When the Pacific Islands Forum concluded in Honiara last month, leaders pledged regional unity under the motto “Iumi Tugeda” — “We are Together”.

Eighteen Pacific heads of government reached agreements on climate resilience and nuclear-free oceans.

They signed the Pacific Resilience Facility treaty and endorsed Australia’s proposal to jointly host the 2026 COP31 climate summit.

• READ MORE: ULMWP alleges 15 civilians killed in West Papua military operation
• Other West Papua reports

However, the region’s most urgent crisis was once again given only formulaic attention. West Papua, where Indonesian military operations continue to displace and replace tens of thousands of Papuans, was given just one predictable paragraph in the final communiqué.

This reaffirmed Indonesia’s sovereignty, recalled an invitation made six years ago for the UN High Commissioner to visit, and vaguely mentioned a possible leaders’ mission in 2026.

For the Papuan people, who have been waiting for more than half a century to exercise their right to self-determination, this represented no progress. It confirmed a decades-long pattern of acknowledging Jakarta’s tight grip, expressing polite concern and postponing action.

A stolen independence
The crisis in West Papua stems from its unique place in Pacific history. In 1961, the West Papuans established the New Guinea Council, adopted a national anthem and raised the Morning Star flag — years before Samoa gained independence in 1962 and Fiji in 1970.

Papuan delegates had also helped to launch the South Pacific Conference in 1950, which would become the Pacific Islands Forum.

However, this path was abruptly reversed. Under pressure from Cold War currents, the Netherlands transferred administration to Indonesia.

The promised plebiscite was replaced by the 1969 Act of Free Choice, in which 1026 hand-picked Papuans were forced to vote for integration under military coercion.

Despite protests, the UN endorsed the result. West Papua was the first Pacific nation to have its recognised independence reversed during decolonisation.

Systematic blockade
Since the early 1990s, UN officials have been seeking access to West Papua. However, the Indonesians have imposed a complete block on any international institutions and news media entering.

Between 2012 and 2022, multiple UN high commissioners and special rapporteurs requested visits. All were denied.

More than 100 UN member states have publicly supported these requests. It has never occurred. Regional organisations ranging from the Pacific Islands Forum to the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States have made identical demands. Jakarta ignores them all.

International media outlets face the same barriers. Despite former Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s 2015 declaration that foreign journalists could enter Papua freely, visa restrictions and surveillance have kept the province as among the world’s least reported conflicts.

During the protests in 2019, Indonesia shut down internet access across the territory.
Indonesia calculates that it can ignore international opinion because key partners treat West Papua as a low priority.

Australia and New Zealand balance occasional concern with deeper trade ties. The US and China prioritise strategic interests.

Even during his recent visit to Papua New Guinea, UN Secretary-General António Guterres made no mention of West Papua, despite the conflict lying just across the border.

Bougainville vs West Papua
The Pacific’s inaction is particularly striking when compared to Bougainville. Like West Papua, Bougainville endured a brutal conflict.

Unlike West Papua, however, Bougainville received genuine international support for self-determination. Under UN oversight, Bougainville’s 2019 referendum allowed free voting, with 98 per cent choosing independence.

Today, Bougainville and Papua New Guinea are negotiating a peaceful transition to sovereignty.

West Papua has been denied even this initial step. There is no credible mediation. There is no international accompaniment. There is no timetable for a political solution.

The price of hypocrisy
Pacific leaders are confronted with a fundamental contradiction. They demand bold global action on climate justice, yet turn a blind eye to political injustice on their doorstep.

The ban on raising the Morning Star flag in Honiara, reportedly under pressure from Indonesia, has highlighted this hypocrisy.

The flag symbolises the right of West Papuans to exist as a nation. Prohibiting it at a meeting celebrating regional solidarity revealed the extent of external influence in Pacific decision-making.

This selective solidarity comes at a high cost. It undermines the Pacific’s credibility as a global conscience on climate change and decolonisation.

It leaves Papuans trapped in what they describe as a “slow-motion genocide”. Between 2018 and 2022, an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people were displaced by Indonesian military operations.

In 2024, Human Rights Watch reported that violence had reached levels unseen in decades.

Breaking the pattern
The Forum could end this cycle by taking practical steps. For example, it could set a deadline of 12 months for an Indonesia-UN agreement on unrestricted access to West Papua.

If no agreement is reached, the Forum could conduct its own investigation with the Melanesian Spearhead Group. It could also make regional programmes contingent on human rights benchmarks, including ensuring humanitarian access and ending internet shutdowns.

Such measures would not breach the Forum’s charter. They would align Pacific diplomacy with the proclaimed values of dignity and solidarity. They would demonstrate that regional unity extends beyond mere rhetoric.

The test of history
The people of West Papua were among the first in Oceania to resist colonial expansion and to form a modern government. They were also the first to experience the reversal of recognised sovereignty.

Until Pacific leaders find the courage to confront Indonesian obstruction and insist on genuine West Papuan self-determination, “Iumi Tugeda” will remain a beautiful slogan shadowed by betrayal.

The region’s moral authority does not depend on eloquence regarding the climate fund, but on whether it confronts its deepest wound.

Any claim to a unified Blue Pacific identity will remain incomplete until the issue of West Papua’s denied independence is finally addressed.

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 holds a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University – Australia.

On my office wall hangs a framed portrait of Shireen Abu Akleh, the inspiring and celebrated American-Palestinian journalist known across the Middle East to watchers of Al Jazeera Arabic, who was assassinated by an Israeli military sniper with impunity.

State murder.

She was gunned down in full blue “press” kit almost two years ago while reporting on a raid in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, clearly targeted for her influence as a media witness to Israeli atrocities.

• READ MORE: The plan is to turn Palestine into a historical footnote so it’s too late to save it

As in the case of all 22 journalists who had been killed by Israeli military until that day, 11 May 2022, nobody was charged.

Now, six months into the catastrophic and genocidal Israeli War on Gaza, some 137 Palestinian journalists have been killed — murdered – by Israeli snipers, or targeted bombs demolishing their homes, and even their families.

Also in my office is pasted a red poster with a bird-of-paradise shaped pen in chains and the legend “Open access for journalists – Free press in West Papua.”

The poster was from a 2017 World Media Freedom Day conference in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, which I attended as a speaker and wrote about. Until this day, there is still no open door for international journalists

Harassed, beaten
Although only one killing of a Papuan journalist is recorded, there have been many instances when local news reporters have been harassed, beaten and threatened – beyond the reach of international media.

Ardiansyah Matra was savagely beaten and his body dumped in the Maro River, Merauke. A spokesperson for the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Victor Mambor, said at the time: “‘It’s highly likely that his murder is connected with the terror situation for journalists which was occurring at the time of Ardiansyah’s death.”

