighted was the theft of indigenous Papuan land by the Indonesian government and foreign corporations in connection to extractive industries such as mining, logging and palm oil plantations.

The appropriation of traditional lands without the consent of the Papuan people violates their right to land and self-determination, leading to environmental degradation, loss of livelihood, and displacement of Indigenous communities.

The tribunal’s judgment underscores how the influx of non-Papuan settlers and the Indonesian government’s policies have led to the marginalisation of Papuan culture and identity. The demographic shift due to transmigration programmes has significantly reduced the proportion of Indigenous Papuans in their own land.

Moreover, a rise in militarisation in West Papua has often led to heightened repression, with potential human rights violations, forced displacement and further marginalisation of the indigenous communities.

The decision to station additional military forces in West Papua, especially in conflict-prone areas like Nduga, Yahukimo and Intan Jaya, reflects a continuation of Indonesia’s militarised approach to governance in the region.

Security pact
The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) was signed by the two countries in 2010 but only came into effect this year after the PNG Parliament ratified it in late February.

Indonesia ratified the pact in 2012.

As reported by Asia Pacific Report, PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko and Indonesia’s ambassador to PNG, Andriana Supandy, said the DCA enabled an enhancement of military operations between the two countries, with a specific focus on strengthening patrols along the PNG-West Papua border.

This will have a significant impact on civilian communities in the areas of conflict and along the border. Indigenous people in particular, are facing the threat of military takeovers of their lands and traditional border lines.

Under the DCA, the joint militaries plan to employ technology, including military drones, to monitor and manage local residents’ every move along the border.

Human rights
Prabowo, Defence Minister prior to being elected President, has a controversial track record on human rights — especially in the 1990s, during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.

His involvement in military operations in West Papua adds to fears that the new battalions may be used for oppressive measures, including crackdowns on dissent and pro-independence movements.

As indigenous communities continue to be marginalised, their calls for self-determination and independence may grow louder, risking further conflict in the region.

Without substantial changes in the Indonesian government’s approach to West Papua, including addressing human rights abuses and engaging in meaningful dialogue with indigenous leaders, the future of West Papuans remains uncertain and fraught with challenges.

With ongoing military operations often accused of targeting indigenous populations, the likelihood of further human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and forced displacement, remains high.

Displacement
Military operations in West Papua frequently result in the displacement of indigenous Papuans, as they flee conflict zones.

The presence of more battalions could drive more communities from their homes, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the region. Indigenous peoples, who rely on their land for survival, face disruption of their traditional livelihoods and rising poverty.

The Indonesian government launched the Damai Cartenz military operation on April 5, 2018, and it is still in place in the conflict zones of Yahukimo, Pegunungan Bintang, Nduga and Intan Jaya.

Since then, according to a September 24 Human Rights Monitor update, more than 79,867 West Papuans remain internally displaced.

The displacement, killings, shootings, abuses, tortures and deaths are merely the tip of the iceberg of what truly occurs within the tightly-controlled military operational zones across West Papua, according to Benny Wenda, a UK-based leader of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP).

The international community, particularly the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum have been criticised for remaining largely silent on the matter. Responding to the August 31 PIF communique reaffirming its 2019 call for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, Wenda said:

“[N]ow is the time for Indonesia to finally let the world see what is happening in our land. They cannot hide their dirty secret any longer.”

Increased global attention and intervention is crucial in addressing the humanitarian crisis, preventing further escalations and supporting the rights and well-being of the West Papuans.

Without meaningful dialogue, the long-term consequences for the indigenous population may be severe, risking further violence and unrest in the region.

As Prabowo was sworn in, Wenda restated the ULMWP’s demand for an internationally-mediated referendum on independence, saying: “The continued violation of our self-determination is the root cause of the West Papua conflict.”

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and Green Left in Australia.

The Land of Papua is widely known as a land full of milk and honey. It is a name widely known in Indonesia that refers to the western half of the island of New Guinea.

Its natural wealth and beauty are special treasures entrusted by the Creator to the Papuan people who are of Melanesian ethnicity.

The beauty of the land inhabited by the blackish and brownish-skinned people is often sung about by Papuans in “Tanah Papua”, a song created by the late Yance Rumbino. The lyrics, besides being musical art, also contain expressions of gratitude and prayer for the masterpiece of the Creator.

• READ MORE: West Papua: The issue that won’t go away for Melanesia

For Papuans, “Tanah Papua” — composed by a former teacher in the central highlands of Papua — is always sung at various important events with a Papuan nuance, both in the Land of Papua and other parts of the world in Papuan gatherings.

The rich, beautiful and mysterious Land of Papua as expressed in the lyrics of the song has not been placed in the right position by the hands of those in power.

So for Papuans, when singing “Tanah Papua”, on one hand they admire and are grateful for all of God’s works in their ancestral land. On the other hand, by singing that song, they remind themselves to stay strong in facing daily challenges.

The characteristics of the Land of Papua geographically and ethnographically are the same as the eastern part of the island of New Guinea, now the independent state of Papua New Guinea.

Attractive to Europe
The beauty and wealth of natural resources and the richness of cultural heritage initially become attractions to European nations.

Therefore, the richness attracted the Europeans who later became the colonisers and invaders of the island.

The Dutch invaded the western part of the island and the British Empire and Germany the eastern part of the island.

The Europeans were present on the island of New Guinea with a “3Gs mission” (gospel, gold, glory). The gospel mission is related to the spread of Christianity. The gold mission is related to power over natural resource wealth. The glory mission is related to reigning over politics and territory on indigenous land outside of Europe.

The western part of the island, during the Dutch administration, was known as Dutch New Guinea or Netherlands New Guinea. Later when Indonesia took over the territory, was then named West Irian, and now it is called Papua or internationally known as West Papua.

The Land of Papua is divided into six provinces and it is home to 250 indigenous Melanesian tribes.

Meanwhile, the eastern part of the island which currently stands on its independent state New Guinea is home to more than 800 indigenous Melanesian tribes. Given the anthropological and ethnographic facts, the Land of Papua and PNG collectively are the most diverse and richest island in the world.

Vital role of language
In the process of forming an embryo and giving birth to a new nation and country, language plays an important role in uniting the various existing indigenous tribes and languages.

In Papua, after the Dutch left its territory and Indonesia took over control over the island, Bahasa Indonesia — modified Malay — was introduced. As a result, Indonesian became the unifying language for all Papuans, all the way from the Sorong to the Merauke region.

Besides Bahasa Indonesia, Papuans are still using their ancestral languages.

Meanwhile, in PNG, Tok Pisin, English and Hiri Motu are three widely spoken languages besides indigenous Melanesian languages. After the British Empire and Germany left the eastern New Guinea territory,

PNG, then an Australian administered former British protectorate and League of Nations mandate, gained its independence in 1975 — yesterday was celebrated as its 49th anniversary.

The relationship between the Land of Papua and its Melanesian sibling PNG is going well.

However, the governments of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea with the spirit of sharing the same land and ocean, culture and values, and the same blood and ancestors, should take tangible steps.

Melanesian policies
As an example, the foreign policy of each country needs to be translated into deep-rooted policies and regulations that fulfill the inner desire of the Melanesian people from both sides of the divide.

And then it needs to be extended to other Melanesian countries in the spirit of “we all are wantok” (one speak). The Melanesian countries and territories include the Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

Together, they are members of the sub-regional Oceania political organisation Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG).

In that forum, Indonesia is an associate member, while the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and Timor-Leste are observers. The ULMWP is the umbrella organisation for the Papuans who are dissatisfied with at least four root causes as concluded by Papua Road Map (2010), the distortion of the historical facts, racial injustice and discrimination, human rights violations, and marginalisation that Papuans have been experiencing for years.

Fiji:
Here is a brief overview of the diplomatic relationship between the Indonesian government and Melanesian countries. First, Indonesia-Fiji bilateral affairs. The two countries cooperate in several areas including defence, police, development, trade, tourism sector, and social issues including education, broadcasting and people-to-people to contact.

PNG:
Second, Indonesia-PNG bilateral affairs. The two countries cooperate in several areas including trade cooperation, investment, tourism, people-to-people contact and connectivity, energy and minerals, plantations and fisheries.

in February 2024, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea boosted defence cooperation by ratifying an agreement, which includes border patrols in a region where indigenous Papuans have waged a decades-long independence struggle against Jakarta’s rule.

Solomon Islands:
Third, Indonesia-Solomon Islands diplomacy. The two countries cooperate in several areas including trade, investment, telecommunications, mining and tourism.

Interestingly, the country that is widely known in the Pacific as a producer of “Pacific Beat” musicians receives a significant amount of assistance from the Indonesian government.

Indonesia and the Solomon Islands do not have security and defence cooperation.

Vanuatu:
Fourth, Indonesia-Vanuatu cooperation. Although Vanuatu is known as a country that is consistent and steadfast in supporting “Free Papua”, it turns out that the two countries have had diplomatic relations since 1995.

They have cooperation in three sectors: trade, investment and tourism. Additionally, the MSG is based in Port Vila, the Vanuatu capital.

FLNKS — New Caledonia:
Meanwhile, New Caledonia, the territory that is vulnerable to political turmoil in seeking independence from France, is still a French overseas territory in the Pacific. Cooperation between the Indonesian and New Caledonia governments covers the same sectors as other MSG members.

However, one sector that gives a different aspect to Indonesia-New Caledonia affairs is cooperation in language, society and culture.

Indonesia’s relationship with MSG member countries cannot be limited to political debate or struggle only. Even though Indonesia has not been politically accepted as a full member of the MSG forum, in other forums in the region Indonesia has space to establish bilateral relations with Pacific countries.

For example, in June 2014, then President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was invited to be one of the keynote speakers at the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) summit in Nadi, Fiji.

PIDF is home to 12 member countries (Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Palau, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu). Its mission is to implement green economic policies in the Pacific.

Multilateral forums
Indonesia has also joined various multilateral forums with other Pacific countries. The Archipelagic and Island States (AIS) is one example — Pacific states through mutual benefits programs.

During the outgoing President Joko Widodo’s administration, Indonesia initiated several cooperation projects with Pacific states, such as hosting the Pacific Exposition in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2019, and initiating the Indonesia-Pacific Development Forum.

Will Indonesia be granted a full membership status at the MSG? Or will ULMWP be granted an associate or full membership status at the MSG? Only time will reveal.

Both the Indonesian government and the United Liberation Movement for West Papua see a home at the MSG.

As former RNZ Pacific journalist Johnny Blades wrote in 2020, “West Papua is the issue that won’t go away for Melanesia”.

At this stage, the leaders of MSG countries are faced with moral and political dilemmas. The world is watching what next step will be taken by the MSG over the region’s polarising issue.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta, and is a member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

Pope Francis has completed his historic first visit to Southeast Asian and Pacific nations.

The papal apostolic visit covered Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Timor-Leste.

This visit is furst to the region after he was elected as the leader of the Catholic Church based in Rome and also as the Vatican Head of State.

• READ MORE: Pope Francis’ longest tour gives joy, hope to millions in Asia-Pacific
• Pope Francis calls for end to tribal ‘spiral of violence’ in PNG visit
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• Other Pope Francis reports

Under Pope Francis’ leadership, many church traditions have been renewed. For example, he gives space to women to take some important leadership and managerial roles in Vatican.

Many believe that the movement of the smiling Pope in distributing roles to women and lay groups is a timely move. Besides, during his term as the head of the Vatican state, the Pope has changed the Vatican’s banking and financial system.

Now, it is more transparent and accountable.

Besides, the Holy Father bluntly acknowledges the darkness concealed by the church hierarchy for years and graciously apologises for the wrong committed by the church.

The Pope invites the clergy (shepherds) to live simply, mingling and uniting with the members of the congregation (sheep).

The former archbishop of Buenos Aires also encourages the church to open itself to accepting congregations who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT).

However, Papa Francis’ encouragement was flooded with protests from some members of the church. And it is still an ongoing spiritual battle that has not been fully delivered in Catholic Church.

Two encyclicals
Pope Francis, the successor of Apostle Peter, is a humble and modest man. Under his papacy, the highest authority of the Catholic Church has issued four apostolic works, two in the form of encyclicals, namely Lumen Fidei (Light of Faith) and Laudato si’ (Praise Be to You) and two others in the form of apostolic exhortations, namely Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel) and Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love).

Of the four masterpieces of the Pope, the encyclical Laudato si’ seems to gain most attention globally.

The encyclical Laudato si’ is an invitation from the Holy Father to human beings to be responsible for the existence of the universe. He begs us human beings not to exploit and torture Mother Nature.

We should respect nature because it provides plants and cares for us like a mother does for her children. Therefore, caring for the environment or the universe is a calling that needs to be responded to genuinely.

This apostolic call is timely because the world is experiencing various threats of natural devastation that leads to natural disasters.

