A new documentary film on the devastating “ecocide” happening in West Papua will be screened as a world premiere at a weekend solidarity forum in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau this weekend.

The 90min feature film, Pesta Babi (“Pig Feast”) — Colonialism In Our Time, produced by award-winning Papuan journalist Victor Mambor and directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono, tells a story about the impact of the Indonesian government and military on the lives of thousands of Papuans trying to protect their rainforests from destruction.

It also relates the plight of thousands of internal refugees in the Melanesian region.

• READ MORE: West Papuan filmmakers expose Merauke rainforest destruction in ‘siege’ doco
• West Papua Solidarity Forum, 7-8 March 2026
• Kōrero with Victor Mambor  – West Papua: Journalism as Resistance, 9 March 2026

The peaceful resistance of local communities is revealed in the documentary as they face up to 54,000 Indonesian troops and large corporate entities make big profits at the expense of an ancient culture.

Dorthea Wabiser of the environmental and human rights group Pusaka, will speak on the deforestation and displacement of communities in the south-eastern district of Merauke  where Indonesia is destroying 2.5 million ha of rainforest for palm oil, sugar cane, biodiesel, rice and other crops.

Military force is deployed to silence any dissent from communities.

“Pesta Babi” (Pig Feast).                              Trailer: Jubi Media

Solidarity group hosts
The solidarity group West Papua Action Aotearoa with West Papua Action Tāmaki are hosting the two-day public forum on March 7 and 8 with the speakers from West Papua including environmental champions and filmmakers who operate in militarised zones at considerable risk to their personal safety.

Also, a media talanoa featuring Jubi Media founder Victor Mambor and others will be hosted by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub on March 9.

“The forum is an important event with a number of speakers and filmmakers from West Papua telling the hidden stories of the Indonesian occupation of their country,” said organiser Catherine Delahunty.

The climate impact of their destruction was incredibly serious as was the use of the military to enforce an end to traditional life, food sources, and forests, she said in a statement.

“These people are our Pacific neighbours with a devastating story to tell that our government and others across the world have chosen to ignore,” she said.

“They have a right to come here and to be heard despite the media bans in Indonesia and the desire of successive New Zealand governments to ignore structural genocide in our region.

NZ citizen kidnapped
“Only when a NZ citizen was kidnapped by Papuan soldiers did the government show any interest in West Papua, and this quickly faded once he was safely released thanks especially to West Papuan efforts.”

Other speakers at the forum include veteran activist and writer Maire Leadbeater, Green MP Teanau Tuiono, Hawai’an academic Dr Emalani Case, journalist and author Dr David Robie, Dr Arama Rata of Te Kuaka, and PNG academic Dr Nathan Rew.

• Forum Day One (public sessons), Saturday, March 7:  Old Choral Hall, University of Auckland, 7 Symonds St,  9am–4pm.
• World Premiere of “Pesta Babi” (The Pig Feast) documentary with Q&A – The Academy Cinema, Lorne St, CBD (below the Auckland Public Library), March 7, 6-8.30pm.
• Forum Day Two (solidarity development), Sunday, March 8: The Taro Patch, 9 Dunnotar Rd, Papatoetoe.
• Media Talanoa, Monday, March 9: “Kōrero with Victor Mambor: West Papua: Journalism as Resistance” – Whānau Community Centre and Hub, 165 Stoddard Rd, Mt Roskill (Next to Harvey Norman), 6-8pm.
• Further information: Catherine Delahunty, West Papua Action Tāmaki and West Papua Action Aotearoa. Tel: 021 2421967

A leader of a major West Papuan political movement has praised the recent judgment of the Permanent People’s Tribunal on the Melanesian region colonised by Indonesia for the past 63 years.

“Indonesia knows they have lost the political, legal, and moral argument over West Papua,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.

“Their only remaining tactics are brutality and secrecy — brutality to crush our struggle and secrecy to hide it from the world.”

• READ MORE: PNG’s Parkop tells exiled Papuans ‘don’t lose hope – keep up the freedom struggle’
• West Papuans in Port Moresby host family day
• Other West Papua reports

Saying he welcomed the release of the judgment of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) on West Papua, he added: “Our independence is not only urgent for West Papua, but for the entirety of Planet Earth.”