Frequently harassed himself, Mambor, founder and publisher of Jubi Media, was apparently the target of a suspected bomb attack, or warning, on 23 January 2023, when Jayapura police investigated a blast outside his home in Angkasapura Village.

At first glance, it may seem strange that comparisons are being made between the War on Gaza in the Middle East and the long-smouldering West Papuan human rights crisis in the Asia-Pacific region almost 11,000 km away. But there are several factors at play.

Melanesian and Pacific activists frequently mention both the Palestinian and West Papuan struggles in the same breath. A figure of up to 500,000 deaths among Papuans is often cited as the toll from 1969 when Indonesia annexed the formerly Dutch colony in controversial circumstances under the flawed Act of Free Choice, characterised by critics as the Act of “No” Choice.

The death toll in Gaza after the six-month war on the besieged enclave by Israel is already almost 33,000 (in reality far higher if the unknown number of casualties buried under the rubble is added). Most of the deaths are women and children.

At least 27 children have died of malnutrition so far with numbers expected to rise sharply.

Ethnic cleansing
But there are mounting fears that Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gazans has no end in sight and the lives of 2.3 million people are at stake.

Both Palestinians and West Papuans see themselves as the victims of violent settler colonial projects that have been stealing their land and destroying their culture under the world’s noses — in the case of Palestine since the Nakba of 1948, and in West Papua since Indonesian paratroopers landed in a botched invasion in 1963.

They see themselves as both confronting genocidal leaders; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity at home sinks by the day with growing protests, and Indonesia’s new President-elect Prabowo Subianto who has an atrocious human rights reputation in both Timor-Leste and West Papua.

And both peoples feel betrayed by a world that has stood by as genocides have been taking place — in the case of Palestine in real time on social media and television screens, and in the case of West Papua slowly over six decades.

Last November, outgoing Indonesian President Joko Widodo confronted US President Joe Biden on his policies over Gaza, and appealed for Washington to do more to prevent atrocities in Palestine.

Indonesian politicians such as Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi have been quick to condemn Israel, including at the International Court of Justice, but Papuan independence leaders find this hypocritical.

“We have full sympathy for the struggle for justice in Palestine and call for the restoration of peace,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.

‘Where’s Indonesian outrage?’
“But what about West Papua? Where was Indonesia’s outrage after Bloody Paniai [2014], or the Wamena massacre in February?

“Indonesia is claiming to oppose genocide in Gaza while committing their own genocide in West Papua.”

“Over 60 years of genocidal colonial rule, over 500,000 West Papuans have been killed by Indonesian forces.”

Wenda said genocide in West Papua was implemented slowly and steadily through a series of massacres, assassinations and policies, such as the killings of the chair of the Papuan Council Theys Eluay in 2001; Mako Tabuni (2012); and cultural curator and artist Arnold Ap (1984).

He cited many independent international and legal expert reports for his “considered position”, such as Yale University Law School, University of Wollongong, and the Asian Human Rights Commission – The Neglected Genocide.

In the South Pacific, Indonesia is widely seen among civil society, university and community groups as a ruthless aggressor with little or no respect for the Papuan culture.

Jakarta is engaged in an intensive diplomacy campaign in an attempt to counter this perception.

Unarmed Palestinians killed in Gaza – revealing Israel’s “kill zones”.  Video: Al Jazeera

Israel’s ‘rogue’ status
But if Indonesia is unpopular in the Pacific over its brutal colonial policies, it is nothing compared to the global “rogue” status of Israel.

In the past few weeks, as atrocity after atrocity pile up and the country’s disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions increasingly shock, supporters appear to be shrinking to its long-term ally the United States and its Five Eyes partners with New Zealand’s coalition government failing to condemn Israel’s war crimes.

On Good Friday — Day 174 of the war – Israel bombed Gaza, Syria and Lebanon on the same day, killing civilians in all three countries.

In the past week, the Israeli military ratcheted up its attacks on the Gaza Strip in defiance of the UN Security Council’s order for an immediate ceasefire, expanded its savage attacks on neighbouring states, and finally withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital after a bloody two-week siege, leaving it totally destroyed with at least 350 patients, staff and displaced people dead.

Fourteen votes against the lone US abstention after Washington had earlier vetoed three previous resolutions produced the decisive ceasefire vote, but the Israeli objective is clearly to raze Gaza and make it uninhabitable.

As The Guardian described the vote, “When Gilad Erdan, the Israeli envoy to the UN, sat before the Security Council to rail against the ceasefire resolution it had just passed, he cut a lonelier figure than ever in the cavernous chamber.”

The newspaper added that the message was clear.

‘Time was up’
“Time was up on the Israeli offensive, and the Biden administration was no longer prepared to let the US’s credibility on the world stage bleed away by defending an Israeli government which paid little, if any, heed to its appeals to stop the bombing of civilian areas and open the gates to substantial food deliveries.”

Al Jazeera interviewed Norwegian physician Dr Mads Gilbert, who has spent long periods working in Gaza, including at al-Shifa Hospital. He was visibly distressed in his reaction, lamenting that the Israeli attack had “destroyed” the 78-year legacy of the Strip’s largest and flagship hospital.

Speaking from Tromso, Norway, he said: “This is such a sad day, I’ve been weeping all morning.”

Dr Gilbert said he did not know the fate of the 107 critical patients who had been moved two days earlier to an older building in the complex.

“The maggots that are creeping out of the corpses in al-Shifa Hospital now,” he said, “are really maggots coming out of the eyes of President Biden and the European Union leaders doing nothing to stop this horrible, horrible genocide.”

Australia-based Antony Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has been reporting on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for two decades, described Israel’s attack on the hospital as the “actions of a rogue state”.

Gaza health officials said Israel was targeting all the hospitals and systematically destroying the medical infrastructure. Only five out of a total of 37 hospitals still had some limited services operating.

Strike on journalists’ tent
Yesterday, four people were killed and journalists were wounded in an Israeli air strike on a tent in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

The Israeli military claimed the strike was aimed at a “command centre” operated by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group, but footage screened by Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary clearly showed it was a tent where displaced people were sheltering and journalists and photographers were working.

The Israeli military have killed another photojournalist and editor, Abdel Wahab Awni, when they bombed his home in the Maghazi refugee camp. This took the number of journalists killed since the start of the war to 137, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

Al Jazeera has revealed that Israel was using “kill zones” for certain combat areas in Gaza. Anybody crossing the “invisible” lines into these zones was shot on sight as a “terrorist”, even if they were unarmed civilians.

The chilling practice was exposed when footage was screened of two unarmed civilians carrying white flags being apparently gunned down and then buried by bulldozer under rubble. A US-based civil rights group described the killings as a “heinous crime”.

