Papua conflict

Papua conflict

New Guinea
Date1962 – present
(54 years)
LocationPapua Province, Indonesia; Papua New Guinea (minor border spillages)
Status Ongoing
Belligerents
 Indonesia
 Papua New Guinea
(on & off since 1975)

Free Papua Movement
Supported by:

 Vanuatu
 Libya (until 2011)
 Soviet Union (until 1991)
Commanders and leaders

Current commanders
Joko Widodo
Jusuf Kalla
Ryamizard Ryacudu
Gatot Nurmantyo
Tito Karnavian
Sutiyoso

Current commanders
Jacob Prai
Benny Wenda
Mathias Wenda
Jacob Rumbiak

Casualties and losses
150,000–400,000 killed in total[1][2]

The Papua conflict is an ongoing conflict between the Indonesian Government and portions of the indigenous populations of West Papua in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua on the island of New Guinea; in which the Indonesian government has been accused of conducting a genocidal campaign against the indigenous inhabitants. Since the withdrawal of the Dutch colonial administration from the Netherlands New Guinea in 1962,[3] the implementation of Indonesian governance in 1963 and the formal absorption of West Papua into Indonesia in 1969, the Free Papua Movement (OPM), a militant Papuan-independence organisation, has conducted a low-level guerilla war against the Indonesian state, targeting the Indonesian military and police, as well as engaging in the kidnapping of both non-Papuan Indonesian settlers and foreigners.[4] West Papuans have conducted various protests and ceremonies raising their flag for independence or federation with Papua New Guinea,[4] and accuse the Indonesian government of indiscriminate violence and of suppressing their freedom of expression. Many West Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian military since 1969 and the Indonesian governance style has been compared to that of a police state, suppressing freedom of political association and political expression.[5][6] The Indonesian Government restricts foreign access to the Papua and West Papua provinces due to sensitivities regarding its suppression of Papuan nationalism.

Overview

The Indonesian National Armed Forces has been accused of committing human rights abuses in Papua

In December 1949, at the end of the Indonesian National Revolution, the Netherlands agreed to recognise Indonesian sovereignty over the territories of the former Dutch East Indies, with the exception of Western New Guinea, which the Dutch continued to hold as Netherlands New Guinea. The nationalist Indonesian government argued that it was the successor state to the whole of the Dutch East Indies and wanted to end the Dutch colonial presence in the archipelago. The Netherlands argued that the Papuans were ethnically different[7] and that the Netherlands would continue to administer the territory until it was capable of self-determination.[8] From 1950 on the Dutch and the Western powers agreed that the Papuans should be given an independent state, but due to global considerations, mainly the Kennedy administration's concern to keep Indonesia on their side of the Cold War, the United States pressured the Dutch to sacrifice Papua's independence and transfer the country to Indonesia.[9]

In 1962, the Dutch agreed to relinquish the territory to temporary United Nations administration, signing the New York Agreement, which included a provision that a plebiscite would be held before 1969. The Indonesian military organised this vote, called the Act of Free Choice in 1969 to determine the population's views on Papua and West Papua's future; the result was in favour of integration into Indonesia. In violation of the Agreement between Indonesia and the Netherlands, the vote was a show of hands in the presence of the Indonesian military, and only involved 1025 hand picked people who were forced at gunpoint to vote for integration with Indonesia, much less than 1% of those who should have been eligible to vote. The legitimacy of the vote is hence disputed by independence activists, who launched a campaign of protests against the military occupation of West Papua by Indonesia.

The Indonesian government is accused of human rights abuses, such as attacks on OPM-sympathetic civilians and jailing people who raise the West Papuan National Morning Star flag for treason.[10]

Through the transmigration program, which since 1969 includes migration to Papua, about half of the 2.4 million inhabitants of Indonesian Papua are born in Java,[2] though intermarriage is increasing and the offspring of transmigrants have come to see themselves as "Papuan" over their parents' ethnic group.[11]

As of 2010, 13,500 Papuan refugees live in exile in the neighbouring independent state of Papua New Guinea (PNG),[2] and occasionally the fighting spills over the border. As a result, the Papua New Guinea Defence Force has set up patrols along PNG's western border to prevent infiltration by the OPM. Additionally, the PNG government has been expelling resident "border crossers" and making a pledge of no anti-Indonesian activity a condition for migrants' stay in PNG. Since the late 1970s, the OPM have made retaliatory "threats against PNG business projects and politicians for the PNGDF's operations against the OPM".[12] The PNGDF has performed joint border patrols with Indonesia since the 1980s, although the PNGDF's operations against the OPM are "parallel".[13]

In 2004, the UK based Free West Papua Campaign was set up by exiled West Papuan leader Benny Wenda to encourage the UN to hold an Independence Referendum in West Papua. The Campaign has growing International support and the backing of notable figures such as Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.[14] In 2012, the Campaign issued an arrest warrant for Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for his state visit to the UK in October–November that year. Yudhoyono was protested against everywhere he went in London and regularly saw West Papuan National Flags of Independence which are illegal in Indonesia.

Brief summary and outline of major events

United Nations Administration (1 October 1962 – 30 April 1963)

New Order 1965–1998

Post-Suharto

1998–2010

2010s

See also

References

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  5. "Protest and Punishment" (PDF). Retrieved 15 April 2011.
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  8. Penders, Christian Lambert Maria (2002). The West New Guinea Debacle: Dutch Decolonization and Indonesia, 1945-1962. University of Hawaii Press. p. 154.
  9. Bilveer Singh, page 2
  10. Lintner, Bertil (21 January 2009). "Papuans Try to Keep Cause Alive". Jakarta Globe. Retrieved 9 February 2009.
  11. Heidbüchel, Esther (2007). The West Papua Conflict in Indonesia: Actors, Issues, and Approaches. Johannes Herrmann Verlag. pp. 87–89.
  12. May, Ronald James (2001). State and Society in Papua New Guinea: The First Twenty-Five Years. ANU E Press. pp. 238, 269, 294.
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  59. "More mass demos in West Papua". Radio New Zealand. 2016-05-31. Retrieved 2016-05-31.

Further reading

External links

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