The irresponsible and greedy behaviour of human beings has destroyed the beauty and diversity of the flora and fauna. Other parts of the world have experienced and are experiencing adverse impacts.

This is also taking place in the Pacific region.

Sinking cities
The World Economy Forum (2019) reports that it is estimated there will be eleven cities in the world that will “sink” by 2100. The cities listed include Jakarta (Indonesia), Lagos (Nigeria), Houston (Texas-US), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Virginia Beach (Virginia-US), Bangkok (Thailand), New Orleans (Louisiana-US), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Alexandra (Egypt), and Miami (Florida-US).

During the visit of the 266th Pope, he addressed the importance of securing and protecting our environment and climate crisis.

During the historic interfaith dialogue held at the Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque on September 5, the 87-year-old Pope said Indonesia was blessed with rainforest and rich in natural resources.

He indirectly referred to the Land of Papua — internationally known as West Papua. The message was not only addressed to the government of Indonesia, but also to Papua New Guinea.

The apostolic visit amazed people in Indonesia which is predominantly a Muslim nation. The humbleness and friendliness of Papa Francis touched the hearts of many, not only Christians, but also people with other religious backgrounds.

Witnessing the presence of the Pope in Jakarta firsthand, we could certainly testify that his presence has brought tremendous joy and will be remembered forever. Those who experienced joy were not only because of the direct encounter.

Some were inspired when watching the broadcast on the mainstream or social media.

The Pope humbly made himself available to be greeted by his people and blessed those who approached him. Those who received the greeting from the Holy Father also came from different age groups — starting from babies in the womb, toddlers and teenagers, young people, adults, the elderly and brothers and sisters with disabilities.

Pope brings inner comfort
An unforgettable experience of faith that the people of the four nations did not expect, but experienced, was that the presence of the Pope Francis brought inner comfort. It was tremendously significant given the social conditions of Indonesia, PNG and Timor-Leste are troubled politically and psychologically.

State policies that do not lift the people out of poverty, practices of injustice that are still rampant, corruption that seems endemic and systemic, the seizure of indigenous people’s customary land by giant companies with government permission, and an economic system that brings profits to a handful of people are some of the factors that have caused disturbed the inner peace of the people.

In Indonesia, soon after the inauguration on October 20 of the elected President and Vice-President, Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the people of Indonesia will welcome the election of governors and deputy governors, regents and deputy regents, mayors and deputy mayors.

This will include the six provinces in the Land of Papua. The simultaneous regional elections will be held on November 27.

The public will monitor the process of the regional election. Reflecting on the presidential election which allegedly involved the current President’s “interference”, in the collective memory of democracy lovers there is a possibility of interference from the government that will lead the nation.

Could that happen? Only time will tell. The task of all elements of society is to jointly maintain the values of honest, honest and open democracy.

Pope Francis in his book, Let Us Dream, the Path to the Future (2020) wrote:

“We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded, and the vulnerable that gives people a say in the decisions that impact their lives.”

Hope for people’s struggles
This message of Pope Francis has a deep meaning in the current context. What is common everywhere, politicians only make sweet promises or give fake hope to voters so that they are elected.

After being elected, the winning or elected candidate tends to be far from the people.

Therefore, a fragment of the Holy Father’s invitation in the book needs to be a shared concern. The written and implied meaning of the fragment above is not far from the democratic values adopted by Indonesia and other Pacific nations.

Pacific Islanders highly value the views of each person. But lately the noble values that were well-cultivated and inherited by the ancestors are increasingly diminishing.

Hopefully, the governments will deliver on the real needs and struggles of the people.

“Our greatest power is not in the respect that others have for us, but the service we can give others,” wrote Pope Francis.

Laurens Ikinia is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta, and is a member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

Fiji’s Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, says he will “apologise” to fellow Melanesian leaders later this month after failing to secure agreement from Indonesia to visit its restive West Papua province.

At last year’s Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders meeting in Cook Islands, the Melanesian Spearhead Group appointed Rabuka and PNG Prime Minister James Marape as the region’s “special envoys” on West Papua.

Several Pacific officials and advocacy groups have expressed anguish over alleged human rights abuses committed by Indonesian forces in West Papua, where an indigenous pro-independence struggle has simmered for decades.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

Rabuka and Marape have been trying to organise a visit to West Papua for more than nine months now.

But in an exclusive interview with the ABC’s Pacific Beat, Rabuka said conversations on the trip were still “ongoing” and blamed Indonesia’s presidential elections in February for the delay.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t go . . .  Indonesia was going through elections. In two months’ time, they will have a new substantive president in place in the palace. Hopefully we can still move forward with that,” he said.

“But in the meantime, James Marape and I will have to apologise to our Melanesian counterparts on the side of the Forum Island leaders meeting in Tonga, and say we have not been able to go on that mission.”

Pacific pressing for independent visit
Pacific nations have been pressing Indonesia to allow representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct an independent visit to Papua.

A UN Human Rights committee report released in May found there were “systematic reports” of both torture and extrajudicial killings of indigenous Papuans in the province.

But Indonesia usually rejects any criticism of its human rights record in West Papua, saying events in the province are a purely internal affair.

West Papua Resistance Leader, Victor Weimo: I must thank the colonialists for continuously teaching us to aspire to true humanity by means of rebellion. pic.twitter.com/h9n4rN9yyN

— Sina Brown-Davis سينا (@uriohau) December 1, 2022

Rabuka said he was “still committed” to the visit and would like to make the trip after incoming Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto takes power in October.

The Fiji prime minister made the comments ahead of a 10-day trip to China, with Rabuka saying he would travel to a number of Chinese provinces to see how the emerging great power had pulled millions of people out of poverty.

He praised Beijing’s development record, but also indicated Fiji would not turn to China for loans or budget support.

“As we take our governments and peoples forward, the people themselves must understand that we cannot borrow to become embroiled in debt servicing later on,” he said.

“People must understand that we can only live within our means, and our means are determined by our own productivity, our own GDP.”

Rabuka is expected to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing towards the end of his trip, at the beginning of next week.

Delegation to visit New Caledonia
After his trip to China, the prime minister will take part in a high level Pacific delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia, which was rocked by widespread rioting and violence earlier this year.

While several Pacific nations have been pressing France to make fresh commitments towards decolonisation in the wake of a contentious final vote on independence back in 2021, Rabuka said the Pacific wanted to help different political groups within the territory to find common ground.

“We will just have to convince the leaders, the local group leaders that rebuilding is very difficult after a spate of violent activities and events,” he said.

Rabuka gave strong backing to a plan to overhaul Pacific policing which Australia has been pushing hard ahead of the PIF leaders meeting in Tonga at the end of this month.

Senior Solomon Islands official Collin Beck took to social media last week to publicly criticise the initiative, suggesting that its backers were trying to “steamroll” any opposition at Pacific regional meetings.

Rabuka said the social media post was “unfortunate” and suggested that Solomon Islands or other Pacific nations could simply opt out of the initiative if they didn’t approve of it.

“When it comes to sovereignty, it is a sovereign state that makes the decision,” he said.

Republished with permission from ABC Pacific Beat.

No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.

Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.

The latest UN Human Rights Committee report on Indonesia in March was highly critical and raised concerns about extrajudicial killing, excessive use of force and enforced disappearances involving indigenous Papuans.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua decolonisation reports

Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.

“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.

“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.

“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”

Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.

The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.

Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.

The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.

In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.

In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.

Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”

After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.

A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.

PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.

“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.

He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.

During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.

Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”

Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.

Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.

“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.

“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”

Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.

Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.

Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.

While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.

An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.

Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.

Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.

Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.

“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.

“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”

The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.

The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.

“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with permission of BenarNews.

An unheralded visit to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces by a leading Pacific diplomat has drawn criticism for undermining a push for a United Nations human rights mission to the region where indigenous pro-independence fighters have fought Indonesian rule for decades.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group’s Director-General, Leonard Louma, has not responded to BenarNews’ questions about the brief visit. It occurred just days after the most recent clash between Indonesian forces and the Papuan resistance, which resulted in four deaths and hundreds of civilians fleeing their homes in Paniai regency in Central Papua province.

Indonesia has capitalised on the visit earlier this month to portray its governance of the contested Melanesian territory, generally referred to as West Papua in the Pacific, in a positive light.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

State news agency Antara said Louma had declared Papua to be in a “stable and conducive” condition.

A highly critical UN Human Right Committee report on Indonesia released in May highlighted “systematic reports about the use of torture” and “extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Indigenous Papuan people.”

The Indonesian government’s sponsorship of the visit is “another attempt to downplay a global call, including from the MSG, to allow the UN Human Rights Commission to visit and assess human rights conditions in Papua,” said Hipo Wangge, an Indonesian foreign policy researcher at Australian National University.

“It’s also another attempt to neutralise regional concern over deep-seated discrimination against Papuans,” he told BenarNews.

UN human rights rebuff
For several years, Indonesia has rebuffed a request from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to carry out an independent fact-finding mission in Papua.

The Pacific Islands Forum, a regional organisation of 18 nations, has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement FLNKS — has made similar appeals.

It is unclear whether the comments attributed to Louma by Antara and an Indonesian government statement are his own words. The Antara article, published last week on June 19, in English and Indonesian, is more or less identical to a statement released by Indonesia’s Ministry of Information and Communications.

An insurgency has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under a separate Dutch administration following Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence from the Netherlands.

Indonesia argues its incorporation of the mineral rich territory was rightful under international law because it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that is the basis for Indonesia’s modern borders.

Papuans, culturally and ethnically distinct from the rest of Indonesia, say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land. Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum restricted to little more than 1000 Papuan voters.

Arrived from PNG
The Indonesian statement said Louma, his executive adviser Christopher Nisbert and members of their entourage arrived on June 17 at the Skouw-Wutung border crossing after traveling overland from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.

They were met by an Indonesian diplomat and then traveled to Jayapura accompanied by Indonesian officials.

On June 19 they took part in a conference organised by Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that was purportedly to address security concerns in Melanesia.

Yones Douw, a Papuan human rights activist based in Paniai, said a properly conducted visit by the Melanesian Spearhead Group should have had wide public notice and involved meetings with churches, customary leaders, journalists and civil society organisations, including the independence movement.

“This visit is just like a thief — in secret. I suspect that the comments submitted to the mass media were the language of the Indonesian government, not on behalf of the MSG,” he told BenarNews.

“This way can damage the togetherness or unity of the Melanesian people,” he said.

The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), an independence movement umbrella organisation, said it should have been notified of the visit because it has observer status at the MSG. Indonesia is an associate member.

‘A surreptitious visit’
“We were not notified by the MSG Secretariat. This is a surreptitious visit initiated by the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” said Markus Haluk, the ULMWP’s executive secretary.

“We will file a protest,” he told the MSG’s chair, Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai.

Indonesia, over several years, has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links to Papuans living under Indonesian rule.

It has had success in ending direct criticism from Pacific island governments — many of which had used the UN General Assembly as a forum to air their concerns about human rights abuses — but grassroots support for Papuan self-determination remains strong.

Wangge, the ANU researcher, said the Indonesian government had been particularly active with Melanesian nations since Louma became director-general of the MSG’s secretariat in 2022.

At the same time it had avoided addressing ongoing reports of abuses in the Papuan provinces, he said, and militarisation of the region.

Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology to Papuans in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing an indigenous man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.

Regional security meetings
Among the initiatives, Indonesian police have facilitated regional security meetings, the Indonesian foreign ministry established an Indonesia-Pacific Development Forum, fisheries training has been provided, and the foreign ministry is providing diplomacy training for young diplomats from Melanesian countries and the MSG’s secretariat.

There was nothing to show, Wangge said, from the MSG’s appointment last year of Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape as special envoys to Indonesia on West Papua.

The two leaders met Indonesian President Joko Widodo, whose second five-year term finishes in October, at a global summit in San Francisco in November.

Following the meeting, there was no agenda to facilitate a dialogue over West Papua, he said.

Marape is due in Indonesia mid-July for an official state visit.

“One thing is clear: the Indonesian government will buy more time by initiating more made-up efforts to cover pressing problems in West Papua,” Wangge said.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

We support Count Me In 2024. It is an important national census event for Papua New Guinea. It is supported by the government. And the people support it too.

The National Census will provide us with up-to-date live data on our population which is needed for planning now and into the next decade.

However, we are amazed that despite the public holiday yesterday, which was announced by Prime Minister James Marape to allow the public servants to have the day off so they can be counted, has become a failure.

• READ MORE: Other PNG National Census reports

Why? Because most of the provinces including four heavily populated areas have yet to receive their full counting materials.

This amounts to poor planning, poor vision, and poor foresight on the part of the holiday-happy PM and his Administrative Minister Richard Masere.

They did not see that Count Me In is in for a long count when the material is late, training not completed, and the technology and gadgets don’t add up for this very important national event.

Meanwhile, taxpayers will pick up the cost of the extra holiday that Marape ubiquitously granted to his public servants yesterday.