The kill zones were confirmed at the weekend by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said the military had claimed to have killed 9000 “terrorists”, but officials admitted that many of the dead were often civilians who had “crossed the line” of fire.

Call for sanctions
The Israeli peace advocacy group Gush Shalom sent an open letter to all the embassies credited to Israel calling for immediate sanctions against the Israeli government, saying Netanyahu was “flagrantly refusing” to comply with the ceasefire resolution.

“We, citizens of Israel,” said the letter, “are calling on your government to initiate a further meeting of the Security Council, aiming to pass a resolution which would set effective sanctions on Israel — in order to bring about an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until the end of Ramadan and beyond it.”

A Palestinian-American professor of law Dr Noura Erakat, of Rutgers University, recently told a BBC interviewer that Israel had made its end game very clear from the beginning of the war.

“Israel has made its intent clear. Its war cabinet had made its intent clear. From the very beginning, in the first week of October 7, it told us its goal was to depopulate Gaza.

“They have equated the decimation of Hamas, which they cannot achieve militarily, with the depopulation of the entire Gaza strip.”

A parallel with Indonesia’s fundamentally flawed policies in West Papua. Failing violent settler colonialism.

Sixty years ago today — on 15 August 1962 — the fate of a newly born nation-state West Papua was stolen by men in New York. The infamous event is known as “The New Agreement”, a deal between the Netherlands and Indonesia over West Papua’s sovereignty.

A different fate had been intended for the people of West Papua in early 1961 when they elected their national Council from whom the Dutch were asking guidance for the transfer of administration back to Papuan hands.

Shockingly, the threat of colonialism came from America several months later when a journalist advocating liberty denounced a secret Washington proposal to betray America’s Pacific War ally Papua to an Asian colonial power.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua self-determination reports

The Council’s response was to present to the Dutch a flag and manifesto of independence asking all the peoples of West Papua to unite as one people under their new Morning Star flag.

On 1 December 1961, the Dutch raised the Morning Star flag, and for more than 60 years the people have united as one raising their Morning Star flag.

But declassified American records reveal horrific deceptions. A group inside the White House had begun secret negotiations with the Republic of Indonesia around a proposal for an illegal use of the International Trusteeship System, or to quote the US, “a special United Nations trusteeship of West New Guinea” that irrespective of Papua’s objections would then ask Indonesia to assume control.

The “special” nature of the US proposal had the opposite intent than that of the international law. The International Trusteeship System, Chapter XII of the United Nations Charter is meant protect a people’s right of independence and have the UN prepare annual reports about their welfare and progress towards independence for each territory the United Nations has become responsible for, including those invaded and subjugated by UN troops.

West Papua is both.

Instead of protection and annual reports, the United Nations by omission of duty is enabling Indonesian impunity for military campaigns of terror and administrative suspension of all human rights.

West Papuans have suffered hundreds of thousands of extrajudicial deaths, disappearances and looting of many hundreds of billions of dollars throughout the UN appointed administration by Indonesia.

Weekly stories of horror hidden from international news media by an ongoing Indonesian declaration that Papua is a quarantine zone requiring special permission for NGOs and journalists to enter.

It is beyond time that the UN took steps to put right the wrongs of the past. #selfdetermination pic.twitter.com/vsWBO0wXpo

— Free West Papua (@FreeWestPapua) August 7, 2022

Fiscal and geopolitical deceptions
Every principle written into the UN’s charter, the Rules of Procedure of the Trusteeship Council, and even Indonesia’s own New York Agreement have been violated by the ongoing Indonesian conduct, international mining and United Nations omission of lawful conduct.

These events proceeded against the backdrop of a global movement calling for decolonialisation that rippled across Asia, Africa and the Pacific, with the West and the Communist bloc supporting or opposing one another to gain influence in these movements.

The newly independent nation of Indonesia, which had been under Dutch rule for more than 300 years, declared independence on 17 August 1945. Sukarno was the man of this era, leading the outburst of a long-awaited human desire for freedom and equality.

In the same era, wars broke out in Korea and Vietnam; the world endured the Cuban missile crisis as forces of the West and the Communist bloc continued to clash and reshape the destiny of these new nation-states.

Leading up to the final recognition of their new republic in December 1949, Indonesians experienced another brutal, protracted war with the Dutch. The Netherlands side wanted to reclaim their past colonial glory, and the Indonesian side wanted to removed Dutch occupation and authority from their nation.

Indonesia’s founding fathers, Sukarno and Suharto, were significant men of their era, with ambitions to match — ambitions that led to the massacre of millions of alleged Indonesian Chinese communists in the mid-1960s; the same ambition that placed the Papuan people on the path they are on now, carved by blood, tears, trauma, war, killing, rape, exploitation, betrayal, and being cheated at every turn by the world’s highest institutions.

Many nations around the world had to face difficult choices, with emerging leaders of all types avoiding the cause of their own imagined nation-state. This was a most turbulent era of development and globalisation.

Arguably, most conflicts around the world today stem from unresolved grievances brought about by this turbulence and divisive historical events.

West Papua’s extended conflicts for the last 60 years are a direct result of being mishandled by Western forces who sought to take Papua’s independence for themselves.

As of today, Indonesians (and those unaware of West Papua’s legal status under international law) think that this is a domestic issue, a narrative which Jakarta elites insist on propagandising to the world.

The truth is that West Papua remains an unresolved issue with international implications. More specifically, the UN still has the responsibility to correct their sixty-year-old mistake.

The UN breached its own charter
At least in principle, all 111 articles of the UN Charter are aimed at promoting peace, dignity, and equality. One of the key elements of the charter (in relation to decolonisation) is its declaration that colonial territories would be considered non-self-governing territories. The United Nations’ responsibility was to provide a “full measure of self-government” to those nations colonised by foreign powers. West Papua’s story as a new nation began within these international frameworks.

West Papua was already listed under the UN’s decolonisation system as a non-self-governing territory before 1962 and the Dutch were preparing Papuans for full independence in accordance with the UN charter guidelines. The public has been deceived by trivialising this agreement and downplaying it as simply two powers — Netherlands and Indonesia — fighting over West Papuan territory.

The UN, as a caretaker of this trust, had a responsibility to provide a measure for Papuans to achieve independence. The UN instead handed (abandoned) this trust to Indonesia, who then abused that international trust by invading West Papua in May 1963. This scandalous historical error has brought unprecedented cataclysm to Papuans to date.

The Indonesian perspective
Most Indonesians have been fooled by their government to think that West Papua’s fate was decided during a referendum, known as “Pepera” or “Act of Free Choice” in 1969, which Papuans now refer to as the “Act of No Choice”. Indonesians assume that Indonesian occupancy is good for West Papua, but this is not true: they are unaware that Indonesia is illegally occupying West Papua and their government is in breach of many international laws.