After testimonies from West Papuans on the ground and from legal and academic experts, the tribunal found Indonesia guilty on all four counts:

• Taking by various means the ancestral land of the Indigenous Papuan people against their will, employing racial discrimination which leads to the loss of culture, traditions and Indigenous knowledge, erases their history and subsumes them into the Indonesian national narrative;
• Violent repression, including unlawful detention, extra-judicial killing, and population displacement in West Papua as a means of furthering industrial development;
• Organised environmental degradation, including the destruction of eco-systems, contamination of land, the poisoning of rivers and their tributaries and of providing the permits, concessions and legal structure of non-compliance for national and foreign companies to invest in West Papua in a way that encourages environmental degradation; and
• colluding with national and foreign companies to cause environmental degradation, population displacement and sustain violent repression in West Papua.

The Hague,has hosted a Climate Change gathering prior to hearing the ICJ meeting where Koteka Wenda, fwpc spoke person from West Papua spoke, about WP being the 3rd largest rainforest after the Amazon and the Congo. “If you save West Papua, you save the lungs of the world” pic.twitter.com/aUJzV354qG

— Benny Wenda (@BennyWenda) December 7, 2024

“This judgment is a total vindication of everything the West Papuan liberation movement has been saying for decades. We are not safe with Indonesia,” said Wenda.

“If we continue to be denied our right to self-determination, everything that makes West Papua unique will disappear.”

Guilty of ‘ecocide’
The PPT had found the Indonesian state guilty of ecocide, of “rapidly destroying our forest” and “poisoning our rivers” through mines, plantations, and huge agribusiness food estates.

“But not only this: the judges also linked Indonesia’s ecocidal destruction to the systematic destruction of West Papua as a people,” said Wenda.

“As they put it: ‘ecological degradation can’t be disaggregated from state and corporate projects which are tending toward the obliteration of a people, or what was called by more than one witness a ‘slow genocide’.”

The PPT found in West Papua everything that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights would also find — ecocide, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass displacement, said Wenda.

“That is why Indonesia continues to deny the UN access to West Papua, despite more than 110 countries demanding their visit.”

Wenda said thde ULMWP considered this judgment a “significant step forward in our quest for liberation”.

‘Nothing left to save’
“The case for self-determination presented by the PPT is comprehensive and undeniable. We already know that our people want freedom — the West Papuan People’s Petition for self-determination was signed by 1.8 million Papuans, more than 70 percent of our population.

“Now the PPT has shown how urgently we need it.,” Wenda said

“Our independence is not only urgent for West Papua, but for the entirety of Planet Earth.

Because Papuans are the stewards of the third largest rainforest in the world, the Indonesian occupation is one of the most severe threats to a habitable global climate.

“If Indonesia continues to destroy our forest at its current rate, there will soon be nothing left to save.”

By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson

On 1 December 1961, West Papua’s national flag, known as the Morning Star, was raised for the first time as a declaration of West Papua’s independence from the Netherlands.

Sixty-three years later, West Papua is claimed by and occupied by Indonesia, which has banned the flag, which still carries aspirations for self-determination and liberation.

The flag continues to be raised globally on December 1 each year on what is still called “Papuan Independence Day”.

• READ MORE: Papua’s Awyu tribal homeland at risk after losing court battle
• Other West Papua reports

Region-wide protests
Protests have been building in West Papua since the new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced the revival of the Transmigration Programme to West Papua.

This was declared a day after he came to power on October 21 and confirmed fears from West Papuans about Prabowo’s rise to power.

This is because Prabowo is a former general known for a trail of allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses in West Papua and East Timor to his name.

Transmigration’s role
The transmigration programme began before Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch colonial government, intended to reduce “overcrowding” in Java and to provide a workforce for plantations in Sumatra.

After independence ended and under Indonesian rule, the programme expanded and in 1969 transmigration to West Papua was started.

This was also the year of the controversial “Act of Free Choice” where a small group of Papuans were coerced by Indonesia into a unanimous vote against their independence.

In 2001 the state-backed transmigration programme ended but, by then, over three-quarters of a million Indonesians had been relocated to West Papua. Although the official transmigration stopped, migration of Indonesians continued via agriculture and development projects.

Indonesia has also said transmigration helps with cultural exchange to unite the West Papuans so they are one nation — “Indonesian”.

West Papuan human rights activist Rosa Moiwend said in the 1980s that Indonesians used the language of “humanising West Papuans” through erasing their indigenous identity.

“It’s a racist kind of thing because they think West Papuans were not fully human,” Moiwend said.