Out in the field, members of the public noted that the tablets supplied for enumerators were not used. The counters were asked why. They responded that the tablets did not have the applications necessary for them to compile the information collated.

This is despite a K17 million (NZ$7 million) contract to Indian firm Max Industrials whose CEO Max Pandey said he has paid for and delivered 22,000 tablets to the National Statistical Office to carry out the work.

If the tablets were delivered, then why are these gadgets inoperable? What type of gadgets are these, where were these manufactured, were these tablets tested, and have they ever been used before in a census?

Are they from a recognised brand? This is a national census and we cannot afford to get it wrong. We have waited 14 years to hold this event.

It is therefore interesting to note that the contract for the supply of tablets was signed last week for a major event that started on Sunday this week.

Just like everybody, we are curious about this fiasco, why materials are late and tablets are not functioning?

The progress of events doesn’t make sense. Despite the Secretary for Finance and the Minister for Administrative Service giving their assurance that all processes were followed, it just does not add up.

We all want to be counted. We all want to be visible. We all want to be recognised as citizens of Papua New Guinea.

The population count has been outstanding since the last one in 2011. More babies have arrived, more heads, more mouths to feed in a country with rising costs of living, and extra turnover of migratory people of all walks of life, national and trans-national all over the country.

We hope that Count Me In will be concluded successfully, given the country’s rugged terrain and challenges, the far-flung coral islands and the lack of national road links.

We hope, we just hope we might all get numbered!

PNG Post-Courier editorial published 19 June 2024 under the headline “Counting fiasco”. Published with permission.

West Papuan pro-independence supporters are calling Indonesia’s condemnation of Israel hypocritical considering its occupation of Papua for 61 years.

The Indonesian government, through the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the President, has condemned the Israeli government’s handling of the conflict in Gaza.

In a statement, a United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) spokesperson said: “Indonesia’s stance on the international stage contrasts with its actions in Papua”.

“Indonesia mediates conflicts in several Asian countries but lacks a roadmap for resolving the conflict in Papua.”

The group is calling for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to immediately form a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations. They have also asked for a review of Indonesia’s UN membership.

In November last year, the Pacific Islands Forum appointed the Fiji and Papua New Guinea prime ministers as special envoys to Indonesia to “address the West Papua issue“.

The ULMWP are asking for Indonesia to let the two leaders visit Papua.

Hard to compare with Gaza
Human Rights Watch researcher in Indonesia Andreas Harsono said the situation in West Papua was hard to compare to Gaza.

“Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank, of course, is recognised by more than 130 countries, members of the United Nations. Meanwhile, West Papua is being discussed mostly among seven or maybe 10 other countries, so this is difficult to compare.”

He said Indonesia — the most populous Muslim majority country — had religion in common with Palestine.

But Harsono said West Papua did need more international attention and there was little understanding of the conflict inside Indonesia because of propaganda.

ULMWP executive secretary Markus Haluk reiterated calls for a UN fact-finding mission.

“We want the UN to send their fact-finding mission to West Papua to witness and to prove that there is a slow-motion genocide, ethnocide and ecocide happening in West Papua,” Haluk said, speaking to RNZ Pacific through a translator.

It is an ongoing plea for the United Nations to visit. In 2019, the Indonesian government agreed in principle to a visit by the Human Rights Commissioner but that promise has not been fulfilled.

Haluk said the “big brothers” in the region — referring to New Zealand and Australia — could bring up the UN fact-finding mission when the nation’s leaders meet with their Indonesian counterparts.

“There has been several visits by the leaders but it seems like the issue of West Papua is not as important as the other issues such as trade,” he said.

‘Refusing to take responsibility’
Former New Zealand Greens MP Catherine Delahunty said she felt frustrated that West Papua had not got the attention it should, especially considering it was in “our own backyard”.

Nearly all foreign media has been banned from entering West Papua.

“Anyone that criticises the regime has great difficulty getting into that country to report and local journalists are subjected to sustained threats and so we’re in a very unhealthy situation in terms of public understanding of just how drastic the situation is,” she said.

Delahunty said Indonesia had been intimidating smaller nations, while larger ones like New Zealand and Australia were “refusing to act”.

“They are refusing to take responsibility for their own part in allowing this to continue.”

She said New Zealand and Australia could create consequences for Indonesia if it continued to not allow the fact-finding mission, by doing things like stopping military exchanges.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said New Zealand “follows human rights developments closely, and takes all allegations of human rights violations seriously”.

“New Zealand continues to register concerns about the human rights situation in Papua via appropriate fora. New Zealand encourages Indonesia to promote and protect the rights of all its citizens, and to be transparent in policy relating to Papua.

“New Zealand recognises Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including in Papua.”

In a statement to RNZ Pacific, the Indonesian Embassy in Wellington said the government of Indonesia was committed to accelerate the development of all provinces, “including our brothers and sisters in Papua”, to lead and enjoy a prosperous way of life.

“Papua is highly respected as an honourable region and will continue to be maintained as such,” it said.

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

New Zealand High Commissioner Peter Zwart and PNG Defence Minister Dr Billy Joseph welcomed a C-130 Hercules to Port Moresby this week to support Papua New Guinea’s response to the March 24 earthquake and recent severe flooding.

“Papua New Guinea has requested New Zealand’s assistance to transport emergency relief items from Port Moresby to affected areas,” said High Commissioner Zwart.

“I am delighted that the New Zealand Defence Force has been able to provide an aircraft to help get these items to provinces and vulnerable communities that have been significantly impacted.”

• READ MORE: Other PNG disaster relief reports

The aircraft will stay in Papua New Guinea for about three days and is expected to deliver humanitarian supplies to several disaster affected provinces.

The New Zealand High Commission remains in close contact with PNG government officials as the response continues.

High Commissioner Zwart said: “New Zealand has a long-standing commitment to working with and supporting Pacific partners to respond to disasters and address humanitarian need, including in Papua New Guinea.”

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963.

In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM (Free Papua Organisation) leader Jeffrey P Bomanak has also claimed that this was the “beginning of genocide” that could only have happened through the failure of the global body to “legally uphold its decolonisation responsibilities in accordance with the UN Charter”.

Bomanak says in the letter dated yesterday that the UN failed to confront the “relentless barbarity of the Indonesian invasion force and expose the lie of the fraudulent 1969 gun-barrel ‘Act of No Choice'”.

• READ MORE: OPM leader’s open letter condemns Australia’s ‘treachery’ over Papua
• West Papua accusations fly at Australia, US
• Other West Papua reports

The open letter follows one released on the eve of Anzac Day last month which strongly criticised the role of Australia and the United States, accusing both countries of “betrayal” in Papuan aspirations for independence.

According to RNZ News today, an Australian statement in response to the earlier OPM letter said the federal government “unreservedly recognises Indonesia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Papua provinces”.

The White House has not responded.

The OPM says it has compiled a “prima facie pictorial ‘integration’ history” of Indonesia’s actions in integrating the Pacific region into an Asian nation. It plans to present this evidence of “six decades of crimes against humanity” to Secretary-General Guterres and new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

The open letter states:

May 1, 2024

Dear Secretary-General Guterres,

I am addressing you in an open letter which I will be releasing to media and governments because I have previously brought to your attention the history of the illegal annexation of West Papua on May 1st, 1963, and the role of your office in the fraudulent UN referendum in 1969, called an Act of Free Choice and I have never received a reply.

After six decades of OPM letters and Papuan appeals to the UN Secretariat, I am providing the transparency and accountability of an “open letter”, so that historians of the future can
investigate the moral and ethical credibility of the UN Secretariat.

May 1st is a day of mourning for Papuans. A day of grief over the illegal annexation of our ancestral Melanesian homeland by a violent occupation force from Southeast Asia.

Indonesia’s annexation of Western New Guinea (Irian Jaya/West Papua) on May 1, 1963, is
commemorated in Indonesia’s Parliament as a day of integration. The photos on these pages on these pages show a different story. The reality these photos portray is, in fact, one of the longest ongoing acts of genocide since the end of the Second World War.

An invasion and an illegal annexation not unlike Nazi Germany’s annexation in 1938 of
its neighbouring country, Austria. The difference for Papuans is that the UN and the USA were co-conspirators in preventing our right to determine a future that was our right to have under the UN decolonisation process: independence and nation-state sovereignty.

A very chilling contradiction — the Allies we fought alongside, nursed back to life, and died with during WWII had joined forces with a mass-murderer not unlike Hitler — the Indonesian president Suharto (see Photo collage #2: Axis of Evil).

Some scholars have called the May 1, 1963 annexation “Indonesia’s Anschluss”. Suharto and the conspirators goal of colonial invasion and conquest had been achieved through
the illegal annexation of my people’s ancestral homeland, my homeland.

General and president-in-waiting Suharto signed a contract in 1967 with American mining giant Freeport, another company associated with David Rockefeller, two years before we were to determine our future through the aforementioned gun-barrel UN referendum project-managed by a brutal occupation force. Our future had already been determined by Suharto, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and Suharto’s friend, UN secretary-General U Thant. U Thant had succeeded Dag Hammarskjöld who had been assassinated for his controversial view that human rights and freedom were absolutely universal and should not be subjected to the criminal whims of either tyrants like Suharto or a resource industry with views on human rights and freedom that resembled Suharto’s.

I do not need to give you a blow-by-blow history for your edification — you already know the entire history and the victim tally — 350,000 adults and 150,000 children and babies. And rising. You are, after all, a man of some principle — Portugal’s former prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, as well as a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party. And presiding as Portuguese prime minster during the final years of Fretilin’s war of liberation in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975 with anywhere up to 250,000 victims of genocide. Please explain to me the difference between the Indonesia’s
invasion and “integration” of East Timor and Indonesia’s invasion and “integration” of my homeland, Western New Guinea (West Papua).

Apart from the oil in the Timor Gap and the gold and copper all over my homeland — the wealth of someone else’s resources promoting the “integration” policies pictured over these pages.

As a member of a socialist party, you might be attending May Day ceremonies today. I will be counselling victims and the families of loved ones who have been “integrated” today. Yes, the freedom-loving Papuans are holding rallies to protest the annexation of our homeland . . .  to protest the failure — your failure — to apply justice and to end this nightmare.

The cost of the UN-approved annexation to Papuans in pain and suffering: massacres, torture, systemic rape by TNI and Polri, mutilation and dismemberment as a signature of your barbarity. Relentless barbarity causing six decades of physical and cultural genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and wave after wave of ethnic cleansing.

The cost to Papuans in the theft and plunder of our natural resources: genocide by starvation and famine.

The cost to Papuans from the foreign resource industry plundering our natural resources: the devastation of pristine environments, whole ecosystems poisoned by the resource industry’s chemical toxicity, called tailings, released into rivers thereby destroying whole riverine catchments along with food sources from fishing and farming — catchment rivers and nearby farming lands contaminated by Freeport, and other’s. A failure to apply any international standards for risk management to prevent the associated birth defects
in villages now living in contaminated catchments.

That we would choose to become part of any nation so brutal defies credibility. That the UN approved integration should have been impossible based on the evidence of the ever-increasing numbers of defence and security forces landing in West Papua and undertaking military campaigns that include ever-increasing victims and internally displaced Papuans, the bombing of central highland villages a current example? Such courage! Why are foreign
media not allowed into my people’s homeland?

Secretary-General Guterres, future historians will judge the efficacy of the United Nations. The integrity. West Papua will feature as a part the UN Secretariat’s legacy. To this endeavour, as the leader of Organisasi Papua Merdeka, I ask, and demand that you comply with your obligations under article 85 part 2 and sundry articles of your Charter of United Nations which requires that you inform the Trusteeship Council about your General Assembly resolution 1752, with which you are subjugating our people and homelands of West New Guinea which we call West Papua.

The agreement which your resolution 1752 is authorising, begins with the words “The Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, having in mind the interests and welfare of the people of the territory of West New Guinea (West Irian)”

Your agreement is clearly a trusteeship agreement written according to your rules of Chapter XII of your Charter of the United Nations.

The West Papuan people have always opposed your use of United Nations military to make our people’s human rights subject to the whim of your two administrators, UNTEA and from 1st May 1963 the Republic of Indonesia that is your current administrator.

We refer to your organisation’s last official record about West Papua which still suffers your ongoing unjust administration managed by UNTEA and Indonesia:

Because you also used article 81 and Chapter XII of your Charter to seize control of our homelands when you created your General Assembly resolution 1752, the Netherlands was excused by article 73(e), “to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply”, from transmitting further reports about our people and the extrajudicial killings that your new administrators began using to silence our demands for our liberty and independence.

We therefore demand your Trusteeship Council begin its unfinished duty of preparing your United Nations reports as articles 85 part 2, 87 and 88 of your Charter requires.