It seems that the Western powers have no issue turning a blind eye when one of their endorsed global players are breaking their laws.

During the period of July to September 1969, the Act of Free Choice was carried out by the Indonesian government. The UN was there but did not act or speak against it. This referendum was one of the items stipulated in the New York Agreement seven years earlier.

About 2025 Papuan elders among the one million Papuans who were handpicked at gunpoint and forced to say “yes” to remain with Indonesia. The UN acted as a bystander, unwilling to interfere with the tyranny taking place before them.

What we seem to forget is the fact that before the referendum in 1969, Indonesia had already launched a large-scale martial and administrative operation throughout West Papua, instilling fear and setting the stage for the rubber stamp referendum to proceed.

What happened in 1969 was a tragedy and a farce of human autonomy. The UN and international community betrayed West Papua on the world’s stage.

The New York Agreement
Andrew Johnson and Julian King, Australian researchers who specialised in this case, have argued that West Papua is still a non-self-governing territory, and that Indonesia has no legal or moral right to claim sovereignty over West Papua. These researchers insist that West Papua is still a non-self-governing territory, and Indonesia is only there temporarily as an administrator — they have no legal basis to introduce any law or policy towards West Papua.

In their ground-breaking seminal work West Papua Exposed: An Abandoned Non-Self-Governing or Trust Territory, Johnson and King conclude that:

Either as a Non-Self-Governing Territory or a Trust Territory, the legal rights of the people of West Papua have been denied with every UN Member responsible and legally bound to uphold the Charter in order to correct this breach of international law.

No Papuan was invited or included during the agreement. This act itself speaks volumes – the complete denial of Papuans’ intrinsic worth as human beings to have any input into their fate is the basis for all kinds of violence, abuse, torture and mistreatment towards Papuan people.

This is the first violation and the most egregious because the Indonesian government’s draconian policies towards Papuans have consistently exhibited and reinforced this prejudiced behaviour over the past 60 years. Indonesians do not treat Papuans as equal human beings, therefore, what Papuans think, desire and feel doesn’t matter.

It was the right move for the UN to accept West Papua as a Trust Territory. However, the UN abandoned this sacred trust to Indonesia a year later, even though Indonesia’s behaviour prior to, during, and after this agreement had already been in breach of many UN charters and principles.

For example, Chapters 11 (XI), 12 (XII), and 13 (XIII) of the UN Charter governing decolonisation and Papua’s right to self-determination, as specified in the New York Agreement’s Articles 18 (XVII), 19 (XIX), 20 (XX), 21 (XXI), and 22 (XXII) have not been followed.

Additionally, the UN’s failure to uphold its principles and its silence on its disastrous mistake constitutes a serious breach of international law.

Secret documents
Declassified documents from the United States, Australia, and the United Nations reveal irrefutable evidence of what went wrong behind the scenes prior to, during, and after the Netherlands-Indonesia agreement.

The idea of exploiting the UN Trusteeship system to transfer the sovereignty of West Papua to Indonesia was already proposed in 1959 by the US embassy in Jakarta.

Now-declassified document titled “A proposal for Settlement of the West New Guinea Dispute”, dated on May 26, 1959, stated:

Our position of neutrality has served its purpose. It is time we developed a formula to remove this major irritant to Indonesian relations with the West.

In the US minds, the formula was exploiting the UN’s mechanisms to give West Papua sovereignty to Indonesia.

A year later on 3 March 1961, the US embassy wrote:

Unless New Guinea question can be promptly removed as source of Soviet strength and US weakness, as incipient cause of war and as platform for variety of unhealthful isms within Indonesia, our best efforts in any other direction will fail to achieve our objectives here.

According to King and Johnson, the 1962 New York Agreement story has been a deception for 60 years; the agreement was not drafted after the Indonesian invasion in 1962. The agreement was proposed by an American lawyer in May 1959, modified in 1960, proposed to Indonesia in March 1961, and executed in 1962.

West Papua is not sold or traded under the Agreement. It is an agreement between UN members to share the responsibility for the welfare of West Papuan people (trusteeship), and it asks the UN to be the “administrator” (occupying force) in 1962. When the United Nations backed the agreement, Pakistani troops were appointed to administer West Papua in 1962, followed by Indonesian troops in 1963.

As it turns out, armies of secret dealers in UN uniforms were behind the scenes setting agendas, proposing solutions, and implementing them without consequences.

It appears then that the New York Agreement itself, the terms of reference upon which the UN General Assembly voted on the agreement, the UN’s role from 1962 to 1963, the final Act of Free Choice in 1969, and the UN General Assembly vote on the Act of Free Choice’s outcome were all facades — a treacherous performance fit for a tragic drama.

A carefully orchestrated plan was devised to sacrifice West Papua to Indonesia by manipulating the UN’s system by the United States — the leader of the free democratic world and the tyrant flexing its vast military power.

The fight to reclaim stolen sovereignty lives on
Papua played an important role in reshaping geopolitical arrangements between the West and the communist bloc, and it will continue to do so if this issue remains unresolved.

The future in which West Papua will play a critical role has arrived. The US and its allies will have to face China or any other power or ideological forces that are challenging the liberal world order.

The responses, criticisms, or reactions arising from nations around the world — whether it be on the issues of covid-19, the Ukraine war, Taiwan, Solomon Islands-China security deals, or any other global issue — suggest that the grand narrative of the West as the saviour of mankind pushed by the US is being questioned and rejected.

Another new grand narrative is now emerging, and that is China.

West Papua at a crossroads
What role will West Papua play in the current geopolitical tussle between the West and China is impossible to predict. This is something that must be dealt with by regional and international communities. West Papua’s issues do not dominate the headlines like Ukraine, Solomon Islands, or Taiwan, but they have their own significance in reshaping regional and global geopolitical arrangements.

The world of Papuans 60 years ago was different from now. More than half of a country abused, tortured and mistreated under Indonesia occupation is driving Papuans to become a minority in their own homeland. It has also strengthened their will to live and fight, and most Papuan youth are equipped with knowledge of the crimes against their people and what they can do to bring about justice and facilitate change.

Papuan resistance groups are increasingly becoming anti-Western, believing that the West is exploiting them while supplying arms to the Indonesian military. West Papuan students across Indonesia often wear revolutionary hats or t-shirts displaying socialist and communist revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro, Lenin, Che Guevara, and Ho-Chi Mi — they are well-versed in Leftist literatures.

The attitude of the general population in West Papua is also changing. Where previous generations have had a strong connection with the West due to shared experiences of World War II and influence by Western missionaries, young people are now questioning everything about the current state of affairs and asking why they are in this predicament.