Pathway to environmental destruction
Papuans believe this was to dilute the Indigenous Melanesian population, and to secure the control of their natural resources, to conduct mining, oil and gas extraction and deforestation.

This is because in the past the transmigration programme was tied to agricultural settlements where, following the deforestation of conservation forests, Indonesian migrants worked on agricultural projects such as rice fields and palm oil plantations.

Octo Mote is the vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). Earlier this year Te Ao Māori News interviewed Mote on the “ecocide and genocide” and the history of how Indonesia gained power over West Papua.

The ecology in West Papua was being damaged by mining, deforestation, and oil and gas extraction, he said. Mote said Indonesia wanted to “wipe them from the land and control their natural resources”.

He emphasised that defending West Papua meant defending the world, because New Guinea had the third-largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo and was crucial for climate change mitigation as they sequester and store carbon.

Concerns grow over militarisation
Moiwend said the other concern right now was the National Strategic Project which developed projects to focus on Indonesian self-sufficiency in food and energy.

Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) started in 2011, so isn’t a new project, but it has failed to deliver many times and was described by Global Atlas of Environmental Justice as a “textbook land grab”.

The mega-project includes the deforestation of a million hectares for rice fields and an additional 600,000 hectares for sugar cane plantations that will be used to make bioethanol.

The project is managed by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture, and the private company, Jhonlin Group, owned by Haji Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad. Ironically, given the project has been promoted to address climate issues, Arsyad is a coal magnate, a primary industry responsible for man-made climate change.

Recently, the Indonesian government announced the deployment of five military battalions to the project site.

Conservation news website Mongabay reported that the villages in the project site had a population of 3000 people whereas a battalion consisted of usually 1000 soldiers, which meant there would be more soldiers than locals and the villagers said it felt as if their home would be turned into a “war zone”.

Merauke is where Moiwend’s village is and many of her cousins and family are protesting and, although there haven’t been any incidents yet, with increased militarisation she feared for the lives of her family as the Indonesian military had killed civilians in the past.

Destruction of spiritual ancestors
The destruction of the environment was also the killing of their dema (spiritual ancestors), she said.

The dema represented and protected different components of nature, with a dema for fish, the sago palm, and the coconut tree.

Traditionally when planting taro, kumara or yam, they chanted and sang for the dema of those plants to ensure an abundant harvest.

Moiwend said they connected to their identity through calling on the name of the dema that was their totem.

She said her totem was the coconut and when she needed healing she would find a coconut tree, drink coconut water, and call to the dema for help.

There were places where the dema lived that humans were not meant to enter but many sacred forests had been deforested.

She said the Indonesians had destroyed their food sources, their connection to their spirituality as well destroying their humanity.

“Anim Ha means the great human being,” she said, “to become a great human being you have to have a certain quality of life, and one quality of life is the connection to your dema, your spiritual realm.”

Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News. Republished with permission.

Asia Pacific Report

A West Papuan advocacy group for self-determination for the colonised Melanesians has appealed to the United Kingdom government to cancel its planned reception for new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

“Prabowo is a blood-stained war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua,” claimed an exiled leader of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda.

He said he hoped the government would stand up for human rights and a “habitable planet” by cancelling its reception for Prabowo.

• READ MORE: President Prabowo’s first foreign tour signals Indonesia’s return to global stage
• ‘If it’s not racism, what is it?’ — Human Rights Watch report
• Prabowo and the UK
• Other West Papua reports

Prabowo, who was inaugurated last month, is on a 12-day trip to China, the United States, Peru, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.

He is due in the UK on Monday, November 19.

The trip comes as Indonesian security forces brutally suppressed a protest against Indonesia’s new transmigration strategy in the Papuan region.

Wenda, an interim president of ULMWP, said Indonesia was sending thousands of industrial excavators to destroy 5 million hectares of Papuan forest along wiith thousands of troops to violently suppress any resistance.

“Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land. He wants to destroy West Papua,” the UK-based Wenda said in a statement.

‘Ghost of Suharto’ returns
“For West Papuans, the ghost of Suharto has returned — the New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.

“It is gravely disappointing that the UK government has signed a ‘critical minerals’ deal with Indonesia, which will likely cover West Papua’s nickel reserves in Tabi and Raja Ampat.

“The UK must understand that there can be no real ‘green deal’ with Indonesia while they are destroying the third largest rainforest on earth.”