West Papua is entitled to independence, and article 76 requires you assist. It is illegal for Indonesia to invade us and to impede our independence, and to subsequently subject us to six decades of every classification for crimes against humanity listed by the International Criminal Court.

We know this trusteeship agreement was first proposed by the American lawyer John Henderson in 1959, and was discussed with Indonesian officials in 1961 six months before the death of your Dag Hammarskjöld. We think it is shameful that you then elected Indonesia’s friend U Thant as Secretary-General, and we demand that you permit the Secretariat to perform its proper duty of revealing your current annexation of West Papua (Resolution 1752) to your Trusteeship Council.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Jeffrey P Bomanak
Chairman-Commander OPM
Markas Victoria, May 1, 2024

REVIEW: By ‘Alopi Latukefu

The Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, John Feakes, has become the first foreign diplomat to visit the “valley of tears” in Wapenamanda, Enga, province.

Feakes braved fears of tribal warfare when he visited Australian government-funded projects at a tribal fighting zone on Wednesday.

The battlefields of Middle Lai, where more than 60 men lost their lives, fell silent after the signing of the landmark Hilton Peace Agreement last month in Port Moresby between the warring alliances.

• READ MORE: Other Enga province reports

The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) has declared its solidarity with civil society groups and student protesters demonstrating against the torture of a Papuan man, Defianus Kogoya, by Indonesian troops in West Papua last February.

The torture was revealed in a video that went viral across the world last month.

PANG said in a statement that peaceful demonstrations came after the video was circulated showing Defianus Kogoya bound in a water-filled barrel, being beaten and cut with knives by Indonesian soldiers.

• READ MORE: Indonesian human rights: 13 soldiers arrested after Papuan torture video
• President Wenda: Crackdown on Jayapura protest shows need for UN visit
• Other Papua torture video reports

Indonesian authorities have since admitted and apologised for the torture, and announced the arrest of 13 soldiers.

In the same video incident, two other Papuan men, Warinus Murib and Alianus Murib, were also arrested and allegedly tortured. Warinus Murib died of his injuries.

Reports state that 62 protesting students have been arrested and interrogated before they were released, while two people were seriously injured by Indonesian security forces.

In an earlier protest, 15 people were arrested for giving out pamphlets. Protesters demand all military operations must cease in West Papua.

“We condemn the excessive military presence in West Papua and the associated human rights violation against Papuans,” said the PANG statement.

“We also condemn the use of heavy-handed tactics by the Indonesian police to violently assault and detain students who should have the right and freedom to express their views.

“This demonstrates yet again the ongoing oppression by Indonesian authorities in West Papua despite decades of official denial and media censorship.”

United Nations experts have expressed serious concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, citing shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people.

Thirteen arrests over the Papuan torture video.    Video: Al Jazeera

Media censorship
In its concluding observations of Indonesia’s second periodic report under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted on 26 March 2024, the Human Rights Committee expressed deep concern over:

• patterns of extrajudicial killings,
• enforced disappearances, torture, and
• other forms of cruel and degrading treatment, particularly of or against indigenous Papuans and the failure to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions.

The committee also highlighted continuing reports of media censorship and suppression of the freedom of expression.

“We call on the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), the Pacific Island Forum (PIF) and the people and the governments of all Pacific Island countries to demand that Indonesia allow for the implementation of the decision of the PIF Leaders in August 2019 for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a mission to West Papua,” the PANG statement said.

“We call on the special envoys of the PIF on West Papua to expedite their mandate to facilitate dialogue with Indonesia, and particularly to pave the way for an urgent UN visit.

“We echo the calls made from the 62 students that were arrested for the Indonesian government to cease all military operations in West Papua and allow the United Nations to do its job.

“Our Pacific governments should expect nothing less from Indonesia, particularly given its privileged position as an associate member of the MSG and as a PIF Dialogue Partner,” PANG said.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

Papua New Guinea’s Defence Minister and minister responsible for the National Disaster Centre Dr Billy Joseph confirmed today that the government — with coordinated support from all stakeholder agencies and development partners — was responding appropriately to the natural disasters that has hit many parts of the country.

The National Disaster Center (NDC) is the national coordinating agency and is working with provincial governments and district development authorities (DDAs) as well as the Department of Works and Highways, PNG Defence Force and other stakeholders to coordinate and respond promptly.

The East Sepik provincial earthquake on Sunday left at least three dead and more than 1000 homes collapsed.

• READ MORE: Three people reported dead, 1000 homes destroyed by PNG earthquake

The US Geological Survey said it was magnitude 6.9 and just over 40 km deep.

King tides and heavy flooding
The minister confirmed that about 10 provinces are getting the necessary assistance from the National Disaster Center, including Goroka/EHP which was not included in the initial report provided to his office.

PNG Defence Force troops are working closely with the Simbu Provincial Government and Gumine DDA and their respective leaderships as Simbu was one of the worst affected provinces.

7 people missing off the coast of New Ireland Province
Nine people boarded a banana boat at Kavieng for Emirau Island but did not make it due to heavy weather conditions when the boat capsized.

Two of the young men swam to the island to look for help while seven others made a makeshift raft and floated awaiting assistance.

“As of today, seven people are still missing and our search is still active — if we don’t find them after 72 hours, we will declare them lost and the search will be discontinued,” Minister Joseph said.

The Australian Defence Force has provided a C27 aircraft to conduct low aerial surveillance of the subject areas.

A PNGDF Navy Patrol Boat has also been deployed to the area but no sightings have been reported.

The Search and Rescue operations are being coordinated by the National Maritime Safety Authority with oversight provided by the PNG Defence Force.

East Sepik Province earthquake
NDC is working very closely with the leaders of East Sepik, including the provincial government, to ensure much needed help reach the people that need it.

An emergency allocation of K200,000 (about NZ$90,000) has been made available for food, water, shelter and medicines etc as seen appropriate by the Provincial Disaster Committee.

It is at their disposal. A commercial helicopter is now in Wewak to assist in the relief operations and the PNDF military helicopter will join shortly.

“We are also mobilising support from our bilateral partners to assist but the challenge is now for the Provincial Disaster Center to provide reports to NDC so we define and coordinate what kind of emergency assistance is required,” Minister Joseph said.

Minister Joseph further warned Papua New Guineans to take precautions and not take risks, especially at sea, as the country’s emergency services are stretched and rescue efforts may not happen in time.

Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Prime Minister James Marape has announced comprehensive relief operations in Papua New Guinea’s devastating weather that has killed at least 21 people and impacted on 16 provinces.

The 21 who died were buried under tonnes of mud in three separate mudslides in Chimbu province.

Sixteen provinces in three regions were being monitored by the PNG National Weather Service for flooding following erratic changes in weather patterns, reports Claudia Tally.

• READ MORE: Heavy rain damages roads, bridges across PNG

From king tides, solar flares and rising temperatures since December 2023, the weather in the country has taken a swift turn to heavy downpours and reported flash flooding in Central, Northern, Western Highlands, Eastern Highlands, Madang and Morobe provinces over the last seven days.

The changes in the weather pattern, especially the flooding, has left many provincial highways eroded, bridges broken and people stranded.

The government’s relief operations, spearheaded by the Department of Works and Highways, National Disaster Office, and the PNG Defence Force, aims to mitigate the challenges faced by communities across the nation.

“King tides, landslips, and other unfortunate natural incidents as a result of the continuous rain and wet weather conditions around the country at present and in recent weeks is of concern to government,” Marape said.

Works directives
“We have already taken steps to provide relief and address the specific situations through the responsible government agencies.”

He said directives had been issued to the Works and Highways Department, National Disaster Office, and Defence Force to dispatch specialist teams.

“These teams are tasked with assessing and addressing road slippages and blockages, ensuring expedient restoration of access and support to the affected locales,” he said.

“Certain places around the country like Gumine in Chimbu Province have been cut off and require urgent attention to restore and relieve.

“Other places in low-lying areas of the country like Gulf Province are also being affected by the continuous rain.

“We’ve mobilised the necessary government resources to clear and relieve those areas affected by the heavy rains over the past month or more.”

He lauded the Department of Works and Highways for their prompt action in Porgera, Enga Province, following a landslip that severed connections to surrounding areas.

“The department’s efforts have successfully reopened the critical access road, demonstrating the government’s commitment to swift and effective crisis management,” he said.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

By Dani Prabowo in Jakarta

Indonesia’s Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto — the man expected to become President after his decisive win in last month’s elections — says democracy in the country is still messy and very costly.

Prabowo said he was still not satisfied with the implantation of democracy in his homeland.

He said there was a need for improvement to democracy in the future.

• READ MORE: Wenda calls for Dutch support over UN visit, slams Prabowo presidency
• Other Prabowo Subianto reports

“Let me testify that democracy is really very, very exhausting. Democracy is very, very messy, democracy is very, very costly,” Prabowo said during a speech in English at the Mandiri Investment Forum last week.

The speech was broadcast online on the Kompas TV YouTube channel last Tuesday.

“And we are still not satisfied with our democracy. There is a lot of room for improvement”, he said.

Prabowo also said he appreciated the participation of the Indonesian people in the 2024 elections which reached 80 percent.

Participation ‘not bad’
According to Prabowo, the electoral participation in Indonesia was not bad — especially when compared to other countries that adhere to a democratic system but where voter participation did not reach 50 percent.

“In our elections, voter participation reached 80 percent. An average of 80 percent. That isn’t bad,” he said.

“Bearing in mind many countries, democratic countries, sometimes the turnout is less than 50 percent.”

The presidential candidate referred to his experience in the 2024 elections where, because of the vast size of Indonesia, he could not visit all the existing provinces.

Of the 38 provinces in the country, Prabowo said he had only been able to visit around 26.

However, he promised that after the elections he would visit the rest of the provinces that he had never visited.

“But after this election I still have to go to and visit those provinces (which I’ve not yet visited). Because I promised [them] that I will visit,” he added.

Prabowo has faced criticism in the Melanesian provinces of West Papua region by indigenous people seeking self-determination because of his troubled human rights record in both Papua and Timor-Leste.

Translated by James Balowski for Indoleft News. The Kompas author is unrelated to Minister Prabowo. The original title of the article was “Prabowo: Demokrasi Sangat Berantakan dan Mahal, Ada Banyak Ruang untuk Perbaikan”.

The man being touted by the opposition as the next leader of Papua New Guinea says the first thing his administration would do is put more focus on law and order.

East Sepik governor Allan Bird is being put forward as the opposition’s candidate for prime minister with a vote on a motion of no confidence likely in the last week of May.

Bird is realistic about his chances but he said it is important to have such a vote.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Governor Bird on PNG’s future
• Other PNG law and order reports

“I think the first thing we would do is just restructure the Budget and put more focus on things like law and order, bring that right to the top and deal with it quickly,” he said.

He spoke about what he aspires to do if he gets the chance.

Don Wiseman: Mr Bird, you had been delegated to look at the violence following the 2022 election, and it is clear that resolving this will be a huge problem.

AB: Not necessarily. It’s currently confined to the upper Highlands part of the country, but it is filtering down to Port Moresby and other places. I guess the reluctance to deal with the violence is that I’d say 90 percent of that violence stems from the aftermath of the elections.

From our own findings, we know that many leaders in that part of the world that run for elections actually use these warlords to help them get elected. And obviously, they’ve got like four years of downtime between elections, and this is how they spend their spare time. So, it’s hardly surprising.

I think our military and our police have the capability to deal with these criminal warlords and put them down. How shall I say it – with extreme prejudice. But you get a lot of interference in the command of the police and the Defence Force. I suspect that changes the operational orders once they get too close to dealing with these terrorists.

DW: Police have been given the power to use lethal force, but a lot of commentators would say the problems have more to do with the the lack of money, the lack of opportunity, the lack of education.

AB: The lack of education, opportunity, and things like that will play a small part. But again, as I said, I come from a province where we don’t have warlords running around heavily armed to the teeth. I mean, you have got to remember an AR-15, or a 4M, or anything like that. These things on the black market cost around 60,000 to 70,000 kina (NZ$20,000-25,000).

The ordinary Papua New Guinean cannot afford one of those things and guns are banned in public use — they’ve been banned for like 30 years. So how do these weapons get in? Just buying a bullet to operate one of these things is hard enough. So you got to ask yourself the question: how are illiterate people with perhaps no opportunity, able to come into possession of such weapons.

DW: The esteemed military leader Jerry Singarok compiled, at the request of the government about 15 years ago, a substantial report on what to do about the gun problem. But next to nothing of that has ever been implemented. Would you go back to something like that?

AB: Absolutely. I have a lot of respect for Major-General Singarok. I know him personally as well. We have had these discussions on occasions. You’ve got smart, capable people who have done a lot of work in areas such as this, and we just simply put them on the backburner and let them collect dust.