Papua’s governor also praised Russia for its generous sponsorship of Papuans to study in the country. The Governor is currently building Russian and Papuan museums to strengthen this relationship and honour Russian anthropologist Nicholai Nicholaievich Mikluho Maklai, who advocated for the rights of New Guinea People 150 years ago.

The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB)
The armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), has also been changing its armed resistance strategy against Indonesian occupation.

They are shooting and killing anyone they consider a traitor or an invader, an attitude never seen before. It is dangerous because of not only their drastic approach, but the retaliation from heavily armed Indonesian security forces, who are aggressively shooting, burning, rampaging, and bombing anyone they consider to be OPM.

The TPNPB and Indonesian security forces have been at war for many years, and Jakarta has responded with heavy handed security measures by sending thousands of soldiers to hunt down the alleged perpetrators.

Recently, this has intensified, resulting in the displacement of thousands of Indigenous Papuans.

West Papua civilians could be subjected to an unprecedented mass atrocity if (or when) this situation escalates. According to a report published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, structural factors behind conflict in the region are showing signs of events that could trigger mass atrocities against civilians.

As reported by the UCA News, Gadjah Mada University researchers in Yogyakarta reported 348 violent acts in Papua between 2010 and March of this year. There were at least 464 deaths, including 320 civilians, and 1654 injuries, mostly civilians.

There are far more human tragedies unfolding in West Papua each day than what this figure represents. Unfortunately, Jakarta has blocked independent journalists from entering the region, making it difficult to verify these claims.

International voices for human rights investigation
In March 2022, UN experts from the Office of the Human Rights High Commissioner published a report highlighting serious violations and abuses against Papuans.

In addition, Jakarta has not granted a request for a visit by the UN High Commissioner to the region made by the UN Human Rights Council.

Despite the Tuvalu resolution of the Pacific Island Forum in 2019 and another resolution from African Caribbean and Pacific nations requesting Jakarta for a UN visit, the request has not yet yielded results.

On August 3, ABC Radio Australia hosted Benny Wenda, the UK-based exiled West Papua independence leader, to discuss the current situation in his homeland.

According to Wenda, the plight of West Papua to determine its own fate is clouded by the current geopolitical intrigues between the West and China. The status of West Papua is an unresolved international issue that has been swept under the carpet.

Even though the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting of heads of state and government held in Suva, Fiji from 11 to 14 July 2022 left West Papua out of the forum’s agenda, Wenda expressed optimism that West Papua would not be forgotten at the next meeting.

Indonesia and West Papua at a crossroads again
Although West Papua has been buried deep within diplomacy for 60 years, it remains the most important issue affecting Jakarta’s relations with China and the US, as well as the way big powers deal with the independent Indigenous nation states across Oceania.

Above all, geopolitical war via chequebook diplomacy, media, or forming military and trade alliances and deals in the Pacific has become a real issue that we all must face.

The peaceful blue Pacific (Oceania), which Australia and New Zealand consider their “backyard” could become a new Middle East.

In response to this fear, the White House invited Pacific leaders to dinner later this year with Joe Biden.

At the outset, West Papua issues might seem insignificant, irrelevant, or forgotten to the world, but in reality, it is one of the most significant issues influencing how Jakarta’s engage with the world and how the world engages with Jakarta.

Once again, Jakarta is caught in the middle between great powers, and they do not have the same leverage to play the same games as their ancestors did so many years ago. Jakarta elites need to recognise that they stole something so precious that belonged to Papuan people, and this must be returned to the rightful owner.

The only appropriate and adequate justice left for Papuans is to be given back their sovereignty. This is the only way for Papua to heal and have decades of violence against them reconciled.

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

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is warning in a new report that mass killings of civilians could occur in Indonesia’s troubled West Papua region in the next year to 18 months if current conditions deteriorate to a worst-case scenario.

Although large-scale violence against civilians is not occurring yet in Papua, early warning signs are visible and warrant attention, says the report, titled “Don’t Abandon Us: Preventing Mass Atrocities in Papua.”

The museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide published the 45-page report this week authored by an Indonesian, Made Supriatma, who conducted field research in the region.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua human rights reports

“Indonesia ranks 27th on the list of countries with risks of mass atrocities. This report should be considered as an early warning,” Supriatma said.

A combination of factors — increasing rebel attacks, better coordination and organisation of pro-independence civilian groups, and the ease of communication — makes it plausible that the unrest could reach a new level in the next 12-18 months, the report said.

“If political and social unrest persist, and if it were to spread across the region, it is possible that the Indonesian government could determine that the scale or persistence of the protests would justify a more severe response, which could lead to large-scale killing of civilians,” it said.

The risks are rooted in factors such as past mass atrocities in Indonesia, the exclusion of indigenous Papuans from political decision-making, Jakarta’s failure to address their grievances and conflicts over the exploitation of the region’s resources, according to the report.

Human rights abuses
Other factors include Papuans’ resentment over Jakarta’s failure to hold accountable security personnel implicated in human rights abuses and conflict between indigenous Papuans and migrants from other parts of Indonesia over economic, political, religious, and ideological issues, it said.

Under one scenario that the report envisions, pro-Jakarta Papuan militia, backed by the military and police, commit mass atrocities against pro-independence Papuans.

But such a scenario depends on indigenous Papuan groups remaining divided into pro-Jakarta and pro-independence groups, it said. The other scenario involves Indonesian migrants and Indonesian security forces committing atrocities against indigenous Papuans, the study said.

The report recommends that the government improve freedom of information and monitoring atrocity risks, manage conflicts through nonviolent means, and address local grievances and drivers of conflict.

Supriatma said indigenous Papuans he spoke to as part of his research confirmed that real and perceived discrimination had fueled an “us-against-them” mentality between indigenous Papuans and Indonesians.

Papua, on the western side of New Guinea Island, has been the scene of a low-level pro-independence insurgency since the mainly Melanesian region was incorporated into Indonesia in a United Nations-administered ballot in the late 1960s.

In 1963, Indonesian forces invaded Papua — like Indonesia, a former Dutch colony — and annexed the region.

Only 1025 people voted in the UN-sponsored referendum in 1969 that locals and activists said was a sham, but the United Nations accepted the result, essentially endorsing Jakarta’s rule.

‘Not based on facts’
An expert at the Indonesian presidential staff office, Theofransus Litaay, questioned the study’s validity.

“There’s something wrong in the identification of research questions. The author extrapolated events in East Timor to his research,” he said, referring to violence by pro-Jakarta militias before and after East Timor’s vote for independence from Indonesia in 1999.

“It’s not based on the facts on the ground,” he said, without elaborating.

Gabriel Lele, a senior researcher with the Papuan Task Force at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, said the report was based on limited data.