Wenda said he was glad to see five members of the House of Lords — Lords Harries, Purvis, Gold, Lexden, and Baroness Bennett — hold the government to account on the issues of self-determination, ecocide, and a long-delayed UN fact-finding visit.

“We need this kind of scrutiny from our parliamentary supporters more than ever now,” he said.

Prabowo is due to visit Oxford Library as part of his diplomatic visit.

“Why Oxford? The answer is clearly because the peaceful Free West Papua Campaign is based here; because the Town Hall flies our national flag every December 1st; and because I have been given Freedom of the City, along with other independence leaders like Nelson Mandela,” Wenda said.

This visit was not an isolated incident, he said. A recent cultural promotion had been held in Oxford Town Centre, addressed by the Indonesian ambassador in an Oxford United scarf.

The people of West Papua have spoken.

Just today (15/11/24), rallies against Indonesia’s settler-colonial Transmigration plan were held in:

Jayapura, Nabire, Sorong, Manokwari, Yahukimo, Yalimo, Timika, Makassar. pic.twitter.com/u0ucw8RfUW

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) November 15, 2024

Takeover of Oxford United
“There was the takeover of Oxford United by Anindya Bakrie, one of Indonesia’s richest men, and Erick Thohir, an Indonesian government minister.

“This is not about business — it is a targeted campaign to undermine West Papua’s international connections. The Indonesian Embassy has sponsored the Cowley Road Carnival and attempted to ban displays of the Morning Star, our national flag.

“They have called a bomb threat in on our office and lobbied to have my Freedom of the City award revoked. Indonesia is using every dirty trick they have in order to destroy my connection with this city.”

Wenda said Indonesia was a poor country, and he blamed the fact that West Papua was its poorest province on six decades of colonialism.

“There are giant slums in Jakarta, with homeless people sleeping under bridges. So why are they pouring money into Oxford, one of the wealthiest cities in Europe?” Wenda said.

“The UK has been my home ever since I escaped an Indonesian prison in the early 2000s. My family and I have been welcomed here, and it will continue to be our home until my country is free and we can return to West Papua.”

15/11/24 Jayapura, West Papua

Another angle showing that the rally against Transmigration was peaceful, but the police forcibly dispersed it.

This violates domestic and international laws. pic.twitter.com/Tm5f4d0VrU

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) November 15, 2024

West Papuan independence advocate Octovianus Mote is in Aotearoa New Zealand to win support for independence for West Papua, which has been ruled by Indonesia for more than 60 years.

Mote is vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and is being hosted in New Zealand by the Green Party, which Mote said had always been a “hero” for West Papua.

He spoke at a West Papua seminar at the Māngere Mountain Education Centre tonight.

• WATCH: Michael Cugley‘s video report on Te Ao Māori News
• READ: Other West Papua reports

Former ULMWP president Benny Wenda has alleged more than 500,000 Papuans have been killed since the occupation, and millions of hectares of ancestral forests, rivers and mountains have been destroyed or polluted for “corporate profit”.

Current president is Manasa Tabuni.

The struggle for West Papuans
“Being born a West Papuan, you are already an enemy of the nation [Indonesia],” Mote says.

“The greatest challenge we are facing right now is that we are facing the colonial power who lives next to us.”

If West Papuans spoke up about what was happening, they were considered “separatists”, Mote says, regardless of whether they are journalists, intellectuals, public servants or even high-ranking Indonesian generals.

“When our students on the ground speak of justice, they’re beaten up, put in jail and [the Indonesians] kill so many of them,” Mote says.

Mote is a former journalist and says that while he was working he witnessed Indonesian forces openly fire at students who were peacefully demonstrating their rights.

“We are in a very dangerous situation right now. When our people try to defend their land, the Indonesian government ignores them and they just take the land without recognising we are landowners,” he says.

The ‘ecocide’ of West Papua
The ecology in West Papua is being damaged by mining, deforestation, and oil and gas extraction. Mote says Indonesia wants to “wipe them from the land and control their natural resources”.

He says he is trying to educate the world that defending West Papua means defending the world, especially small islands in the Pacific.

West Papua is the western half of the island of New Guinea, bordering the independent nation of Papua New Guinea. New Guinea has the world’s third-largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo and it is crucial for climate change mitigation as they sequester and store carbon.

Mote says the continued deforestation of New Guinea, which West Papuan leaders are trying to stop, would greatly impact on the small island countries in the Pacific, which are among the most vulnerable to climate change.