DW: The opposition hopes to have its notice for a motion of no confidence in the Marape government in Parliament on 28 or 29 May, when Parliament resumes. It was adjourned two weeks ago when the opposition tried to present their motion, with the government claiming it was laden with fake names, something the opposition has strenuously denied. Do you have the numbers?

AB: Obviously we’re talking with people inside the government because that’s where the numbers are. Hence, we’ve been encouraged to go ahead with the vote of no confidence. The chance of maybe being Prime Minister per se, is probably like 5 percent. So it could be someone else.

I say that because in Papua New Guinea, it’s really difficult for someone with my background and my sort of discipline and level of honesty to become prime minister. It’s happened a couple of times in the past, but it’s very rare.

DW: You’re too honest?

AB: I’m too honest. Yes.

DW: We’ve looked at the law and audit issue. What else needs fixing fast?

Well, we’ve got a youth bulge. We’ve got a huge population problem. We’ve got to start looking at practical ways in terms of how we can quickly expand opportunities to use your word. Whatever we’ve been doing for the last 10 years has not worked. We’ve got to try something new.

My proposal is actually really keeping with international management best practice. You go to any organisation this is what they do. I think New Zealand does it as well, and Australia does, which is you’ve got to push more funds and responsibilities closer to the coalface and that’s the provinces.

If I could do one thing that would change the trajectory of this country, it’s actually to push more resources away from the centralised government. We actually have a centralised system of government right now.

The Prime Minister [Marape] has so much control to the point where it’s up to him to authorise the building of a road in a particular place worth, say, 5 million kina. The national government is the federal government, if you like, is looking after projects that are as low as say, 2 to 3 million New Zealand dollars in value all the way up to projects that are $500 million in value.

So the question is: there’s got to be better separation of powers, better separation of responsibilities and, of course, clearly demarcated roles and responsibilities. Right now, we’re all competing for the same space. It’s highly inefficient with duplicating a lot of things and there’s a lot of wastage of resources. The way to do that is to decentralise.

DW: What concerns do you have about MPs having direct control over significant amounts of these funds that are meant to go to their electorates? Should they?

AB: Well, I don’t think any of us should have access to direct funding in that regard. However, this is the prevailing political culture that we live in. So again, coming back to my idea about ensuring that we get better funding at the sub-national levels is to strengthen the operational capability of the public servants there, so that once they start to perform, then hopefully over time, there’ll be less of a need to directly give funds to members of parliament because the system itself will start functioning.

We’ve killed the system over the last 20 or 30 years and so now the system is overly dependent on one individual which is wrong.

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

By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist, and Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

As women and children seek hope of a future without tribal fighting, the cycle of killing continues in Papua New Guinea’s remote Highlands.

Tribal warfare dating back generations is being said to show no signs of easing and considered a complicated issue due to PNG’s complex colonial history.

Following the recent massacre of more than 70 people, community leaders in Wabag held mediation talks in an effort to draw up a permanent solution on Tuesday, with formal peace negotiations set down for yesterday between the warring factions.

• READ MORE: Other tribal warfare reports

A woman, who walked 20 hours on foot with seven children to flee the violence in the remote highlands, was at the meeting and told RNZ Pacific she wants the fighting to stop so she can return home.

In 2019, the then police minister said killings of more than two dozen women and children “changed everything”.

But a tribesman, who has asked to remain anonymous, told RNZ Pacific the only thing that had changed was it was easier to get guns.

Multiple sources have told RNZ Pacific the government appears to be powerless in such remote areas, saying police and security forces are sent in by the government when conflict breaks out, there is a temporary pause to the fighting, then the forces leave, and the fighting starts again.

There are also concerns about a lack of political will at the national level to enforce the law using police and military due to tribal and political allegiances of local MPs, as recommendations made decades ago by former PNG Defence Force commander Major-General Jerry Singirok are yet to be fully implemented.

While the government, police and community groups look at peaceful solutions, mercenaries are collecting munitions for the next retaliatory fight, multiple sources on the ground, including a mercenary, told us.

Killing pays
After “Bloody Sunday”, which left dozens dead in revenge killings, the men with guns were out of bullets.

Tribal fighting in Papua New Gunea’s Enga Province reached boiling point on February 18, fuelled by a long-standing feud between different clans, which resulted in a mass massacre.

The tribesman who spoke to RNZ Pacific said they did not want to fight anymore but believed there was no other option when someone from the “enemy” turned up on their land wanting to burn down their village.

“Prime Minister [James Marape] — we want development in our villages,” he said, speaking from a remote area in the Highlands after his village was burnt to the ground.

There is no employment, no infrastructure, no support, he said, adding that those were the things that would keep people busy and away from engaging in tribal conflict.

At the moment killing people paid, he said.

‘Hundreds of lives lost’
“Businessmen, leaders and educated elites are supplying guns, bullets and financing the engagement of gunmen,” Wapenamanda Open MP Miki Kaeok said.

The MP is worried about the influence of money and guns, saying they have taken over people’s lives especially with the increase in engagement of local mercenaries and availability of military issued firearms.

“Hundreds of lives have been lost. Properties worth millions of kina have been ransacked and destroyed. I don’t want this to continue. It must stop now,” Kaeok pleaded.

Meanwhile, men in the Highlands are paid anything between K3000 (NZ$1300) to K10,000 (NZ$4,400) to kill, the tribesman claimed during the interview.

Then, he called over one of the men involved in that fight, an alleged killer, to join the video interview.

“Um this is the hire man,” he introduced him. “If they put K2000 (NZ$880) for him and say go burn down this village — he goes in groups — they clear the village, they give him money and he goes to his village . . . ”

The “hire man”, standing slouched over holding a machete, looked at the camera and claimed 64 people were killed on one side and eight on another pushing the total death toll to more than 70.

Wabag police told RNZ Pacific on Tuesday that 63 bodies had been recovered so far.

“A lot of people died,” an inspector from Wabag told RNZ Pacific.

The killings have not stopped there; a video has been circulating on social media platforms of what appears to be a young boy pleading for his life before he was killed.

The video, seen by RNZ Pacific, shows the child being hit by a machete until he falls to the ground.

The man who allegedly carried out the brutality was introduced to RNZ Pacific by the tribesman via video chat.

“They recognise that this person was an enemy,” the tribesman — translating for the killer, who was standing in a line with other men holding machetes — told RNZ Pacific.

“This small guy (referring to the dead child) came out of the bush to save his life. But he ended up in the hands of enemies.

“And then they chopped him with a bush knife and he was dead.”

“In revenge, he killed that small boy” because the killer’s three family members were killed about five months ago.

Asked whether they were saddened that children have died in the violence, the killer said: “No one can spare their lives because he was included in the fight and he’s coming as a warrior in order to kill people,” our source translated.

Killing people — “that’s the only way”, they said.

He said that while fighting had been going on most of his life, military style weapons had only been in the mix for the last decade or so.

He said getting a gun was relatively easy and all they had to do was wait in the bush for five days near the border with Indonesia.

“We are using high-powered rifle guns that we are getting exported from West Papuans.”

He added the change from tribe-on-tribe to clan-to-clan fighting has exacerbated the issue, with a larger number of people involved in any one incident.

Mediation underway
A Wapenamanda community leader in Enga Province Aquila Kunza said mediation was underway between the warring factions in the remote Highlands to prevent further violence.

“The policemen are facilitating and meditating the peace mediation and they are listening,” Kunza said.

Revenge killings had been ongoing for years and there was no sign of gunmen stopping anytime soon, Kunza said.

“This fight has lasted about four years now and I know it will continue. It occurs intermittently, it comes and goes,” he said.

“When there’s somebody around (such as the military), they go into hiding, when the army is gone because the government cannot support them anymore, the fighting erupts again.”

Kunza has been housing women and children who fled the violence and after years of violence and watching police come and go, he is calling for a community-led approach.

At a large community gathering in Wabag the main town of Enga on Tuesday people voiced their concerns.

“The government must be prepared to give money to every family [impacted] and assist them to resettle back to their villages to make new gardens to build new houses,” Kunza said.

He said formal peace negotiations are taking place today as residents from across the Enga Province are travelling to Wabag today for peace talks between the warring factions.

‘Value life’
Many Engans have lamented that the traditional rules of war have been ignored as children have not been spared in the conflict and societal norms that governed their society have been broken.

A woman who was kidnapped last year in Hela in the Bosavi region — a different area to where the recent massacre took place — and held for ransom said PNG was on the verge of being a failed state.

“I’ve gone through this,” Cathy Alex told RNZ Pacific.

“People told us who gave them their guns in Hela, people told us who supplied them munitions. People told us the solutions. People told us why tribal fights started, why violence is happening,” Alex shared.

She said they managed to find out that killers got paid K2000 (NZ$880) for killing one person, that was in 2017.

“For a property that’s worth K200/300,000 [up to NZ$130,000] that’s destroyed, the full amount goes to the person who caused the tribal fight,” she said.

“How can you not value the life of a person?”

Government help
With retaliations continuing the “hire man” who claims to have killed more than 20 people from warring tribes, said he is staring down death.

“He would have to die on his land because…when they come they will fight…we have to shoot in order to protect my village,” the tribesman explained.

“He said he’s not scared about it. He is not afraid of dying. He got a gun in order to shoot, they shoot him, and that’s finished.”

“He’s really worried about his village not to burn down.”

The tribesman said that without government committing financial support for infrastructure, jobs and community initiatives the fighting will continue.

He also wants to see a drastic change in police numbers and a more permanent military presence on the ground.

“We don’t have a proper government to protect us from enemies in order to protect ourselves, our houses . . . and to protect assets we have to buy guns in order to protect them.”

Parliament urged to act
Last week, the PNG Parliament discussed the issue of gun violence.

East Sepik Governor Allan Bird, who is on the opposition benches, has called on the government “to respond”.

He said the “terrorists in the upper Highlands” needed their guns to be stripped from them.

“We are a government for goodness sake — let’s act like one,” Bird said.

Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso agreed with Bird’s sentiments and acknowledged that the situation was serious.

He called on the whole of Parliament to unite to fix the issue together.

RNZ Pacific has contacted the PM Marape’s office for comment with no response yet.

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

An Australian-based West Papua advocacy group has condemned the arrest and “humiliation” of two teenagers by Indonesian security forces last week.

The head of Cartenz 2024 Peace Operations, Kombes Faizal Ramadhani, said in a statement on Friday that the 15-year-olds had been arrested after a clash with the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB ) in Kali Brasa on Thursday, February 22.

During the shootout, a TPNPB member named as Otniel Giban (alias Bolong Giban) had been killed.

• READ MORE: A BBC report on the arrest in Bahasa Indonesian
• A Jubi news report on the incident in West Papua

The Sydney-based Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) today condemned the arrest of the teenagers, only identified by the Indonesian authorities by their initials, MH and BGE and who were initially seized as “suspects” but later described as “witnesses”.

Faizal said that the teenagers had been arrested because they were suspected of being members of the TPNPB group and that they were currently being detained at the Damai Cartenz military post.

However, the TPNPB declared that the two teenagers were not members of the TPNPB and were ordinary civilians.

The teenagers were arrested when they were crossing the Brasa River in the Yahukimo Regency.

Aircraft shot at
The clash between security forces and the TNPB occurred while the Cartenz Peacekeeping Operation-2024 searched for those responsible for shooting at an aircraft in Yahukimo in which a military member had been wounded.

Meanwhile, also in Jakarta last Friday the Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Richard Marles, met with Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto — who is poised to win this month’s Indonesian presidential election.

Marles stressed at a media conference at the Defence Ministry that Australia did not support the Free Papua Movement, saying the country “fully recognise[d] Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty”.

“We do not endorse any independence movement,” he told a media conference.

However, in Sydney AWPA’s Joe Collins said in a statement: “I was at first surprised that West Papua even got a mention at the meeting as usually Australia tries to ignore the issue but even our Defence Minister can hardly ignore a media question on it.”

‘No support for any independence movements’
An extract from the media conference says:

Subianto: “Thank you very much. I don’t think there is any need for questions. Questions?”

Journalist: “Thank you very much Mr Deputy Prime Minister. Regarding the huge amount of [the] Australian defence budget, how should the Indonesian people see it? Is it going to be a trap or an opportunity for our national interest?

“And my second question is what is Australia’s standpoint regarding the separatist [pro-independence] movement in Papua because there are some voices from Australia concern[ed] about human rights violations?”

Marles: “Thank you for the question. Let me do the second issue first. We, Australia utterly recognise the territorial sovereignty of Indonesia, full stop. And there is no support for any independence movements.

“We support the territorial sovereignty of Indonesia. And that includes those provinces being part of Indonesia. No ifs, no buts. And I want to be very clear about that.”

Collins said there was no shortage of comments during the delegation’s visit to Indonesian around how important the relationship was.

“West Papua will remain the elephant in the room in the Australia-Indonesian relationship,” Collins said. “We can expect many hiccups in the relationship over West Papua in the coming years “.