“It is true that there has been an escalation of violence, but the main perpetrators are the OPM [Free Papua Movement] and the victims have been civilians, soldiers and police,” lele said.

He said rebels had also attacked indigenous Papuans who did not support the pro-independence movement.

Violence has intensified in Papua since 2018, when pro-independence rebels attacked workers who were building roads and bridges in Nduga regency, killing 20 people, including an Indonesian soldier.

Suspected rebels killed civilians
In the latest violence, suspected rebels gunned down 10 civilians, mostly non-indigenous Papuans, and wounded two others on July 16.

A local rebel commander from the OPM’s armed wing, Egianus Kogoya, claimed responsibility.

“We suspect they were spies, so we shot them dead on the spot,” the Media Indonesia newspaper quoted him as saying on Monday.

The attack in Nduga regency came a little more than two weeks after legislators voted to create three new provinces in Papua amid opposition from indigenous people and rebel groups.

In March this year, insurgents killed eight workers who were repairing a telecommunications tower in Beoga, a district of Puncak regency.

No desire to address racism
Reverend Dr Benny Giay, a member of the Papua Church Council, said Jakarta had not shown a desire to address racism against Papuans, who are ethnically Melanesian, and instead branded pro-independence groups terrorists.

“Authorities allow arms trade between armed groups and members of the TNI [military] and police, which perpetuates the violence and in the end can have fatal consequences for the indigenous people,” Dr Giay said.

The influx of migrants from other parts of Indonesia has created inter-communal tensions and conflicts over regional governance, analysts said.

Indigenous people are concerned that a massive project to build a trans-Papua highway, as part of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s drive to boost infrastructure, could lead to economic domination by outsiders and the presence of more troops, said Cahyo Pamungkas, a researcher from the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).

“The road will mainly benefit non-Papuans, and indigenous people will benefit little economically because they are not ready to be involved in the economic system that the government wants to build,” Cahyo said.

Republished from Benar News. Co-author Victor Mambor is editor-in-chief of the indigenous Papuan newspaper and website Jubi.

Papuans have launched protest actions in 13 cities across Indonesia to demonstrate against the so-called “Act of Free Choice” that enabled Jakarta to take control of the Melanesian region.

The Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) and the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP) organised the rallies in cities, including Jakarta, Bandung and Ambon.

AMP spokesperson Surya Anta said that they were taking to the streets based on two principal issues related to West Papuan independence.

“[Papuans had] already declared their independence in 1961, deciding not to be part of the 1945 [declaration of Indonesian] independence [from the Dutch],” Surya told CNN Indonesia in front of the State Palace in Central Jakarta last Thursday marking the August 2 date.

Surya said that at the time, the people of West Papua already had a state symbol, flag and currency, although no administration had yet been established.

The second reason was that the people of West Papua wanted to separate from Indonesia because for years and years they had suffered “slow-motion genocide”.

This was in no way in accordance with the values enshrined in the state ideology of Pancasila in realising independence for all nations.

‘Oppression, slow-motion genocide’
“They suffer oppression, abuse, slow-motion genocide, rape, abductions, no freedom of expression and access to information, and many other things,” he said.

The problems facing the West Papuans also included the massive exploitation of natural resources, which according to Surya, is because of the PT Freeport Indonesian gold-and-copper mine problem.

Social inequality was also high compared with other parts of Indonesia.

Surya added that the West Papuan people wanted to separate from Indonesia because they did not feel Indonesian because of the numerous problems cited.

“Yes (they want to separate from Indonesia) because from the very beginning they did not feel Indonesian. Go ahead and check the [1948] Youth Pledge. Was West Papua mentioned there?,” he said.

Surya said that the infrastructure development which was being touted by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in Papua had not been enough to make the people feel Indonesian.

“Yeah, like the Dutch [colonial] period, we got schools, but did this then make us become Dutch citizens? No. We still felt convinced that our identity was different,” he said.

Widodo has become known as the Indonesian president which has most often visited Papua. His agenda has been varied but in his Nawa Cita [nine point priority programme], Widodo has prioritised the resolution of past human rights violations and the development of infrastructure in Papua.

‘Same old song’
Coordinating Minister for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs Menko Polhukam Wiranto referred to protests by Papuan pro-independence activists such as these as being a “separatist” action seeking to attract international attention.

“It’s a small separatist movement but by methods such as this [they] want to get world attention,” said Wiranto at his office in Jakarta.

The former commander of ABRI (Indonesian Armed Forces, now TNI) said that threats by Papuan pro-independence groups which had been widespread lately were just the “same old song” which had been played repeatedly for a long time.

As has been reported, the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) were holding actions in Jakarta and London to support a new referendum for the Papuan people.

At Thursday’s action in front of the State Palace the AMP and the FRI-WP expressed their support for West Papuan liberation from the NKRI or Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.

Responding to this, Wiranto suggested that people do not need to become upset or anxious about the frequent actions by such groups.

“This old song is the same as the one played in the past. We don’t need to get upset, we don’t need to get anxious, we will just fight it,” he said.

Wiranto also said that the government would not be influenced by the “separatist” threat from such groups.

He asserted that in principle the government still considered Papua would remain part of the NKRI forever and did not need to be disturbed by challenges by any party at all.

“It is clear that we have a principled and standing position which cannot be disrupted by challenges from movements such as this,” he said.

Soft diplomacy
Wiranto also insisted that the government had repeatedly made efforts to develop diplomatic relations with neighbouring countries in order to suppress “biased issues” related to development in Papua.

Wiranto claimed that heads of state in the Asia-Pacific region such as Micronesia, Nauru, and Australia were often invited to help in “suppressing” such groups.

“Soft diplomacy activities which we are carrying out in the South Pacific continue apace. They [the Papuan separatist groups] perhaps then feel angry about the soft diplomacy activities that we are conducting,” said Wiranto.

Wiranto claimed to have invited officials from these countries to see for themselves the current conditions and social developments in remote parts of Papua.

This is aimed at preventing countries in the Asia-Pacific region from “misunderstanding” the current social developments and situation in Papua.

“So we invite them to see the facts [on the ground]. As if we do not provide good education to our friends in Papua. This issue is being continually pushed, continually made an issue of, in Europe, the South Pacific, but you know yourself right, the reality is not like that,” he said.

Wiranto said that there were still potential threats from irresponsible parties which resulted in the emergence of separatist groups in Papua.

He was reluctant however to cite which parties he meant. Wiranto said only that these parties did not want Indonesia to be united and only wanted to take the profits from mining in Papua.

“Because there are still parties that do not want our country to be united, there are still parties which take the profits from mining activities”, he said.

Translated by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service. The original title of the article was “Aksi Referendum Papua: Infrastruktur Jokowi Bukan Jawaban”.