Mote also says their customary council in West Papua has already considered the impacts of climate change on small island nations and, given West Papua’s abundance of land the council says that by having sovereignty they would be able to both protect the land and support Pacific Islanders who need to migrate from their home islands.

In 2021, West Papuan leaders pledged to make ecocide a serious crime and this week Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa submitted a court proposal to the International Criminal Court (ICJ) to recognise ecocide as a crime.

Support from local Indonesians
Mote says there are Indonesians who support the indigenous rights movement for West Papuans. He says there are both NGOs and a Papuan Peace Network founded by West Papuan peace campaigner Neles Tebay.

“There is a movement growing among the academics and among the well-educated people who have read the realities among those who are also victims of the capitalist investors, especially in Indonesia when they introduced the Omnibus Law.”

The so-called Omnibus Law was passed in 2020 as part of outgoing President Joko Widodo’s goals to increase investment and industrialisation in Indonesia. The law was protested against because of concerns it would be harmful for workers due to changes in working conditions, and the environment because it would allow for increased deforestation.

Mote says there has been an “awakening”, especially among the younger generations who are more open-minded and connected to the world, who could see it both as a humanitarian and an environmental issue.

The ‘transfer’ of West Papua to Indonesia
“The [former colonial nation] Dutch [traded] us like a cow,” Mote says.

The former Dutch colony was passed over to Indonesia in 1963 in disputed circumstances but the ULMWP calls it an “invasion”.

From 1957, the Soviet Union had been supplying arms to Indonesia and, during that period, the Indonesian Communist Party had become the largest political party in the country.

The US government urged the Dutch government to give West Papua to Indonesia in an attempt to appease the communist-friendly Indonesian government as part of a US drive to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.

The US engineered a meeting between both countries, which resulted in the New York Agreement, giving control of West Papua to the UN in 1962 and then Indonesia a year later.

The New York Agreement stipulated that the population of West Papua would be entitled to an act of self-determination.

The ‘act of no choice’
This decolonisation agreement was titled the 1969 Act of Free Choice, which is referred to as “the act of no choice” by pro-independence activists.

Mote says they witnessed “how the UN allowed Indonesia to cut us into pieces, and they didn’t say anything when Indonesia manipulated our right to self-determination”.

The manipulation Mote refers to is for the Act of Free Choice. Instead of a national referendum, the Indonesian military hand-picked 1025 West Papuan “representatives” to vote on behalf of the 816,000 people. The representatives were allegedly threatened, bribed and some were held at gunpoint to ensure a unanimous vote.

Leaders of the West Papuan independence movement assert that this was not a real opportunity to exercise self-determination as it was manipulated. However, it was accepted by the UN.

Pacific support at UN General Assembly
Mote has came to Aotearoa after the 53rd Pacific Island Forum Leaders summit in Tonga last week and he has come to discuss plans over the next five years. Mote hopes to gain support to take what he calls the “slow-motion genocide” of West Papua back to the UN General Assembly.

“In that meeting we formulated how we can help really push self-determination as the main issue in the Pacific Islands,” Mote says.

Mote says there was a focus on self-determination of West Papua, Kanaky/New Caledonia and Tahiti. He also said the focus was on what he described as the current colonisation issue with capitalists and global powers having vested interests in the Pacific region.

The movement got it to the UN General Assembly in 2018, so Mote says it is achievable. In 2018, Pacific solidarity was shown as the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and the Republic of Vanuatu all spoke out in support of West Papua.

They affirmed the need for the matter to be returned to the United Nations, and the Solomon Islands voiced its concerns over human rights abuses and violations.

What needs to be done
He says that in the next five years Pacific nations need to firstly make the Indonesian government accountable for its actions in West Papua. He also says outgoing President Widodo should be held accountable for his “involvement”.

Mote says New Zealand is the strongest Pacific nation that would be able to push for the human rights and environmental issues happening, especially as he alleges Australia always backs Indonesian policies.

He says he is looking to New Zealand to speak up about the atrocities taking place in West Papua and is particularly looking for support from the Greens, Labour and Te Pāti Māori for political support.

The coalition government announced a plan of action on July 30 this year, which set a new goal of $6 billion in annual two-way trade with Indonesia by 2029.

“New Zealand is strongly committed to our partnership with Indonesia,” Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said at the time.

“There is much more we can and should be doing together.”

Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News. Republished by Asia Pacific Report 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.