Under the banana leaves on a roadside in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands lies the dismembered and bullet-riddled bodies of eight men.

All have been pulled out from the hillside along the highway from Wapenamanda to Wabag in Enga province.

They were among at least 50 people killed in the worst outbreak of tribal fighting in the country’s recent history.

• READ MORE: Other PNG tribal warfare reports

These were not locals but hired guns from neighbouring districts and provinces who had been brought in to fight in a tribal fight.

Assistant Commissioner of Police-Western End Samson Kua has condemned the killings.

The call from security personnel is now for all leaders of Enga to put aside political differences and assist security personnel to promptly address the tribal fighting.

Information received is that security personnel were nearly shot as well as they tried to stop the fight.

The recovery of bodies continues.

A ghastly sight
In another report, the Post-Courier described it as a ghastly sight as a picture of bodies piled high on top each other on a police vehicle was shared on online platforms.

The bodies belonged to men who fought in a fight between two tribes in Wapenamanda.

The grassland of Wapenamanda was their battlefield as they fought with guns, knives, and other homemade weapons.

Police called for more support.

The dead bodies were of the Sikin and Kaekin tribesmen and were retrieved by policemen supported by the PNG Defence Force.

The men were killed yesterday at Akom/7 mile during heavy gun fire.

The situation is said to be still tense, but the highway was clear for the travelling public.

Police told the Post-Courier they had retrieved at least 50 bodies from the roadside, grasslands and hills of Wapenamanda by Monday morning.

Rival factions used “high-powered guns”, such as AK47 and M4 rifles in the battles, the newspaper reported.

The death toll was expected to rise.

Republished with permission from the PNG Post-Courier.

With Indonesia preparing for elections next week, Human Rights Watch has sought answers from the three groups vying for the presidency on how they would resolve human rights violations.

Two of the three Indonesian presidential and vice-presidential candidates responded to a questionnaire on key human rights issues.

The presidential candidates Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo submitted responses on their policy before the February 14 vote, but Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo, did not.

• READ MORE: Mounting criticism of Jokowi by academics – claims Indonesia near ‘failed state’
  
• Indonesia: Candidates speak out on human rights
• Other Indonesian elections reports

In response to the question: “What is your policy on government restrictions on access to West Papua by foreign journalists and international human rights monitors?”

Baswedan’s stance is that the issue of justice is at the heart of the security problems in Papua.

According to his response, there are three problems to deal with the situation.

“Resolving all human rights violations in Papua by strengthening national human rights institutions to investigate and resolve human rights violations in Papua, as well as encouraging socio-economic recovery for victims of human rights violations in Papua.

“Preventing the recurrence of violence by ensuring justice through; 1) sustainable infrastructure development by respecting special autonomy and customary rights of indigenous communities, 2) realising food security through local food production with indigenous communities as the main actors, 3) reducing logistics costs, 4) the presence of community health centers and schools throughout the Papua region, and 5) empowering talents from Papua to be actively involved in Indonesia’s development in various sectors and institutions.

“Carrying out dialogue with all comprehensively in ways that mutually respect and appreciate all parties, especially Indigenous Papuans.”

For Pranowo, he said he would “focus on the issue of fiscal policy and asymmetric development for Papua’.

This would be done through “Reducing socio-economic disparities due to internal differences growth, development, and access to resources between regions through resource redistribution, infrastructure investment, tax incentives, or special financial support for Papua in order to achieve more equitable economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve the standard of living of citizens to those who need it most.

“We also committed a special approach to preventing corruption and degradation of natural resources in Papua, especially in newly expanded provinces,” he said.

A service for Indonesians
Human Rights Watch’s Elaine Pearson says the two teams that responded had done Indonesian voters a service by sharing their views on the critically important human rights issues affecting the country.

She said voters should be able to go beyond the rhetoric to compare actual positions, and hold the candidates to their word if they are elected.

The questionnaire contained 16 questions focused on women’s rights, children’s rights to education, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, labour rights, media freedom, and freedom of expression.

Other questions included policies on disability rights, protection of Indonesian migrant workers, and Indonesia’s foreign policy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

There were also questions on policies that would address accountability for past violations including the mass killings in 1965, atrocities against ethnic Madurese on Kalimantan Island, sectarian violence in the Malukus Islands, the conflict in Aceh, the Lake Poso violence, the crackdown against student activists in 1998, and killings in East Timor.

All three teams have submitted their vision and mission statements ahead of the election, which are available with the General Election Commission.

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

• Here is a Human Rights Watch summary of the responses received to the questionnaire. The full answers from the campaigns of two of the three presidential and vice presidential candidates can be accessed online at:
•  Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD here
• Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar here

On 1 December each year, in cities across Australia and New Zealand, a small group of West Papuan immigrants and refugees and their supporters raise a flag called the Morning Star in an act that symbolises their struggle for self-determination.

Doing the same thing in their homeland is illegal.

This year is the 62nd anniversary of the flag being raised alongside the Dutch standard in 1961 as The Netherlands prepared their colony for independence.

• READ MORE: Why Indonesia fails to address the West Papua conflict
• Activists call on NZ govt to do more for West Papua

Formerly the colony of Dutch New Guinea, Indonesia controversially took control of West Papua in 1963 and has now divided the Melanesian region into seven provinces.

In the intervening years, brutal civil conflict is thought to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives through combat and deprivation, and Indonesia has been criticised internationally for human rights abuses.

The Morning Star will fly in Ronny Kareni’s adopted hometown of Canberra and will also be raised across the Pacific region and around the world.

“It brings tears of joy to me because many Papuan lives, those who have gone before me, have shed blood or spent time in prison, or died just because of raising the Morning Star flag,” Kareni, the Australian representative of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) in Australia told SBS World News.

‘Our right to self-determination’
“Commemorating the anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination and West Papua to be free from Indonesia’s brutal occupation.”

Indonesia’s diplomats regularly issue statements criticising the act, including when the flag was raised at Sydney’s Leichhardt Town Hall, as “a symbol of separatism” that could be “misinterpreted to represent support from the Australian government”.

“It’s a symbol of an aspiring independent state which would secede from the unitary Indonesian republic, so the flag itself isn’t particularly welcome within official Indonesian political discourse,” says Professor Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesian citizen and director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.

“The raising of the flag is an expression of the grievances they hold against Indonesia for the way that economic and political governance and development has taken place over the last six decades.

“But it’s really part of the job of Indonesian officials to make a counterpoint that West Papua is a legitimate part of the unitary republic.”

The history of the Morning Star
After World War II, a wave of decolonisation swept the globe.

The Netherlands reluctantly relinquished the Dutch East Indies in 1949, which became Indonesia, but held onto Dutch New Guinea, much to the chagrin of President Sukarno, who led the independence struggle.

In 1957, Sukarno began seizing the remaining Dutch assets and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens, many of whom were evacuated to Australia, in large part over The Netherlands’ reluctance to hand over Dutch New Guinea.

The Dutch created the New Guinea Council of predominantly elected Papuan representatives in 1961 and it declared a 10-year roadmap to independence, adopted the Morning Star flag, the national anthem – “Hai Tanahku Papua” or “Oh My Land Papua” – and a coat-of-arms for a future state to be known as “West Papua”.

The West Papua flag was inspired by the red, white and blue of the Dutch but the design can hold different meanings for the traditional landowners.

“The five-pointed star has the cultural connection to the creation story, the seven blue lines represent the seven customary land groupings,” says Kareni.

The red is now often cited as a tribute to the blood spilt fighting for independence.

Attending the 1961 inauguration were Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia — represented by the president of the Senate Sir Alister McMullin in full ceremonial attire — but the United States, after initially accepting an invitation, withdrew.

Cold War in full swing
The Cold War was in full swing and the Western powers were battling the Russians for influence over non-aligned Indonesia.

The Morning Star flag was raised for the first time alongside the Dutch one at a military parade in the capital Hollandia, now called Jayapura, on 1 December.

On 19 December, Sukarno began ordering military incursions into what he called “West Irian”, which saw thousands of soldiers parachute or land by sea ahead of battles they overwhelmingly lost.

Then 20-year-old Dutch soldier Vincent Scheenhouwer, who now lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, was one of the thousands deployed to reinforce the nascent Papua Volunteer Corps, largely armed with WW2 surplus, arriving in June 1962.

“The groups who were on patrol found weapons, so modern it was unbelievable, and plenty of ammunition,” he said of Russian arms supplied to Indonesian troops.

He did not see combat himself but did have contact with the local people, who variously flew the red and white Indonesian or the Dutch flag, depending on who controlled the ground.

“I think whoever was supplying the people food, they belonged to them,” he said.

He did not see the Morning Star flag.

“At that time, nothing, totally nothing. Only when I came out to Australia (in 1970) did I find out more about it,” he said.

Waning international support
With long supply lines on the other side of the world and waning international support, the Dutch sensed their time was up and signed the territory over to UN control in October 1962 under the “New York Agreement”, which abolished the symbols of a future West Papuan state, including the flag.

The UN handed control to Indonesia in May 1963 on condition it prepared the territory for a referendum on self-determination.

“I’m sort of happy it didn’t come to a serious conflict (at the time), on the other hand you must feel for the people, because later on we did hear they have been very badly mistreated,” says Scheenhouwer.

“I think Holland was trying to do the right thing but it’s gone completely now, destroyed by Indonesia.”

The so-called Act Of Free Choice referendum in 1969 saw the Indonesian military round up 1025 Papuan leaders who then voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.

The outcome was accepted by the UN General Assembly, which failed to declare if the referendum complied with the “self-determination” requirements of the New York Agreement, and Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.

“Rightly or wrongly, in the Indonesian imagination, unlike East Timor for example, Papua was always regarded as part of the unitary Indonesian republic because the definition of the latter was based on the borders of colonial Dutch East Indies, whereas East Timor was never part of that, it was a Portuguese colony,” says Professor Hadiz.

“The average Indonesian’s reaction to the flag goes against everything they learned from kindergarten all the way to university.

Knee-jerk reaction
“So their reaction is knee-jerk. They are just not aware of the conditions there and relate to West Papua on the basis of government propaganda, and also the mainstream media which upholds the idea of the Indonesian unitary republic.”

In 1971, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) declared the “republic of West Papua” with the Morning Star as its flag, which has gone on to become a potent binding symbol for the movement.

The basis for Indonesian control of West Papua is rejected by what are today fractured and competing military and political factions of the independence movement, but they do agree on some things.

“The New York Agreement was a treaty signed between the Dutch and Indonesia and didn’t involve the people of West Papua, which led to the so-called referendum in 1969, which was a whitewash,” says Kareni.

“For the people, it was a betrayal and West Papua remains unfinished business of the United Nations.”

Raising the flag also raises the West Papua issue on an international level, especially when it is violently repressed in the two Indonesian provinces where there are reportedly tens of thousands of troops deployed.

“It certainly doesn’t depict Indonesia in very favourable terms,” Professor Vedi says.

“The problem for the West Papua [independence] movement is that there’s not a lot of international support, whereas East Timor at least had a significant measure.

‘Concerns about geopolitical stability’
“Concerns about geopolitical stability and issues such as the Indonesian state, as we know it now, being dismembered to a degree — I think there would be a lot of nervousness in the international community.”

Australia provides significant military training and foreign aid to Indonesia and has recently agreed to further strengthen defence ties.

Australia signed the Lombok Treaty with Indonesia in 2006 recognising its territorial sovereignty.

“It’s important that we are doing it here to call on the Australian government to be vocal on the human rights situation, despite the bilateral relationship with Indonesia,” says Kareni.

“Secondly, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and the leaders have agreed to call for a visit of the UN Human Rights Commissioner to carry out an impartial investigation.”

Events are also planned across West Papua.

“It’s a milestone, 60 years, and we’re still waiting to freely sing the national anthem and freely fly the Morning Star flag so it’s very significant for us,” he says.

“We still continue to fight, to claim our rights and sovereignty of the land and people.”

Stefan Armbruster is Queensland and Pacific correspondent for SBS News. First published by SBS in 2021 and republished by Asia Pacific Report with minor edits and permission.

The Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP) and the Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) have denounced the Rome Agreement of 30 September 1962 as “illegal” during protest speeches marking the 61st anniversary last Saturday.

The groups gathered at several places throughout Indonesia to hold peaceful protests and speeches.

The protesters held a public discussion and protest in Yogyakarta, Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, Ternate, East Java and North Maluku.

• READ MORE: Release of Victor Yeimo from Indonesian prison rekindles West Papuan fight against racism
• Other West Papua reports

Some protesters were met by hardliner groups of Indonesians who claimed they were supported and protected by the Indonesian police.

The Facebook page of AMP reports that peaceful demonstrations were also scheduled for September 30 in Kupan city but were obstructed by Garuda reactionaries, known as ORMAS (Civic Organisation Group) and police officers.

Some conversations were extremely racist, indicating that both the police and state are still maintaining a policy of racism.