Background:
In 1969, Pepera — Known as the “Act of Free Choice”, a referendum, was held to decide whether West Papua, a former Dutch colony annexed by Indonesia in 1963, would be become independent or join Indonesia. The UN sanction plebiscite, in which 1025 hand-picked tribal leaders allegedly expressed their desire for integration, has been widely dismissed as a sham.

Critics claim that that the selected voters were coerced, threatened and closely scrutinised by the military to unanimously vote for integration.

Although it is widely held that West Papua declared independence from Indonesia on December 1, 1961, this actually marks the date when the Morning Star (Bintang Kejora) flag was first raised alongside the Dutch flag in an officially sanctioned ceremony in Jayapura, then called Hollandia.

The first declaration of independence actually took place on July 1, 1971 at the Victoria Headquarters in Waris Village, Jayapura, when Oom Nicolas Jouwe and two Free Papua Organisation (OPM) commanders, Seth Jafeth Roemkorem and Jacob Hendrik Prai, raised the Morning Star flag and unilaterally proclaimed Papua Barat or West Papua as an independent democratic republic, complete with a National Liberation Army (TPN), a provisional constitution, government, senate and parliament.

• More West Papua stories
  

Two damning and contrasting books about Indonesian colonialism in the Pacific, both by activist participants in Europe and New Zealand, have recently been published. Overall, they are excellent exposes of the harsh repression of the Melanesian people of West Papua and a world that has largely closed a blind eye to to human rights violations.

In Papua Blood, Danish photographer Peter Bang provides a deeply personal account of his more than three decades of experience in West Papua that is a testament to the resilience and patience of the people in the face of “slow genocide” with an estimated 500,000 Papuans dying over the past half century.

With See No Evil, Maire Leadbeater, peace movement advocate and spokesperson of West Papua Action Auckland, offers a meticulously researched historical account of New Zealand’s originally supportive stance for the independence aspirations of the Papuan people while still a Dutch colony and then its unprincipled slide into betrayal amid Cold War realpolitik.

Peter Bang’s book features 188 examples of his evocative imagery, providing colourful insights into changing lifestyles in West Papua, ranging through pristine rainforest, waterfalls, villages and urban cityscapes to dramatic scenes of resistance to oppression and the defiant displays of the Morning Star flag of independence.

Some of the most poignant images are photographs of use of the traditional koteka (penis gourds) and traditional attire, which are under threat in some parts of West Papua, and customary life in remote parts of the Highlands and the tree houses of the coastal marshlands.

Besides the photographs, Bang also has a narrative about the various episodes of his life in West Papua.

Never far from his account, are the reflections of life under Indonesian colonialism, and extreme racism displayed towards the Papuan people and their culture and traditions. From the beginning in 1963 when Indonesia under Sukarno wrested control of West Papua from the Dutch with United Nations approval six years later under a sham “Act of Free Choice” against the local people’s wishes, followed by the so-called ‘Transmigrassi’ programme encouraging thousands of Javanese migrants to settle, the Papuans have been treated with repression.

‘Disaster for Papuans’
Bang describes the massive migration of Indonesians to West Papua as “not only a disaster for the Papuan people, but also a catastrophe for the rainforest, earth and wildlife” (p. 13).

“Police soldiers conducted frequent punitive expeditions with reference to violation of ‘laws’ that the indigenous people neither understood nor had heard about, partly because of language barriers and the huge cultural difference,” writes Bang (p. 11). The list of atrocities has been endless.

“There were examples of Papuans who had been captured, and thrown out alive from helicopters, strangled or drowned after being put into plastic bags. Pregnant women killed by bayonets. Prisoners forced to dig their own graves before they were killed.” (p. 12)

A book that provided an early impetus while Bang was researching for his involvement in West Papua was Indonesia’s Secret War by journalist Robin Osborne, a former press secretary for Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan, the leader who was later ousted from office because of his bungled Sandline mercenary affair over the Bougainville civil war. Osborne’s book also influenced me when I first began writing about West Papua in the early 1980s.

After travelling through Asia, a young Peter Bang arrived in West Papua in 1986 for his first visit determined to journey to the remote Yali tribe as a photographer and writer interested in indigenous peoples. He wanted to find out how the Yali people had integrated with the outside world since missionaries had first entered the isolated tribal area just 25 years earlier.

When Bang visited the town of Angguruk for the first time, “the only wheels I saw at the mission station were punctured and sat on a wheelbarrow … It was only seven years ago that human flesh had been eaten in the area” (p. 16).

During this early period of jungle trekking, Bang rarely “encountered anything besides kindness – only twice did I experience being threatened with a bow and arrow” (p. 39). The first time was by a “mentally disabled” man confused over Bang’s presence, and he was scolded by the village chief.

Political change
Ten years later, Peter Bang again visited the Yali people and found the political climate had changed in the capital Jayapura – “we saw police and military everywhere” following an incident a few months earlier when OPM (Free Papua Movement) guerrillas had held 11 captives hostage in a cave.

He struck up a friendship with Wimmo, a Dani tribesman and son of a village witchdoctor and healer in the Baliem Valley, that was to endure for years, and he had an adoptive family.

On a return visit, Bang met Tebora, mother of the nine-year-old boy Puwul who was the subject of the author’s earlier book, Puwul’s World. At the age of 29, Puwul had walked barefooted hundreds of kilometres across the mountains from the Jaxólé Valley village to Jayapura, and then escaped across the border into Papua New Guinea. A well-worn copy of Puwul’s World was the only book in the village apart from a single copy of the Bible.

Years later, Bang met tribal leader and freedom fighter Benny Wenda who, with the help of Australian human rights activist and lawyer Jennifer Robinson, was granted asylum in the United Kingdom in 2003: “I felt great sympathy for Benny Wenda’s position on the fight for liberation. By many, he was compared to Nelson Mandela, although he was obviously playing his own ukelele” (p. 81)

Wenda and Filip Karma, at the time imprisoned by the Indonesian authorities for 15 years for “raising the Morning Star flag”, were nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.

Bang founded the Danish section of the Free West Papua Campaign and launched an activist Facebook page.

One of the book’s amusing and inspirational highlights is his secret “freedom paddle” on the Baliem River when Peter Bang used a yellow inflatable rubber boat and a pocket-sized Morning Star flag to make his own personal protest against Indonesia (p. 123). This was a courageous statement in itself given the continued arrests of journalists in West Papua by the military authorities in spite of the “open” policy of President Joko Widodo.

As a special section, Bang’s book devotes 26 pages to the indigenous people of West Papua, profiling some of the territory’s 300 tribes and their cultural and social systems, such as the Highlands communities of Dani and Yali, and the Asmat, Korowai and Kombai peoples.

Fascinating insight
This book is a fascinating insight into West Papuan life under duress, but would have benefitted with tighter and cleaner copy editing by the English-language volunteer editors. Nevertheless, it is a valuable work with a strong sociopolitical message.

Peter Bang concludes: “Nobody knows what the future holds. In 2018, the Indonesian regime continues the brutal crackdown on the native population of West Papua.”

In contrast to Bang’s authentic narrative of life in West Papua, Maire Leadbeater’s See No Evil book – launched yesterday – is an activist historical account of New Zealand’s shameful record over West Papua, which is just as disgraceful as Wellington’s record on Timor-Leste over 24 years of Indonesian illegal occupation (tempered by a quietly supportive post-independence role).

Surely there is a lesson here. For those New Zealand politicians, officials and conservative journalists who prefer to meekly accept the Indonesian status quo, the East Timor precedent is an indicator that we should be strongly advocating self-determination for the Papuans.

One of the many strengths of Leadbeater’s thoroughly researched book is she exposes the volte-face and hypocrisy of the stance of successive New Zealand governments since Walter Nash and his “united New Guinea” initiative (p. 66).

“A stroke of the pen in the shape of the 1962 New York Agreement, signed by the colonial Dutch and the Indonesian government, sealed the fate of the people of West Papua,” the author notes in her introduction. Prior to this “selling out” of a people arrangement, New Zealand had been a vocal supporter of the Dutch government’s preparations to decolonise the territory.

In fact, the Dutch had done much more to prepare West Papua for independence than Australia had done at that stage for neighbouring Papua New Guinea, which became independent in 1975.

Game changer
Indonesia’s so-called September 30th Movement crisis in 1965 – three years after paratroopers had been dropped on West Papua in a farcical “invasion” – was the game changer. The attempted coup triggered massive anti-communist massacres in Indonesia leading to an estimated 200,000 to 800,000 killings and eventually the seizure of power by General Suharto from the ageing nationalist President Sukarno in 1967 (Adam, 2015).

As Leadbeater notes, the bloodletting opened the door to Western foreign investment and “rich prizes” in West Papua such as the Freeport’s Grasberg gold and copper mine, one of the world’s richest.

“New Zealand politicians and diplomats welcomed Indonesia’s change in direction. Cold War anti-communist fervour trumped sympathy for the victims of the purge; and New Zealand was keen to increase its trade, investment and ties with the ‘new’ Indonesia.” (p. 22)

The first 13 chapters of the book, from “the Pleistocene period” to “Suharto goes but thwarted hope for West Papua”, are a methodical and insightful documentation of “recolonisation”, and New Zealand’s changing relationship are an excellent record and useful tool for the advocates of West Papuan independence.

However, the last two contemporary chapters and conclusion, do not quite measure up to the quality of the rest of the book.

For example, a less than two-page section on “Media access” gives short change to the important media role in the West Papuan independence struggle. Leadbeater quite rightly castigates the mainstream New Zealand media for a lack of coverage for such a serious issue. Her explanation for the widespread ignorance about West Papua is simplistic:

“A major reason (setting aside Radio New Zealand’s consistent reporting) is that the issues are seldom covered in the mainstream media. It is a circular problem: lack of direct access results in a dearth of objective and fully rounded reporting; editors fear that material they do receive may be inaccurate or misrepresentative; so a media blackout prevails and editors conflate the resulting limited public debate with a lack of interest.” (p. 233)

Mainstream ‘silence’
Leadbeater points out that the mainstream media coverage of the “pre-internet 1960s did a better job”. Yet she fails to explain why, or credit those contemporary New Zealand journalists who have worked hard to break the mainstream “silence” (Robie, 2017).

She dismisses the courageous and successful groundbreaking attempts by at least two New Zealand media organisations – Māori Television and Radio New Zealand – to “test” President Widodo’s new policy in 2015 by sending crews to West Papua in merely three sentences. Since then, she admits, Indonesia’s media “shutters have mostly stayed shut” (p. 235).

One of the New Zealand journalists who has written extensively on West Papua and Melanesian issues for many years, RNZ Pacific’s Johnny Blades, is barely mentioned (apart from the RNZ visit to West Papua). Tabloid Jubi editor Victor Mambor, who visited New Zealand in 2014, Paul Bensemann (who travelled to West Papua disguised as a bird watcher in 2013), Scoop’s Gordon Campbell, Television New Zealand’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver and Tere Harrison’s 2016 short documentary Run It Straight are just a few of those who have contributed to growing awareness of Papuan issues in this country who have not been given fair acknowledgement.

Also important has been the role of the alternative and independent New Zealand and Pacific media, such as Asia Pacific Report, Pacific Scoop (both via the Pacific Media Centre), West Papua Media and Evening Report that have provided relentless coverage of West Papua. Other community and activist groups deserve honourable mentions.

Even in my own case, a journalist and educator who has written on West Papuan affairs for more than three decades with countless articles and who wrote the first New Zealand book with an extensive section on the West Papuan struggle (Robie, 1989), there is a remarkable silence.

One has a strong impression that Leadbeater is reluctant to acknowledge her contemporaries (a characteristic of her previous books too) and thus the selective sourcing weakens her work as it relates to the millennial years.

The early history of the West Papuan agony is exemplary, but in view of the flawed final two chapters I look forward to another more nuanced account of the contemporary struggle. Merdeka!

David Robie is director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of Pacific Journalism Review. He was awarded the 1983 NZ Media Peace Prize for his coverage of Timor-Leste and West Papua, “Blood on our hands”, published in New Outlook magazine.

Papua Blood: A Photographer’s Eyewitness Account of West Papua Over 30 Years, by Peter Bang. Copenhagen, Denmark: Remote Frontlines, 2018. 248 pages. ISBN 9788743001010.
See No Evil: New Zealand’s Betrayal of the People of West Papua, by Maire Leadbeater. Dunedin, NZ: Otago University Press, 2018. 310 pages. ISBN 9781988531212.

References
Adam, A. W. (2015, October 1). How Indonesia’s 1965-1966 anti-communist purge remade a nation and the world. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/how-indonesias-1965-1966-anti-communist-purge-remade-a-nation-and-the-world-48243

Bang, P. (1996). Duianya Puwul. [English edition (2018): Puwul’s World: Endangered native people]. Copenhagen, Denmark: Remote Frontlines.

Osborne, R. (1985). Indonesia’s secret war: The guerilla struggle in Irian Jaya. Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: Nationalist struggles in the South Pacific. London, UK: Zed Books.

Robie, D. (2017). Tanah Papua, Asia-Pacific news blind spots and citizen media: From the ‘Act of Free Choice’ betrayal to a social media revolution. Pacific Journalism Review : Te Koakoa, 23(2), 159-178. https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v23i2.334