Protests such as these are not unusual. Papuan students and their Indonesian supporters do this annually in order to draw attention to Indonesia’s illegal occupation of West Papua, which violates international law and the UN Charters on self-determination and decolonisation.

This time, the protest was over the Rome Agreement.

In 2021, an attempt to stage a protest in front of the US Embassy in central Jakarta was also made, but 17 AMP Papuan students were arrested.

What the protests are against
These protests across Indonesia may be dismissed by mainstream media as insignificant. But for Papuans, they are actually most significant.

The theme is protesting against what Papuans see as the “genesis” of a betrayal with lies, deceit, and manipulation by powerful international actors that sealed Papua’s fate with Indonesia.

This set a stage of gross human rights violations and exploitation of West Papua’s natural resources, which has been going on since these agreements were signed.

They were treaties, agreements, discussions, and decisions concerning West Papua’s future made by state and multinational actors without Papuan input — ultimately leading to West Papua’s “destruction”.

According to the AMP, the agreement between the Netherlands, Indonesia, the United Nations (UN) and the United States was manipulated to gain control over Papua, reports Suara Kalbar.

The AMP Papuan students and their Indonesian solidarity groups stated that the September 1962 Rome Agreement, followed by the signing of the New York Agreement on August 15, 1962, was reached without the involvement of any representatives of the Papuan people.

The protesters’ highlighted these flaws of the Rome Agreement that:

1. The Act of Free Choice to be delayed or cancelled;
2. “Musyawarah” (a form of Indonesian consensus building) be used rather than one-person-one-vote;
3. The UN report to the UNGA be accepted without debate;
4. Indonesia would rule West Papua for 25 years after 1963;
5. The US could exploit natural resources in partnership with Indonesian state companies; and
6. The US would underwrite an Asian Development Bank grant for US$30 million and guarantee World Bank funds for a transmigration programme beginning in 1977.

The agreement signed by Indonesia, the Netherlands and the United States was a very controversial with 29 articles stipulating the New York agreement, which regulates 3 things, where articles 14-21 regulate self-determination based on the international practice of one person one vote; and articles 12 and 13 governing the transfer of the administration from the United Nations Temporary Executive (UNTEA) to Indonesia.

Thus, this agreement allowed Indonesia’s claim to the land of Papua, which had been carried out after the transfer of control of West Papua from Dutch to Indonesia through UNTEA on 1 May 1963.

West Papua ‘conditioned’
The student protesters argued that prior to 1963 Indonesia had already conditioned West Papua by conducting military operations and suppressing the pro-independence movement, reports Koran Kejora.

Ironically, the protesters say, even before the process of self-determination was carried out on 7 April 1967, Freeport, the state-owned “mining company of American imperialism”, had signed its first contract with Indonesia.

This meant that West Papua had already been claimed by Indonesia through Freeport’s first contract two years before the Act of Free Choice was conducted, reports Koran Kehora.

The Act of Free Choice itself “was a sham”, only 1025 out of 809,337 Papuans with the right to vote had been quarantined or voted, and only 175 of them voiced their opinion, protesters said.

Despite its undemocratic nature, terror, intimidation, manipulation, and gross human rights violations, with the implementation of the Act of Free Choice, Indonesia legitimised its illegal claim to West Papua.

Igin Kogoya, a coordinator for AMP and Indonesian supporters in Malang, said in a media release that Indonesia did not carry out the agreement in accordance with the New York Agreement, reports Jubi.

Instead, Indonesia uses a variety of military operations to condition the region and suppress the independence movement of West Papuans.

“Therefore, before the self-determination process was carried out in 1969, Freeport, the imperialist state-owned mining company of the United States, signed its first contract of work with the Indonesian government illegally on 7 April 1967.”

Early Freeport mine deal
Naldo Wasiage of AMP Lombok and Benjos of FRI-WP Lombok claimed colonial Indonesia had made claims to the West Papua region with Freeport’s first contract two years before the Act of Free Choice was passed.

Today, Indonesia’s reform, terror, intimidation, and incarceration, as well as the shootings and murders of Papuans, still occurring.

The human rights of the Papuan people are insignificant and hold no value for Indonesia.

The Military Operation Area was implemented throughout West Papua before and after the illegal Act of Free Choice. This clearly demonstrates that Indonesia’s desire to colonise West Papua until the present.

When asked about the Rome Agreement, Andrew Johnson, an Australian who has been researching international documents and treaties related to West Papua’s “betrayal”, said:

In order to invest billions of dollars in looting West Papua, Freeport would need assurances that Indonesia would be able to deliver access to the region. A Rome Agreement-type document would provide this assurance.

Victor Yeimo: Unveiling the atrocities
After being released from the Indonesian legal system and prison on 23 September 2023, Victor Yeimo addressed thousands of Papuans in Waena Jayapura by saying:

The Papuan people have long suffered under a dehumanising paradigm, which denies our inalienable rights to be human in our own land.

Yeimo said that the Papuan people in West Papua were systematically excluded from any decision-making processes that shaped their own future.

Jakarta’s oppressive control led to arbitrary policies and laws imposed on West Papuans, disregarding their voices and aspirations. This exclusion highlighted the colonisers’ desire to maintain control and dominance, he said.

The ratification of Special Autonomy, Volume II, serves as an example of Jakarta’s deception. The Papuan People’s Council (MRP), entrusted with representing the special autonomy law, was sidelined, rendering their role meaningless.

Jakarta’s military intervention further emphasised the denial of Papuan rights.

The expansion of five new autonomous provinces in West Papua deepens the marginalisation of indigenous Papuans. This move reinforces the grip of Indonesian colonialism, eroding the cultural identity of the Papuan people.

Jakarta’s tactics, supported by state intelligence and collaboration with local elites, legitimised its oppressive control, Yeimo said.

The state intelligence agency (BIN) in Jakarta manipulated conflict between Papuan groups and tribes to perpetuate hostility and division. By sowing seeds of discord, the colonisers sought to weaken the collective strength of the Papuan people and divert their attention away from their own oppressive actions.

Under Indonesian colonial rule, property, wealth and position held little significance for the Papuan people, Yeimo said.

Relying on hollow promises and pseudo-offers from the oppressors would never lead to justice, welfare, or peace. It was time to reject the deceptive allure of colonialism and focus on reclaiming autonomy and dignity, Yeimo told his people.

Embracing nationalistic ideals was crucial in the Papuan struggle for liberation. Indigenous Papuans must question their own participation in Indonesian colonialism.

Working for the colonisers as bureaucratic elites or bourgeois elites does not uphold their humanity or dignity. It is time to reclaim their autonomy and fight for their freedom.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

Academics at Papuan tertiary institutions have accused Indonesian authorities of a new “indigenous marginalisation” programme through the establishment of the autonomous regions of Papua that poses a “significant threat” to the local population.

The dean of the Faculty of Social Science at Okmin University of Papua, Octaviaen Gerald Bidana, said the new autonomous regions (DOB) established by the central government was a deliberate strategy aimed at sidelining the Indigenous Papuan population.

This strategy involved the establishment of entry points for large-scale transmigration programmes.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

Bidana made these remarks during an online discussion titled “Demography, Expansion, and Papuan Development” organised by the Papua Task Force Department of the Catholic Youth Center Management last week.

He said that the expansion effectively served as a “gateway for transmigration”, with indigenous Papuans being enticed by promises of welfare and development that ultimately would turn out to be deceptive.

Echoing Bidana’s concerns, Nguruh Suryawan, a lecturer of Anthropology at the State University of Papua, said that the expansion areas had seen an uncontrolled influx of immigrants.

This unregulated migration, he argued, posed a significant threat to the indigenous Papuan population, leading to their gradual marginalisation.

Riwanto Tirtosudarmo, an Indonesian political demographer, analysed the situation from a demographic perspective.

He said that with the establishment of DOBs in Papua, the Papuan population was likely to become a minority in their own homeland due to the increasing number of immigrants.

The central government’s stated objective for expansion in Papua was to promote equitable and accelerated development in eastern Indonesia.

However, the participants in this online discussion expressed scepticism, saying that the reality on the ground told “a different story”.

The discussion was hosted by Alfonsa Jumkon Wayap, chair of the Women and Children Division of the Catholic Youth Central Board, and was part of a regular online discussion series organised by the Papua Task Force Department of the Catholic Youth Central Board.

Papuan demographics
Pacific Media Watch reports that the 2020 census revealed a population of 4.3 million in the province of Papua of which the majority were Christian.

However, the official estimate for mid-2022 was 4.4 million prior to the division of the province into four separate provinces, according to Wikipedia.

The official estimate of the population in mid-2022 of the reduced province of Papua (with the capital Jayapura) was 1.04 million.

The interior is predominantly populated by ethnic Papuans while coastal towns are inhabited by descendants of intermarriages between Papuans, Melanesians and Austronesians, including other Indonesian ethnic groups.

Migrants from the rest of Indonesia also tend to inhabit the coastal regions.

Republished from Jubi News with permission.

Inclusive talks in Paris between France and Kanaky New Caledonia’s politicians have yielded outcomes, including a French-submitted document on its future.

The talks, held last week, aimed at resuming all-round dialogue over a possible future status for New Caledonia.

Since the end of 2021 and a series of three referendums on New Caledonia’s independence, talks had stalled.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Paris has tried but failed to bring pro-French and pro-independence parties to the same table.

Instead, there were only “bilateral” talks, separately, between France and the pro-independence camp, and between Paris and the pro-France camp.

During the latest round of talks from September 4 to 8, all sides were present for the first time in almost two years.

French Home Affairs and Overseas Minister Gérald Darmanin put on the table a working document which, he said, albeit “ambitious”, remained open to modifications from all sides of New Caledonia’s political spectrum.

Sensitive topics
The document covers sensitive topics such as New Caledonia’s future right to self-determination, but also ways to build and strengthen the notion of a “New Caledonian citizenship”.

“I have been personally involved, I have travelled to New Caledonia four times over the past year . . . We have had a lot of exchanges and a climate of confidence has emerged,” Darmanin told the French newspaper Le Monde.

“There was goodwill from all sides … We have decided to put this project on the table because nobody was doing it,” he added.

The working document, Darmanin said, contained what he described as a “modernisation of New Caledonia’s institutions”, including changes to the areas of responsibilities both on New Caledonia’s government level, but also for its three provinces.

“The project also reaffirms that New Caledonia remains French, but retains a specific paragraph in the [French] Constitution, which means the 1998 Nouméa Accord will not be affected in terms of a New Caledonian citizenship within the French citizenship” he told Le Monde in the same weekend interview.

Another sensitive issue was New Caledonia’s electoral roll for local elections to be held next year.

For the past 25 years, as part of the autonomy Nouméa Accord signed in 1998, the list of eligible voters was “frozen” to only include residents who were born in New Caledonia or established there before 1998 (including their descendents).

Temporary measure
The measure was supposed to be temporary for the duration of the Accord, which is now deemed to have expired.

From France’s point of view, these special measures are no longer tenable and should be brought closer to a one-person, one-vote system before New Caledonia’s provincial elections are held in 2024.

On New Caledonia’s right to self-determination, Darmanin’s draft “no longer includes a date or a timeline to achieve it”, he said, adding this would remove the “Damocles sword” of a “binary question YES or NO to independence”.

Instead, any future project would be submitted “by New Caledonians themselves”, and should be endorsed by a minimum two-thirds of the local Congress.

The document is understood to serve as a basis for further discussions to be finalised by the end of 2023, Darmanin said, adding the final version would result in a French Constitutional amendment scheduled to be put to the necessary vote of the French Congress (both the Senate and the National Assembly).

He said if no agreement was reached by then, “we will amend the electoral roll in order to hold provincial elections [in 2024]. This is a democratic requirement”.

Darmanin said he would travel again to New Caledonia at the “end of October” to pursue talks with all parties.

‘Responsibility in face of history’
“[Last] week, pro-independence and anti-independence (politicians) have held meetings with me in the same room . . .  I am counting on those parties’ great sense of responsibility in the face of history,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron was in New Caledonia late July, when he announced plans for the Constitutional amendment and specific arrangements for New Caledonia sometime early 2024.

Last Friday, he met visiting New Caledonia politicians to mark the end of the week-long Paris talks.

“The President insisted on the need to reach an agreement in order to fully engage on the path of forgiveness and future,” Macron’s office said in a statement.

On the pro-French side, Sonia Backès — the pro-France President of New Caledonia’s Southern Province — said that “by October 11, we should have a document that lists all points of agreement and also those points of disagreement”.

“We have the feeling things are moving forward,” pro-independence FLNKS delegation member Victor Tutugoro told French public media television Outre-Mer la 1ère. “So we’re going to start working on this [document] and really open negotiations by the end of October,” he added.

All three referendums held between 2018 and 2021 have resulted in a majority of voters rejecting independence in New Caledonia.

Final steps required
France regards those results as one of the final steps required from the Nouméa Accord, signed 10 years after another deal, the Matignon-Oudinot Accord, was struck in 1988 to bring an end to half a decade of a bloody quasi-civil war.

But the FLNKS, the umbrella of pro-independence parties, is contesting the outcome of the third referendum held in late 2021, which was largely boycotted by the indigenous Kanak population, saying the covid restrictions and subsequent traditional mourning deterred many of the indigenous Kanaks from voting.

While pro-French parties have seen those three referendums results as evidence of the will for New Caledonia to remain French, the FLNKS is claiming it wants to bring the matter before the International Court of Justice.

It recently received in-principle support from the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) leaders who held their summit in Port Vila, Vanuatu in late August.

The MSG consists of Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and FLNKS as a non-state member.

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

Prime Minister James Marape has made two foreign policy gaffes in the space of a week that may come back to bite him as Papua New Guinea prepares for its 48th anniversary of independence this Saturday.

Critics have been stunned by the opening of a PNG embassy in Jerusalem in defiance of international law — when only three countries have done this other than the United States amid strong Palestinian condemnation — and days later a communique from his office appeared to have indicated he had turned his back on West Papuan self-determination aspirations.

Marape was reported to have told President Joko Widodo that PNG had no right to criticise Indonesia over human rights allegations in West Papua and reportedly admitted that he had “abstained” at the Port Vila meeting of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) last month when it had been widely expected that a pro-independence movement would be admitted as full members.

• READ MORE: MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
• Other West Papua reports

The membership was denied and the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) remained as observers — as they have for almost a decade, disappointing supporters across the Pacific, while Indonesia remains an associate member.

Although Marape later denied that these were actually his views and he told PNG media that the statement had been “unauthorised”, his backtracking was less than convincing.

In the case of Papua New Guinea’s diplomatic relations with Israel, they were given a major and surprising upgrade with the opening of the embassy on September 5 in a high-rise building opposite Malha Mall, Israel’s largest shopping mall.

Marape was quoted by the PNG Post-Courier as saying that the Israeli government would “bankroll” the first two years of the embassy’s operation.

Diplomatic rift with Palestine
This is bound to cause a serious diplomatic rift with Palestine with much of the world supporting resolutions backing the Palestinian cause, especially as Marape also pledged support for Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attending the inauguration ceremony.

Papua New Guinea has now joined Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo and the United States as the “pariah” countries willing to open embassies in West Jerusalem. Most countries maintain embassies instead in Tel Aviv, the country’s commercial centre.

Israel regards West Jerusalem as its capital and would like to see all diplomatic missions established there. However, 138 of the 193 United Nations member countries do not recognise this.

Palestine considers East Jerusalem as its capital for a future independent state in spite of the city being occupied by Israel since being captured in the 1967 Six Day War and having been annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

As Al Jazeera reports, Israel has defiantly continued to build illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and in the Occupied West Bank.

“Many nations choose not to open their embassies in Jerusalem, but we have made a conscious choice,” Marape admitted at the embassy opening.

“For us to call ourselves Christian, paying respect to God will not be complete without recognising that Jerusalem is the universal capital of the people and the nation of Israel,” Marape said.

Law as ‘Christian state’
According to PNG news media, Marape also plans to introduce a law declaring the country a “Christian state” and this has faced some flak back home.

In an editorial, the Post-Courier said Marape had officially opened the new embassy in Jerusalem in response to PNG church groups that had lobbied for a “firmer relationship” with Israel for so long.

“When PM Marape was in Israel,” lamented the Post-Courier, “news broke out that a Christian prayer warrior back home, ‘using the name of the Lord, started performing a prayer ritual and was describing and naming people in the village who she claimed had satanic powers and were killing and causing people to get sick, have bad luck and struggle in finding education, finding jobs and doing business’.

“Upon the prayer warrior’s words, a community in Bulolo, Morobe Province, went bonkers and tortured a 39-year-old mother to her death. She was suspected of possessing satanic powers and of being a witch.

“It is hard to accept that such a barbaric killing should occur in Morobe, the stronghold of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which has quickly condemned the killing.”

The Post-Courier warned that the country would need to wait and see how Palestine would react over the embassy.

“Australia and Britain had to withdraw their plans to set up embassies in Jerusalem, when Palestine protested, describing the move as a ‘blatant violation of international law’.

Pacific Journalism Review: How Indonesian media amplifies the state’s narrative on the Free West Papua movement. #westpapua #indonesia #humanrights https://t.co/J3Rj0Ulhzs pic.twitter.com/9ygIo6KjWN

— Human Rights Monitor (@hurimonitor) September 12, 2023

Indonesian ‘soft-diplomacy’ in Pacific
The establishment of the new embassy coincides with a high profile in recent months over the Indonesian government’s major boost in its diplomatic offensive in Oceania in an attempt to persuade Pacific countries to fall in line with Jakarta over West Papua.

Former Security, Politics and Legal Affairs Minister Wiranto – previously a former high-ranking Indonesian general with an unsavoury reputation — gained an additional budget of 60 million rupiah (US$4 million) to be used for diplomatic efforts in the South Pacific

“We are pursuing intense soft-diplomacy. I’m heading it up myself, going there, coordinating, and talking to them,” he told a working meeting with the House of Representatives (DPR) Budget Committee in September 2018.

“We’re proposing an additional budget of 60 billion rupiah.”

Wiranto was annoyed that seven out of 13 Pacific countries back independence for West Papua. He claimed at the time that this was because of “disinformation” in the Pacific and he wanted to change that.

In 2019, he was appointed to lead the nine-member Presidential Advisory Council but his Pacific strategy was followed through over the past six years.

“We’ve been forgetting, we’ve been negligent, that there are many countries [in the Pacific] which could potentially threaten our domination — Papua is part of our territory and it turns out that this is true,” said Wiranto at the time of the budget debate.

But for many critics in the region, it is the Indonesian government and its officials themselves that have been peddling disinformation and racism about Papua.

Atrocities in Timor-Leste
Wiranto has little credibility in the Pacific, or indeed globally over human rights.

According to Human Rights Watch: “The former general Wiranto was chief of Indonesia’s armed forces in 1999 when the Indonesian army and military-backed militias carried out numerous atrocities against East Timorese after they voted for independence.

“On February 24, 2003, the UN-sponsored East Timor Serious Crimes Unit filed an indictment for crimes against humanity against Wiranto and three other Indonesian generals, three colonels and the former governor of East Timor.

“The charges include[d] murder, arson, destruction of property and forced relocation.

“The charges against Wiranto are so serious that the United States has put Wiranto and others accused of crimes in East Timor on a visa watch list that could bar them from entering the country.”

Australian human rights author and West Papuan advocate Jim Aubrey condemned Wiranto’s “intense soft-diplomacy” comment.

“Yeah, right! Like the soft-diplomatic decapitation of Tarina Murib! Like the soft-diplomatic mutilation and dismemberment of the Timika Four villagers! Like Indonesian barbarity is non-existent!,” he told Asia Pacific Report, saying that Jakarta’s policy had continued since Wiranto’s declaration.

“The non-existent things in Wiranto’s chosen words are truth and justice!”

Conflicting reports on West Papua
When the PNG government released conflicting reports on Papua New Guinea’s position over West Papua last weekend it caused confusion after Marape and Widodo had met in a sideline meeting in in Jakarta during the ASEAN summit.

According to RNZ Pacific, Marape had said about allegations of human rights violations in West Papua that PNG had no moral grounds to comment on human rights issues outside of its own jurisdiction because it had its “own challenges”.

He was also reported to have told President Widodo Marape that he had abstained from supporting the West Papuan bid to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group because the West Papuan United Liberation Movement (ULMWP) “does not meet the requirements of a fully-fledged sovereign nation”.

“Indonesia’s associate membership status also as a Melanesian country to the MSG suffices, which cancels out West Papua ULM’s bid,” Marape reportedly said referring to the ULMWP.

Reacting with shock to the report, a senior PNG politician described it to Asia Pacific Report as “a complete capitulation”.

“No PNG leader has ever gone to that extent,” the politician said, saying that he was seeking clarification.

The statements also caught the attention of the ULMWP which raised its concerns with the Post-Courier.

Marape statement ‘corrected’
Three days later the Post-Courier reported that Marape had “corrected” the original reported statement.

In a revised statement, Marape said that in an effort to rectify any misinformation and alleviate concerns raised within Melanesian Solidarity Group (MSG) countries, West Papua, Indonesia, and the international community, he had addressed “the inaccuracies”.

“Papua New Guinea never abstained from West Papua matters at the MSG meeting, but rather, offered solutions that affirmed Indonesian sovereignty over her territories and at the same time supported the collective MSG position to back the Pacific Islands Forum Resolution of 2019 on United Nations to assess if there are human right abuses in West Papua and Papua provinces of Indonesia.”

He also relayed a message to President Widodo that the four MSG leaders of Melanesian countries – [Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon islands and Vanuatu] — had resolved to visit him at his convenience to discuss human rights.

But clarifications or not, Prime Minister Marape has left a lingering impression that Papua New Guinea’s foreign policy is for sale with chequebook diplomacy, especially when relating to both Indonesia and Israel.

Dr David Robie is the founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and former professor of communication and journalism at Auckland University of Technology. He is the author of Blood on Their Banner about nationalist struggles in the South Pacific and other books.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has backtracked on his comments that PNG had “no right to comment” on human rights abuses in West Papua and has offered a clarification to “clear misconceptions and apprehension”.

Last week, Marape met Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the sidelines of the 43rd ASEAN summit in Jakarta.

According to a statement released by Marape’s office, he revealed that he “abstained” from supporting the West Papuan bid to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ Summit held in Port Vila, Vanuatu, last month because the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) “does not meet the requirements of a fully-fledged sovereign nation”.

• READ MORE: MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
• Marape claims PNG has ‘no right’ to criticise abuses in West Papua
• Other West Papua reports

However, on Saturday, his office again released a statement, saying that the statement released two days earlier had been “released without consent” and that it “wrongfully” said that he had abstained on the West Papua issue.

“Papua New Guinea never abstained from West Papua matters at the MSG meeting,” he said.

He said PNG “offered solutions that affirmed Indonesian sovereignty over her territories”, adding that “at the same time [PNG] supported the collective MSG position to back the Pacific Islands Forum Resolution of 2019 on United Nations to assess if there are human right abuses in West Papua and Papua provinces of Indonesia.”

Marape said PNG stressed to President Widodo its respect for Indonesian sovereignty and their territorial rights.

Collective Melanesian, Pacific resolutions
“But on matters of human rights, I pointed out the collective Melanesian and Pacific resolutions for the United Nations to be allowed to ascertain [human rights] allegations.”

According to Marape the four MSG leaders have agreed to visit the Indonesian President “at his convenience to discuss this matter”.

“President Widodo responded that the MSG leaders are welcome to meet him and invited them to an October meeting subject on the availability of all leaders. He assured me that all is okay in the two Papuan provinces and invited other PNG leaders to visit these provinces.”

Pacific Media Watch reports that there are actually currently six provinces in the West Papua region, not two, under Indonesia’s divide-and-rule policies.

Since 30 June 2022, the region has been split into the following provinces – Papua (including the capital city of Jayapura), Central Papua, Highland Papua, South Papua, Southwest Papua and West Papua.

Marape has also said that his deputy John Rosso was also expected to lead a delegation to West Papua to “look into matters in respect to human rights”.

Meanwhile, he believes the presence of Indonesia on MSG as an associate member and ULMWP as observer at the MSG “is sufficient for the moment”.

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

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has told Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo that PNG has no right to criticise Jakarta over what he calls alleged human rights abuses in West Papua.

The two leaders spoke on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Jakarta, reaffirming commitments to maintain dialogue to build stronger and trustful relations that had been made when they met in Port Moresby in July.

Marape told Widodo he had abstained from supporting the West Papuan bid to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group at last month’s meeting in Port Vila because the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) “does not meet the requirements of a fully-fledged sovereign nation”.

• READ MORE:  MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
• Other West Papua human rights reports

“Indonesia’s associate membership status, also as a Melanesian country to the MSG suffices, which cancels out West Papua ULM’s bid,” Marape said, referring to the ULMWP.

He said about the allegations of human rights issues in West Papua, that since PNG had its own challenges, it had no moral grounds to comment on human rights issues outside of its own jurisdiction.

The Indonesian president said PNG deputy Prime Pinister John Rosso would be invited to assess developments taking place in West Papua.

Widodo said Indonesia’s was committed to building trustful and cooperative relations with all Pacific countries and would extend an invitation to their leaders to attend the Archipelagic Island States (AIS) Forum next month in Indonesia.

Meanwhile, on the planned electrification project in PNG’s western provinces, the two leaders pledged to ensure this project would go ahead smoothly and is completed on time.

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